When I was pregnant with my daughter many years ago, I was working for the worse boss I had ever had. He was vindictive, passive aggressive, and afraid of his own shadow — all the key characteristics you don’t want in a boss.

I loved what I was doing, but this guy made my life hell. Many nights were lost to bitching about this manager and at some point my husband and I decided I needed to make a change.

My ultimate goal had always been to write a book or two, and try my hand at freelancing and becoming my own boss, but it was always not the right time to take the plunge. Well, we decided to save my whole paycheck for the nine months I was pregnant and then consider whether I could actually start life as a freelancer once my daughter was born. The jerky boss was a great motivator for finally pushing my fears aside.

We ended up saving enough money that after my six-week maternity leave I made the happy walk into my boss’ office.

I told him I was not coming back to my job because I wanted to become a freelancer and take time to write my first book.

His response: “oh, I know, once women become moms the pull of the child is just too strong.”

I tried to reiterate that I was quitting to embark on a new career path for myself, but he kept doing the wink and nod, as if I was just kidding about my new direction.

I sat there thinking, should I tell this guy — “you’re a prick. That’s why I’m out of here bozo”?

But I restrained myself, opting to do the right thing for the sake of my future in journalism and for the sake of our civil society.

Women do not leave a job they love, that pays them a good wage and fulfills them just because the call of motherhood is tugging at them. I don’t care what Dr. Laura says.

They leave because they don’t like their job, or because their bosses suck, or because the opportunities suck, or because the pay sucks.

The latter, it turns out, is one of the biggest reasons, according to a new study to be released today.

The New York Times broke the story this morning about a Congressional study and research by economists that shows women are leaving the workplace in higher numbers because of the tough economy and it’s not for the reasons everyone has assumed.

Indeed, for the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.

When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.

It’s the money stupid.

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.

“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”

I have long talked about how a good job, with bosses who are understanding of family issues, with opportunities for advancement, and that pays a fair wage, are the kinds of jobs most people don’t just check out of. You don’t need an HR experts to explain why there is low turnover in gigs like this.

Women are done a disservice if we all just assume they are leaving the workplace because they have a child. It’s clearly not the case for most women. Saying it diminishes the importance of changing the major negatives in today’s workplace — a growing disparity in pay among the rank and file and top executives, and the inflexibility when it comes to work-life balance.

And the occasional pricky boss of course.

“Frankly Eve, I’m worried about your bandwidth.”

This statement came from my editor at MSNBC.com recently. He told me this after I asked him to give me two or three additional assignments each month. With gas and prices for just about everything else so high, I’ve been feeling pressure to make some extra money lately.

When he made his “bandwidth” statement I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. I said, “What do you mean?”

He went on to tell me he was worried that maybe I was taking on too much work and didn’t know if I could handle more. With a weekly column and small business blog at MSNBC.com, and all the other freelance work he knows that I do for BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine and New York Times, plus working on a proposal for my next book, he was reluctant to give me more.

I insisted and he eventually relented.

When I got off the phone I thought: “Great. More work.”

But a day or two later I was working on a freelance assignment, and I couldn’t remember where I put a critical report I had printed out just hours earlier. My desk has become a sea of clutter lately and I was pulling my hair out trying to find it. Then I realized I had forgotten to RSVP for a six-year-old pool birthday party that my son Cheiron was invited to. And, even though it was midday, I was yawning so much I had to have a second cup of coffee. (My limit is usually one.)

Just as I was making another cup of Joe I heard the words of my editor: “I’m worried about your bandwidth.” And suddenly that statement became crystal clear in my head.

I was indeed using up my bandwidth, a bandwidth I always thought was limitless.

There are some issues here. I decided to take on more work at a time when I’ve become rather unorganized. I have no real system for tracking my work and my desk looks like a bomb went off. There’s a bag of nuts on my desk from 2004.

Any way, I ‘m getting some help with my desk. I will be writing about this for a MSNBC.com column in two weeks.

As for surpassing my bandwidth reserve, I’m still not sure that’s really happened.

I decided to ask Cali Williams Yost, fellow blogger and founder of Work+Life Fit, and author of “Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You” what the working-to-much warning signs are. Here’s her list:

1. Consistently missing deadlines for priority work.
2. Noticing that you are making more mistakes than usual (we all make mistakes but the rate is higher).
3. You find you don’t have enough time to concentrate, and focus in order to do your job well.
4. You are feeling more tired at the end of the day.
5. This doesn’t seem to be a discrete period of extra work, it seems to have no end.

She also had some interesting insights on what exactly is too much work.

“I find many people still define it as whether or not they are able to get everything done on their ‘to do’ list,” she explains. “I’m not sure how realistic that definition is in a 24/7, high-tech, global work reality where emails keep coming in day and night and business is conducted across the global.”

A more “realistic gauge,” she adds, “is whether or not you are able to get the priority tasks and responsibilities done in a quality, non-frantic way. How you know you are taking on too much work is when too many things become a priority and the pace at which you need to work to complete those tasks is unmanageable, exhausting and jeopardizing the quality of the work.”

And I didn’t ask her for tips but thank goodness she offered them anyway:

* Sit down with you manager and team (or with yourself if you are an entrepreneur) and ask for help reprioritizing. I’ve found oftentimes managers and team members are unaware when a colleague’s plate becomes too full. Putting your head-down and just toughing it out no longer works today’s world. You need to say something.
* Rethink your planning and technology management system. Are you letting email and voicemail control you, or are you controlling it so you aren’t distracted and can focus? Are you taking the time either daily or weekly to think about what you need to a want to accomplish at work and in your personal life? Gone are the days when we can just let the day “happen.”

Boy, she’s not kidding.

Are you guys doing too much? Have you checked your bandwidth lately?

Since I wrote my book, “From the Sandbox to the Corner Office”, I’m often asked — What makes successful CEOs and entrepreneurs different from the rest of us?

I’ve already talked a lot about how many of these overachievers were spanked as children. That seemed to get those most interest from the mass media.

But Jennifer Remling wanted to get beyond that. She started a project called “Carve Your Own Road” and has been traveling around the country trying to understand the entrepreneurial spirit. Her book on her journey comes out next year.

She asked me recently to do a webinar for her website, and the main theme was what successful people seem to have in common when it comes to their career approach.

Risk. Risk. Risk. That’s basically the overriding theme I’ve found when interviewing top executives and heavy weight entrepreneurs.

They weren’t afraid to take risks, even though they often had butterflies in their stomachs when it came to making career leaps.

Here’s a link to the webinar

One of the key discussion points was about asking for help. Yes. Many of these successful men and women asked for a lot of help on their climb to the top. The majority talked about the mentors they were lucky enough to be mentored by along the way. And I’m not talking about formalized mentoring programs that are now so prevalent in Corporate America. These were organically grown relationships.

A CEO for a major bank told me she used to pull up her chair to her manager’s desk and watch him work, asking him questions along the way. The CEO of a major retailer told me he stopped his retail idol in a fancy restaurant to introduce himself, and ended up in a long-term mentoring relationship with him.

It’s all about taking risks and learning from people that are smarter than you. Pretty simple.

I reprimanded my six-year-old son this morning because he did not flush the toilet.

The way I see it, this is one of the many building blocks I am giving him so he can go out and be a productive citizen some day.

“Flush the toilet.” “Don’t hit your sister with a Hot Wheel.” “Don’t lie.” “Don’t steal.” “Don’t send incriminating emails that could someday come back to haunt you.”

So what the heck did the parents of Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi teach them?

Tannin and Cioffi are two former hedge-fund managers for Bear Stearns were arrested today. Supposedly, these two men knew their fund was “toast” but they still painted a rosy picture of the funds to investors. Investors ended up losing $1.6 billion.

Here are photos of Tannin and Cioffi:

It’s not a new story. This type of scam has happened at other firms. We all remember Enron. Executives saying everything is okay when clearly everything is not.

This morning, disgusted with yet another one of these situations, I look back and wonder, how were these men raised? My mom would say, “they were raised by wolves.”

Since we know that’s not the case, I figured I’d ask an ethics expert on whether these acts point to something amiss in a person’s upbringing.

Am I nuts to even consider this?

“No,” James Otteson, professor of philosophy and economics at Yeshiva College in New York, assures me.

Children, he says, need to develop a “deep sense of how their actions affect other people.”

This is not natural for human beings, he explains, so parents have to keep drumming this into their kids’ head, making it a habit to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, along the lines of, “What does Johnny think when you do that?” “Imagine what Johnny would feel.”

Without this basic empathy building block, it’s easy for individuals to do bad things without thinking about how their actions will impact others.

When you combine this attitude with the general predatory environment in certain areas of the business world today, he says, you have a lethal combination.

These hedge fund managers and corporate executives are dealing with ridiculous amounts of money, so they may begin to see investors as “tools, or pieces on a chess board they’re just moving around.”

We need to all get in the habit of thinking every day how our actions trickle down. Remember the circle of yelling theory? When you yell the people you yell at end up yelling, and so on and so on and so on.

The alleged actions of Tannin and Cioffi may have indirectly hurt thousands of individuals who lost lots of money and are now struggling to keep their homes, their lifestyles.

They were also stupid, it seems. The two guys actually corresponded via email about how the fund was in crummy shape several days before they told investors they were “quite comfortable” with the fund’s stability.

What were they thinking?

For a moment I started thinking we should all be more philosophical every day.

But then I started researching Tannin and Cioffi’s background and found out that Tannin actually had this foundation.

He was a Preston Warren scholar in philosophy at Bucknell University many years ago before heading for Wall Street.

I’m not kidding folks.

Here’s a definition of the prize from the University’s website:

The W. Preston Warren Prize, endowed by friends in honor of Professor Warren, for 26 years a distinguished professor of philosophy at Bucknell, is awarded to that senior majoring in philosophy who shows the greatest achievement and promise in philosophy.

Unfortunately, it appears it was all promise and no achievement for Tannin.

I guess he never learned early on to flush the toilet.

I’m having one of those mornings when little makes sense.

At a time when companies are cutting back on leave for working parents and a growing number of Americans are losing their jobs, why would intelligent men and women agree to give CEOs of major companies money after their dead.

The men and women I’m talking about are the board members of large corporations that approved so-called death benefits for top executives. The Wall Street Journal found these lavish payouts after reviewing federal filings and reported on these shocking perks yesterday.

You still can’t take it with you. But some executives have arranged for the next best thing: huge corporate payouts to their heirs if they die in office.

Take Eugene Isenberg, the 78-year-old chief executive of Nabors Industries Ltd. If Mr. Isenberg died tomorrow, Nabors would owe his estate a “severance” payment of at least $263.6 million, company filings show. That’s more than the first-quarter earnings at the Houston oil-service company.

These payouts are known as “golden coffins” and they really make you wonder whether “supply side economics” really does lift all boats.

Lately it seems the average worker is sinking when you look at stagnant wage increases among the rank and file, and continued reductions in benefits, everything from healthcare to time off.

Employees are paying more than ever for the health insurance they get from their employers, if they get any coverage at all. And paid leave benefits are few and far between. Indeed, a story in today’s Wall Street Journal talks about how maternity leave is the latest benefit to be hacked and slashed in the workplace.

At a time when many consumers are scrambling for cash, working parents face an added source of pressure: a squeeze on maternity-leave pay and time off.

Employers are cutting back on post-childbirth pay for mothers and offering shorter leaves, on average, for both moms and dads, compared with a decade ago. This comes despite research showing attentive nurturing has particular developmental power in a baby’s first year, and that longer leaves can ease postpartum depression in some mothers. The pattern heightens the need for parents to plan carefully for time off post-childbirth.

Unfortunately, if your employer doesn’t give you some paid time off to have a baby or care for a sick relative you’re on your own. The United States is one of only a few industrialized nations that does not mandate paid family leave. The other nations that join us in this distinction include Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

So, instead of just ranting about the lack of fairness in today’s workplace, there are things we can do if we’re employees that need help when it comes to caring for loved ones, or when we lose our jobs.

Three states, including California, New Jersey and Washington, now have paid-family- leave legislation on the books, and a host of other states are considering it. Also, federal bills are circulating right now that call for varying amounts of leave. I wrote a story about this recently for MSNBC.com. Workers who want to see this mandated should call their local and state representatives and tell them they want to see this become the law of the land.

And right now, the House Democrats are on the verge of presenting a bill to extend umemployment benefits for workers who have lost their jobs in this tough economy. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer from Maryland is pushing this extension so get on the horn to your Congressmen and women if you think this is a good idea.

Even if you think government should stay out of the mandating business and let the economic engine take care of itself, you should make your voices heard.

While I can’t help but think such benefits will really help lift all boats down the line, we always need healthy discourse in order to make the best decisions.

I’m sure the board members locked in those wood-paneled rooms at corporations deciding whether to pay out millions to dead executives missed out on healthy discourse.

Let’s just hope they don’t decide to bury some workers with the dead CEOs to accompany them into the after worklife.

I know, it seems pretty bad out there right now.

The jobless rate has hit the highest level in more than two decades. And everyone is wondering what will be the next shoe to drop.

But folks, let’s get our heads together. There are lots of opportunities out there in growth industries, and many companies are going to great lengths to recruit workers these days.

My column this week on MSNBC.com looks at how some firms are using employee testimonials to convince people to consider working for them. Some of the employee videos are corny but a few give you a peak at what it might be like to work for one of these employers, employers that are actually in hiring mode.

OK, I’ve gone over this list before. The job opportunities are a plenty in healthcare; education; consulting; the trades like plumbing and HVAC; all things related to the aging of the population; and a host of green sector jobs, everything from solar energy to bike shops. What about entrepreneurship?

Also, make sure to do what you can to keep your job. Start letting your managers know what you do, and take on some assignments just to let everyone know you’re on the ball and willing to work. Don’t be a loner either. Go out to lunch with coworkers and any manager that will have you. The more everyone feels comfortable with you the harder it will be to add you to the pink-slip list.

If you’ve already lost your job and need advice, please post your questions here. I’ll try to offer you any help I can.

Good luck everyone!

Can your boss fire you if your spouse or child is disabled and their medical bills are high, or because your employer thinks you’ll slack off at work because you’re caring for a loved one?

Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, this is a legal no no.

Alas, some employers are doing this exact thing, or at least alleged to be doing this, according to an interesting story in the Wall Street Journal today.

The number of employees filing charges against companies who are firing or in some way discriminating against non-disabled workers because they care for disabled family members is rising. This is called “association discrimination” and it’s not allowed under the ADA.

Did you guys even know this protection existed? Probably not.

But you might be hearing more about it because there are two law suits pending that deal with this little known ADA provision and the outcome of these lawsuits will likely impact many employees who now care for a disabled loved one, or who cover that family member under their employer’s insurance.

According to the article, many of these lawsuits don’t end up benefiting the employee because it’s often hard to prove an employer took some sort of job action against a worker because of his or her disabled family member.

However, the two suits now in the courts “appear to have strong circumstantial evidence” to back up worker claims of discrimination by association.

One case in particular involving Phillis Dewitt whose husband had terminal prostate cancer appears to be strong.

This from The HR Specialist:

Phillis Dewitt worked as a nurse at Proctor Hospital. She received promotions and excellent evaluations that referred to her as an “outstanding clinical manager who consistently goes the extra mile.”

While Dewitt may have gone to lengths for the hospital, the hospital didn’t seem to have returned the favor. The hospital provided health insurance for employees and their dependents through a hybrid self-insurance and catastrophic coverage plan. The hospital covered medical expenses up to $250,000 per year, after which an insurance policy covered the rest.

The HR office regularly tracked expenses and noticed that Dewitt’s husband was racking up big bills for prostate cancer. At one point, Dewitt’s supervisor pulled her aside and suggested that she put her husband into hospice care rather than undergoing chemo and other expensive treatment.

Then, after a financial crisis in which the hospital invited managers to come up with creative solutions to budgeting, Dewitt was fired. Her husband died about a year later.

She sued, alleging association disability discrimination. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said her case should go forward. It reasoned that there was direct evidence of association discrimination. A jury will decide how much that might be worth. (Dewitt v. Proctor Hospital, No. 07-1957, 7th Cir., 2008)

Given the aging of the working population and the never-ending drumbeat in Corporate America to cut labor costs, I think it’s safe to say we’ll be seeing more of these cases…unfortunately.

“Disgruntled.” That’s the label supporters of President Bush have put on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose new book exposes alleged dirty deeds by Bush and top White House officials.

The woman who holds McClellan’s position now, Dana Perino, was quoted saying the dreaded word, “disgruntled.”

One thing you learn early on when you enter the workforce is to be careful when dogging your former employer. This has been a piece of career advice that has been handed down from generation to generation.

McClellan probably isn’t worried about his future employability given his book is number one on Amazon today, but for the rest of us who can’t make a killing by writing a tell-all book, we need to think twice before we bitch about a past boss.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t expose illegal behavior, especially if someone can get hurt. But in this case, waiting until years after you leave a company to expose such behavior is unethical on your part as well. I’ve written before how employee themselves have to stand up for injustices they see, even if it means sacrificing your job. (If McClellan’s allegations are true, that Bush used propaganda to prop up an unjust war, then it seems he had a hand in the tragedy. No?)

But complaining about a former employer, especially to hiring managers that are interviewing you leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

I know, we’re human, and want to get things off our our chests, but restrain the urge to purge.

I love happy endings, especially when they involve workers.

If I were a betting gal, I would have bet that this conservative Supreme Court would have sided with employers in rulings announced yesterday involving workers who were allegedly retaliated against by employers. But thankfully, I would have lost that bet.

In February, I wrote about an employee of restaurant chain Cracker Barrel who was fired for reporting to managers that another worker was being racially discriminated against. It seemed like a clear case of retaliation, which is thought to be a legal no no. Alas, the law is fuzzy in this regard, which is where the Supreme Court came in.

The high court was to decide whether Hendrick Humphries, the Cracker Barrel employee’s, claims of retaliation were indeed covered by existing labor laws, specifically an anti-discrimination statute that has no limits on filing time limits or damages.

And in another case, Myrna Gomez-Perez, a former postal worker in Puerto Rico, filed an age discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and then, she claims, her managers reduced her hours as a result. She to claimed she was retaliated against.

This case would have an ultimate impact on federal employees because the law was unclear on federal employers retaliating based on age discrimination.

In both cases, the Supreme Court decided Tuesday in the employees’ favor, giving them the green light to pursue their lawsuits.

Everyone seemed surprised by the rulings.

From the Associated Press:

An unexpected blend of liberal and conservative Supreme Court justices gave workers more leeway Tuesday to sue when they face retaliation after complaining about discrimination in the workplace.

I was also a bit dumbfounded.

In February, I wrote a blog post for The Huffington Post on how workers should be keeping an eye on the Supreme Courts agenda because the cases they were examining and their ultimate rulings would impact employees for years to come.

Maybe they knew you were all watching.

Many of you have asked me how you go about getting your boss to let you work from home.

It’s hard to just walk into your boss’ office and ask for what you want out of the blue. But you all now have a great conversation ice breaker — GAS PRICES.

Hello, this is the best excuse ever to ask for a day or two of telecommuting. Gas prices are skyrocketing and I bet your manager is also feeling the pinch. So get all your arguments together and ask to speak with her boss about the issue.

Make a case for why you can do your job at home and even do it better than if you were in a busy, noisy, distracting office. And make sure to sprinkle the conversation with information about how much more you’re paying a month because of higher gas prices.

There is no guarantee he or she will agree, but why not ask? Come on. This is the perfect time.

I address the issue today in my MSNBC.com column and I also offer tips on how to ask for the coveted work-at-home days.

Here’s to driving less and working more! Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you that. If you work from home, expect to work more than you ever have. I’m on the clock 24/7, so make sure you set boundaries.

If you decide to ask your boss I hope you’ll share your story here…whether you get a yes or no.