Work Daze

Hey, did anyone around here see my Scotch Tape dispenser? What about my stapler, and my paper clips, and my pen, and my desk blotter, and my computer keyboard, and my office chair? Am I crazy, or was there carpeting in this cubical yesterday?

You may think that I’m joking, but that’s the way it is in the workplace today. If you want to keep your possessions, don’t come to work. You’ll have better luck keeping what God and the office manager gave to you strolling the naked city at midnight, holding up your ATM card, and wearing a T-shirt that says, “I’m a tourist. Rob me.”

If you doubt me, I know you’ll take the well-manicured words of the Spherion Corporation, the mega-big employment agency. In their recent Spherion© Workplace Snapshot, the eager beavers at Spherion have turned their laser-like focus on one of today’s critical issues – the theft of office supplies for personal use.

[No, I don’t know why anyone would steal office supplies for impersonal use. The reason I have a dozen cases of spring clips under my bed is not because I am the owner-operator of SpringClipsRUs.com. I just sleep better knowing that if I ever need a spring clip, it will be there for me.]

According to the survey, one in five U.S. workers have stolen office supplies. Of the 20% who are dirty, 20% are also guilty. This might suggest that other 80% of all workers are pillars of ethical behavior. But that couldn’t be true. I think the honest 80% have just watched too many episodes of the Sopranos. They believe that if they really did pocket a box of rubber bands, the boss would have them whacked.

In 2006, when Spherion conducted a similar survey, only 18% of workers admitted to stealing office supplies. This suggests that either the moral fiber of America is fraying, or that more of us are feeling the need to clip, staple and tape. Because according to the Spherion© Workplace Snapshot, necessity is the mother of larceny.

Get ready to take this down, behavioral psychologists – people steal office supplies because “they need them.” Or so report 41% of the dirty rats caught with their fingers in the supply closet. Nearly a third, 32%, confessed that the reason they stole was because “their boss said it was alright.” This is difficult to believe. Who among us has ever had a boss that encouraged us to rob and steal, unless, of course, it was for the boss’s benefit.

[Frankly, I’ve loaded more boxes of file folders in the trunk of my boss’s Jaguar than all the bodies Pauly Walnuts ever loaded in the trunk of his Coupe de Ville. “Here, take a dozen legal-size for yourself,” the boss always tells me. “You and the little woman have a night of filing on me.”]

15% excused their participation in felony paper clip theft by explaining, “the company won’t miss them.” Poor excuse. If the company got rid of everything it “wouldn’t miss,” you’d be bugging the folks at Spherion to find you a new job, since your position would be long gone.

“Everyone else does it” was the explanation du jour for 6% of the guilty respondents, proving that despite your vigorous denials, if your workplace buddy jumped off a bridge carrying a carton of printer toner, you’d jump, too.

Only 5% gave the excuse that I expected would be number-one-with-a-bullet – “the company owes me.” But I do believe that the 34% who responded “other/unsure” really do belong in the revenge camp. We all walk around harboring resentment against our managers, and how much better to steal a punch than to throw one. When viewed in this context, pilfering office supplies may just be the cheapest form of workplace therapy. If your company could exchange a trip to the shrink with a trip to Staples, the bottom line would soar.

Finally, the survey revealed that workers earning more than $75,000 annually were the most likely to take office supplies for personal use. Duh! Workers who earn less than $75,000 do not get access to file folders and paper clips. Blue-collar types have to settle for stealing trifles like bench presses, Caterpillar tractors, and senior vice presidents.

Still, the results of this survey are sobering, and I promise to return all the office supplies I have stolen over the years. I’m going to do it, too – just as soon as I can steal a forklift.

You’re a member of management’s inner-circle. You’re pledge master of Chew & Jaw, the loading dock smoking, gossiping and pink slip marching society. You’re the president of your office’s chapter of the Mary Kate Olsen Fan Club. Yet, there is one organization to which you don’t belong – Bob’s Book Klub.

In Bob’s Book Klub we read the latest, hottest and most delightfully useless business books published by Berrett-Koehler, the big business book publisher out of San Francisco. According to their Fall 2007 catalog, BK business books “promote progressive leadership and management practices, socially responsible approaches to business, and human and effective organizations.”

More important, they regularly ship me a shiny, four-color catalog that fits perfectly under the wobbly, northeast leg of my Aeron chair, making it possible for me to lean back and nap through the afternoon without fear of falling over and banging my head on my feng shui fountain. If that isn’t promoting progressive leadership, I don’t know what is.

I’ve been receiving the Berrett-Koehler catalog for years now, and have never given the company its props. With the humiliating disclosure that the editorial staff at B-K has repeatedly rejected my own proposal for a business best seller, “The Coffee Room Cook Book, 316 Low Cost Meals You Can Make With Food Scrounged from Your Company’s Kelvinator,” here are some of the new business books that will be falling like crimson and gold leaves this fall.

“Know Can Do,” by Ken Blanchard, Paul J. Meyer and Dick Ruth is the leading entry in the Fall 2007 catalog and it’s easy to see why. Mr. Blanchard is the “best selling author whose books have sold more than 18 million copies worldwide.” And, let me proudly add, at least six of these 18 million books have actually been read!

“Written in the entertaining fable format Blanchard has made famous,” it’s clear that “Know Can Do” will sit proudly on your desk top, gathering dust for decades, as visitors to your office notice that you, too, are dumb enough to have shelled out $19.95 for a book as thin as Mary Kate’s thigh, and not half as entertaining.

“You’ll find out how to adjust your brain’s filtering system,” is just one of the promises of this exciting new volume, but who needs that? After years of fine-tuning your brain’s filtering system, it’s already impossible for you to be reached by any management communication, no matter how vaporous. Face it, Kenny-boy – we’ve worked hard to become non-thinking, non-feeling, non-productive robots at the office. Why change now?

“Getting There Early” by Bob Johansen is another exciting and important BK book I won’t be reading this year. Johansen is the “former CEO of The Institute of the Future.” I’m sure Mr. Johansen is a bright fellow, but you have to question why anyone would leave a job that would let you put “The Institute of the Future” on your business cards and baggage tags. The last person to have such a cool title was George Jetson at his firm, Spacely Space Sprockets.

According to the catalog, “‘Getting There Early” describes the Institute’s “three-step Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle that will allow readers to sense, make sense of, and win with dilemmas.” [To further thicken this stew, I should point out that, at the Institute, dilemmas are “recurring, complex, messy and puzzling situations.” Like every time your boss asks you to “step into her office.”]

Frankly, one has to wonder if you need a book to tell you how to “Get There Early.” As a master in the art of career fortune telling, do you really need someone to write “REDRUM” on your cubical wall to know that if you want to truly “Get There Early,” move right now to Bangalore, because, brother, that’s where your job is going to be.

“Gifts from the Mountain, Simple Truths for Life’s Complexities” by Eileen McDargh is the last of the new fall books to attract my attention. This collection of “pithy, profound and practical reflections” is heading straight to the top of my putrid, pathetic, and puerile reading list. Just don’t expect me to be reading Ms. McDargh’s “musings on wild onions or mosquitoes, river crossings or thunderbolts.” I’ll buy this BK business book, because at just 120 pages, it’s just the perfect size to throw at my boss’s head, the next time he cruises past my cube.

Now that’s a simple truth my mosquito-brain boss can really reflect on.

Sick of the corporate rat-race? Under appreciated? Under compensated? Are you ready for a REAL opportunity that will finally pay you what you are worth?

Congratulations. You’re exactly the kind of sucker that we’re looking for.

Because I make a small (very small) fortune trading on the pain and frustration of the working stiff, I’m probably the last person on earth who should refuse to pass the gravy boat. Yet, I do feel protective of the grouchy and disaffected, and hate to see my audience ripped off by anyone who isn’t me.

That’s right, Michael Leroux, I’m talking about y-o-u.

Mr. Leroux is the man behind SuccessByChoice.net, the web site that spewed out the painful questions I pose in the first paragraph, and which offers, as balm to the universal agony of the 9-to-5’er, a success system that “not only allows you the potential to double or triple your income working from home, but also includes wealth building opportunities you normally wouldn’t have access to and will allow you to RETIRE WEALTHY IN A FEW YEARS.”

What exactly the magic system will have you doing, other than making endless trips to the bank, is kept a mystery – a neat feat for a web site that prints out to 19 pages. We do learn what the system isn’t. It isn’t multi-level marketing. It requires no stockpiling of products (Good news! I don’t care how rich I am going to be. If it involves cleaning out the garage, I’m not interested.) There’s no cold calling, nor will it have you “chasing after family and friends.” (So give up trying to get your Bucky Covington CDs back.)

Despite the cloak of secrecy that covers the actual mechanism of the business, we do learn quite a lot about our SuccessByChoice mentor, Mr. Leroux. An ex-federal law enforcement officer, he is pictured on the home page, casually dressed in jeans (rumpled) and a sport shirt (untucked), posing next to a Cadillac Escalade. Though he looks like he’s 16 in the photo, his bio tells us he has been married to wife, Monique, for 21 years and they have two children. He also “lives life on his own terms,” which, in his own terms, means taking endless vacations to “luxury five stars resorts around the world.”

Michael also introduces us to a dozen individuals who, unlike thee and me, have unshackled themselves from the chains of the bi-weekly paycheck to become bi-coastal party animals. One of the people who is not on the list is Jay Kubassek, and that is surprising, since Mr. Kubassak also operates a web site offering an opportunity to escape the corporate world for riches and freedom.

“I am on a personal mission to create at least another 100 millionaires over the next 5 years in the direct sales industry,” Kubassek says from the home page of dream-wealth.com. Though both spokesmodels take the same approach, the same language, and often, the same vacation, Kubassek and Leroux are two very different breeds of con.

For example, Jay has decided to spend a sliver of his wealth on a “custom built BMW” instead of that gas-gulping, greenhouse-gas-belching Escalade. Jay also has a “custom built gold fish pond” in his “beautiful home” to go with his Beemer. I imagine he is also working on some custom built gold fish, but that may take some time.

Jay is also a more open about how we will escape gainful employment and gain admission to world of the rich and the custom built. We will be selling “legitimate stand alone products.” And though Jay also assures us that his plan is not multi-level marketing, he does have us “helping 20 people each make $15,000/month, and this would pay you $40,000 a month, PLUS residual income.”

Heck, if I could convince 20 people to lend me $10 a month, I’d never work again.

One interesting similarity between these two philanthropic individuals is that the exact same people, giving the exact same testimonials, appear on both of their sites. Incredibly, Michael Leroux (AKA “Mike”), the ex-federal Law enforcement office, provides a spirited testimonial for Jay. Jay doesn’t return the favor for Mike, however. I suppose you get a little arrogant when you have a custom made gold fish pond.

If you want to pursue either of these opportunities, fine with me. But I hope some of you stick around at the office, grousing and gossiping. I’d hate if I was the only one left to complain.

You think you’re busy? I’m as busy as a truffle pig on a package tour of Tuscany. As busy as a one-armed man trying to cover his ears at a Maroon 5 concert. In fact, I’m so busy being busy that I don’t have time to make up jokes about how busy I am. And that’s too bad, because if there’s one thing we like to brag about it’s how busy we are.

You know it’s true. We used to brag about our skill at sports, or all the money we are making, but now we’re too old to be good at any sport more demanding than tidily-winks, and as for all the money we’re making, it pales in comparison to all the money we’re spending. This leaves busy bodies nothing to buzz about except what busy little bees we be.

If being busy is the main topic of conversation at your nearest water cooler, you might want to pick up a copy of a new book by Edward M. Hallowell. The book is titled “CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD.”

The timing is good. The Senate has designated September 7th is National AD/HD Awareness Day, and assuming we can remember to add a small celebration to our busy schedules, it’s nice to know that even a dysfunctional entity like congress can get it together to recognize the effects of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disease.

Unlike most pop psych business books, author Hallowell is knowledgeable about his subject. He runs an outfit called The Hallowell Center where, one presumes, very well organized individuals offer help and support to children with Attention Deficit Disorder. In CrazyBusy, Hallowell takes what he has learned from working with kids who can not focus on geometry and repurposes it to help CEOs who can’t focus on anything but their enormous egos.

Even humble wage slaves like thee and me can benefit from Hallowell’s tips on how to manage “the rush, the gush, the worry and the blather (which also includes clutter)” of modern life. Frankly, I thought the best way to handle these matters was simply to have a hanging file for each of these topics, so that in moments of stress, you could simply say to your boss, “Of course, I handled that assignment. It’s right here, filed under ‘blather.’”

If you find yourself overscheduled and undersatisfied, here are a few tips from Herr Hallowell on how to go from CrazyBusy to just plain crazy:

1. Start each week with a planning session, and use a weekly/daily planner.

Hallowell is a big believer is schedules as a way to get control over your life. You can even create your own timetable, he suggests, by drawing a chart of your waking hours, using one square for each half hour. “If you’re awake for 16 hours,” he says. “You’ll need 32 squares.” [For someone like you, who naps in the afternoons, and is on cruise control for the rest of the day, 3 squares should do.]

2. Do at least one undesirable task first thing in the morning and get it over with.

That’s easy. You go to work.

3. Break large tasks into “chunks” of 30 minutes or less.

There’s nothing better than a chunky work day. Simply explain to your manager that you are trying to get control of your time so you can be more productive. That’s why your quota for sales calls this month will be finished in 2012.

4. Get rid of the “maybe later” pile. Decide right away if something is worth keeping. Otherwise, toss it.

Your “maybe later” pile can be a problem, especially when you add your “probably never” and your “over my dead body” piles. It takes discipline to separate the wheat from the chaff, workwise, but it will pay benefits in allowing you to better focus your efforts. Here’s the starting point: The business plan, the budget, and the vision statement go. The 2003 “Sports Illustrated” swimsuit issue stays.

5. Reward yourself for your accomplishments.

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy – a highly paid, dull boy, but a dull boy all the same. If you accomplish all your chosen tasks for one day, reward yourself with a month off in Pongo Pongo, where there are no cell phones and no Internet service.

Keep in touch with the office by carving memos on coconuts and tossing them into the Pacific. That is, if you’re not too busy.