Work Daze

What’s the worst part of getting sick? It isn’t the aches from the fever, or the pains of a needle prick, or the nausea from the anesthesia, or the news that surgeon has left the keys to his Bentley Continental GT in your rib cage. No, the worst part of getting sick is dealing with your health insurance company.

As Michael Moore points out in “Sicko,” even people who have health insurance are not immune to suffering the terminal agonies of the American healthcare system. And if you get your insurance through your employer, the pain can be even worse.

Think about it – does your employer provide freshly roasted espresso in your break room, or is the coffee you are served taste more like a well-past-rancid blend of rejected beans and lichen?

Your coffee. Your computer. Your vacation. Management scrimps on every other aspect of your so-called “benefit package, “so do you really think that when it came to health care, they decided to splurge? “I know it will take a big hunk out of our bonuses,” the executive committee members probably said to each other. “But let’s make sure our employees get the best health insurance money can buy.”

If you believe that happened, you are definitely sick.

One new wrinkle in today’s health scare program is the availability of the FSA, or Flexible Spending Account. Now being offered to employees by forward-looking companies across the country, the FSA is popular in the executive suite because it forces employees to reach into their own pocket to pay for medical expenses before the corporate insurance kicks in.

The benefit for the employee is that instead of fighting with the insurance company to approve your medical care, you can simply dip into your Flexible Spending Account. Now you won’t have to battle some cold-hearted HMO to have “alternative treatments,” like aroma therapy and reflexology. You can even indulge in those frivolous and fashionable medical trends we feeble-minded workers desire, like that fancy heart-lung transplant you’ve been craving.

One interesting feature in some of these “employee choice” health plans is that the money you don’t fritter away on open-heart surgery is turned over to – guess who? – your company. It’s use it or lose it , or, more correctly, if you don’t use it, senior management will use it—to fund their annual bonuses.

It’s no surprise that the idea of converting your health care dollars into executive vacations has slowed the adoption of the so-called “employee-choice” health insurance programs. In view of this inexplicable resistance, most companies still give you the option of choosing the traditional HMO, or Horrible Medical Option, and the elite PPO, or Painful Punishing Option.

Workers who adopt these programs deal with “gate keepers” who make sure every policy holder is healthy and happy. Oh, wait a minute! It’s every employee of the insurance company who is supposed to be healthy and happy. The customers can take their changes.

I know the insurance industry take a lot of hits from disgruntled customers who fail to appreciate the company’s colorful brochures, and instead choose to obsess on trifling non-essentials, like the company’s suggestion to reduce the cost of an expensive blood transfusion by using watered-down ketchup, or their insistence on sending you to unemployed actors from doctor shows on TV. [Actually, the whole idea of a medical degree is quite over-rated. The actor who plays House never went to medical school, and he cures deathly ill patients every week in 60 minutes, including commercials.]

Unfortunately, even Michael Moore fails to point out the real tragedy of the current system. Perhaps Mr. Moore is satisfied with his appearance, but if ordinary folks like us are to rise up in the corporate ranks, we will definitely need, as they in Beverly Hills, “some work done.” And as long as essential operations like face lifts, and liposuction are considered “elective surgery,” what chance do we have?

What nonsense! In today’s shallow society, where even the most incompetent CEO can earn a couple hundred million a year, the real secret to success is the ability to look good on television. After years of stuffing ourselves with Ho-Ho’s and Sno-Balls, how can we cram ourselves into sleek Armani suits so we can trade platitudes with Maria Bartiromo?

In fact, in our global economy, I think the government should make plastic surgery mandatory. That way, our businesses and our healthcare system can go down the tubes, but at least, we’ll be looking good.

So, you’re sitting at your desk and you’re miserable, and you’re miserable about being miserable, and so you think to your miserable self – “If I’m so unhappy, why don’t I do something about it? Getting a job flipping burgers has got to better than this.”

Know what?

You could be right! Why not throw off the creaking chains of traditional employment and live your dream? And if you don’t have a dream, outside of surviving until 5 PM, no worries. This is America. If you’ve got enough money, you can live someone else’s dream.

Listen up, friend – the secret to success and happiness is to open a franchise.

With a franchise, you don’t have to make your own mistakes. You can make somebody else’s mistakes all over again. This is a lot easier and much less time consuming.

As if to prove the universal appeal of the franchise to the duly and dully employed, The Wall Street Journal regularly runs a franchising opportunity section, a feature that must have extra appeal to WSJ reporters these days as they contemplate life under Rupert Murdock.

“Why settle for a pint when you can own the entire shop?” asks an ad for Hagen-Dazs ice cream shops. Alas, the answer to that question is the main reason you must to pass on this otherwise irresistible opportunity. The image of you spending eight hours a day in such close proximity to butterfat is enough to predict total economic collapse of the enterprise. Within a week of the grand opening, you’ll be turning down your pint-sized customer’s hopeful requests for butter-brickle crunch and cookie dough deluxe because you’ve personally eaten an entire month’s supply. [On the positive side, once the business – and your profile – have gone belly up, you can work out the remainder of you lease by turning the ice cream shop into a local branch of Curves.]

“Opportunity doesn’t always knock…sometimes it barks!” is the clarion call of “North America’s Full-Service Pet Center Franchise, Petland.” The owners of a Petland franchise get “the systems you need to succeed,” including “Third Party Financing” and “Public Relations Support.” You’ll have to call an 800-number to find out if Petland’s health plan includes treatment for bird flu, or free burial service for ten thousand guppies when your water heater goes on the fritz. [I suppose you can always serve your horrified customers cream of guppy soup. Talk about public relations!]

“If you love kids, sports and business, this is the opportunity for you,” barks Velocity, a sports performance franchise. Personally, I didn’t know that such a business existed, definitely a case of “my bad,” since I am informed by the ad that “there are more than 40 million children involved in organized sports who spend an estimated $4.1 billion on private coaching and sports instruction.”

I suspect it was the franchisers who did the estimating, but why be picky. Why shouldn’t you get rich for transforming Tommy into Tiger? And how great to make a full-time job of your weekly golf game, while insuring yourself a lifetime supply of free caddies, as you stroll the back nine followed by a string of PING-lugging students, each one paying $50 an hour for the privilege of observing your wicked hook.

[Truth be told, even a mediocre athlete could make a nice living with a Velocity franchise. I, myself, could hold weekend seminars explaining how to arrange pillows on the couch for maximum comfort and how to change channels without spilling your drink. Maybe I could even franchise my list of 50 irrefutable excuses for not doing any housework or childcare.]

Due to space requirements, and the fact that it is time for my after-breakfast nap, I must skip the opportunities afforded by MathMonkey and not one, but two tax preparation franchises. You already know everything you need to know about monkey math; you see it every two weeks in your paycheck deductions. And let’s face it; you already have a full time job paying taxes.

Which leaves us with the best opportunity of all – v’s Barbershop. “A business investment has never before been this fun,” says the ad, and I believe it! What could be more fun than handing out sugarless lollies to squirming juvenile delinquents; taking orders from dotting mothers; and rearranging the few remaining follicles on the chrome domes of angry aging customers. Hey, the best thing about this franchise is that it makes your present job look pretty good.

Next!

You know there are people who obsess about writing the great American novel. Not me. I also dream not of writing the great American screenplay, nor the great American pop song, nor the great American spam email. These are all worthy goals, but for working people, like thee and me, there can only be one literary goal that shines like a beacon in the dark and stormy night.

We want to write the great American office policy manual.

Oh, the unadulterated power of it all! Who wants to be in Oprah’s Book Club when you can be the ultimate arbiter of office behavior – the definitive reference resource when the HR monster rears both of its ugly heads and solemnly announces that your latest administrative boo-boo can only be judged by the one unimpeachable, undeniable source of truth and morality – the office policy manual.

Will you be reprimanded? Suspended without pay? Shot at sunrise? Not even Anton Scalia can weigh in on these issues. In the office, right and wrong all comes down to the black and white rules of the office policy manual.

Until recently, I didn’t think that a human being could write such a volume. I assumed policy manuals simply appeared in a cloud of Montecristo smoke at management offsites. But now, thanks to the nice folks at TemplateZone.com, I learn that mere mortals can indeed write an office policy manual, and there is even a piece of software to help us accomplish the Herculean task. Introducing Office Policy Manual 2007.

According to the listing on templatezone.com, “Office Policy Manual 2007 eliminates the need to “dedicate valuable time researching and collecting information, selecting appropriate policies, formatting document design and layout, revising and fine-tuning.”

It’s a wonderful promise. Heaven knows I’ve worn down the nubbin of more than one quill pen revising and fine-tuning my most recent mission-critical office ethics assignment – a list of rules for disposing of the contents in the office refrigerator when they are past their prime. I mean, is it morally right to throw out a fellow employee’s tuna salad before it even starts glowing in the dark?

My Herculean efforts would have been but a trifle had I a software guru on whom to lean.

Some of the features available to users of Office Policy Manual 2007 include “over 130 in-depth business & technology policies,” including a disaster recovery plan, blogging/IM usage, benefits and sick leave. Since no two firms are exactly alike, I imagine that the software does allow some interactive sculpting of these rock-solid policies, perhaps in a multiple-choice format.

With this kind of killer app, you would expect to click your own data input into these critical subject areas, like:

In case of a major disaster, it is essential that the employee:

A. Be ready to sacrifice your pathetic life to save your manager.
B. Be prepared with a good excuse explaining why you’re not responsible for this disaster, unlike all your other blunders.
C. Turn in all expense reports to HR before running to the nearest exit

Every employee will enjoy a rich panoply of benefits, including:

A. The right to detail your manager’s Mercedes on alternate Saturday mornings.
B. The opportunity to receive souvenir match books from the exclusive bistros where your supervisors enjoy their lavish, expense account lunches.
C. When caused by workplace stress, every third angioplasty is free.

Employees who wish to apply for paid sick leave should:

A. Ask for a hospital bed to be moved into your cubical.
B. Prepare for laughter and finger-pointing from your superiors.
C. Get a note from your psychiatrist.

Also included in the software package are a number of priceless extra features, including an “expanded library of workplace posters sanctioned by the Department of Labor.” I’m sure any of these art works would replace the original Gaughan and Mastisse oil paintings in your break room, though the guys in sales may balk at giving up their Snap-On Tool calendars.

Best of all, if you order now, templatezone.com will also include a free copy of OrgChart Pro, “the fastest way to instantly create and maintain vivid, presentation ready organization charts.” It’s a $149.95 value and worth every penny.

Think of the fun trying to mouse your name into the upper branches of the corporate tree. Think of the surprise as your limb is lopped off when your job is transplanted to Bangalore.

Hmmm. I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but should we be worried that Office Policy Manual 2007 is available in Hindi?

Good news! Today’s column is not being written by the same mental midget who usually pontificates on office life from this soap box. Instead, you have the extreme good fortune to be reading the opinions of someone whose views have won recognition from the famous Foundazion di Vittoro.

Feel free to faint in my esteemed presence.

For me the real honor is not that the award comes with a trifling bit of cash -- $500,000 to be exact. What thrills me is the recognition, at long last, for my work in developing a nation of workplace slackers, slugs and shysters. Since I had never heard of the Foundazion, I must admit that even I was surprised when I received the award announcement in a personal email from Mr. Vikki Malcom, the “foundation officer.” According to Mr. Malcom, collecting my prize simply required me to send some inconsequential data concerning my bank accounts, PIN numbers, and credit card information to claimspayoutdept@yahoo.it.

Why the foundation needs this personal information is a mystery, but I’m sure I can trust them. After all, they do insist that while the majority of the money is to be spend for “personal business development,” at least “15% of the awarded funds should be used to “develop a part of your environment.”

For my part, I can think of no better improvement in my part of the environment than to use those 75,000 green greenbacks to purchase copies of Nancy Spears new book, “Buddha: 9 to 5 – The Eightfold Path to Enlightening Your Workplace and Improving Your Bottom Line.”

News of the Buddha book also came my way via email, and while it didn’t come with $500,000, it did help identify of the bald fellow in saffron robes and sandals who has been spotting scurrying in and out of the CEO’s office. [Turns out he was the CEO’s aroma therapist, but you never know.]

According to Ms. Spears, the message of the Buddha “can save corporate America from its chaos and corruption and initiate healthy change in the workplace.” Once a company embraces Buddha business basics, she insists, it will “wake up,” and, in achieving enlightenment, “foster a creative, non-threatening environment for its employees to do good work with passion.”

Waking up is certainly a good goal for corporate management, but I question its utility for the working classes. If it wasn’t for our after-breakfast, mid-morning, and pre-lunch naps, I can’t imagine how we’d ever get through the morning.

As the author sees it, Buddha is not only an inspiration to managers, he was, himself, a CEO. I don’t think Buddha ever had to face an angry stockholder, or prostrate himself before a compensation committee, but Spears’ Buddha CEO did, at his core, “understand that at our core, each of us is basically good.”

This would seem to put Buddha CEO at odds with your firm’s management, which believes at its core that each of you is basically good for nothing.

But maybe your supervisors are more Buddhist than they appear. Spears quotes a spiritual master as exclaiming, “You have this precious human body in order to serve other living beings.” If that means that you were pre-destined to start your work day by bringing your manager a double mocha double quick, so be it.

Unfortunately, the entire Buddha management style depends on “working from your inherent intelligence.” This may be a bridge too far-fetched for your current supervisors. Inherent intelligence is obviously a substance that is in short supply on Mahogany Row, though there is an ample supply of greed and a major surplus of inherent dumb.

I also have to question the inherent intelligence of Ms. Spears whose official website promises to delineate the “eight principals of path,” but only comes up with 7. [Note to Nancy: The numbers between 1 and 8 do not include two 3’s. Lucky Buddha was CEO and not in the accounting department, or the religion would have gone broke centuries ago.]

And speaking of numbers, I just Googled the Foundazion di Vittorio and, to my shock and surprise, must report that it’s a real organization being used by Internet scamsters. Apparently, I am not getting the half mill, and all the balances of all my bank accounts have been transferred to Nigeria.

True to “Buddha: 9 to 5,” I’m trying to remember that the con artists are basically good. It’s not easy. I’m no religious expert, but if you ask me, this kind of disappointment would even make Buddha lose his cool.

Far be it for us to get on the wrong side of the American Management Association. Our managers have already tagged us as utterly useless, and if our negatives as employees weren’t trumped by the negatives we’ve kept from the 2005 Christmas party, we’d have long since entered to the final stage of employee life. A moment of silence, my friend, for the dearly disposable.

Therefore, let me quickly assert that when I devoted a previous column to the new best-selling, blockbuster books coming from Berrett-Koehler Publishing, no way did I mean to diss the better-selling, bigger blockbuster books from the publishing arm of the AMA, Amacom.

Amacom knows exactly what up-and-coming manager types want to read, which proves how hopeless a case I am. Looking at their Fall-Winter 2007 catalog, I must report I’ve never seen a bigger collection of silly, time-wasting hogwash.

Frankly, if this list represents what our bosses will be reading, they’re even dumber than we thought.

As evidence, let me mark this slim volume as exhibit A – Judith Bardwick’s “One Foot Out The Door, How to Combat the Psychological Recession That’s Alienating Employees and Hurting American Business.” Now, you know there’s trouble ahead when the cover immediately lets you know that the author is a Ph.D. After all, you don’t need to see that a book is by Danielle Steel, Ph.D. or Stephan King, DDS, to know you’ve got your hands on a juicy read.

Bardwick’s thesis does bear some merit, however, and when she describes workers as “fearful and feeling vulnerable,” I suspect she may have been peeking in our cubicles. How else would she know that you are “merely going through the motions?”

If her diagnosis is correct, her treatment is whack. Ms. Ph.D expects our bosses to “strengthen the bonds of trust and respect between managers and employees.” But if we really do have “one foot out the door,” how is it possible? Of course, our managers could slam the door on our foot, turning our tarsals and metatarsals into peanut butter. But this will mean medical expenses, so a more likely response will probably include a foot on our posterior and a trusting, respectful kick.

Once safely out the door, we can turn our attention to another new Amacom book, “Acing the Interview” by Tony Beshara. This literary paperweight trumpets the inclusion of 450 sample interview questions, the better to “answer the questions that will get you the job.”

This could be helpful. In the time since your last job interview, you may have forgotten how to respond to basic questions, like “Which do you consider most valuable – a high salary, job recognition, or advancement?” [Let me save you $16.95. The correct answer is “Advancement, sir. In fact, I plan to be sitting in your chair in six months and then you can be on the street and see how you like answering stupid questions.”]

If you decide to skip the job hunt altogether, and you were born without a Y chromosome, you’ll want to pick up Susan Wilson Solovic’s “The Girl’s Guide to Building a Million-Dollar Business.” Frankly, I thought we were supposed to address “girls” as “women,” at least, that’s what I was told by the chick in HR. Clearly, this book does not pander to political correctness. One of its selling points is a focus on “taking emotions out of the workplace,” a stereotype of the over-emotional female if ever I saw one.

As Ms Wilson Solovic apparently does not understand, there is no one who can throw a tantrum more convincingly than a man, and if you doubt it, try removing the Ho-Ho’s from the office snack machine.

There is one book on the Amacom Fall-Winter list that not only has best-seller written all over it, but also delivers actual management value. “India Arriving” by Rafiq Dossani is a serious study of Indian society and culture. But don’t let that worry you. The power of this volume does not come from reading about the effect of out-sourcing on traditional Indian culture. With this book, all the manager has to do is place it on the corner of their desk. When we worker bees see what the boss is reading, we’ll get our feet out of the door and our butts in gear. Hey, we don’t need an Amacom book to tell us that if don’t get moving, the only thing that will be arriving in India is our job.