Some years ago I had a colleague I’ll call June. It seemed that every time I went to the ladies’ room, June was there, applying mascara, combing her long, dark tresses and chatting. She also spent lots of time out on the sidewalk smoking, and in the cafeteria.
Exceedingly friendly and warm, she knew everyone and devoted much of her day to catching up on their personal news. What she didn’t spend much time on was work. A guy who sat in the cubicle next to hers once told me that he estimated she put in just two hours a day of what could be described as productive labor.
Eric Abrahamson, a professor at Columbia Business School who specializes in leadership and organizational problem solving, calls people like June “Michelangelos of work avoidance.” Abrahamson studies workplace fads and time management and has looked closely at the ways some employees manage to get paid to do nothing. He doesn’t advocate their practices, but he says that understanding them can help managers address office inequities and make their teams more productive.
When I was a kid, there was nothing that tasted better than ice cold water from the hose. I’m not sure if it was all the drugs in the Flint water system, or just a childhood joy, but it was somehow the best H2O I’ve ever had.
You’d think after spraying himself the first couple times he’d figure it out or at least realize he’s getting wet. The look of satisfaction on his face when he finally gets a drink though is absolutely priceless.
There are many things to dislike about Christmas: the bloated newspaper ads, the second-rate music repeated endlessly in shopping malls, the inane evangelical bleating that “Jesus is the reason for the season”, and the pressure to conform lest you be labeled a Scrooge, or, even worse, a Grinch.
Of course, there are things to like about Christmas, too. Everybody enjoys giving presents, and some even like receiving them. A break from work is always appreciated — even if, like me, you just use it to catch up on work left undone — and a house that smells of roast turkey is one worth coming home to.
But there’s one Christmas tradition that my wife and I have never shared: deceiving our kids about the real nature of Santa.
The Kangbashi district began as a public-works project in Ordos, a wealthy coal-mining town in Inner Mongolia. The area is filled with office towers, administrative centers, government buildings, museums, theaters and sports fields—not to mention acre on acre of subdivisions overflowing with middle-class duplexes and bungalows. The only problem: the district was originally designed to house, support and entertain 1 million people, yet hardly anyone lives there.
A good host helps, too, and Kevin Pollak is at the helm of “Million Dollar Money Drop.” He knows when to step in with a joke to move the contest along.The concept here is fairly simple: Two people play as a team. At the start, they’re handed $1 million to lose. Really.
Over the course of the show, they’ll face a series of multiple-choice questions. Each time, they must bet a chunk of the money on their answers. What’s left over at the end, they keep. But having anything left, of course, is easier said than done.
Norman, Okla., Honolulu and Riverside, Calif., had the highest levels of the substance, dubbed the “Erin Brockovich chemical.” New York, while far down on the list of cities, still had more chromium-6 in the tap water than what California is proposing as a “public health goal” for safe levels: 0.06 parts per billion.
