Nearly Half of U.S. Workers Feel Bullied at Work -- and They Want to Sue

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Employees complain of being publicly criticized, interrupted, teased, and ignored, according to a new survey.

From domestic diva Martha Stewart to firebrand former ambassador John Bolton, the headlines are filled with examples of bullying bosses. But a new survey reveals that the phenomenon may be common to all levels of management, not just occupants of the corner office.

More than 44 percent of 534 U.S. workers surveyed feel that their bosses bully them on the job, according to the Employment Law Alliance, a San Francisco-based network of employment and labor attorneys. The survey also found that 64% of workers feel they should have the right to sue if bullied.

"I am somewhat surprised," said Stephen Hirschfield, CEO of the Employment Law Alliance. "It's a new issue and I did not know how pervasive it was."

Bullying bosses are those who publicly criticize, rudely interrupt, tease, give dirty looks, use sarcastic jabs, or flat out ignore certain employees, according to the survey's respondents.

Hirschfield said he was also surprised at how many workers would consider litigation, adding that he does not feel courts should be addressing the problem, because such cases would put "the jury in a situation where they have to Monday-morning quarterback."

Since it's difficult to characterize bullying, juries would have a tough time legally defining the problem, according to Hirschfield. They would have to decide whether certain behavior constitutes bullying or just a "lack of common courtesy."

Hirschfield suggested that companies change their sexual harassment policies in order to include the most common bully tactics that bosses seem to use. "It would put management on notice of what is acceptable and what isn't," Hirschfield said. The policies "should have a zero tolerance policy for those problems."

Gary Namie, an author on the subject and founder of Work Doctor, a Washington-based company that helps businesses develop plans to stop the intimidation seen from bullying, said he thinks the issue permeates far more insidiously and destructively than the poll implies -- and believes laws should be designed to prevent the behavior.

Namie said bullying has two distinct characteristics, instead of the minor signs mentioned in the survey. "It is a deliberate campaign to destroy somebody else's job or career," he said. "And it is severe enough to cause harm to one's health."

One must distinguish between a bully and a boss with poor leadership skills, according to Namie. The skills can be taught, while you probably should get rid of the brutish bully that has no hope.

The problem is most people do not realize that bullying is an issue. Namie suggested that business owners look at turnover rates and absenteeism numbers. If people in a certain division show a tendency to not come to work, then the division head may have pushed the employees to the extreme measure of avoiding the job altogether.
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Pat Dutched had been a bookkeeper more than 25 years when she got a bright idea. Everything important to a small business should be in one place, easily reachable, and organized alphabetically and by dates.

She started with her own 25 clients, filling for each a banker's box with receipts, invoices, payments, payroll, and insurance and lease documents.

In recent months, Ms. Dutched has expanded her idea into a business, Bookkeeping In A Box, and has an Internet site and displays in two Sylvania bank branches. She said she has put nearly $60,000 of her own money into the start-up, but it's starting to pay off.

It's getting rave reviews from some of her initial customers.

"It's a tremendously simple and yet efficient way of keeping track of every penny coming in and going out," said Jon Richardson, a downtown Toledo attorney.

Timothy Gilbert, a podiatrist in Maumee, said, "I guess from a bookkeeping standpoint it is what it says it is: plain old file folders in a box. It's a simple, 'old-school' tool, but it's economical and efficient, and it transports easily."

Ms. Dutched picks it up once a month, he said. The founder has a small-business background. In the late 1960s, she opened a wig boutique in Miracle Mile shopping center, and for a time she managed the former Garden Inn restaurant on Monroe Street.

A couple of decades into her bookkeeping career she built up a client list that included doctors' offices, construction companies, insurance agencies, and a restaurant chain.

"I have a very rigid schedule because of the deadlines," she said. "If I'm sitting in one client's office and get a call from another client, I need a system so I can explain where the [information] is at while I'm on the phone.

"If the question is about worker comp, I say, 'Go to the W file,' and if it's about a bank deposit last month, I say, 'It's in the December packet.' … And, when it's tax time, the box can go to the accountant."

Ms. Dutched, 61, of Round Lake, Mich., runs her business out of an office in Ottawa Lake, Mich. She said she has been promoting her concept at trade shows, and last year decided to get serious about making it a business.

She said she put together several dozen kits, including 15-page instruction manuals, and sold all of them for about $250 each. She's preparing an advertising campaign.

Contact Homer Brickey at:
homerbrickey@theblade.com
or 419-724-6129.
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Selling Celebrity Addresses Turns Out To Be A Killer Business Idea.

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ContactAnyCelebrity.com gives you access to the contact info of more than 54,000 celebs from the worlds of screen, music, athletics, politics and more--as well as info for their agents, production companies, charities, managers and publicists, giving you the best avenues to get in touch with your target star.

Best of all, you can try it out on the cheap: A week's trial subscription is just a buck, and then it's $19.97 per month, and you can cancel at any time. Because, you know, fame is fickle.

[Via - Entrepreneur Magazine]

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Farmer's cool invention turns profitable

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New Paltz — When the air conditioner caught fire three years ago, Kate Khosla thought it was time to pull the plug — literally — on her husband Ron's efforts to invent a better compressor-condensor-evaporator.

For anyone who's not a farmer, a compressor-condensor-evaporator may not sound like something you'd want to spend much time building a better one of. But Ron and Kate Khosla are farmers, and it had always bothered them that it could cost $3,000 or more to have such a huge and heavy contraption installed to create a walk-in cooler room, cool enough to store their harvest in. Their organic farm, Huguenot Street Farm, is modest, as are their profits.

Khosla's idea was simple: he thought he could build a gizmo that would allow an ordinary air conditioner to take a room's temperature down as low as 32 degrees. Not all of his prototypes blew up, but neither did any of his early models last long enough to get the job done.

The toasted air conditioner failed to stop Khosla from plugging away for another three years. Last week, you could find Khosla juggling about a dozen small boxes at the New Paltz post office, sending his patent-pending CoolBot to farmers like himself. With next to no publicity or marketing, the CoolBot is becoming a very hot item. And it's poised to go more places than the farm. He's sold about 80 units at $250 a pop and has placed material orders that will allow him to build another 500.

It's all a marvel to Khosla, who calls himself a "reluctant capitalist" who never intended to sell his invention. He'd thought initially to explain the process to other farmers and let them build their own. That idea didn't work out, but the Khoslas don't seem too broken up about it.

If enthusiasm could be measured in BTUs, Ron Khosla's would be off the charts. Yes, it's been eight years in the making — no overnight success, but, he says, once you've invented something and it's showing such promise and you start realizing who else in the world would love to have a walk-in cooler (caterers, kitchens, grocery stores, wineries) and you're already discovering economies of scale and making a good thing better, well, all you really want to do is invent something else.

And that's the plan at the Khoslas. Whatever money they make from the CoolBot is being earmarked for Ron's next project.

And what might that be?

He smiles and rolls his inventor's eyes conspiratorially.

"It's a secret."
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Christy Coyne recently opened a second location of her Orange County children's bookstore, the First Page, and she's already working on the next chapter of what she hopes will be an ongoing business success story.

The plotline has her creating an e-commerce site by April and selling her first two franchises by September.

She'll also finalize contracts with three employees that she wants to turn into partners, which will give them ownership stakes in the growing operation.

Like many main characters in books, Coyne knew she had to buck the odds. In Coyne's saga, the goal is to create a children's bookstore that would be a profitable haven for harried moms and curious kids alike.

"I threw away all the ideas of what a bookstore should be," said the mother of two, who has sunk $500,000 into the business. The first store broke even last year.

Instead of cramming as many books as possible onto towering shelves, the First Page displays books by grade level, face out, taking up valuable sales space.

Shelves are low so parents can keep tabs on their children. Stuffed toy dragons sit next to books on knights and dragons, creating an easy gift combo.

And floors are hardwood to ensure easy cleanup in the stores, which welcome customers bearing food and drink.

It's the kind of store she dreamed of after a bad experience shopping at a large chain bookstore a few years ago. Picking through a jumbled shelf trying to find a Curious George title, Coyne turned her back on her 2-year-old, who took the opportunity to pull all the books off a nearby ledge.

There had to be a better way, Coyne thought. Her vision: "I am walking into a store with two small children and I am exhausted," said Coyne, whose kids are now 5 and 7. "I think: How lovely to have some nice, cheerful not-tired person to help me in and out of here and somebody who would think my children are charming."

With that 2002 epiphany, the story of the First Page began.

Within a year, Coyne, a lawyer by training, had opened her first store in Costa Mesa. It took far more money than she ever imagined, she said. She and her husband, a corporate attorney, took a loan against their home and Coyne sank a small inheritance into the business.

She used the money to hire the designer of the Warner Bros. retail stores to plan her shop. High-quality shelving and displays also took a chunk. And Coyne focused on buying quality books that might not be available in the national competition.

"I knew it was going to be all about the niche, figuring out what do superstores not do that I could do better," said Coyne, who opened a Newport Beach store in October.

She doesn't carry Barbie titles, for example. Or Disney books. Or even the "Goosebumps" series.

"Instead of having 15 OK books, we have four fabulous books," Coyne said. Her stores stock about 2,000 titles each.

Coyne certainly has a lot from which to choose. The children's book publishing business is a vibrant industry, turning out titles faster than in the general book market.

Children's books accounted for about 10% of all titles published in 2005, up from 7% in 1995, according to R.R. Bowker, a publishing information company.

The number of children's bookstores is also growing overall, although less vigorously. The Assn. of Booksellers for Children added 12 bookstore owners to its rolls last year for a total of 200.

Although that is off from the "golden age" of children's bookstores in the pre-superstore 1980s, it is a respectable gain, said Kristen McLean, executive director of the group.

"It is still very, very competitive," McLean said. "Booksellers are really having to exercise a lot of creativity to stay competitive."

Even then, selling books for children isn't all fun and games, industry insiders say.

Competition from large chains that offer deep discounts and online sites such as Amazon.com make it tough in a business with profit margins of 3% to 5%, experts say.

Two weeks ago, members of the Southern California Children's Booksellers Assn. held their final meeting; the group is disbanding because of declining membership.

"It's not as easy and romantic as it looks," said Alexandra Uhl, owner of A Whale of a Tale Children's Bookshoppe, a Newport Beach store that opened in 1989.

Coyne believes she's come up with a plot twist that could make it easier.

She's creating an operations manual as part of her franchise setup documents that she hopes will cover all the bumps involved in launching her stores. She's setting up an inventory control system and plans a central distribution center to serve the franchises she hopes to have.

She wants to help those with a passion for books but little business experience avoid the steep learning curve she experienced.

"I was flying blind," Coyne said. " 'Losses' is too mild a word. 'Hemorrhaging' would be a good word. We were hemorrhaging cash."

Early on, Coyne switched gears several times. She dropped her high-school section the first year. Her second store used taller shelves for the older kids' books at the back of the shop.

But most important, she added many more gift items, each pegged to a book in the store, which gave sales a boost. Toys typically have a higher markup than books. Make-a-tiara kits now sit next to princess books, for example.

"This is something bookstores are starting to figure out because what are typically called sidelines, or non-book merchandise, is becoming critically important, particularly in children's bookstores, to help them support their bottom line," McLean said.

Coyne is passionate about offering her store concept to other moms, or dads, who love books and the idea of bookselling but want to balance work and family — not the route of the typical entrepreneur.

"It needs to be a person who is looking to somehow have both," Coyne said. "Because you are not going to be making $100,0000 a year, but you can have family vacations whenever you want."

That sounds like a happy ending.

[Via LATimes.Com]

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Wacky Business Idea - Multiethnic Wedding Cake Figurines

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Startup Costs: $100,000

An observer might say Ellie Genuardi and Rena Puebla act a lot like a married couple. Having known each other for years, they even finish each other’s sentences and bicker playfully. In 2004, this pair of longtime friends and business associates said “I do” to a marriage-related business: Puebla and Genuardi wed their entrepreneurial ideas to form Renellie International.

Renellie is a line of elegantly handcrafted, multiethnic wedding cake figurines. Made out of polyresin stone, the interchangeable brides and grooms are offered in Asian, black, Hispanic and white versions.

“There are so many interracial marriages,” says Gen-uardi. “We felt there was a definite need for this type of product.”

“When I got married the first time, I had two white people on my cake,” says Puebla. “No one had choices.” It was Puebla’s second marriage--to an Asian man--that inspired Renellie’s mix-and-match cake toppers. Puebla and her husband, Ron, are one of more than 2 million interracial couples in the U.S. That growing market, combined with a $72 billion-per-year wedding industry, provides an endless customer base for Renellie, which projects 2007 sales of $400,000.

Renellie also caters to same-sex couples. The company currently offers a bride with a tailored skirt and jacket, and it may introduce a bride with flowing pants. These versatile options could also be used for an anniversary cake, a second marriage or an older bride, Genuardi says.

Prior to Renellie’s unveiling in Janu-ary 2005, interracial and same-sex couples had pretty much resorted to putting either flowers or nothing at all on their cakes, Puebla says. “We want to go back to tradition, while representing those who are marrying.”

With an attractive alternative to plastic and a product in tune with modern-day values, Renellie lets couples have their cake and eat it, too.
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