Work Daze

Used to be the best way to clear a room was to shout “FIRE!” But now the world has changed. Now, if you want to clear a room, all you have to do is whisper, “Here’s my PowerPoint presentation.”

I don’t know how or when or why PowerPoint came to play such a large part of our work days. Apparently, there was some great unfilled need to have the words we don’t want to hear backed up by images we don’t want to see. And not just words. When prepared by a PowerPoint expert, the weird words and idiotic ideas of the presenter can twist and twirl and flip and build boldly with graphs and charts and all kinds of graphics nonsense.

The bottom line is that anyone who can click a mouse can have their innermost thoughts blown up to CinemaScope size and plastered across the conference room wall. With PowerPoint, we are all the Tom Cruise of our offices, only not as good looking and much more wacky.

Whatever advances in clarity that PowerPoint has delivered, there is a more negative side to the phenomena. Once a PowerPoint makes a presentation the center of attention, what happens to the presenter when they totally blow it.

We all know the feeling: you are standing in the front of the room with the PowerPoint at your back while in front of you sit a dozen or a gross of bland, blank faces. It is immediately obvious that if a small percentage got the point of your PowerPoint, they want to stab you through the heart with it.

The fallout from such a fumble is the subject of a recent “Career Couch” column in The New York Times. The author, Matt Villano, apparently ran all around the country to ask assorted management consultant types how to recover from such a public disgrace. Apparently, my line was busy when he called, because I was not able to add my two cents to the discussion…not until now.

• Take responsibility

This is the advice from Roger R. Pearman of Leadership Performance Systems who opines that “failure to acknowledge that you goofed gets translated into arrogance and insensitivity.” What Mr. Pearnman fails to acknowledge is that arrogance and insensitivity usually gets translated into “leadership ability.”

Even if your arrogance does not get you promoted, there’s absolutely no reason to accept blame, not when there are so many available candidates on whom to put the stench of failure. Like the coworker whose constant need for your assistance in doing her job distracted you. Or the expert from the IT department expert who suggested using images of topless dancers.

These folks will be delighted you thought of them, and appreciate your generosity in sharing.

• Be prepared

According to the so-called experts the author called, the worst blunder a presenter can make is to appear unprepared. “Many people think they can wing it,” says Karla Robertson of Shifting Gears, “but when it comes to a presentation, you have to do your homework.”

I don’t see why. You didn’t do your homework in school; there’s no reason to start now. Instead of spending endless hours building your presentation, learn a few simple ways to deflect anyone even noticing that for you spent all your prep time holding down a bar stool at the Kit Kat Klub.

“I want to make this an interactive presentation,” is one very good way to lay the groundwork for the fact that you didn’t do your home work. “Please feel free to interrupt me with questions any time.”

With any luck, your co-workers will be so anxious to show off their brilliance they will pepper you with questions. And being so darn “interactive,” you can pass these questions to other attendees for their inspired points of view. Play it right and there will be so much meaningless chatter going on you’ll be able to leave the room and return to your power perch at the Kit Kat.

• To apologize or not to apologize

Larina Kase, the president of Performance and Success Coaching, says that you want to avoid apologizing as it can “come off as groveling.” Once again I must disagree. Not only is groveling one of the attributes managers look for in an employee, but the fact that you consistently fumble, screw-up and blunder will make you irresistable when promotion time comes along.

After all, who do your bosses want more than someone so incompetent it makes them look good.

Are you secretive, sneaky and snoopy? Does your management radar alert you to when the boss is coming to make a friendly inspection of your office chair? Have you sourced out two or ten secret exits for days when you need to nip out of the office, hours before closing time?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, I have good news—you could be ready for an exciting career change. Yes, my secretive, sneaky, snoopy friend, you could become a private investigator!

Frankly, I had not thought of detective work as a possible career until I heard about a new book, Private Investigation 101 by ace P.I., Norma Tillman. Ms. Tillman, a PI with over twenty-five years experience, explains that she wrote the book because so many of her customers were interested in the field.

“Typically, the first question people ask when they find out about the work I do is ‘can you help me find someone,’ and the second is ‘how can I become a private investigator?’”

It’s only natural, I suppose, what with all the TV shows, movies and books that focus on detectives of various types, sizes, and sexes. There’s the classic he-man gumshoe, like Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade, the female PI, like Kinsey Milhone and V.I. Warshawski. Lauren Laurano is a lesbian detective and Dave Bradstetter is a homosexual detective. There are detectives who are chefs, accountants, lawyers and playboys. If we looked long enough with could probably find an alien private eye with six eyes who walks those mean galaxies, hunting for crime.

The conclusion is obvious—no matter who you are and what you do, you qualify for a career as a private investigator.

Before you rush to hand in your resignation, you impetuous jack-a-napes, do take a moment to consider Norma Tillman’s caution about the realities of the job. “Being a private investigator is not exactly like what you see in the movies and on television. Cases don’t always wrap up neatly in 30, 60, and 90-minutes. And some of the work is decidedly unglamorous and definitely not cinematic.”

This dose of reality may or may not influence your decision. After all, how difficult will it be to walk away from all the glamour and drama of your present gig, even when you consider giving up all the thrilling staff meetings and intimate tête-à-têtes with the boss?

If you do decide to go ahead with your new career as a PI, Ms. Tillman’s book may be just the ticket. Certainly she has had some memorable experiences, such as dressing like a street person to find a mentally disturbed woman who was hiding from her family. [You could do the same and you wouldn’t even have to put on a costume. If you want mentally disturbed, just go to the office manager and ask for an extra box of paper clips.]

Tillman also recounts working in a topless bar to “save a man from suicide.” Since the sight of thee or me topless would drive most men to suicide, this may be the kind of assignment we’ll have to turn down. But there are plenty of other options.

If you want to be a private dick or jane, here are two tips on how to start:

1. Decide what kind of PI you are going to be.

PIs come in many flavors. Tillman’s practice focuses on finding missing persons, some of whom end up in jail while others end up in surprise family reunions on Oprah. I’ll leave it to you to decide which punishment is worse.

To become a tracer of lost losers one must have experience browsing through computer databases and public records. Just be careful to stay focused on your assignment. The last time I did a computer search I discovered I was the lost heir to crown of Lichtenstein-Herzegovina and frankly, ever since, I haven’t felt the same about fetching my boss’s morning latte.

2. Get some practice

The day of amateur PI is history, and now you must be licensed if you want to privately investigate. But there’s no reason why you can’t do some detecting at your current job, just to see how you like it. Pretend a mysterious blonde has hired you to find out critical information on your boss, like whether he wears boxers or jockeys or maybe, a thong. Even if you never become a PI, with that kind of information, there’s no telling how far you will go.

Hate to tell you, but this time, they’ve really got us. After all the management tortures and humiliations we’ve had to suffer, lo, these many years, this is just about the worst degradation we’ve experienced. But it must be true, because I read about it in The Wall Street Journal.

Believe it or not, our bosses have started giving raises based on performance.

It’s bad enough we have to come into the office every day and even spend time pretending to be working. Now they actually want us to accomplish something.

Yet, it’s true.

“Employers increasingly are dolling out money based on performance,” the Journal reports. “Instead of giving across-the-board raises that were more common back in the 1990s. This year, for instance, bonuses will account for 11% of payroll…up from only 4% in 1999.”

Forgetting for a moment that you probably didn’t even know that your firm gave out bonuses, it is unsettling to learn that you will have work to get one. This isn’t like the old system when you knew that if you could survive on your job for twenty, thirty or fifty years, you’d eventually get your hands on some of those fat paychecks the fat cats get. But if promotion is based on being good at your job, instead of the more basic skills, like schmoozing and butt kissing and being invisible, there’s simply no hope.

There are a number of reasons that bonuses are going up while salaries are going nowhere. Managers are being pressured to keep employment costs down. At the same time, a tight job market is making it more difficult to retain the their most productive employees. By scrimping on thee and me, managers can keep the “top performers,” which, in turn, makes them top performers in their boss’s beady little eyes. In other words, by squeezing you, the boss gets a seat on the gravy train, while you get to eat Gravy Train.

Clearly, this is a situation we cannot stand by, or sit by, or sleep by, either. Why, the entire company could soon be populated solely with over-achieving, under-enjoyable performance drones, making work even less fun than it already is.

Fortunately, the compensation experts who have pinpointed the bonus trend also have professional suggestions on how we can get our share of those delicious dollars. I say you give them a try. After all, you’ve already lost your raise; what else do you have to lose?

• Promote thyself.

“You have to promote yourself,” says a career coach from Reston, Virginia. “Bosses can’t know everything. Employees should keep a dairy of accomplishments and talk up the most impressive ones.”

For you, a whole diary may not be necessary. With your accomplishments, a tiny Post-It will be more than adequate. But that doesn’t mean you have nothing to promote. For example, if you actually pulled it off, let your boss know that you got out of bed last Monday morning. Of course, if you showed up for work that morning in your PJ’s, that might not be viewed as a major accomplishment, unless you really look cute in your PJ’s.

• Get creative.

Since real cash money might be tight in your company, think of alternative perks and benefits that you would enjoy. How about an extra weekend off? Or, if you’ve got a really good performance story, how about getting the boss to agree to let you work only 80 hours a week? In terms of perks, how about asking for a ride in the boss’s Jaguar? Maybe he’ll even let you sit on his lap and blow the horn!

• Don’t wait.

According to the experts, your raise or bonus will be decided upon well before you actually have a toe-to-toe meeting with the boss. Therefore, don’t wait until your annual review to remind the Mr. and Ms. ADHD just how productive you are. In fact, why not call them at home at, oh, 4 AM when they’re not busy, and then follow up at, say, 7 PM and 7:30 PM and 8 PM, and every half hour until midnight. These reminders may seem a little overdone, but trust me, the boss will appreciate your understanding of how much they have on their minds, and you can be certain that your bonus will be a big surprise.

Personally, I think the whole performance business is misguided. For example, your boss probably thinks you like her. Now that’s what I call a great performance.

In the words of the great wise man, Jimmy Webb – “this time we almost made it, girl.”

Yes, this time we went to a professional convention and almost made it to the finish line…the grand final…the fat lady’s last song. Specifically, we arrived on Thursday in time for registration, stayed all the way through Friday’s meetings, Lunch-N-Learns, and no-host cocktail parties. But when the Rise ‘n Shine seminars were finished on Saturday, and facing an afternoon of keynotes leading to the big 50’s dance party that ended the event, we bolted like Julia Roberts in The Runaway Bride.

Counting a delightful 12-hour schlep from San Francisco to Kansas City, that’s more than 50% attendance, a feat for which we think we deserve a medal. [You can hold off on striking the medal until the results of the drug tests come in, but I’m telling you right now, if there was testosterone in Marriott’s coffee, I didn’t know it.]

I don’t care what profession you are in, or how passionately you are devoted to it, there’s something absolutely numbing about a big convention. I may be wrong, but if the government really wanted to make life difficult for the prisoners at Guantanemo, they could cancel the attack dogs and bring in four hundred convention-crazy ophthalmologists.

Those prisoners would be spilling their guts in no time.

The irony of all this is that before I started going to these events, I actually felt envious of convention attendees. I was working near a large convention center and it seemed that almost every week the streets were full of ebullient, affable pharmacists or chip designers or appliance wholesalers, their plastic name badges hanging from their necks like high-class corporate bling.

Some of the conventions even featured great entertainers, ancient pop stars like, well, Jimmy Webb, who had been dragged from the top-ten graveyard to perform one more time for an audience of adoring dental assistants.

It wasn’t until I actually started attending conventions that I realized I had misjudged the glitz and glamour of a pack of rowdy periodontists. Fact is, conventions are a big drag.

If you have to leave the warmth and safety of your cubical to go to a convention, here are some tips for surviving:

1. Prepare to be friendly.

Despite the jam-packed schedule of specious speeches by learned layabouts, industry gurus, and other charlatans, the real purpose of going to a convention is to network. Despite what you tell your boss, you’re not going to learn how to do your job better. What you better learn is where your next job is going to be.

To insure that you are fresh and affable for every “meet and greet,” skip all the lectures and classes. You’ll want to sleep during the day if you want to be up all night partying with your new friends. That is, anyone who you can immediately pester the moment the convention ends to remind them of their drunken promise to slip your resume on their boss’s desktop.

Whether your drug of choice is Prozac, Smirnoff, or the latest Ashlee Simpson CD, be sure to pack whatever is necessary to shift your usually sullen and withdrawn personality into frat-boy party-girl mode. Remember: a Stephen Hawken may get a good job review, but the next new job will be going to Paris Hilton.

2. Pace Yourself

One problem with conventions is that you usually wind up spending all your time in enclosed places, like hotels and convention centers. Without exposure to fresh air, and with constant exposure to breakfast pastries, fast-food lunches, and elaborate dinners with drinks on the house, you can find whatever claim you may make for good health to be rapidly slipping from your crumb-encrusted, booze-soaked, guacamole-stained fingers.

Remember to step outside every two or three hours to breath whatever passes for fresh air in the convention city. It’s a good way to stay healthy and to meet the smoking elite, invariably the only folks who, not finding the convention hall sufficiently toxic, do occasionally step outside to fill their lungs with carcinogenic. [Be definitely sure to give your resumes to these folks; they surely won’t be around for long.]

3. Accept all freebies

Every convention has a sponsor hall where potential suppliers try to bribe you with cheap Chinese-made gewgaws, like leaky logo pens, expandable mini-sponges, and monogrammed golf-tees. Scoop up all of this junk, but don’t consider it accepting a bribe. Consider it doing your Christmas shopping.