Work Daze

The new year is off to a rip-roaring start, so I have to ask you – are you depressed? Do you dread coming to work and drag through every day as if a three hundred pound weight has been surgically implanted between your shoulder blades?

If you are depressed, I think I can help. [If you’re not depressed, no one can help. You must be crazy, or upper management, or both.] Allow me to introduce you to Drs. Kevin and Jackie Freiberg. According to a recent press release, the doctors are the authors of a newly released business book, “BOOM! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual.”

[Some of you may remember the Drs. Freiberg from a previous press release in which they described the “Dead People Working™ Syndrome – a trademarked, mark you, condition that represents “a nationwide epidemic sweeping through companies and cubicles causing massive daydreaming and serious lack of productivity.” In other words, business as usual.]

The Dead People Working™ Syndrome must have died a horrible death, publicity-wise, because now the Freiberg’s flack, Mr. Drew Schadegg, is flogging their latest work by suggesting it contains “4 Tips for Beating the ‘Post Holiday Blues’ at Work.” No stranger to statistics, the Freibergs assert that as many as 25% of people in the United States suffer from the condition. [That’s a real improvement over the 75% of us who show symptoms of DPW™S. I’m not sure whether the 25% represents a quarter of the 75%, or .1875%, or if Post Holiday Blues is a condition limited to non-DPW™S workers, meaning 100% of us have something wrong with us. I’m not even sure Post Holiday Blues is even a syndrome, or trademarked. All I can say in my defense is that the next time I get an email offering me a Ph.D. by mail, I’m signing up.]

Anywho, what’s important about our depression is that the Drs. Freiberg do have solid suggestions for how we could snap out of it. I’ll share their tips. I just hope it doesn’t get you even more depressed:

• Get focused faster. “Hitting the ground at full-speed” is the major idea here. Instead of moping in your cubicle, waiting for the ax to drop, get out there and show management why they should – no, why they must – consider you a peak performer. Or just continue moping. Chances are, your supervisors are even more depressed than you are, and by being up and at’em, you face the risk of alienating your boss. No one likes a mindless idiot, not even another mindless idiot.

• Make a New Year’s Statement. The Freibergs want you to use the new year to “exceed your own expectations. The work you do is your signature – make it a masterpiece.” I agree. Might as well make it a bold statement. Perhaps you could arrive at work on time, and stay until quitting instead of sneaking out early, hidden in the recycling bin.


• Think beyond yourself. According to the Freibergs, “the Post Holiday Blues is normally some form of self-loathing.” I’m not so sure. I do loath myself, but I loath my boss and my co-workers even more. I even loath the Freibergs and I’ve never even met them.

• Take bigger risks. “Experimentation and failure are prerequisites to creativity, innovation and growth” exclaim the good doctors. I think they have it exactly backwards. Creativity, innovation and growth are the prerequisites to failure and more failure. Hey, we’re experienced workers. We don’t need experimentation in order to fail. Failure is the thing we do best.

It may be my self-loathing creeping up on me, but I’m thinking I am a tad negative about the Freibergs and the ideas behind “BOOM!” I know I certainly enjoyed their previous two books, one of which is titled “NUTS!” and the other, which is called “GUTS!” I haven’t exactly read them, but I do detect a certain enthusiasm in their titles, as well as a tendency to use exclamation marks. I don’t know what we can expect next from these authors. I would suggest they consider KAPOW! PHOOMPH! and KA-BOOM! except those have already been used – by Batman.

But if taking these tips help you get through the next eleven months, I say – go for it. I love it when co-workers get so enthusiastic about their jobs that they work three times harder than anyone else. But please, cut down on sound effects. Some of us want to sleep.