Work Daze

Personal question – does your company have rules for desk hygiene?

I once had a job where it was mandatory to clear your desk every night before you left, except for personal items, like a photo of your family or your pet. And there were rules for those photos, as well. You had to use a company-approved picture frame, no larger (or smaller) than the company-approved dimensions of 5 x 7 inches. I tried to get around the rule with a 16 x 20 Kodacolor of my boss, but it didn’t work. The office manager wrote me up for the infraction, and, even though the company and I parted ways many years ago, I’m sure the misdemeanor still lives on in my permanent record.

Too bad I did not have for my defense a copy of an excellent and much-needed new book, “A Perfect Mess,” by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman. This important text is a study of the messes for the masses, and even more important, the benefits that derive from clutter and confusion.

According to the authors, what looks like a messy desk to others can be, to its owner, a well-organized filing system with all the data retrieval power of a super-computer. Ask the man or woman behind the clutter for a document and chances are, they will be able to reach into the paper pile and pull out exactly what was requested.

Moreover, there is often method to the madness of a messy desk. Less important files move to the bottom, while critical files rise to the top. In this way, a messy desk is really a living, breathing creature – a paper biomass with a mind, and a life all its own. [Perhaps this is why it tends to grow until it swallows its owner, thus saving the organization the time and cost of a painful firing.]

There are other advantages to office clutter and disorder. If a worker does not spend time trying to keep her desk clean, she is free to spend more time on more critical business issues, like inventing new products and developing new profit centers. A perfectly messy desk can also serve as a catalyst for new ideas – the juxtaposition of random memos and reports serving as a spark for out of the box thinking. [Months of clutter can also serve as a spark for an office fire, so management should make sure that clutter-challenged employees are sitting near the fire extinguisher.]

Of course, it is useless to explain to the neatniks that run most businesses that untidiness is a virtue. Even the fact that Albert Einstein preferred to work in chaos does not carry much weight. And yet it is true. “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind,” the famous thinker once remarked, “of what then, is an empty desk?”

One technological advance that may help the messier among us survive is the personal computer. Living in the age of electronic information it is possible to have a perfectly clean desk and a totally cluttered work style. Instead of piling papers on your desk, and your credenza, and your bookcase, and your toaster-oven, simply file every e-mail, e-memo, and e-document you receive in one big desktop folder, along with your important recipes, critical eBay bids, urgent invoices from your aroma therapist, and assorted downloads from GiveBrittanyABreak.com.

Alas, the computer has not brought a halt to the tyranny of the neatniks. Every week brings new books on how to organize your life. There are even television programs where a team of fussbudgets are sent on guerrilla missions to unclutter the homes of ordinary citizens. And if you think the neatness Nazis are going to allow a constitutional amendment to give Americans the fundamental right to a messy desk, forget it.

I’m afraid businesses will also continue to reward the tidy and punish the messy. There are over 3,000 members of the National Association of Professional Organizers (or NAPO), which promotes a variety of feel-bad events, designed to make us patronize the services of its members and the products of its sponsors (including the dreaded labeler lobby.)

What does all this mean? I’m afraid at a loss for a summation. I had already created my conclusion, which was really well written and quite soul-stirring, but I’m afraid I lost it in this big pile of papers on my desk. Somebody put in an emergency call to NAPO. Really, I’ve got to get organized.

I know! I know! The idea is completely ridiculous. How could you possibly summarize your entire working life – your accomplishments, your achievements, your awards and your honors – on one side of one piece of paper?

Yet, this is the exact challenge that faces us when we decide to apply for a new job.

For our highly brilliant – and highly overcompensated – managers the difficult part of crafting a resume is in deciding which of their many triumphs to include. The need to pare down a working lifetime of explosive promotions and expanding responsibilities makes for cluttered, ineffectual resumes that never seem to capture the special genius of the person, especially when the hiring manager must consider that the job applicant managed all these accomplishments working with a staff of indolent, insolent ingrates. In a word, us.

For everyone else, the problem is slightly different. Our challenge is to somehow inflate decades of sloth and career somnambulism into enough content to fill a 3x5 index card, not to mention a full sheet of paper. Fortunately, help is available. A recent “Career Journal” article by Dana Mattioli in “The Wall Street Journal” offers tips that will allow even the least of us to “stand out in a sea of CVs.”

[For those of you who are not Latinists, CV stands for curriculum vitae, a small but voracious caterpillar that lives on unprocessed expense reports, found rotting in the file cabinets of HR departments.]

Tip #1: Ditch the Modesty

“The resume is absolutely no time to be humble,” says eager Heather Eagar of ResumeLines.com. This sounds like trouble. If everyone in the job market is being encouraged to blow their own horns, me and thee are going to find it difficult to be heard, sitting in the back of the orchestra, tootling on our piccolos. If we can’t be humble, there’s only one other option. We have to lie.

Since we don’t do much work, we have plenty of time to dream up wonderful titles and accomplishments for ourselves. Be reasonable. You can inflate your title to Executive Senior Group Vice President, but don’t use King of the Known Universe, Lord of Destruction and Defender of the Sacred Regions of Zoron. That title is on my resume.

TIP #2: Review a performance checklist

Apparently, there exists in the working world a group of people who receive so many rave reviews that they cannot remember them all. Personally, I still beam with pride over the memorable occasion fifteen years ago when the boss actually remembered my name.

If you forget to remember your accomplishments, resume professionals suggest that you go back over your annual job reviews to remind yourself of your strengths – one of which is obviously not your great memory. The pros also recommend that you enlist friends, family members, and even your spouse to help you bring back to consciousness various career events that are resume-worthy.

“Ask what you bragged about, or were proud of at work,” counsels Deb Dib, president of Advantage Resumes. This might work for some people, but when I tried it, all I got was, “Well, I remember back in 1998, when you were raving about the new, super-sized jelly donuts that suddenly appeared at the Monday staff meeting,” or “what about that Christmas party in 2003, when you stripped down to your Jockeys and sang ‘Stayin’ Alive’ with the punch bowl on your head.”

Two excellent accomplishments, come to think of it. Let me dust off my resume and put them right on the top.

Tip #3: Measure results

According to Judy Rosemartin, an executive coach and president of Sensible Strategies, Inc. you should pepper your resume with “percentages, dollar signs and time qualifiers.”
I suppose that means that when the boss told you, “We’d get our work done in half the time if you weren’t here,” you could include the metric, “Increased production efficacy by 50% simply by not showing up.” Quite an accomplishment, you have to admit, and better than most people can say, even when they’re at their desk.

One caution given by the experts is to only include awards based on merit. “Just because you sat there for 20 years is not an accomplishment,” insists Martin Weitzman of Gilbert Resumes. We strongly disagree. When you consider how easy it is to fall asleep and slip down under your desk for the day, sitting at your desk for 20 years is a triumph, and deserves an honored place on anyone’s resume.

You are a beautiful person. Everyone knows it. But what about those poor unfortunates in the workplace not blessed with the face of a movie star and the physique of an action figure?

It is well documented that good looks directly transfers into good salaries. It doesn’t matter how smart you are. The better you appear, the better you are paid. And if you doubt it, ask Tom Cruise.

Being a hunk yourself, it is perfectly understandable that you have not spent much time worrying about those less fortunately endowed. Fortunately, San Francisco career counselor, Marty Nemko, has addressed the issue on his website, www.martynemko.com. “Working While Ugly, Career Advice for the Unattractive” may not go quite far enough for our taste in suggests viable work-arounds for an excess of ugly.

Readers who are stud muffins and total hotties can stop at this point, and hustle over to the tanning salon for an eyebrow wax. For those of you who may see a slight flaw or ten in the mirror, read on. Here are Nemko’s tips for turning the appalling into the appealing and the creepy into the captivating.

1. Work hard to present a winning personality

It’s OK to be a Frankenstein as long as you’re a friendly Frankenstein. If someone is going to poke fun at your looks, Nemko counsels, let that person be you. “I’m having a bad hair day,” is a good opening remark for a baldy, he suggests, while someone with a big nose could quip, “I have a good face for radio.”

While not exactly a laugh riot, this kind of comedy is not for everyone. Someone who has spent their entire life feeling self-conscious about their gigantic honker may not feel comfortable about stepping into the spotlight as a stand-up comedian on open-mike night. Instead, I suggest you follow the career path of the “unknown comic.” This successful comedian performed his entire routine while wearing a brown paper bag.

Showing up at your next staff meeting with a plastic grocery bag over your head will position you as a real Mr. Personality. Plus, you’ll get extra sympathy when the paramedics rush in to revive you from suffocation.

2. Dress carefully

We can’t influence our genes, but we can control our jeans. Some career counselors suggest you have a signature color, or a visual trademark, like Larry King’s suspenders or Bono’s wraparound glasses.

The visual trademark idea has certainly worked well for Britney Spears, but if your goal is to appear on the cover of the annual report, rather than the cover of “People,” you should choose your trademark with care.

Here’s an idea – walk around the office with an ax on your shoulder. This will suggest that when it comes time to chop some salaries, you’re the man.

3. Look slim

For those poor unfortunates who have lingered to long at the donut tray, and who are so unmotivated in their career goals that they are unwilling to join me in paying the company’s IT technician to staple his stomach, Nemko recommends that you avoid tight clothing and busy patterns. Unfortunately, my enemies at work are so jealous of my abilities that they instituted a fiendish plot to replace my entire wardrobe at regular intervals with an exact duplicate of everything I wear, only a size smaller. This may seem paranoid, but it is the only reason I can imagine for the fact that my clothes seem tighter with every passing pizza.

Nemko advises against the “muumuu look,” but I disagree. Wearing a king-size sheet to work makes me feel like a Roman senator. It’s also quite nice when it’s time for my mid-morning nap.

4. Practice distraction

If your face is a horror show, draw attention elsewhere. “A great hairstyle, or accessories such as jewelry, handbags and shoes can refocus people’s gaze,” suggests the career counselor. This is absolutely true, but what if you’re a woman? I suggest wearing combat fatigues. This says you’re ready to “battle for the bottom line.” People will not only avoid your face, they’ll run from you in the hallways.

5. Work alone.

If all the above still will not compensate for your ugly puss and sloppy body, Nemko suggests you consider solitary employment, preferably in a location without mirrors. You might become a workplace humor columnist, for example, holed-up in a dank fallout shelter fifty feet below the ground. And I hope you do. Ugly or not, I could use the company.

As you well know, it takes a big bowl of bad to get me stirred up. I have lived through stock market scandals, political pay-offs, even the cancellation of “The O.C.,” and have not stirred from my Barcolounger.

Yet the latest kafuffle about excessive executive compensation has got my dander up, and believe me, you don’t want to anything to do with my dander, up or down.

The heart of the issue is not so much the gigantic paychecks cashed every two weeks by America’s business leaders, nor their silly habit of backdating the buckets of stock options they regularly receive. Everyone understands how difficult it is to live from paycheck to paycheck, and we assume that making ends meet is just as stressful when you’re worrying about how you’ll buy your next Porsche as it is to be worrying about how you’ll pay for your next meal.

I take the same empathetic approach to the so-called scandal of backdating stock options. We all lie about what the calendar tells us. The fact that certain brilliant MBA-types fibbed about the dates of their option awards is no worse than Pamela Anderson claiming that she is 28. [Note to Pam: please stop calling. I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Kid Rock, but I have no interest in a rebound romance.]

Anyway, the big fuss these days concerns highly-placed corporate executives who have pretty much run their stock prices – if not their companies – into the ground. Former CEOs like Hank McKinnell of Pfizer and Bob Nardelli of Home Depot have been so bad at their jobs that even their Board of Directors noticed.

The outcome of this scrutiny has been harsh. Both CEOs have been pinked slipped, but not before they were green-slipped retirement packages worth over $200 million dollars – each.

To some narrow-minded thinkers, a $200 million dollar reward for doing a really bad job is considered an affront, if not a downright crime against nature. I disagree – 200 million percent. CEOs like Nardelli and McKinnell are to be praised, not buried in bad press.

Just imagine what the working world would be like if we cut off compensation to people who did bad jobs. People like you and me would be broke, that’s what it would be like. Personally, I’m so bad at my job that my manager actually prefers it when I spend the day slacking. “I’d rather have you sleep than work,” is the way she so charmingly puts it. “That way, you can’t screw up.”

[Of course, one can screw up while sleeping at your desk. I once fell out of my Aeron chair and banged my head on the stapler, which caused a nasty bruise, which resulted in two years of disability, plus a fat settlement for punitive damages.]

Still, given the high level of management incompetence in business today, it is surprising that ineffectual bosses are rewarded 24-karat golden parachutes. I believe the boards of directors at Pfizer and Home Depot are not shelling out mega-fortunes because their CEOs are inept. The millions are because they have been embarrassed! How can they hold their heads up at the country club, where all the other incompetents CEOs are still employed, without a money cushion on which to rest their gently paddled behinds?

Now I know that some readers may think that I am being overly generous to people who have already been the recipients of too much generosity. And I know that other readers may feel that I have been too harsh on people who have been dealt a bad hand by the uncertainties of the marketplace.

But let me prove that these failed CEOs, now rich beyond imagination, are truly what we Harvard MBA’s call knuckleheads. You’d think they’d be spending their days spending their money when, in fact, they’re focused on where they will be working next! If thee or me were lucky enough – and incompetent enough – to have a $200 million payoff, we’d never work again. To be honest, if I had $200 dollars more than I needed to pay my bills, I would never work again.

But Mr. Nardelli, for one, reports he is busily fielding job offers. He will probably be working next at a private, rather than a public company, where there is significantly less public scrutiny. And who can blame him. If you’re going to fail your way into your next $200 million dollar payoff, it’s better to do it where no one can see you.

If there’s room on your list for just one more New Year’s resolution, let me make this suggestion. In 2007, you will, at long last, get your dream job – the intellectually rewarding, totally secure, and ridiculously well paying position you have long desired and deserved.

Of course, there will be a price you will have to pay for checking off this resolution as a “mission accomplished.” If you want the job that is perfect for you, you will have to completely change who you are.

The reason is obvious, ain’t it? Unless you can find a job as a mattress tester in a chocolate factory, no boss could possibly equal what your current boss is providing – a desk, a paycheck, and someplace to go Monday through Friday. I mean, the economy is good, but it’s not that good.

Fortunately, you will not have to transition yourself all by yourself. Martin Yate, C.P.C., has authored a new tome for the times, “Knock ‘em Dead, 2007: The Ultimate Job Search Guide.” [I don’t know exactly what professional honor is rewarded with the C.P.C. designation. I looked it up, and can only find Climate Prediction Center, but heck, if Yate can predict the weather, I see no reason why he can’t look into your future and find the blue skies of career success.]

According to Yate, achieving your dream job requires a new mindset for the New Year. “You have to be connected and have strategies in place,” he informs us before listing the three essentials for success: “Plans of attack, plans for defense and plans for growth.”

Apparently our plan to survive another year without being noticed will not be sufficient.

Should you care to Knock ‘em Dead in 2007, you can purchase Mr. Yate’s book, or visit his website, www.knockemdead.com, or you can read my commentary on his commentary. Or you can simply knock yourself in the head with a baseball bat. Trust me, it will be a lot more pleasant.

1. Create a professional online identity.

This is the Internet Age, Mr. Yate reminds us, and according to a Harris Poll, 23% of professionals Google people before meeting them – or, we can assume, interviewing them. Yate suggests that you provide the digital looky-loos with appropriate search material. Remember that on the Internet no one checks facts, so you can easily set up a web site called HowIWonTheNobelPeacePrize.com, or start writing to a chat room endless communiqués, titled “Why won’t Angelina Jolie leave me alone.” Once the search engines finish searching your name, you’ll be a prize hire.

2. Dress for the (internal) job you want.

It could be that your dream job for 2007 is in the company for whom you already work. This raises the an interesting question – should you break the company’s casual dress code and spruce up for an internal interview. Yate says it’s OK to pass on the tuxedo, but do “make more effort than you would for a normal day at work.” For many of us, this means changing out of our pajamas before we leave for the office, but for the rest of you, Yate suggests that making a fashion statement will “give you private time to prepare for the challenges ahead, like a solider cleaning his weapons before the battle.”

Terrific idea, but he doesn’t take it far enough. Why not dress like a soldier? Show up at your interview in full combat gear, including camouflage clothes and a double bullet belt criss-crossing your chest. Add a sword and a gas mask and trust me; no one is going to turn you down.

3. Know your strengths and weaknesses.

“You need self-awareness for survival in today’s business world,” counsels Yate, who suggests you list the skills needed for success and then do an inventory of your own abilities, thus producing a useful inventory of your strengths and weaknesses on which to “launch yourself towards your career goals.” And you can certainly do all this; it definitely won’t take much time, especially in the “career strengths” area. But adding up all your weaknesses will occupy you full-time until at least September of 2007, which won’t leave much room for job hunting, especially considering the long-winter days are traditionally the time you spend hibernating.

May I suggest you just stumble on with your so-called career? If a great job comes along, it will find you, curled up under your desk and sleeping peacefully. If not, well, there’s always 2008.