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Most people who want extra tip money try to write something clever on their jars, but the geniuses over at Depanneur, a grocery store in Brooklyn, know just hot to get the dollars moving: make it a contest between two geek icons. Personally, I’d give my money to Alfred because he needs it more, but that’s just me.
Link Via The Consumerist
If you’re tired of boring old fabric-covered cubicles, you can always invest a little time and money to convert yours into a gorgeous wooden study. If only they had a how-to guide.
Have you ever taken a vacation from one job so you could catch upon your other job? I have. This is from the webcomic Mr. Lovenstein by J.L. Westover. Link -via The Daily What
A 9 to 5 office worker calls in sick and thinks he will have the city to himself during business hours. He is surprised to find that he’s in the minority. Reaction to this video is that this happens in every big city. I can attest that it is the case in small towns, too. This skit is from the live show Killing my Lobster Conquers the Galaxy. Link -via Metafilter
If you are a supervisor in your workplace and you die at work, there is a 10% chance that it was murder. If you’re not in management, the chances of your case being a murder drops to 7%. Gizmodo crunched the statistics on the 4,547 American workplace deaths in 2010 and found some other interesting tidbits:
Overall, “Transportation and material moving occupations”—people who work operating vehicles—dominated the death list, with 1,115 killed on the job. Only seven percent of them were murdered.
The 45-54 year-old bracket made up the plurality of deaths, with a full quarter. 16% of them plummeted to their demises.
The deadliest state to work in? Texas, with 456 fatalities. The safest? New Hampshire, with only 5. West Virginia won the explosion death contest, with 34—likely from all that coal mining, which is extremely dangerous and explosion-prone.
Happy Labor Day! Link -via the Presurfer
A lot of people think their boss is a real “monster.” However this list imagines if your boss actually was monster from TV or film. What monster would your boss be? Or what Monster would you WANT to be your boss.
5) The Jagrafess, from Doctor Who
The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe from Doctor Who is a pretty reasonable boss, and its underlings get to help influence public opinion. “I’d get to work at in Broadcasting!” exults Bradley. And to be fair, if you live in the Jagrafess’ world, then you already work for it one way or another. Just make sure you wear a sweater to work.
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Business Cat is an image meme in which a cat holds a desk job. Most of what you see around the ‘net are pithy statements mixing business and cat culture. But here’s a post that takes you through the entire day of a house cat that holds down a nine-to-five job, although he often works late. After all, he is the Executive Vice Purrsident in Charge of Sales and Quality Control for New Yarn-Based Products. Link
What happens when one bored office starts posting 8 bit characters on their windows with Post It Notes and the office across the street starts competing with their designs? A delightful art war, that’s what. Be sure to click the link and enjoy all of the great pictures.
Before I left my day job, I had plenty of “I quit” fantasies. Mostly, they involved walking away from an explosion a la every major action star ever, but I can’t say at any point I imagined being a robot. But that’s what’s happening here and in a new series of videos by deviantART:
Have you ever wanted to quit work because your boss is a jerk or because you wanted to dedicate your time to something you’re truly passionate about? That’s the inspiration behind our newest project.
DeviantART has teamed up with a stellar production crew, some very talented actors, and some awesome deviants to create a series of short videos that we all wish could happen IRL. Watch above as our overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated employees quit work and show their bosses who they really are!
THere are also “Be a Panda” and “Be a Wizard” videos up, and t-shirts to boot.
We have all heard of dream office environments like at Google where workers get free lunch, laundry and massages. But one company has taken things to the next level by decorating their work space to look like something more appropriate at a theme park. I like how despite the office looking like a Disneyland ride, if you notice the men in the photos are wearing dress shirts and ties. They like things casual, but respectable.
With work spaces decorated with swirly lollipops, giant cupcakes, a treehouse, boot houses and even a flowing waterfall concealing a secret office, Inventionland has been designed to get big minds thinking. The bizarre workspace in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is home to Davison, a product-development company whose inventions are sold in Wal-Mart, Target, FAO Schwartz, J.C. Penney and many other major brands.
400 Excuses & Lies For The Workplace – $9.95
Do you hate your job? You need 400 Excuses & Lies For The Workplace from the NeatoShop. Enclosed in this handy little tin are 400 ready-made excuses and lies to get out of working. These flashcards are perfect for when you need a good laugh. We know you would never actually use them.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Cubicle Toys!
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As someone who works from home, I can vouch for the accuracy of these nuggets of wisdom posted at Buzzfeed. This one in particular, which is a concept I struggle with. You might laugh, but when you work on your own schedule, there is a constant tug-of-war between better quality and getting anything finished at all. Amirite? Link
While many folks are dealing with unemployment, those who still have jobs are putting up with more and more cutbacks. Little by little, our personal space at work is shrinking.
According to the International Facility Management Association, the average American office worker had 90 square feet of work space in 1994, but by 2010, that same worker was down to just 75 square feet of personal space in which to stretch out on the job.
Nor are office drones the only casualty of this spacial downsizing trend. Senior company officials have seen their offices shrink as well, from an average of 115 square feet in 1994 to 96 square feet in 2010. Oh, the humanity!
However, big offices are not the status symbol they used to be. Now it is a sign of status when a worker can do at least part of his job completely outside the office. Link -via J-Walk Blog
This Friday’s Museum of Possibilities addresses the many kinds of burdens felt by office workers, and offers to “solve” or ameliorate some of them. Though office workers have more freedom to move about in their cubicles than, say, debeaked and declawed chickens can move inside their tiny coops, they do experience a variety of underlying stresses. For one, they are required to appear artificially perky and cheerful on the job, which author Barbara Ehrenreich says wastes energy that could be devoted to actual work – see Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, and Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America.
Further, they need to keep up with the latest information, work late hours, take work home, and at the same time learn how to keep fit, look presentable and multitask. A good multitasker might be on the phone while answering email and doing “research” online, which might include checking out interesting facts on Neatorama. All in all, there is more to being an office worker than just showing up for work.
While today’s workers do not always need to carry a heavy briefcase to accomplish work at home – a USB stick loaded with PowerPoint files fits easily in the suit jacket pocket – there is nonetheless the need to continue to worry about the job as well as to work after hours or at home. I believe that the available types of office apparel fail to take into account real needs! I have come to the aid of workers of the office world with suits and dresses, jackets and hats designed especially for office professionals!
The Oatmeal has the lowdown on Why Working from Home is Both Awesome and Horrible. I can vouch for the whole list of reasons, particularly the “loss of regimen”. Link -via Gorilla Mask
Many different ways to create a happier workforce, but I find this one works quite well.
When I was in university, I used to absolutely love studying and writing papers. Wait! Before you throw me into the nerd dumpster, hear me out. Okay, the actual work involved with cramming mind-numbing textbook information into my head, or making sure every sentence I typed was properly referenced, quoted, footnoted and endnoted was extremely tedious indeed. But, as endless as some of those homework nights seemed to be, I was genuinely happy to be there. The reason? I had inadvertently constructed a workplace so comfortable, so conducive to both concentration and creativity, that I thoroughly enjoyed hibernating there for hours on end. I say inadvertently, because back then I was relatively clueless when it came to workplace mood-enhancement techniques, and it was only years later that I discovered the value in the things I did.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Nightcrawlerx.
Despite the proven benefits of naps on your cognitive ability, many employers still frown upon their workers napping on the job. So to help the sleepy get their winks, Miss Cellania wrote this highly informative piece at our pal mental_floss about how to nap at work:
Some of us have perfected the art of sleeping while sitting up. Too bad our closed eyes give us away, but that can be fixed as well with Sleep Safe Tape. The cellophane tape has eyes printed on it that you can peel off, apply to your eyelids, and appear awake while you snooze through a boring meeting.
An unfinished work is a creative work that has not been finished. Its creator might have chosen never to finish it, or might have been prevented by circumstances outside of their control (including death).The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens’ death and thus how it might have ended remains unknown. The novel is named after Edwin Drood but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud is Drood’s fiancée, and has also caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon with his twin sister, Helena. Neville Landless and Drood take a dislike to one another the moment they meet. Drood later disappears in mysterious circumstances and Dickens’ death before he completed the story means that what happened to him remains a mystery for real.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
Mike Rowe, the host of the TV show "Dirty Jobs" is a surprisingly eloquent guy. In this TED talk in December 2008, he talked about people with dirty jobs, questioning one’s assumptions, the nature of hard work, and the "war on work."
I learned a lot of new things by watching this video clip, including how to properly castrate lambs (hint: yanking ‘em out with one’s teeth is one of the steps)
Hit play or go to Link [TED video clip]
Last year, the state of Utah mandated a four-day work week for state employees. The salaries and number of hours each worker put in remained the same as the workday became longer, but offices were closed on Fridays.
After 12 months, Utah’s experiment has been deemed so successful that a new acronym could catch on: TGIT (thank God it’s Thursday). The state found that its compressed workweek resulted in a 13% reduction in energy use and estimated that employees saved as much as $6 million in gasoline costs. Altogether, the initiative will cut the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 12,000 metric tons a year. And perhaps not surprisingly, 82% of state workers say they want to keep the new schedule.
Even those who do not work for the state have benefitted since offices are open later Monday through Thursday. Other states and businesses are looking at the results and may possibly try the schedule out. Link -via Digg
Esther Schindler played D&D for years, and has discerned principles from those experiences that can be used in her working life:
5. The best quests require a mixture of skills in the party. Find new friends and cultivate ancillary skills. That pesky little hobbit thief may eat you out of house and home, yet sometimes he comes in pretty handy. This is the point of all those tedious “diversity training” exercises from your HR department; perhaps the message would get across better if they talked about the apparently-weak wizard and the bard with those amazing negotiation skills.
Link via Geek Dad, who notes that July is Dungeon Master Appreciation Month
I work in the darkest, dingiest office building known to man. It’s like any light is sucked into the beige fabric-covered cube walls… not the best environment for creativity. Needless to say, I’m quite intrigued by this cube makeover – click the link to see the “before,” if you’re lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the confines of a cubicle.
Link via ikea hacker
