Work Daze

Let’s be honest: vacations stink. Here we sit, boobs in cubes, totally in sync with the ebb and flow of office life, when all of a sudden, summer kicks in, and we are expected to exchange our cozy Aeron chair and for a coach seat to some overpriced hell hole like Maui or Paris or Wall Drug.

Worse yet, society expects us to spend two full weeks far from our beloved fax machine, a full 14 days with children who are far more demanding than our psycho bosses, and spouses who expect us to communicate, even though no one has bothered to e-mail us an agenda so we know what we’re expected to communicate about.

I tell you, bub, if there’s anything that makes you appreciate how good you have it at work, it’s two weeks of family vacation.

Once upon a time, it was easy to steer clear of vacations. In fact, many of us have not only managed to avoid the standard two-week sojourn of sunburned baby bottoms, sullen teens, excruciating exchange rates, and intercontinental bicker-fests, but have actually gotten credit for our sacrifice.

“Oh, the poor darling,” your spouse would say. “He so wanted to come with the family for the 14-day, goat-cart tour of Lower Slovenia, but he was just too busy at the office.”

Alas, these brilliant excuses will no longer fly, so we may have to. Thanks to traitorous scribblers like Tripp Friedler, the author of “Free Gulliver: Six Swift Lessons in Life Planning,” it has now been revealed that the real reason we can not jet off for a two week package tour of the Knott’s Berry Farm Extend-A-Stay Motor Lodge is not because we are too busy at work, but simply because we just don’t want to.

What follows are author Friedler’s thoughts on popular vacation excuses, and why they won’t wash.

• You think you can’t afford it.

With the price of a gallon of gas now approaching the price of a gallon of Chateau Turpentine, you would think the “We can’t afford it” excuse would be unassailable. But Friedler bursts that balloon. “Actually you probably can afford it,” says Friedler. “You would just rather spend money on a big house or an expensive car.”

Considering the sad state of our paychecks, the truth of the matter is you have probably chosen to spend your vacation money on trivial luxuries, like medical care and food. But Friedler is relentless, suggesting that you live in a refrigerator box fifty weeks a year in order to spend two luxurious weeks exploring America’s national parks. “Hey, at least, you’ll know it’s your choice,” Friedler says. And so does Smoky The Bear. Which do you think Smoky would choose: living in the woods with a bunch of chipmunks or sitting in your Barcolounger and watching the OC on your big screen TV?

• You believe they can’t survive without you at work.

Wrongheaded Friedler suggests that if you use this excuse “you might have a few ego issues you need to explore.” In fact, we’re not afraid the business will crash without us; we’re afraid it won’t! Face facts, Friedler: the real reason we angle to stay home is because when the boss sees how well the company runs without us for two solid weeks, the next vacation hotspot we’ll be visiting is the unemployment office.

• Secretly, you’re more comfortable at the office than hanging out with your family.

“I’m not here to judge anyone,” insists the Tripster, pointing out “Many hard-driving executives don’t enjoy being around their family for long stretches.” And may I add, so do we no-drive sub-executive lackeys. It’s no surprise bosses don’t like to spend time with their families. Relatives are not direct reports. Family members don’t jump every time the boss sneezes, burps or grunts. And there’s that same lack of respect for Mommy and Daddy when they return to the bosom of the family for a vacation fiesta. You expect to be powerless and abused when you’re at work. It’s just too much when you get the same treatment at home.

So, what’s the solution? Tell your boss you’re going on vacation, and send your family flying off wherever they want to go, but you stay at work, safe and happy in your cube. Chances are, no one will notice you, and even if they do, think of the credit you’ll get for giving up your vacation. Now, that beats a suntan any old day.

Don’t like to brag, but nobody is harder on business books than yours truly.

Day by day, author by author, they come off the business bestseller conveyor belt and book by book, we shoot them down. Spencer Johnson’s “Who Moved My Cheese?” We found it rancid. Stephan Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People?” We found it highly effective at putting us to sleep.

But once every blue moon along comes a business book with a philosophy so twisted and an attitude so subversive, we have no choice but to go completely moo-moo ga-ga and embrace it completely. This is the case with the latest from the razor-sharp quill of Stanley Bing, “100 Bullshit Jobs and How To Get Them.”

Bing’s book begins with a bang-up quotation from Aristotle—“All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.” Undeniably true, you will agree, and also undeniably depressing. If being a Greek philosopher was a crummy job, way back in 384 BCE, what chance do the rest of us have, especially considering that Aristotle never had to worry about expense reports, or whether hot pants could substitute for those little short Grecian skirts on casual Fridays.

Bing begins his book with a lengthy exegesis on the nature of a bullshit job, most of which will probably be unnecessary to those of us who have been in the workforce for more than, say, 5 minutes. Basically, to Bing, bullshit is the “high-octane, lucrative, completely insubstantial charade” that represents from zero to 200% of any job description.

In short, bullshit work is not productive and does not move the ball ahead. It’s work that could disappear completely without any harm to the company or its prospects. Yet it remains the most important part of our day, since it gets us raises, and perks, and if we do it well enough and often enough, gets us promoted to positions where other people have to spend all their days bullshitting us.

Bing’s thesis is that we should attempt to get positions that offer the highest BS quotient, since those are the jobs that require the minimum amount of work and return the maximum amount of compensation. He further posits that the amount of BS required in any position can be quantified. His theory, which I trust will be duly noted and considered by the Nobel Prize committee—calculates the amount of bullshit by multiplying the amount of abuse an employee must endure (A), multiplied by the amount of perks one enjoys (P) times salary ($), all divided by the number of hours (H) one must work to achieve all the above. Or, back to the Greek, ß = AP$/H. [Bing multiples the whole calculus shebang by G, the growth of your firm, but let’s face, the only growth in our jobs is seen around our expanding waistbands.]

The majority of Bing’s book is occupied with a listing of 100 specific bullshit jobs. In my one criticism to this important publication, the jobs are listed alphabetically, rather than by their BS quotient. As result, when flipping through the pages, you might decide to direct your career course to becoming #23, a Closet Organizer. With a ß of 99, you may decide that spending your days helping rich, disorganized people systematize their socks, or separate their Gucci from their Prada, represents a pretty sweet gig. But then you flip a few pages, and discover the even better bullshit position of #70, Pet Psychic, a job where the ß is twice as high, but the perks are even more juicy, like the opportunity to relate to clients like Drew Barrymore who Bing quotes as saying, “If I die before my cat, I want a little of my ashes put in his food so I can live inside him.”

Funny, I feel the same way about my boss. Except I want his ashes in my cat box.

The ultimate bullshit job, according to Bing, is #11, Being Donald Trump. The bullshit level of this job is 200—the maximum possible. As in all the job descriptions, Bing toplines the skills required (swaggering, primping) and the duties (break a lot of wind), as well as the next step in your career path—in Trump’s case, The Bosley Institute.

I might go after this position myself, but frankly, I’ve got an even better bullshit job—workplace humor columnist. It pays like crazy, is very easy, and the best part is, no one ever makes fun of my hair!

No one sent me candy or flower this Mother’s Day, but I did get a gift—a front-page, cover story article in USA Today on the burning question of our day, “Do Moms Make Better Managers?”

The answer is a definite “maybe,” results that depend mainly on who you ask. A significant majority of employees believe that mothers do make better bosses, a Mom’s experience with raising children providing unique insights into the stresses of the workplace. A significant majority of employers have quite the opposite reaction. Employers, surprisingly enough, do not highly value the sympathetic, empathetic mom-type manager, but would prefer to promote people with other skills, like the ability to work 16 hours a day, even if it means leaving their children in the care of wolves.

Another disappointing, but less-than-surprising revelation about manager Moms is revealed in a study from Cornell University, where sociologist Shelley Correll was able to quantify the infamous “motherhood penalty.” By submitting paired resumes for the same job—the resumes identical except for the inclusion of membership in the Parent-Teachers Association in one—Cornell's Correll found that women active in the PTA were 44% less likely to be hired. On the other hand, the job was for “marketing director of a communications company,” and the hiring manager was probably taken aback that any of the candidates could spell PTA.

Clearly, if you are a Mom who wants to be a manager, or a manager who wants to be a Mom, there will be certain hurdles you must jump. Here are my suggestions for what to do when your Lamaze breathing techniques aren’t working, and your vice presidents refuse to sit quietly in he corner when you give them a time out.

1. Juggling and Rejiggering

The major knock against manager Moms is their tendency to leave the job for trivial domestic duties, like driving their offspring to their heart-transplant operations. [A Dad, of course, with his priorities in place, would reschedule the transplant to a more convenient time, like during lunch hour, or on a weekend, unless it’s during NASCAR season.]

On the positive side, Moms have a great opportunity to prove their commitment to their jobs. Simply sneak the kids into the office and turn them lose at the daily staff meeting. Train your ankle-biters to run, screaming and sniveling, to Mommy dearest, clutching at your knees and bawling, “Mommy, Mommy, please come home. We never see you because you’re always working.”

After a charade like this, the kids will need years of therapy, but when you’re promoted to a manager’s position, you’ll be able to afford it.

2. Sisterhood Stinks

According to the article, the employers who are least likely to promote women with children are women without children. The psychology behind this twisted sisterhood is obvious, but there is an easy work-around to get around this anti-Mom prejudice. All you need do is pack up your most obstreperous offspring and leave him or her on your boss’s front door. A few precious moments with your darling monster should convince even the most hard-hearted executive witch that you can handle the toughest assignments, like re-orging the sales department, or convincing Junior to brush his teeth.

3. Mean to Be Mean

While manager Moms do get credit for being extra patient with employees who misbehave, they also can get dinged for being too soft with underperformers. Let your employer know that you are capable of being a mean Mom when the situation calls for it. When your naughty direct-reports act up, don’t be afraid to ground them, even if they are vice presidents and it is the day of the office party. If an infraction is sufficiently severe, corporal punishment may be required. Nothing motivates a sales manager who fails to make his quota than a good spanking, especially when delivered in front of the entire sales team.

If none of these gambits work, there’s always a Plan B. Quit your job and become a stay-at-home Mom. According to The Wall Street Journal, the comparative annual cost of hiring professionals to perform the ten basic duties of the average Mom, a list which includes housekeeper, day-care center teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry-machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, CEO and psychologist, is $134,121 and that doesn’t include overtime or combat pay. Come to think of it, maybe quitting your day job isn’t such a good idea. For a working Mom, managing a bunch of unruly vice presidents is clearly a vacation.

Spring has sprung, but don’t expect a lot of poetic blather about butterflies and buttercups. The only signs of Spring I recognize from my windowless cubical in the dark recesses of the middle-management maze are the sneezes and sniffles from my co-workers as the corporate air conditioner filters out the fresh air, while pumping our workplace full of pollen.

Still, I would be lying if I said that the change in seasons had no effect. As if by magic, when the snow on the boss’s putting green starts to melt, signaling the return of the vice presidents from their winter hideaways in Bermuda and Hawaii, I find myself moving into total spring-cleaning mode.

And why, in spring, does a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of dumpsters? Blame it on the brain which, sensing the onset of winter, turns up its neural receptors, the better to take in all the stimulation available and thereby resist our body’s innate tendency to hibernate.

Unfortunately, for many of us, the stimulation available is not sufficient, and despite our best attempt to tantalize and energize our brain cells with repeated viewings of the “O.C.” and “Gilmour Girls,” the need to hibernate wins out. [If someone can tell me what happened in our office between November 15 and February 22, please immediately email to the address below.]

When winter ends and the sun returns, our neural receptors red line and we launch into the annual and familiar spring frenzy of mating, or, if we’re married, cleaning. But how exactly do you tackle the mountains of paper that have piled up on your desk since you last attempted to organize your work life, which probably occurred during the Presidency of Grover Cleveland? And how will your manager react when you explain that you have entered a new realm of efficiency by getting rid of useless time-wasters, like your telephone and your computer?

These are exactly the questions in a survey fielded by the helpful folks at Pendaflex to introduce their new PileSmart product line. Targeted at “pilers” (those who pile their paperwork rather than file it), Pendaflex surveyed the administrative assistants of important executives at Fortune 500 companies to learn their secrets for success—assuming you define success as being an underpaid lackey for a corporate wind-bag.

What could you learn from these highly organized individuals? Pull up a file folder and let’s get started.

1. Tackle a tickle

Fill a file draw with 31 file folders, one for each day of the month. This will not only help sales at Pendaflex, but will help you know when specific projects should be tackled. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for months which don’t have 31 days, like February, which has about six days, I believe, and June, when other people get vacations, and which lasts for 93 days. On the positive side, the tickler system will help you determine exactly how late you are with your assignments, and that should be good for a laugh.

2. Reference this

According to the assistants, “reference books are a great way to stay organized and a unique scrapbook of your career.” Items to keep in your reference book are phone logs, memos and contact info. Nice idea, and in later years, if it doesn’t make your heart sing with emotional memories of your time with your boss, it will be invaluable when you blackmail the creep.

3. No pop-ins

Rather than constantly popping in on your boss, the executive assistants suggest you “keep a running list of the questions and comments as they occur to you.” You would use this list for an end-of-the-day meeting to tidy up trifling issues too unimportant to interrupt your lord and master, like “Your fly is unzipped,” “You’re wearing one black shoe and one brown shoe,” or “Your new Jaguar is on fire.”

4. KISS

Truer words were never surveyed: “When it comes to working with your boss, make things as simple as humanly possible.” The assistants suggest using colors to help simplify the process, like red for urgent, and yellow for medium-priority tasks, and blue for “cold” files. Clearly, this is far too complicated for the average boss, who, when seeing a red file, would likely implode with fear and trepidation. I suggest you simply burn all your files. That’s the kind of forward-looking employee every executive wants, and wouldn’t all that empty file space make a wonderful location for hibernation when winter rolls around again?

It’s a Work Daze exclusive! Gasoline prices are on the rise.

Yes, it’s true. If you haven’t filled up lately, prepare yourself for a terminal case of sticker shock when you drive the old jalopy into your favorite filling station. In some areas, a gallon of gas costs over $3.50. Why, that’s almost as much as we’re willing to pay for a jug of vintage Chardonnay.

What’s behind the rise in gasoline prices? There are many answers to this question. Some people believe the oil companies are gouging the public as they greedily try to profit from our dependency on gasoline. This seems highly unlikely. Oil companies are noted for their public spiritness. And let’s be honest, it does require a major cash outflow to keep all those gas station restrooms spotlessly clean.

Other pundits put the blame on China and India, two rapidly industrializing countries that are not only taking our jobs, but also demanding more of our oil. But this also seems improbable. How much gasoline does it take to run a call center, or a rickshaw, for that matter? Besides, with their economies booming, the Indians and the Chinese will soon be outsourcing many of their most important jobs to the United States. So far, the only person hired is American Idol host, Ryan Seacrest, who will be the official mascot of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but I’m sure there will be more work coming our way.

[There are also some malcontents who put the blame on our politicians, many of whom are viewed as far too cozy with the industry. Just because the President was seen holding hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah as they strolled through Bush’s Texas ranch does not mean that the current administration is a pawn of the oil interests. Think positive! The two men simply could be gay.]

No matter what caused the current gas price crises, the fundamental question for me and thee is how to use this disaster to further our careers.

Pull up to the pump, pal and I’ll fill you up:

1. Embrace alternative energy

No question that in the future America will have to turn to alternative forms of energy. Ethanol is getting a big play now, since it made from corn, which grows in abundance and doesn’t cost very much, unless you buy it in the form of popcorn in movie theaters, in which case it’s more expensive than platinum. While you could pull out the kid’s play structure and grow corn in your backyard at home, the work environment is better suited for another form of alternative energy: wind power.

Consider the continuous blasts of hot air blowing down from Mahogany Row. Contemplate the gaseous energy produced every time there’s a staff meeting. Harnessing the force of this seemingly endless persiflage of piffle would power a dozen Hummers. And it’s easy to harness office wind power. Next time a meeting is called, simply have all your co-workers bring mini-windmills to the gathering; you’ll turn your conference rooms into mini-wind farms.

2. If you can’ t beat ’em, change ’em.

Some people who are upset about America being held hostage to the oil industry may decide to change the system – and the industry – from within. While this is certainly a noble calling, be prepared to accept a high level of sacrifice. Like any glamour business, salaries are not always commensurate with the work required. For example, Lee Raymond, the former CEO of Exxon-Mobil Corporation from 1993 to 2005, had to suffer a level of compensation just a scosh over $686 million. That is only $144,573 for each day he spent leading Exxon's "God pod," as the executive suite at the company's headquarters in Irving, Texas, is known.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t accept twice that amount to spend a day in Irving, Texas.

3. Be a role model.

Perhaps the easiest way to leverage the current rise in gasoline prices to boost your career is to set a good example for your co-workers. To conserve energy, take frequent naps at your desk. Turn off power-wasting devices like computers, telephones, and your supervisor’s pacemaker. Demonstrate thrifty driving habits by working from home, or from the lounge area of the Kit Kat Klub.

And if all else fails, ask your boss if he wants to hold hands. Let your co-workers fight for that promotion to vice president. With a little luck, you could be the company’s first sheik!