Jennifer Lee Johnson

Guest Post: How Many Hours a Day Can You Be Productive?

I have a new guest post up over at the Women on Business blog:

I once had a boss who would walk around the office at 5:05 to see who was sitting at their desk and who had already left for the day.  He said that if you were able to leave at 5 every day, you didn’t care about your job.

So, we all sat around for an extra hour a day twiddling our thumbs so as not to arouse his suspicion.  Sure, some days we had plenty of work to carry us to 6 or later.  But, other days… not so much.

It was always especially tough for me. If there’s one thing I do really well, its manage my time.  I’m the type who would rather work through lunch than stay late and I often manage my day down to the minute to make sure I get everything done on time – and done well.

So, sitting around every night just for appearances made me angry.  Shouldn’t your work be evaluated based on… well.. your work?  Not how many hours you punch on a time card?

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Review: Red Lights

Another belated post about my review of Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China over at the Feminist Review:

It’s easy to disregard sex workers, to relegate them to the margins of society and pretend that they don’t exist in the perfect little world that is uncomfortable with the idea that there are members of our population who have sex for money. Often considered an untouchable part of society (no matter what culture we’re talking about), sex workers are often overlooked in anthropological or sociological studies with many researchers content to look at the more accepted members of society rather than delve into the seedy underbelly of urban life. Luckily, the sex workers of Dalian, a bustling metropolis in Northern China, had their voices heard by Tiantian Zheng who writes a beautiful study of the realities facing these women.

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