Work Daze

Here's the most important career question you'll be asked this year - are
you harboring a secret love of taxidermy? Is it on your life list to have an
artfully stuffed caribou in your cupboard and the head of a doe-eyed dead
deer in your den? No, not really? Then, let me ask you the question in
another way - if your boss revealed that her passionate, personal pastime is
taxidermy, would your first response be to visualize a place over your
fireplace to hang the family schnauzer?

Of course! If the price of career advancement in this rotten economy is a
stuffed schnauzer, then not even the president of PETA could deny you. For
the truth is - whatever obsesses our managers is not only our obsession, but
our obligation.

This poignant point was brought home to me by Jared Sandberg who, in a
recent "Cubicle Culture" column in "The Wall Street Journal," chronicled the
story of "Nan Worth," a worker bee who suddenly found herself working for a
man who was moo-moo-goo-goo over the Boy Scouts of America.

While Worth had no inherent problem with Boy Scouts, she did find herself
vexed by a boss who "adorned his office with merit badges and posters of
knot-tying instructions, began a fund-raising campaign, complete with Boy
Scout cutout in the lobby, made speeches about the importance of being a
scout, demanded regular status requests about funds raised, and launched a
knot-tying contest to help raise awareness."

Considering all the 7-steps-to-out-of-the-box-leadership blather bosses
regularly impose on us, it is a mystery to me why any employee worth their
coffee break would object to such a harmless brand of managerial nonsense,
but apparently, the good scout in the corner office soon had his workers
working overtime to practice their knot-tying skills, with a special focus
on how to tie the perfect noose.

It's one thing to contribute to the success of the company, I suppose, and
quite another to contribute to your boss's favorite charity, especially when
you suspect that the rate of your future raises will depend on coughing up
the cash necessary to fill the coffers of the boss's favorite charitable
obsession.

Of course, it is not simply a boss's charitable impulses that can rock the
world of the employee victim. How many careers have risen and fallen on the
worker's ability to play golf, or tennis, or chess, or tidily-winks. Often,
the skill one needs most is the ability to play dead. Sure, your boss will
loudly embrace the opportunity to shoot a round or two with a superior
golfer, the better to improve their game. But in the long term, what a boss
really wants in a golfing partner is someone who can be counted on to lose
consistently, gracefully, and without making it seem like they were trying
to lose in the first place.

In golf, counting strokes is important. At work, it's much more important to
stroke the boss's ego.

One tragic story recounted in the Cubicle Culture column concerns Paul
Karlin, a man who worked for a chocoholic. "If you want to stay in this
department, you are going to have to learn to love chocolate," a colleague
informed Karlin, who was one step below the chocolate junkie on the org.
chart.

The warning proved prescient, and Karlin, who didn't like chocolate, was
forced to accept a variety of bars, bon-bons, and bunnies, all of which he
hid away for later regifting. Hopefully, to his own direct reports.

One could argue that someone who doesn't like chocolate deserves any
punishment life has to offer, but there are ways that employee Karlin could
have responded to the situation without risking a file cabinet full of a
melted chocolate goo. For example, he could have claimed to be a diabetic,
which would excuse him from the daily chocolate dispensations, and set him
up for an extra ration of pity.

My favorite example of an employee suffering through the obsessions of their
boss is the cautionary tale of a senior executive whose passion was the
tango. Since his wife had little interest in the ultimate dance of love, the
exec, quite literally, dragged his assistant to and through his dance
lessons.

Personally, I am delighted when I work for bosses who make their obsessions
obvious right from the jump. I hate having to guess what my boss wants me to
pretend to like. If all that is required is to wear high heels and tackle
the tango, I say - let's dance.