8 Big Mistakes You Could Be Making At Work

By Liz Wolgemuth

By now, everyone knows the basic mistakes to avoid at work: no flip-flops, no swearing, no offensive downloads, and no irate E-mails. But there are plenty of other faux pas that can do harm to an employee's or manager's reputation in the office or with clients. Sometimes, these lesser-known errors are tough to learn to avoid. Luckily, the careers bloggers who contribute to U.S. News's On Careers: Outside Voices have come to the rescue. Here are eight mistakes they've spotted that you might not have known you were making:

Talking about politics:
Political opinions uttered around the water cooler can hurt office relations--especially if you're the boss, says G.L. Hoffman, chairman of JobDig and author of What Would Dad Say. Bosses who openly favor a particular candidate will appear to be taking sides with employees who favor the same one, Hoffman says. Even for nonmanagers, politics is a quick way to damage relationships with clients or vendors.

Quietly absorbing the increased price of gas:
You're paying through the nose to get to the office every morning, so why not take advantage of it? Blogger Andrew G.R. of Jobacle says this is a great time to ask for a raise. You might not get it, but you will have laid the groundwork for future negotiations, he says. Also, if you get turned down, you can take the opportunity to lobby for a telecommuting day each week.

Writing modest self-appraisals:
There is plenty of reason to show humility at the office--most of the time. When it comes to writing your self-appraisal, however, modesty is ill-placed, says Suzanne Lucas of Evil HR Lady. Your boss is almost certainly too busy to keep tabs on all your accomplishments throughout the year. The self-appraisal is an ideal time to show off all the terrific projects you've helmed and clients you've brought on. Just be honest, Lucas says.

Spending too little time listening:
It's easy to think that your job is to be a big thinker and a great achiever. But much of the time, the people around you just need to be heard. A good listener can stand out in an office of big shots. Michael Wade, author of Execupundit, writes that he once knew an executive "whose career success was widely attributed to his extraordinary ability to listen. When he was with you, he was with you."

Downplaying your mistakes:
Sure, you're nervous in the face of your error, but acting like it's nothing won't make it nothing. Your boss might very well end up more concerned with your blasé attitude than with the mistake itself, says Alison Green of Ask A Manager.

Not using your vacation time:
You think you're too busy and you think it's too expensive, but take a vacation anyway. "Vacation is given for a reason--you're not impressing people by failing to take it," writes Grant Harmon, who blogs at Newly Corporate. "In fact, you're proving that you're not able to balance work/life." Use the time to restore your energy. Then head back to the office looking refreshed and ready for work.

Talking yourself out of dreaming: Sure, dreaming can lead to wildly ridiculous ideas and outrageous goals, but outrageous goals get achieved all the time. Still, most people shut their dreams down pretty quickly. Curt Rosengren of The M.A.P. Maker suggests, instead, that you assume "the only possible outcome is success, and then challenge yourself to prove how that can happen." You're talking away the critic and forcing yourself to get creative.

Blindly accepting a promotion: Most people tend to think that it's better to get ahead, but many find that a promotion is no improvement on their previous job and barely--or not at all--worth the new title. Before you accept a promotion, ask some key questions, suggests Jobacle's Andrew G.R.: How much more work would be involved? How much more money? What kind of staff would you be inheriting? Also, get an idea of what the next career step would be, he says. You don't want to make a leap--and find out you're at a dead end.

Happiness is a Good Job

By Anya Kamenetz of Generation Debt

Gen Debt is notorious for its outsized job expectations. Many of us are looking for an extreme level of passion, fulfillment, creativity, social purpose, and customization from our jobs, along with friendly co-workers and a flexible working environment. And if we don't find what we need right away, we are often all too ready to move on.

The eager poster boy for this attitude is Sean Aiken, a 26-year-old Canadian who decided to tackle the job search in a novel way: He's spending a year working a different job every week, with the goal of finding a position that suits him perfectly.

When I caught up with Aiken in December, his resume looked like this: "Fashion buyer and then photographer in New York City, baker in Brooklyn, pizza maker in Cape Cod, winemaker in Washington State; this week I'll be working in a martial arts studio in Vancouver." This being the 2000s, he has a video blog, he's sponsored by a job Web site, he's staying with strangers using Couchsurfing, and he's even donating his salaries to charity.

Sean has clearly thought a lot about the way young adults look at their jobs, maybe because he has answered so many reporters' questions about the meaning of his mission.

"It's about not settling," he says. "Many people in my generation have higher expectations around the workforce. We're not looking for job security and a high-paying salary. Other things are more important in our decisions: job satisfaction, flexibility, the people you're working with. We're looking for more of a balanced lifestyle, where that line between careers and social lives blurs into one. It's a movement of saying, Hey, I want to be happy."

There are many people out there who think trying to be happy in your job is mostly a pipe dream. Some even seem to find the idea personally offensive. When I wrote about Aiken's mission on my own blog, one headhunter responded, "Part of the eventual downfall of our society will be these punks with this stupid, unfounded sense of entitlement and those who enable them."

Now, perhaps young people who hop from job to job are guilty of being a little flaky, and as a parent I probably wouldn't want to bankroll such explorations indefinitely. But I have trouble understanding exactly why someone would feel so negatively about someone else trying to be happy.

As a Brookings Institution survey of the college Class of 2003 found: "[Young people] place the highest value on making a difference in the work that they do and the chance to learn new skills and do challenging work. Salary ranks at the very bottom of a list of very important considerations as they make decisions about future careers." Does that sound like a terrible worker or a terrible person?

A Good Job Is Hard to Find
What really intrigues me about the trend of youthful idealism is the way it contrasts with young people's actual experience of the changing work world. Workers younger than 30 are the largest and fastest-growing uninsured group in the country -- two out of five recent college graduates go without health coverage.

Gen Debt is also far less likely to have pensions and consists of the least likely workers to belong to a union. The two-thirds of young workers without college degrees dominate the low-wage workforce, occupying half of all minimum-wage jobs and the majority of high-turnover, dead-end service-industry jobs such as barista, waitress, and clerk.

Young people with bachelor's degrees also increasingly spend time in nonstandard work: as unpaid interns, temps, freelancers, contract workers, academic adjuncts, "permatemps," and "permalancers."

The Center for Economic and Policy Research chronicled the declining "good job" in a report by economist John Schmitt, released in November. They defined a "good job" as one that paid at least $17 an hour in 2006 dollars, or $34,000 a year -- the median pay for men in 1979 -- and boasted both a pension and health insurance.

Schmitt found that the share of "good jobs" fell between 1979 and 2006, despite economic growth, mostly because of the decline in benefits. Moreover, "good jobs" declined more sharply in the most recent business cycle than in the previous two business cycles.

It's important to note that the independent workforce is growing quickly and doesn't just consist of young workers but of everyone from working mothers to high-tech specialists to older, semi-retired folks. So, not every independent worker necessarily has a "bad job."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its reports on "alternative employment arrangements," distinguishes between independent contractors and temporary or contingent workers. The former actually earn more than full-time workers on average, while the latter earn less and tend to say that they would rather have a full-time job. The key difference is the ability to negotiate and set your own rates, which of course usually comes with valuable skills and experience.

Getting Real
In some ways, young workers like Sean Aiken are simply reacting to the changing work world by shifting their priorities. Permanent jobs with benefits are scarce, so you can learn to prize independence and flexibility. If the money's not so great, you seek intrinsic rewards.

Getting a graduate degree is another strategy to compete, but it means you must seek an increasingly specialized type of job. And with student loans piling up, the pressure to find the "perfect job" can be economic as well.

I believe it's a good thing that a new generation is bringing new values and attitudes to the workplace. But my view is that a lifetime of job-hopping won't do much to replace bad jobs with good ones. Young workers need to understand their true value in the marketplace and put employers on notice that shortchanging them is not acceptable.

I witnessed a great example of this during the first week of December 2007 in New York City. Viacom, a media industry behemoth that owns MTV, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Logo, and other television networks, classifies reportedly up to half of its writers, animators, producers, editors, Web designers, and other creative talents as freelancers or contract workers. These people work full-time, often for years, alongside regular employees, but with lower salaries and benefits.

Fighting for Your Rights
Just in time for the holiday season, Viacom sharply cut benefits and pay even more for these workers, handing out the information alongside invites to the holiday party. But the permalancers, largely in their 20s and early 30s, didn't take kindly to the coal in their stockings. They walked off the job four days in a row. And they actually won some concessions -- Viacom promised to restore their 401(k)s and original health plan.

Sara Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancers Union, which represents 50,000 independent workers nationwide and is technically the fourth-largest union in New York State, called the Viacom walkout "the beginning of a social movement."

Independence, passion, and work-life balance are all well and good, but young workers shouldn't give up on the old-school rewards our parents looked for when they started out: a living wage, the ability to go to the doctor when you're sick, and some money to put some away for the future. We shouldn't just adjust to the changing workforce -- we should strive to transform it through our own commitment and excellence.