Work Daze

If there’s one thing we’re famous for at Work Daze it’s providing insightful, useful career information about a month after it can possibly do you any good. Our New Year’s resolutions usually arrive some time in February, and our summer vacation tips invariably show up at your doorstep at the same time as the first snowflakes of winter. But this year, we’ve gotten our act together and can now provide the appropriate gift-giving advice you’ll need this year to make sure that you are both appreciated and employed next year.

This is not only darn good timing; it’s also darn essential. With the economy doing the loop-the-loop, and with economists bickering over whether the coming recession will be mild or wild, you want to do everything in your power to ingratiate your miserable self with the people in power.

Of course, you could earn the respect of management by dint of hard work but frankly, that takes too much work. Plus, you might miss the year-end fruitcake festival in marketing. But a gift – the right gift – only takes a few clicks of your mouse, and if chosen correctly, you can keep that digital creature from having to stir again into well into 2008.

I was reminded that we are in gift season by an email from Topsites-usa.com, which provides a list of web locations for that perfect “Christmas Boss Gift.” First on the list is Tiffany.com, the website of the jeweler famous for blue boxes and breakfasts.

Certainly a gift from Tiffany does assure that you will make an impression on your manager, but you do have to be careful before charging up a diamond-encrusted, sapphire-studded platinum fountain pen. A really expensive gift might tell the boss that you are making too much money, an impression that could come back to haunt you when you want your boss to use that pen to approve a big fat raise. My advice – if you want to play the Tiffany card, buy the cheapest gift you can possibly find. [The cheapest gift I could find was a key chain fob that says “Return to Tiffany’s.” Excellent gift. With any luck at all, some kind-hearted stranger will find your boss wandering the streets in a holiday stupor and ship him off to New York.]

If you’re like me and the thought of even spending $75 on your boss rankles, you will be excited to know about a gifting option based not on silver and gold, but on flour and water. That’s right, boys and girls. I’m talking corporate Christmas cookies from cookiehq.com. Once you get past a rather scary corporate logo – a giant cookie with hands, feet, and either a face full of chocolate chips or the world’s worst case of acne, Cookie HQ is chock full of fun cookie treats, including giant Christmas fortune cookies and a two-pound hunk-o-cookie formed to read “Good Job” in colorful icing.

My favorite cookie gift comes from the wide selection of “photo cookies.” These bite-sized treats are iced to depict an image of your choice – either your smiling face, or a view of your malnourished children, or how about that cell-phone photo you snapped of your boss dancing on top of a picnic table at the last summer’s company picnic wearing nothing but a leopard-skin thong.

Also in the edible area is a gift of chocolate which is available in a variety of custom shapes from namethatchocolate.com. There is a big “#1” hunk of chocolate for the boss who thinks she is, but no chocolate zero which would be a more accurate representation of your assessment. [If like so many of us, you find yourself working for a boss who is younger than you, a nice companion gift to the chocolate offering would be a tube of Clearasil.]

If none of these standard, web store-bought gifts feel right to you, it may be necessary to use your imagination to craft a gift that is just as special as your boss. A gym membership says “Hey, you’re fat,” and provides you the opportunity to bond with the boss in the steam room. A bottle of fine wine suggests that the boss’s dipsomania has not gone unnoticed. And if you’re totally out of ideas, there’s the always welcome gift of cash.

I’m not saying that you can buy your boss’s love and respect, but it never hurts to put in a down payment.

Now here’s a great idea – if your supervisor says that you’re underperforming and unproductive, don’t apologize and promise you’ll do better. Just explain to the boss that the reason you sit in your cubicle all day surfing the web and playing computer games is because you don’t want to risk your health or expose the company to an expensive law suit.

You’re not lazy; you’re a workaholic in recovery.

It could happen! According to an eye-opening article by Phyllis Korkki in “The New York Times,” the line between being a hard worker and being a workaholic is easily missed. And should you cross that line and become a workaholic, the road back can be twisty and bumpy indeed.

“The behavior can be extraordinary hard to change,” Ms. Korkki writes, and Professor Gayle Porter of the Rutgers School of Business agrees. “People will go through withdrawal,” she suggests. And what could be a better example of “cold turkey” than the sight of you, hunched up in front of your computer, shaking uncontrollably at the sight of another important project you’re going to ignore.

But what is a workaholic, you ask. And how do I know if I am one?

According to Diane M. Fassel, the author of “Working Ourselves to Death,” a workaholic is someone who is “addicted to incessant activity.” Workaholics are either perfectionists, have a need for control, or are a combination of both, adds Professor Porter. No matter how you slice it, workaholics are people who work a lot, whether or not there is work that actually needs to be done.

In fact, workaholics may actually create more work through their workaholic ways, the better to them to have more work to do. This is not a problem if the workaholic is a fellow employee, but it can lead to serious problems when the workaholic is your manager. “He or she may expect long hours from subordinates, may force them to try to meet impossible standards, then rush in to save the day when the work is deemed substandard,” says Professor Porter, who, to be honest, is beginning to sound like a workaholic herself and should probably be spending less time at her desk, analyzing us, and more time at a Rutgers’ campus beer bust, getting stupid.

One real problem with workaholics is that, unlike alcoholics, they are usually praised, respected and promoted. Get caught, blitzed, in the coat closet with a bottle of 100-proof Old Overcoat and you’re likely to get the boot. Get caught on a Saturday night, at your desk, revising sales projections for 2015, and you’re likely to get the corner office.

Unfortunately, there are no 12-step programs for workaholics. [They tried to start one, but no one attended the meetings. Everyone was too busy working.] This leaves workaholics subject to a panoply of ills: stress, substance abuse, sleep disorders, anxiety, and heart disease. Not to mention the psychic consequences of hatred emanating from co-workers and direct reports as laser beams of loathing are hurled in their direction.

What is needed, of course, are a few simple techniques you can use to cure yourself of the problems associated with being a workaholic while not denying yourself any of the advantages.

One important step is self-analysis. Try to understand why you have become a workaholic. Is it because you are inventing a reason to ignore your demanding, demented family life, or is it to hide from your own awful, obnoxious personality? Like all the great gurus, you must come to realize that despite your hard work, life stinks and that existence is no less miserable and meaningless when you’re lying on the sofa, like the rest of us, chugging cheap beer and watching “Hogan Family Rules.” Now that’s true happiness.

Another good idea is to rid yourself of all the workaholic enablers, mostly technological, that make it possible for you to hide in the laundry room during family dinners, conducting global business initiatives on your Blackberry or your laptop. If anything should be on your lap, it’s that cute new intern in marketing, and when it comes to being connected 24/7, trust me -- you’ll be less accessible but far more contented with a high-tech communication device from your childhood – two orange juice cans attached with a piece of string.

Remember – if you can’t kick the workaholic habit, your future looks grim. You’ll be successful and rich and worst of all, you’ll never know what happened on Hogan Family Rules.

I don’t have an MBA, but I do know that when it comes to business
performance, there are only two possibilities -- profit or loss. It’s the
same at home. When you don’t have enough income to cover your outgo, you are
operating in the red.

But not on Wall Street. Big brokerage firms and giant investment banks have
been running into trouble lately. The financial geniuses who manage these
companies have been sinking gazillions into subprime mortgages. As result of
this spending spree, they have literally lost billions of dollars. Only when
you’re a bank, you don’t have a big, embarrassing loss. You have a “write
down.”

To my shell-like ears, a “write down” doesn’t sound like a financial
disaster. It sounds like something you do at a tea party. And the big
financial firms would have indeed done better if they were having a tea
party. As “The New York Times” reported recently on the subject of Morgan
Stanley, there is “intense speculation that Morgan Stanley might announce a
write-down next month of $2 billion to $4 billion. And it follows in the
wake of market-rattling write-downs of at least $12 billion for Citigroup
and $8.4 billion for Merrill Lynch”

What happens to an executive who “writes down” eight to twelve billion
dollars? In the case of Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, they get sent packing.
That only makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that what they pack is
millions of dollars in severance pay – at least 150 million in the case of
E. Stanley O’Neill, the canned CEO of Merrill Lynch. [The CEO of Citigroup
hasn’t negotiated his settlement package yet, but perhaps he can find
comfort in walking away with his walking papers and vested stock holdings
valued at $94 million on top of the roughly $53.1 million in pay he took
home in the last four years.]

Think about it – hundreds of millions for achieving “write downs” of
billions. What would they have given these guys if they had been successful?
The key to Fort Knox?

I point out the shabby shenanigans on Wall Street not simply to ridicule a
ridiculous situation. Let’s think positive here. In the decline and fall of
these big time CEOs is a real opportunity for thee and me. If you think it’s
strange that individuals smart enough to command top jobs make a total hash
of their situation – and their companies – consider a real oddity: it’s
apparently a problem to fill these, highly lucrative top spots now that the
current crop of bozos are gone.

“Thin talent pool for top Wall Street jobs” reads a headline on the front
page of “The Wall Street Journal,” which goes on to report that “credit
turmoil has claimed two scalps on Wall Street in a week – and exposed the
shortage of talent for the biggest jobs in finance.”

Now, just because you couldn’t balance your checkbook with the help of a
super-computer, don’t fret. “Boards at both Citigroup and Merrill are likely
to look outside their firms for successful candidates,” the Journal reports.
So, you see, your lack of financial experience will not put you out of the
running

“Even veteran executivesS. may be short of technical expertise to figure out
the mess,” continues the Journal as it scans the landscape for candidates.
In other words, if you did know anything about finance, these companies
wouldn’t want to have anything to do with you.

But let’s focus on your positive qualities, like your good looks and sense
of style. One critical function of a CEO these days is being the public face
of a global enterprise. And who better than you to wear expensive designer
clothes and fly around the world in a corporate jet, dining at the finest
restaurants, and staying in the most luxurious hotels as you mix and mingle
with other corporate superstars?

[All this travel means you may miss critical episodes of Dancing With the
Stars, but don’t worry, you can write a TIVO into your employment contract.]

At the end of the day, it is entirely possible that you will screw up your
sinecure as CEO of Citigroup and totally bomb as boss of Merrill Lynch. But
even if you do nothing at all, you can feel good in knowing that your write
downs aren’t as bad as your predecessors. And if this doesn’t make you feel
better, that severance check for $150 million should help.

Have you watched the hot new TV show, Gossip Girl? I haven’t watched it, but I am living it. Ask me what the most important product our company produces and I will tell you flat-out – it’s gossip. Our services are slack and our merchandise is morbid, but when it comes to turning out high-grade, A-#1 gossip, no one can touch us.

If you also work for a company that is the Tiffany’s of gossip, I hope you are enjoying every juicy rumor and scandalous innuendo. Because, believe it or don’t, there is a group of people out there who want to take away the very lifeblood of office life. That’s right, thanks to the efforts of these funless, clueless party-poopers, companies all over America are shutting down the gossip mill.

There’s a name for the people behind the anti-gossip movement. They’re called consultants. The leader of the button-your-lip pack seems to be Ms. April Callis of Springboard Consulting, the inventor and purveyor of a half-day workshop called Gossip Stoppers. According to an article in “Time Magazine,” Ms. Callis “delivers analysis of gossip's causes and destructive potential, along with tips for improvement. She focuses on creating solutions rather than assigning blame, and she makes listeners responsible for stopping rumors by refusing to pass them on.”

Now I’m all for creating solutions, but I don’t see how you stop gossip by refusing to pass on rumors. After all, if gossip mongers like thee and me suddenly cease and desist when it comes to spouting in the hallways and byways of our companies, everyone will get suspicious and that will start even more rumors, only this time, the rumors will be about us! Also, if you cut off air supply to a particularly rancid rumor, it could die before everyone in the office hears about it. And that would just be a shame.

Remember our slogan: a slimy, underhanded, totally untrue rumor is a terrible thing to waste.

If you think an anti-gossip seminar from Ms. Callis would be a dry and dreary affair, think again. According to the “Time” article, “Gossip Stoppers kits include paper clips to remind rumormongers to fasten those loose lips and breath mints to help them remember to sweeten what they say.”

There is also a charming button with the international “NO” signal superimposed on the word “Gossip.” [You don’t have to go a workshop to get all this booty. Gossip Stoppers kits are available online for peanuts. I’d give you more information, but that would be gossip.]

It’s bad enough that the spoilsports are trying to take away our natural right to gossip, they also expect us to hold positive feelings about our work, our workplace and our co-workers. At gossipstoppers.com, for example, there is a quiz to determine whether or not you are working in a “negative office.”

It’s not challenging to take the quiz or to see through the meaning of certain answers. Or are you shocked and surprised that feeling “moody, focused and then bored” at work and spending your time to “complain and whine about work and co-workers” are considered to be signs of negativity?

If you I know you, feeling “moody, focused and bored” would represent an attitude adjustment worthy of a pound of Prozac. It’s sure better than “depressed, psychotic, and suicidal.” As for complaining and whining – well, isn’t that what made America great? Isn’t it what made America, period? Think about it. If the Pilgrims didn’t complain and whine about King George, we’d all be eating steak and kidney pie for Thanksgiving.

The one tenant of the positivity movement that I do embrace is the idea that all our backbiting and backstabbing is caused by the mutual back scratching of management. “While the bosses are waiting for every department to sign off on a decision, leaks spring, and worried staff members start spinning,” suggests Time writer Francine Russo. And April Callis agrees. "After so much downsizing," she says, "there are fewer employees left. They feel overworked, without control and in a negative spiral."

The solution to this situation is obvious. All of us worker bees must immediately start buzzing about management’s sins, omissions, and foibles. That way, the entire organization can come together in a totally positive way, expressing with one whispered voice, our complete contempt for our supervisors.

In fact, you won’t believe what I heard about your manager. Stop working on that report and meet me in the break room. I’ll tell you all about it.