Pocketmint

Tag: employment

1. Our year of radical change

   6 July 2013

   Okay, I went AWOL on Pocketmint again. I’m sorry, but I’m hoping when you hear why, you’ll forgive me. Around the time of my last post, my whole life took an abrupt left turn … and then just kept going. Here are (some of) the major developments from the last three months: 1. Jak got […]

2. Learning to talk to strangers

   31 December 2012

   In college, I was once recruited to write a feature article for a magazine. I fled more-or-less screaming from the prospect. Writing was not the problem. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever — I was confident I could figure it out. Research has always been one of my better skills, even back in the day when you had […]

3. Career advice for cats and foxes

   30 October 2012

   What do you want to be when you grow up? I spent a lot of time as a kid trying to answer that question — not in a casual way, but with an unchildlike level of seriousness and deliberation, including trips to the library to research esoteric details of my prospective careers. For example, at […]

4. Salary negotiation: we’ve been doing it wrong

   27 August 2012

   For as long as I can remember, the standard advice to job applicants has been ‘never be the first one to name a number’ when it comes to negotiating compensation. Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist, says so in no uncertain terms: … when it comes to discussing your potential salary, never give the number […]

5. Working for a financial company during a financial crisis (… or not)

   27 October 2008

   The post you’re about to read first appeared here on October 27th, for less than 24 hours. On the morning of October 28th, while en route to work after a doctor’s appointment, I received a call from the Human Resources director of the company that had employed me for nearly three years. He asked if […]

6. Now hiring. Whoo hoo!

   16 September 2008

   A job-matching site which has my resumé on file just emailed me an alert about a new position for which I was supposedly a near-perfect match. I dutifully clicked through and started reading. Job description sounded good, and then I got to the ‘About the Company’ section: Seattle — home to gourmet coffee, grunge, and […]

7. Minimum wage gain and pain

   24 July 2008

   Millions of Americans got a raise today. I am grateful to not be one of them. I’ve worked for minimum wage. During and just after college, I waited tables in Texas where ‘tipped employees’ were paid just $2.13 an hour. That number hasn’t changed at all in the last twenty years, and guess what? Today’s […]

8. Double exposure: risks of working in the financial industry

   14 July 2008

   If you have any money in the stock market right now, you’ve probably noticed a distressing trend over the past few months. I only check my retirement account balances once a month, and I can’t help being pained when the decline in net worth measures thousands of dollars. Compounding this is the fact that, because […]

9. Cutting benefits to lure employees?

   9 July 2008

   Hope you had a fun Fourth! Jak and I spent the holiday weekend visiting his sister and her husband in Eugene, Oregon. We watched fireworks from a boat and played laser tag. My in-laws (I sometimes call them ‘out-laws’, since Jak and I aren’t married) own an auto shop in Eugene. Business is booming, but […]