The origins of Labor Day, which takes place the first Monday of September in North America, are somewhat uncertain. The holiday originated in Canada, born out of the worker’s rights movement there in the 1870s. By the 1880s, it had spread across the border, and the first organized Labor Day celebration in the U.S. was held in New York City in 1882.
Throughout the 1880s the honoring of Labor Day gradually made its way throughout the U.S., until it became a federal holiday during the administration of President Grover Cleveland in 1894. Rather than being a day of rest for the worker, however, Labor Day was initially a day of activism. Early celebrations relied on parades and festivals centered around union organizations and their workers. Homage was paid to the rights of these workers and their incredible importance in the growing industrial economy of the country.
What is certain is that since then, the world of work has changed dramatically. The American worker is migrating from the factory to service and knowledge work. Union membership is falling. More and more of us work for small businesses, or even ourselves, instead of large corporations. Read the rest of this entry »
This is the question that I dread more than any other over the holidays, which is saying quite a bit, since my vegan diet also tends to generate another set of awkward questions.
During the rest of the year, my life is filled mostly with other technology workers and freelancers who easily understand what I do for a living. However, the holidays can be a different story when I’m faced with people who know little about what it means to be a web worker.
Over the past few years, I’ve held a number of jobs involving various types of web work. While at Intel, I managed teams of people spread out over several states. I’ve telecommuted from Portland to a company in California. I’ve managed online communities of people with members located around the world. Currently, I work out of my house and coffee shops as an online community and social media consultant.
Here are a few of the scenarios I have encountered as a result of the “What do you do?” question:
Scenario 1: The goof off
Me: I work for Company X managing their online community.
Them: Never heard of Company X. Where is the office?
Me: In California.
Them: Are you moving to California?
Me: No, I work out of my home office over the phone and email mostly.
Them: Cool, I wish I had a job where I could goof off all day.
Me: Sigh
Read the rest of this entry »
It may be a terrible pun, but it is a useful micro-site from the people at Google. The site (and the pun) is “Appy Holidays,” and the aim is to help you manage your hectic holiday schedule.
In the tradition of Fashion Your Firefox, and iPhone Your Life, Appy Holidays collects a selection of Google Apps under a consolidated theme, in this case “manag[ing] the holiday hustle and bustle”.
The Google services featured on the web site include Calendar, Docs, Picasa, and the recently released Gmail-integrated video chat. In fact, the services listed and their suggested uses does present a nice way of getting all of your holiday ducks in a row. Most useful are probably Calendar and Docs, especially if you’re already using these services professionally.
I’m awful at keeping track of deadlines without a planner or calendar, and I already use Google Calendar to keep track of appointments, so it makes sense to add a new calendar devoted exclusively to making sure I don’t miss any of those holiday parties I’ve committed to, or, at the micro-management level, reminding me that the turkey needs to go in by 10:00 if it’s going to be ready when company comes.
Appy Holidays also suggests using Docs for shopping list management, and for labelling and writing holiday letters. They’ve even prepared a special selection of templates so that most of the work is already done for you. If you’re like me, you might also want to keep tabs on your holiday budget using a Docs spreadsheet, since otherwise January might be a very long, scant month indeed. Leftover turkey can only feed you for so long.
Gone are the days when we were in school and got two or more weeks off at holiday time to celebrate and recuperate. Some companies shut down for an entire week or more around Christmas — and their employees probably feel pretty lucky. If you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur or just really busy at your job, you may not be able to take off more than a day or two.
But everyone needs some downtime and a chance to reconnect with family and friends. Taking at least a couple days off at the end of the year can help you feel refreshed and ready for the next one.
What are your plans for taking time off over the holidays? And what are you going to do with that downtime?
Related posts
The holiday season is upon us, and you’re beginning to get stressed out. There’s just so much to do during the holidays: decorating, gift buying, gift wrapping, getting a tree, baking cookies, scheduling family get-togethers and preparing for any get-togethers and so on.
And you’ve still got that pile of work to do.
Holiday planning while you’ve got a busy work schedule can be tough. Let’s take a look at some ideas for getting organized this holiday season, web-worker style.
1. Use web apps for planning. We’re web workers. Consider planning things out on Gcal and using a list program (there are tons of them) for your action lists. I like to use tadalist to make Christmas wish lists for all my kids, and share them with family, so that they can check things off if they buy an item. Then my kids get what they want, no one buys duplicate gifts, and it was easy and fun to create!
Read the rest of this entry »
Euan Semple writes at The Obvious that the Christmas season could be a good time to get your workplace to try out social software because of the surplus of time people have:
One of the most common reasons given for not becoming engaged online is time. Many people feel that time spent on blogs or forums is time wasted… But during the Christmas season, even in the busiest of offices, there tends to be more down time and people are more relaxed about how they use it. People on shift over the Christmas period have more time to “play” when the office is quiet and often surf their way towards blogs, wikis or forums and get involved for the first time.
While this may be the case in some workplaces, I’d imagine many web workers, especially those who freelance or otherwise run their own businesses, may not find much time to rest and relax during the holiday season. I’m looking forward to a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but not expecting much downtime between preparing for holiday celebrations and getting regular work done.
What about you? Will you find some downtime in December?
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
