Young Osama, left home alone in Afghanistan, ended up fighting off a pair of wacky, comically inept Soviet soldiers, using only his wits and common materials found around the home. Then he discovered the true meaning of Ramadan. [NYT]
Non-staff employees at MTV Networks had a meeting with the company's HR department this afternoon. Nearly 200 attended, and the HR person running the meeting said, "If we would've known so many of you were going to show up, we would've ordered lunch to help soften the blow." Lunch or no, it didn't go over so well!…
Here's what we hear from what we believe has truly become the Viacom sweatshop. (One Viacom permalancer estimates that almost 50% of the staff are contract workers at this point.) A 50-hour workweek will now be standard, at least at MTV Digital (which means no overtime until after 50 hours, and no overtime at all…
We hear that Viacom contractors will be informed today that their paltry five days of vacation time have been cut—to zero. Rumor has it other perks are also on the chopping block. Maybe the Viacom dining hall's automated massage chairs will now be off-limits to lowly contract workers. Tell us more, please!
I am going on vacation. Emily and Josh will be the new me and will also be each other, but not themselves, Maggie will be the new Josh except less prone to nudity and bad sweaters, and Sheila will be the new Maggie, but with less swearing. Next week, though, Pareene will be the new Doree-Balk—but not until then…
Have you not heard? No one is taking long vacations these days! (Um, except all of us here! Apparently we are shiftless and lazy.) The new trend, we hear, is for employees to take a few four- or five-day breaks, instead of a full week or two. Oh, and everyone brings their BlackBerries and "checks in" with the office…
Nick Douglas is off on vacation this week. Gawker Media, always with its finger to the pulse of on-line publishing, has found the best writer to maintaing Valleywag's journalistic intergrity. Unfornately Dvorak apparently already had a blog, so instead management dropped the ball picked Rick Abruzzo. Mr. Abruzzo…
After we printed Yahoo's corporate e-mail telling employees to use their vacation time for the Christmas holiday week (or to take unpaid time off), the news got around — Forbes, MSNBC, the Red Herring, and other media outlets drew more attention to the faux pas. Now Scrooge had a change of heart: Yahoo's making…
