'Office Space' is not really about the mailroom per se, but it's a great movie

The NY Times Sunday magazine carries an intriguing story by Adam Davidson, “Why Are Harvard Graduates in the Mailroom?” Of course, the idea is that the company mailroom is where one goes from low on the ladder to (eventually) get a shot at big dreams of success. This theme is made famous by film and TV, but  I’ve never known anyone who actually worked in one – probably because, I’ve never really lived in a big city such as LA or NYC. He discusses that which is often not discussed in friendly company – employment represents a distinct set of opportunities, choices, risks, and rewards – and that’s just the start of it.

There are a number of professions in which workers are paid, in part, with a figurative lottery ticket. The worker accepts a lower-paying job in exchange for a slim but real chance of a large, future payday.

And then:

This system is unfair and arbitrary and often takes advantage of many people who don’t really have a shot at the big prize. But it is far preferable to the parts of our economy where there are no big prizes waiting. That mailroom clerk at Warner Brothers may make less than a post office clerk (maybe even half as much), but the latter has less chance of a significant promotion. Workers in retail sales, clerical settings, low-skill manufacturing and other fields tend to have loose, uncommitted bonds to their industries, and their employers have even looser commitments to them. These jobs don’t offer a bright future precisely because they don’t require a huge amount of skill, and therefore there’s no need to do much merit-sorting.

That last part may yield some ire in people. I don’t think that he means that people in these jobs don’t work hard or have skill, but rather that such jobs are readily available – if you dislike a particular job, then you can quit it and find a similar one quickly – hence, there is less personal investment and accordingly, little long-term opportunity payoff (even if it’s just a lottery). Or at least that used to be the case. Now such jobs have become more scarce, but even more scarce are the jobs that used to populate America – the solid “Plan B” jobs – although I find that an odd way to portray them. I’ll let Davidson explain:

But part of the American post-World War II economic miracle was that most people didn’t have to choose between a high-stakes-lottery job or a lousy dead-end one. Steelworkers, midlevel corporate executives, shopkeepers and plumbers were all able to make a decent amount from the start of their careers with steady, but never spectacular, raises throughout. These two tiers actually supported each other. Strivers were able to dream bigger because they had a solid Plan B. New York City and Los Angeles are buoyed by teachers, store owners, arts administrators and others who came to town to make it big in film or music or publishing, eventually gave up on that dream and ended up doing fine in another field.

I don’t think that Davidson is in any way denigrating these good careers that are rapidly disappearing, but rather sees them as an excellent opportunities for people who ‘go for it’ (be it to become famous or rich through business building) and don’t make it. His point seems to be that without such ‘fall back’ positions, people are less inclined to take significant chances and foster innovation – thus, the economy finds itself in a self-perpetuating downward spiral. We become a nation of ‘lottery players’ and the people who serve those players (some eventual winners and some losers) their coffee or ring up their merchandise at the store.

You can check out the rest of the story here.

Among the 435 members of the House, for example, there are one physicist, one chemist, one microbiologist, six engineers and nearly two dozen representatives with medical training. The case of doctors and the body politic is telling. Everyone knows roughly what doctors do, and so those with medical backgrounds escape the anti-intellectual charge of irrelevance often thrown at those in the hard sciences. Witness Senator Bill Frist, Gov. Howard Dean and even Ron Paul.

But why is it so low relative to some other nations?

One reason is that an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with religious and cultural beliefs and scientists are sometimes tone-deaf to the social environment in which they state their conclusions. A more politically sensitive approach to problems and issues, on the other hand, often leads to positions that simply don’t jibe with the facts, no matter how delicately phrased. Examples as diverse as stem cell research and the economic stimulus abound.

This article prompts some questions – what are the determinants of “scientists presence” in elected government? Does it make a difference, and if so what? You can check out the rest of the article here.

Heather Gain, the marketing manager of the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., said that in recent years the store had begun doing more events that required the customer to buy a book, constantly reminding them that “if they aren’t purchasing the books from the establishments that are running these events, the bookstores are going to go away.”

“We’re a business,” Ms. Gain said. “We’re not just an Amazon showroom.”

The New York Times has the rest of the story here.

That address on the bottom of this column? That is the pathetic, confused death knell of the once-proud newspaper industry, and I want nothing to do with it. Sending an email to that address is about as useful as sending your study group report about Iraq to the president.

Here’s what my internet-fearing editors have failed to understand: I don’t want to talk to you; I want to talk at you. A column is not my attempt to engage in a conversation with you. I have more than enough people to converse with. And I don’t listen to them either. That sound on the phone, Mum, is me typing.

Some newspapers even list the phone numbers of their reporters at the end of their articles. That’s a smart use of their employees’ time. Why not just save a step and have themset up a folding table at a senior citizen centre with a sign asking for complaints?

Where does this end? Does Philip Roth have to put his email at the end of his book? Does Tom Hanks have to hold up a sign with his email at the end of his movie? Should your hotel housekeeper leave her email on your sheets? Are you starting to see how creepy this is?

Not everything should be interactive. A piece of work that stands on its own, without explanation or defence, takes on its own power. If Martin Luther put his 95 theses on the wall and then all the townsfolk sent him their comments, and he had to write back to all of them and clarify what he meant, some of the theses would have been all watered down and there never would have been a Diet of Worms. And then, for the rest of history, school pupils learning about the Reformation would have nothing to make fun of. You can see how dangerous this all is.

Robert Sapolsky and an olive baboon share a quiet moment on the Talek River, July 2007 (Credit: John Heminway)

A lot, apparently. National Geographic has a fascinating look at stress via the research of Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky. Here’s a bit of it:

In this revelatory film, discoveries occur in an extraordinary range of places, from baboon troops on the plains of East Africa to the office cubes of government bureaucrats in London to neuroscience labs at the nation’s leading research universities. Groundbreaking research reveals surprising facts about the impact of stress on our bodies: how it can shrink our brains, add fat to our bellies and even unravel our chromosomes. Understanding how stress works can help us figure out ways to combat it and mitigate negative impacts on our health.

For over three decades, Robert Sapolsky has been working to advance our understanding of stress — in particular how our social standing (our place in various hierarchies) can make us more or less susceptible to the damaging effects of stress. Throughout the film, he weaves the grim realities of the impact of chronic stress with his wry observations about 21st century life.

The documentary is available on Netflix instant watch and here’s the story on it from PBS.

Some interesting thoughts on the Pareto 80/20 principle as applied to work efficiency here.

The annual APSA meeting in Washington, DC is upon us and should be a very successful event. Look forward to some live Twittering from us on the event. Pssst … the twitter feeds are to your right.

See it here.