The Panda Bear wants to let her readers know that she has not abandoned her blog. Her father has been critically ill for the past two weeks. She plans to restart her blog once the health status of her father is resolved.
Her father who is 89 fell down the stairs and broke his pelvis and has sustained a brain injury. While he is not brain dead, he has sustained a brain damage. Yesterday, he appeared to be totally unconscious.
He is in the intensive care unit at The Massachusetts General Hospital. The Panda Bear spent a couple of days with her father in the unit of the hospital. She was impressed with the list of specialists that were working on her father to deal with his health.
Probably as a result of his fall, the Panda Bear's father has sustained a heart attack and brain seizure. The brain seizure has set the Panda Bear's father back in terms of mental cognition.
The Panda Bear Blog is in part of blog about American overwork. The Panda Bear gets very angry at supposed "experts" who aren't on the clock telling us average folk that we simply imagine that we are overworked.
It is the most stressful time of year in the Panda Bear's line of work. The Panda Bear wants it noted that many American workers are going from work to personal stress. While the Panda Bear's employer has been good about giving the Panda Bear time of from work, it should be noted that this is coming from the eighteen days from the Panda Bear's "Benefit Time" which is a combination of personal, sick and vacation time.
Nowadays, jobs are hard to get. In life and death discussions with the physicians the Panda Bear will be waving company leave of absence forms so her job can be protected under the American Family Medical Leave Act.
The Panda Bear now must get ready for her tasks for the day and see her very ill father on the first holiday of the summer.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
The Panda Bear on Bullying, May Day, and Time Famine
The Panda Bear Blog is a blog about average people struggling with average problems.
The Panda Bear reconnected with another friend from her childhood who also was bullied. The years she would have been bullied would be from about 1968-1972. The Panda Bear and all her friends remember that the schools did nothing to stop bullying. The Panda Bear is glad that school bullying is now talked about. She does not remember it being talked about she was a child. The Panda Bear has had these conflicting memories of feeling like she was the only child ever in the history of the world who was bullied and at the same time if she saw other children being bullied she would have the feeling that she was glad it was not her. Even if bullying has not stopped in schools, the Panda Bear thinks it is an infinite improvement from when she was a child that it is now being discussed in classrooms. That the schools did nothing to stop the bullying made the Panda Bear feel that the bullies were somehow right. The Panda Bear also feels that it is too bad that all the bully victims could not get together and simply ignore the bullies. The bullies seemed to have better group organizational skills than the bullied.
According to this article in the The Nation, more people in the US are celebrating May Day. The article gives a interesting history of May Day. The Panda Bear things more needs to be done to celebrate and honor achievements of average people. The Panda Bear is hearing of "employee appreciation" events where the higher ups pretty much say they think they are more important than their workers. In the Panda Bear's opinion, employee appreciation should be where managers appreciate the ordinary workers. If upper management feels they are superior to the workers they should be tactful enough not to say in front of them on worker appreciation events. To the Panda Bear this behavior is both rude and stupid.
In a previous post, the Panda Bear said the purpose of her blog was to chronicle the rising hours of work and how it was not good for society. The Panda Bear feels it would be nice for people who feel time stressed to be able to band together to find solutions both on a societal and personal level. Furthermore, the Panda Bear believes that many of the "experts" in US society have an incomplete understanding of the average worker.
In her last week's post, the Panda Bear discussed a study by authors associated with Harvard, Yale and Wharton Business school about how volunteering made time stressed people feel like they had more free time. To get the full text of the study click here. The authors describe the problem of time stressed Americans quite accurately here:
Despite medical advances that have lengthened the human lifespan and technologicalinnovations that have automated many chores, Americans report feeling more time-constrainedthan ever (Carroll, 2008; Robinson & Godbey, 1999). Many, in fact, perceive themselves asvictims of a “time famine'
However, the Panda Bear feels it is simplistic to say that people would feel less time strained if they "volunteered".
In future posts, the Panda Bear will analyze her free time to see how much she wastes.
The Panda Bear reconnected with another friend from her childhood who also was bullied. The years she would have been bullied would be from about 1968-1972. The Panda Bear and all her friends remember that the schools did nothing to stop bullying. The Panda Bear is glad that school bullying is now talked about. She does not remember it being talked about she was a child. The Panda Bear has had these conflicting memories of feeling like she was the only child ever in the history of the world who was bullied and at the same time if she saw other children being bullied she would have the feeling that she was glad it was not her. Even if bullying has not stopped in schools, the Panda Bear thinks it is an infinite improvement from when she was a child that it is now being discussed in classrooms. That the schools did nothing to stop the bullying made the Panda Bear feel that the bullies were somehow right. The Panda Bear also feels that it is too bad that all the bully victims could not get together and simply ignore the bullies. The bullies seemed to have better group organizational skills than the bullied.
According to this article in the The Nation, more people in the US are celebrating May Day. The article gives a interesting history of May Day. The Panda Bear things more needs to be done to celebrate and honor achievements of average people. The Panda Bear is hearing of "employee appreciation" events where the higher ups pretty much say they think they are more important than their workers. In the Panda Bear's opinion, employee appreciation should be where managers appreciate the ordinary workers. If upper management feels they are superior to the workers they should be tactful enough not to say in front of them on worker appreciation events. To the Panda Bear this behavior is both rude and stupid.
In a previous post, the Panda Bear said the purpose of her blog was to chronicle the rising hours of work and how it was not good for society. The Panda Bear feels it would be nice for people who feel time stressed to be able to band together to find solutions both on a societal and personal level. Furthermore, the Panda Bear believes that many of the "experts" in US society have an incomplete understanding of the average worker.
In her last week's post, the Panda Bear discussed a study by authors associated with Harvard, Yale and Wharton Business school about how volunteering made time stressed people feel like they had more free time. To get the full text of the study click here. The authors describe the problem of time stressed Americans quite accurately here:
Despite medical advances that have lengthened the human lifespan and technologicalinnovations that have automated many chores, Americans report feeling more time-constrainedthan ever (Carroll, 2008; Robinson & Godbey, 1999). Many, in fact, perceive themselves asvictims of a “time famine'
– having too much to do and not enough time to do it (DeVoe &Pfeffer, 2011; Perlow, 1999). With waking hours largely consumed by work, precious minutesremain for the daily list of to-dos, including exercise, cleaning, and socializing with friends and family (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004). Not surprisingly, some 85% of parents wish for more time with their children (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006), and twice asmany Americans would prefer two weeks of vacation over two weeks of extra pay (Honoré,2004).Most relevant to the present investigation, people’s sense that time is scarce decreases their tendency to give time to others. Darley and Batson (1973) showed that seminary students late to discuss the parable of the Good Samaritan hurried past a suffering confederate. Similarly,Levine (1998) found pace-of-life to negatively predict prosocial behavior in cities around theworld, with the chronically time-constrained inhabitants of places like New York being leastlikely to spend time helping strangers.
However, the Panda Bear feels it is simplistic to say that people would feel less time strained if they "volunteered".
In future posts, the Panda Bear will analyze her free time to see how much she wastes.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The Panda Bear on Sick Time and Volunteering
The Panda Bear Blog is a blog about not having it all. It is a blog for stressed out average people who feel the “experts” somehow just don’t get the average person lives.
In a previous post, the Panda Bear was complaining about how even when she does not feel well, physicians won’t write her sick notes for work and her employers want them if she is out more than a couple of days. (Please note the Panda Bear on the whole has been in good health and the longest time she has been out sick from work in twenty-seven years has been a week).
The Panda Bear had maligned her present employer. After taking two days off from for an upper respiratory infection for which her physician said she could return to work, the Panda Bear’s supervisor said she could have taken a third day off. The supervisor said she would not require the Panda Bear to get a note for up to five days taken off for illness. The supervisor told the Panda Bear that she would rather the Panda Bear be out and not spread her germs at work. The Panda Bear thanked her supervisor and told her she had worked for two organizations where all time taken off for illnesses lowered a person’s attendance ratings.
The Panda Bear’s apartment is a mess because for several weeks the Panda Bear only had the energy to work and come home. The Panda Bear feels varying energy levels and illness is something that much time management theory ignores. The kitchen table broke this morning. The Panda Bear and Mr. Panda will now have to get unexpectedly a new kitchen table this weekend. Something always seems to happen to foil the best laid time management schemes. While at work, this week the Panda Bear was listening an show on NPR called Radio Boston where some professors of business from such excellent schools such Yale and Wharton which claimed that people who volunteered felt like they had more free time than people who worked that did not volunteer. These professors said the act of volunteering gave people the illusion that they had more free time.
Now the Panda Bear is all for volunteering.She has done volunteering while has she worked full-time. In addition, the experience the pleasure of working for what the Panda Bear feels are good causes, the Panda Bear has experienced other personal benefits. She has developed new skills and met new people. It has lead to contacts that have provided her with references for paid work. Volunteering can be a much nicer experience than paid employment because people know that one would only do it if one was not being nicely treated.
However, the Panda Bear does not feel that volunteering has made her feel that she has more free time. The Panda Bear has question several of her friends about whether their volunteering increased their feeling that they have more free time. Everyone said no. While volunteering may have some positive benefits, it did not make them feel like they had more free time. The Panda Bear feels that these college professors have no idea what it is to work on a time clock which the Panda Bear does. Furthermore, volunteering shows how American workers have less and less free time. At one time many companies had programs where people could volunteer on work time. Even if companies did not provide the actual work time, they supported employees efforts to volunteer because they thought it made the organization look good. Now most organizations want total commitment from their employees.
In a previous post, the Panda Bear was complaining about how even when she does not feel well, physicians won’t write her sick notes for work and her employers want them if she is out more than a couple of days. (Please note the Panda Bear on the whole has been in good health and the longest time she has been out sick from work in twenty-seven years has been a week).
The Panda Bear had maligned her present employer. After taking two days off from for an upper respiratory infection for which her physician said she could return to work, the Panda Bear’s supervisor said she could have taken a third day off. The supervisor said she would not require the Panda Bear to get a note for up to five days taken off for illness. The supervisor told the Panda Bear that she would rather the Panda Bear be out and not spread her germs at work. The Panda Bear thanked her supervisor and told her she had worked for two organizations where all time taken off for illnesses lowered a person’s attendance ratings.
The Panda Bear’s apartment is a mess because for several weeks the Panda Bear only had the energy to work and come home. The Panda Bear feels varying energy levels and illness is something that much time management theory ignores. The kitchen table broke this morning. The Panda Bear and Mr. Panda will now have to get unexpectedly a new kitchen table this weekend. Something always seems to happen to foil the best laid time management schemes. While at work, this week the Panda Bear was listening an show on NPR called Radio Boston where some professors of business from such excellent schools such Yale and Wharton which claimed that people who volunteered felt like they had more free time than people who worked that did not volunteer. These professors said the act of volunteering gave people the illusion that they had more free time.
Now the Panda Bear is all for volunteering.She has done volunteering while has she worked full-time. In addition, the experience the pleasure of working for what the Panda Bear feels are good causes, the Panda Bear has experienced other personal benefits. She has developed new skills and met new people. It has lead to contacts that have provided her with references for paid work. Volunteering can be a much nicer experience than paid employment because people know that one would only do it if one was not being nicely treated.
However, the Panda Bear does not feel that volunteering has made her feel that she has more free time. The Panda Bear has question several of her friends about whether their volunteering increased their feeling that they have more free time. Everyone said no. While volunteering may have some positive benefits, it did not make them feel like they had more free time. The Panda Bear feels that these college professors have no idea what it is to work on a time clock which the Panda Bear does. Furthermore, volunteering shows how American workers have less and less free time. At one time many companies had programs where people could volunteer on work time. Even if companies did not provide the actual work time, they supported employees efforts to volunteer because they thought it made the organization look good. Now most organizations want total commitment from their employees.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Panda Bear on the Purpose of her Blog and Womac/House Update
The Panda Bear is taking a slight break from her promise to herself to get some rest after she came home from work. However, she read this article from the Atlantic called "Is your job killing you?" and Panda Bear found one of the key themes of her blog. This article states:
Welcome to the future of work: a world where everything moves faster, the hours are longer and steady jobs are harder to find. Work has always been central to our lives -- in the United States, the 40-hour workweek stretches back at least a century -- but now, technology and the pressure of competing in a global economy is threatening to turn back the clock, making our toil an all-consuming affair once again.
Studies show that we're more productive than ever...
The object of the Panda Bear Blog is to show that this involuntary increase in work hours is bad for Americans physically, psychologically, economically and morally. She things some of this increase in work hours is actually counterproductive; we aren't really getting more done.. The Panda Bear things the ultimate measure of wealth is freedom to do the things we want to do rather than have to do. In the spirit of the current populists uprisings the Panda Bear feels that American workers are not reaping the benefits of their productivity. The top one percent throw as a few toys for all our sweat and blood.
Furthermore, this article states that Americans work some of the longest hours in the world:
In 2010, Americans each worked on average a total of 1,778 hours. That's not nearly as bad as South Korea (2,193 hours), but the United States still spends more time at work than many of its fellow developed nations, including Japan, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The Panda Bear believes that what made the US great was our spirit of fun and adventure. We are the country that gave the world Elvis Presley and Walt Disney. The Panda Bear remembers when she was a child there was a chant that went:
(a Far Eastern Ethnic group) school has just begun
no more laughing no more fun.
The Panda Bear things this describes the United States right now-endless work-no sense of play and adventure. We have become a nation of drudges. In the upcoming elections the Panda Bear plans to ask different political candidates what they plan to do to make us are more relaxed, friendly and leisured country.
The Panda Bear is not ashamed to admit she struggles to survive in this new tough American economy. She works but can do not many other things that she would like to do.
This long works hours explains why the Panda Bear has not made some of the home improvements she expected to have completed. Readers of the Panda Bear Blog know the thing she dislikes the most in the world are household chores. This fall the Panda Bear saw some mice and launched the War on Mice and Clutter(WOMAC). This war is modeled after George Bush's Global War on Terror(GWOT).
The Panda Bear did manage to get rid of some clutter. She also got a cat(Suzie-see above) whom she loves. Since has the Panda Bear has gotten Suzie she has not seen any mice and she loves having a cat. It is the first pet the Panda Bear has had.
While the Panda Bear has not been able to do half of what she has wanted to do with her apartment, she now does household chores with a new feeling of tranquility. She has come to accept the fact that she will never be the world's best housekeeper. When she has the energy to do her few hated home chores, she now does it with a spirit of peace, acceptance and love.
The world is far too fast paced for the Panda Bear. She just wants to sit outside and lay on the grass and rest.
Welcome to the future of work: a world where everything moves faster, the hours are longer and steady jobs are harder to find. Work has always been central to our lives -- in the United States, the 40-hour workweek stretches back at least a century -- but now, technology and the pressure of competing in a global economy is threatening to turn back the clock, making our toil an all-consuming affair once again.
Studies show that we're more productive than ever...
The object of the Panda Bear Blog is to show that this involuntary increase in work hours is bad for Americans physically, psychologically, economically and morally. She things some of this increase in work hours is actually counterproductive; we aren't really getting more done.. The Panda Bear things the ultimate measure of wealth is freedom to do the things we want to do rather than have to do. In the spirit of the current populists uprisings the Panda Bear feels that American workers are not reaping the benefits of their productivity. The top one percent throw as a few toys for all our sweat and blood.
Furthermore, this article states that Americans work some of the longest hours in the world:
In 2010, Americans each worked on average a total of 1,778 hours. That's not nearly as bad as South Korea (2,193 hours), but the United States still spends more time at work than many of its fellow developed nations, including Japan, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The Panda Bear believes that what made the US great was our spirit of fun and adventure. We are the country that gave the world Elvis Presley and Walt Disney. The Panda Bear remembers when she was a child there was a chant that went:
(a Far Eastern Ethnic group) school has just begun
no more laughing no more fun.
The Panda Bear things this describes the United States right now-endless work-no sense of play and adventure. We have become a nation of drudges. In the upcoming elections the Panda Bear plans to ask different political candidates what they plan to do to make us are more relaxed, friendly and leisured country.
The Panda Bear is not ashamed to admit she struggles to survive in this new tough American economy. She works but can do not many other things that she would like to do.
This long works hours explains why the Panda Bear has not made some of the home improvements she expected to have completed. Readers of the Panda Bear Blog know the thing she dislikes the most in the world are household chores. This fall the Panda Bear saw some mice and launched the War on Mice and Clutter(WOMAC). This war is modeled after George Bush's Global War on Terror(GWOT).
While the Panda Bear has not been able to do half of what she has wanted to do with her apartment, she now does household chores with a new feeling of tranquility. She has come to accept the fact that she will never be the world's best housekeeper. When she has the energy to do her few hated home chores, she now does it with a spirit of peace, acceptance and love.
The world is far too fast paced for the Panda Bear. She just wants to sit outside and lay on the grass and rest.
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