Long ago a woman named Marilee Jones lied about her educational background.

She applied for a job 28 years ago at the elite school, MIT, and at the time said she got degrees she never actually got.

Well, this high school educated woman was able to rise through the ranks at MIT becoming the dean of admissions. And guess what, she made a name for herself by helping, what she deemed, stressed out students calm down about the whole admissions process.

Even with the uncovering of this lie people have come to her defense saying she was an inspiration by taking some of the hell out of the admissions process for students everywhere. Her mantra was, stop trying to be perfect. I suppose much of that sentiment came from her realization that indeed she wasn’t perfect.

This week, she resigned her post at age 55 because of the scandal.

So, how’d she get caught. She’s been traveling around the country giving speeches lately to promote her new book “Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond”, and somebody probably unearthed the real scoop on her past, or the colleges she claims she got degress from decided to drop dime on her.

Here’s a quote from her book: “Holding integrity is sometimes very hard to do because the temptation may be to cheat or cut corners.”

Boy, did she cut some big corners.

She was wrong to lie, of course, but there’s something about this story that makes me sad and unable to tear her a new one.

It’s almost as if her guilt over what she was hiding gave her some insight, some ability to help so many college bound kids. She was trying to lower the bar for kids that were talented but maybe didn’t have the grades or extracurriculars that other kids had. She understood this well, because she was well below the bar for the world she ended up excelling in, at least when you look at her real resume.

Why does part of me want to scream: “You go girl!”?

Sorry folks, we can not hand over the oversight of worker safety to employers. I’m not being cynical here. It’s just not a smart thing.

Companies are in it for the profit. They are not in it to keep their employees safe. I know many CEOs and they all seem like nice men and women, but I’m sorry, I wouldn’t trust them, or anyone other than an independent body to oversee something so important
There is a reason OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) was created, and under the Bush administration the agency has lost its teeth.

There’s a great story in the New York Times today dealing with this very issue. Please check it out if you have a chance. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25osha.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

You’ll have to log in to read the whole piece but here are some highlights:

Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.

Puzzled Missouri health authorities turned to two federal agencies in Washington. Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, moved quickly to examine patients, inspect factories and run tests. Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.

But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.

On Tuesday, the top official at the agency told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing that it would prepare a safety bulletin and plan to inspect a few dozen of the thousands of food plants that use the additive.

That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.

Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.

The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.

Every few years a company admits to having screwed women, you know the monetary kind.

They agree to pay millions of dollar — usually just a drop in the bucket for these firms — they say they’re going to hire diversity gurus and really, really make an effort this time not to stick it to their female employees. “I promise, with sugar on top.”
Today, Morgan Stanley settled a sex bias lawsuit and agreed to pay $46 million, about what the company’s CEO made last year. The case involved discrimination against thousands of female financial advisers, who, it turns out were being paid less than their male counterparts. Surprise, surprise.

Is it just me, or are you all sick of this. It’s the same thing over and over again. We all know there’s a problem. Major corporations admit it in court. Statistic after statistic reveal the disparity in pay and treatment.

What the heck are we going to do about it?

I am addressing some of this in an upcoming column in early May where I look at how women are conditioned to roll over when it comes to money.

Stay tuned.

Unfortunately, many of us may end up working longer than we want.

The concept of retirement in this country is changing, and it has a lot to do with economics. Few of us are saving for retirement and that means, lacking a sugardaddy or sugarmomma, we’re going to have to keep our noses to the grindstone well into our 60s and maybe our 70s.

For some of us that’s no problem because we love what we do. But for those of us who hate our jobs, or have jobs that require the energy of youth, we’re in big trouble.

Check out my column today on MSNBC.com. I look at the trend and some of the reasons behind it.

I recently wrote a column for MSNBC.com on the importance of sending thank you notes after a job interview, and I got a bunch of email from readers saying they were treated like garbage by company hiring managers and felt the bums didn’t deserve a thank you.

So I wrote another column about how courtesy during the job hiring process has pretty much become a thing of the past.

What ever happend to manners? It made me think about something my mom always said, and I start the column with a reference to her. Were these people raised by wolves?

Is there any room for being nice to eachother anymore. Everyone seems to be angry, pissed off, ready to bust.

“I don’t owe you anything” appears to be the mantra of our age.

Are women to blame that they still make about 20 cents less on the dollar than men?

I attended the Wharton Economic Summit yesterday in Philadelphia and I sat in on a session titled “Striking the Right Balance: Women and Work in the New Millennium”, and one speaker dared to point the finger at women for the disparity between the pay of men and women.

At first I thought Shellye Archambeau, CEO of technology firm MetricStream Inc., was crazy when she suggested that it might be the ineptness of women in the salary-negotation department that is partly to blame, but the more she spoke the more she seemed to make sense.

As an executive for a host of big corporations, including IBM and Blockbuster, Shellye paid out raises to her subordinates. But it was the squeaky wheels that usually got most of the money. By the squeaky wheel, I mean the workers that knocked on her door and said “I need more money.” And the ones that did that most tended to be…MEN.

By the time she divvied up money for the rest of her crew, there wasn’t much left for the polite ladies. She estimated that over time, giving men 1 to 3 percent more in raises because they were pushy and asked for it, could end up creating double digit gaps between the pay of men and women.

So are we women pushovers when it comes to feathering our own nests?

Another member of the panel made a good point about how women are just not conditioned to negotiate.

Leslie Morgan Steiner, who writes an online column for working mothers called On Balance, says when she asks girl babysitters how much money they want they usually say “pay me what you think is reasonable.”

That’s insane girls. You need to ask for what you think is reasonble, we all do!

The answer to almost every corporation’s woes is the hack and slash the workforce. Just choppity chop chop away…one hundred workers, one thousand workers, whatever is needed to pump up the stock price.

There was a time in the 1990s when companies were trying to out do eachother with the size of their “announced” layoffs. Sometimes the actual number was never reached, but hey, it made Wall Street happy.

Let the hacking continue. Citigroup announced yesterday it was cutting 17,000 jobs. 17,000 jobs! That’s enough people to fill a small town.

But I’m scratching my head over statements by Citigroup executives about the cutbacks:

This from an AP story:

The elimination of the jobs won’t reduce the bank’s work force, but merely slow its growth, Citi executives said.

(Citi’s chief operating officer, Robert Druskin) told a conference call with Wall Street analysts they should expect Citi’s headcount to grow this year because of acquisitions and plans to open new branches, especially overseas.

So are they cutting or not? And if they are, what were these 17,000 people doing anyway? Will they be missed? Thousands of people weren’t sitting around just picking their noses. They did something critical, right?

If I were a customer of Citigroup I would wonder big time.

I’ve interviewed tons of people over the years, many of them CEOs, and almost everyone has a story to tell about that major career blunder, the one that almost derailed their careers.

But there are some mistakes people make that are just too big.

Radio host Don Imus described a Rutger’s women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” Yes, I’m not kidding folks.

Rev. Al Sharpton, as expected, has called for Imus to be fired. Imus has been running around saying how sorry he is and how he definitely went too far.

Did he go way to far? Should he get the axe?

(update:

NBC cancelled Imus’s radio show silmulcast on MSNBC.)
OK, so the guy’s suspended. But should be defending the right of idiots to say stupid things? Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe we’re all too sensitive to the words…but the deeds man, the deeds. People are still struggling. People are still suffering. Is it because men like Imus are ignorant? I don’t know.

What the heck was Wal-Mart thinking?

The company has been not only snooping on its own employees, but now it turns out they’ve been snooping on anyone who has a gripe with Wal-Mart and says so, stockholders and even their own consultants. I suppose company officials believe sinister forces lurk around every corner.

What a way for the nation’s largest employer to live.

Turns out none of the spying may be illegal, and guys, Wal-Mart isn’t the first and won’t be the last to engage in such activities…remember Hewlett Packard spying on its own board members. But do corporations owe anything to basic civility in our society? Do we have any privacy rights anymore?
Check out the story: Wal-Mart’s Spying

Did you ever have one of those days..just too tired to work, think, and, dare I say it, too tired to blog.

Life gets overwhelming. Can’t sleep. How will you ever get the energy to finish all the projects piling up.

Anyone have suggestions for great pick me ups? You know, take a walk, listen to the birds singing.

Come on. Help the CareerDiva get back to work, back on track!