Work Daze

Think about it, Dude. If it’s tough coming back to work after a single week-end, imagine the strain on the psyche when you have to drag yourself back into the workplace after being out of the office for a year, or more.

It could happen.

In a recent survey, the online job site CareerBuilder.com had their survey monkeys interview 6,852 worker monkeys and came up with the supposedly good news that even after 12 months off, forty-five percent of respondents found themselves back in harness within one month. Another one-third of the drop-outs had dropped back in after six months of hunting and groveling, while a mere 14 percent were on the job hunt for over a year before bagging a space in the employee parking lot.

I say this is “supposedly” good news because I have no doubt that even after a year of cranking out resumes, the new hires knew within the first minute of their first day that a terrible mistake had been made. They should have stayed home.

If you are one of those people who has broken out of employment prison and now want to tunnel back in, or if you are currently employed and are dreaming of a week-end that lasts, oh, ten years, Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder.com, offers hope.

“Employers are struggling to find skilled labor and are recruiting qualified employees before the competition has a chance to do so,” Ms. Haefner explains. “Even in a tighter job market, skilled workers re-entering the workforce after a leave of absence can find good opportunities and competitive compensation packages.”

[It could be true. Look around your workplace. I’ll bet your company’s managers are “struggling to find skilled labor.” Unfortunately, they’re trying to find these rare birds among the current flock of employees. As far “competitive compensation” goes, that’s a subjective matter altogether. Look how much you get paid to hide behind your work station from 9 to 5, surfing the web for bargain Ferragamos at zappos in-between grouching and gossiping with the other malcontents.]

“Medical reasons” are the primary motivators for most workers who have taken an extended period of time off. I assume these “medical reasons” include psychological problems, like waking up one morning and realizing that you can not possibly spend one more boring day with one more idiot manager doing one more futile task. There’s a name for this condition. It’s called sanity.

“Raising a family” is another popular explanation for abandoning the work force, but I think this is bogus. Every day at work is another day you are raising your family – your work family. I mean, someone has to set limits for obstreperous human resource vice presidents and nurture cute interns who are looking for guidance from an experienced denizen of the workplace.

Surprisingly, only 13% of the stay-at-home crowd cited “to relax and enjoy life” as a reason for leaving their jobs. Perhaps that’s because 87% of workers are like you and me – we goof off so much and accomplish so little that the best way to “relax and enjoy life” is to go to work.

The survey does provide some wise advice for those unwise individuals who want to re-enlist in the job corps. Many candidates “perceived a concern amongst employers that they would once again leave the workforce.” You could have seen that one coming a mile away. Bosses want to hire people who have skills, yes, but the most important skill required to get a job is the ability to look like you care.

“Yes, sir, Ms. Hiring Manager. Selling digital dental devices in Denver has been a dream of mine since I was 10-years old.”

If you have committed the unforgivable sin of leaving your post for some frivolous reason, like having a baby, or open heart surgery, there are ways you can prove your commitment. Chaining yourself to a fichus in your potential employer’s reception room shows you’re not going anywhere. Or arrive at the preliminary interview with a tent, a knapsack, and a sleeping bag. And don’t be afraid to weep mournfully when the hiring manager shows you to the door.

“If I don’t get to work here, I’m not losing a job,” you sniff. “I’m losing a friend.”

One other problem recycled workers must face is how to explain there time off the reservation. I suggest telling potential employers that you were federal prison. It’s harsh, I know, but it’s a whole lot better than admitting you quit “to relax and enjoy life.”

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.

I don’t want to make you any more paranoid than you already are, but if you suspect that someone is reading your every email, and tracking your every website visit, you’re probably right.

No, it’s not the FBI that has you under the electronic microscope. The Feds don’t care if you spend three hours a day tracking the latest antics of Britney and Lindsay on tmz.com and the rest of the time, selling the company’s office supplies on eBay. The person who has made it their business to be in your business is your boss. And the consequences of Big Brother Big Bothering you can be dire indeed.

According to the 2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey from the nosey parkers at American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, over 50% of all employers fire workers for email and Internet abuse. Drill down and the percentages get every scarier. 66% of employers are monitoring your Internet connections. 45% are tracking your keystrokes. 40% of companies that monitor email actually assign an individual to manually read and review your private e-communications.

No wonder the economy is in such a tailspin. Businesses not only have taken their eye off the ball, they’re spending all their time keeping their eyeballs on your emails.

If this high level of corporate snoopitude is news to you, then you have no one but yourself to blame. Over 80% of the companies who eavesdrop into your private life at work claim to have notified their employees of their policies. This is absolutely no excuse since they probably made the notification in one of those snoozefest orientation meetings, or buried it in some HR manual you immediately interred in your file drawer.

One vexing statistic around all these e-terminations is that most seem to be based on the dubious moral judgments of your management. 64% of email offenses cite “inappropriate or offensive language.” Hey, what’s the sense of living in America if you can’t email a bud to vent, even if it the verbiage is deeply offensive, as in “my boss is a doo-doo head.”

The same “inappropriate /offensive content” excuse is also at the heart of 84% of Internet misuse terminations. This is nonsense. So what if you spend your days at www.saucypoodle.com, watching poodles dressed in frilly lingerie? At least, you’re at your computer. At least, you look like you’re working.

Besides, it’s not your fault if your company is not one of the 65% the AMA survey found that block connections to “inappropriate” websites. Like visiting your manager’s myspace page and learning that behind the harsh, focused, eye-of-the-tiger taskmaster who you see at work is a “macramé junky with a collection of over 500 Hummel figurines who loves to scrapbook.”

Keystroke tracking is another tool of the curious corporation. Apparently, anyone who uses more than 15 uppercase “Q’s” per month is a major security risk and must be fired immediately. [If you’re not sure if your company employs a keystroke counter, spend a morning at your workstation, idly entering asterisks. If no one comes running down from Mahogany Row demanding that you stop before they go crazy, you’re probably safe.]

If you think it’s safe to e-vent when you’re out of the office, you need a rethink – fast. 12% of the companies surveyed “monitor the blogosphere to see what is being written about the company.” I guess that means your “My Idiot Boss” blog could get you in trouble, even if you only write it during coffee breaks, and on the lunch hour, and all through the week-end, and while on vacation. If you haven’t been fired yet, it may be because your boss has not reached the end of first 3,000 pages.

My personal choice for the most awful outcome of all this spying and prying is the shocking revelation that many companies actually hire an individual to read the email of their employees. This practice does not alarm me because I don’t write incendiary emails to people within the company, and I don’t care what the office manager says, I was only kidding when I sent those two hundred emails suggesting I was going to fill her desk drawers with rabid weasels.

The problem with the official email reader is that these positions are hard to find. Talk about a dream job! What could better for born snoops like us than the opportunity to spend our days reading the electronic babblings of our psychotic co-workers and get paid for it?

Listen, if you think your present job is miserable, imagine how you’d feel
if you lost it.

David K. Marshall, an unemployed 61-year old credit manager, recently
profiled in The Wall Street Journal’s “Managing Your Career” column, just
got laid off for the second time in two years. The last time he was
unemployed, it took six months of searching before Mr. Marshall found a new
credit managing gig. Now the question is – which will come first? A new job
or Medicare.

[Frankly, I’m not surprised that a credit manager is having a tough time in
today’s job market. The banks and brokerage companies that are currently
writing down billions of dollars in credit losses obviously felt that no
management was needed when it came to making loans. And now that their sour
loans have them on the edge of bankruptcy, they can’t afford to hire the
credit managers they should have hired in the first place.]

It’s not only credit managers who are finding themselves on the street for
an extended period. According to Joann S. Lublin, who manages the “Managing
Your Career” column, about 18.3% of jobless Americans in January have been
out of work for at least 27 weeks, and “these individuals often battle
pinched wallets, age bias and depression.”

Must be rough. You and I are fully employed and we’re wrestling 24/7 with
depression and age bias. As for a pinched wallet, I could slip mine through
the eye of a needle, if I could afford to buy one. But there is hope, as we
learn from Lublin’s poll of folks whose employment is based on the
unemployment of others.

Like William Brown, a senior managing director for DBM, a New York
human-resources consultancy. “Build your personal brand,” councils Brown.
The idea is to gather your friends and acquaintances for a focus group on
Product You. The goal – to determine why this brand isn’t selling.

For example, Product You may have a shelf-life beyond your expiration date.
If this is the issue, then it is time to spruce up your label graphics with
a hint of Botox, and a dab of Platysmaplasty, and, while you’re at it, how
about a new toupee from Rugs-R-Us. If you can’t afford to cover your chrome
dome with the high-priced spread, made of human hair, go for the raccoon fur
model. It looks great and will make you feel like one of the pack when you
go dumpster diving at the local supermarket.

Alternately, Product You may have too many artificial ingredients, like that
business degree from the London School of Economics that you received after
sending $199.99 to a web site in Nigeria, or those prominent bullet points
on your resume that cite your Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and your service to
the country as Ambassador to the Court of King Fred of Freedonia.

In fact, if there are items on your resume that do not reflect the truth, or
even approximate it, the long-time out-of-worker needs to polish that puppy,
and fast. “Make sure your resume is doing its job,” says Damien Birkel,
founder of Professionals in Transition. Unless, of course, its job is to
serve as the disposable liner for a parakeet cage.

“A subtle variation in font choice can sometimes help a resume stand out
from the crowd,” suggests Alex Douzet, a founder of TheLadders.com. I wish
this were true, but somehow I doubt that changing your pathetic career
history from Ariel Black to Franklin Gothic is going to nab that big job. I
feel completely differently about a change in font size, however. Why not
change your font size from a feeble 12-point to a powerful, self-assured
48-point? You’ll have to use a piece of paper the size of a Volvo station
wagon to get everything in, but what’s so bad about that? Imagine the
impression you’ll make when four burly longshoremen carry your resume into
the interview room and drape it over the hiring manager. Now that’s
confidence!

If all these maneuvers fail, you can always follow the example of tragically
unemployed Sharon Harrington, who exorcises her job hunting blues with the
occasional “solo pity party,” where she bemoans her fate, feels sorry for
herself, and eats tons of chocolate. The only suggestion I can make is for
Ms. Harrington to integrate those chocolate-covered pity parties with her
job interviews. Once you’ve shared a five-pound box of run-soaked truffles
with a hiring manager, no way he’s going to turn you down.

If you’d like to know who I’m supporting for President, you certainly won’t
find out by walking into my cubical. I’ve got my walls plastered with signs
for Hillary, Obama, and John McCain. I don’t have a Huckabee banner, because
I am wearing an “I Like Mike” T-shirt – at least, I wear it on Mondays. On
Tuesdays I wear my “Hats off for Hillary” golf cap. On Wednesdays, it’s my
“Obama’s Army” lapel pin, and on Thursdays, rain or shine, I come to work
wearing my “Another Macintosh for McCain” raincoat. I’ll be wearing my
“Nader is Greater” sweatshirt on Fridays, once I pull it out of the
mothballs. That leaves the weekends for the candidate of the Vegetarian
Party, which has yet to hold its first caucus, but will certainly swing into
action once we enter broccoli season.

As you may grasp, in the important matter of choosing a Presidential
candidate, I am hedging my bets.

It’s probably the same for you, too. While company management may not have a
political policy on the books, you certainly know better than to get on the
wrong side of your bosses when it comes to any important matter, like who
will win this year’s American Idol. The stakes are even higher when it comes
to a hot-campaign button issue, like a Presidential election. Hillary, Barak
and John may not ruin the country in one term, but disagreeing with
management on the issue could result in your election to the unemployment
office. And you can forget about asking for a recount. The only hanging chad
in this election will be you.

What makes the problem even more difficult is the fact that management
rarely publishes the company line on political issues. According to a new
survey from the American Management Association, ninety-two percent of all
workers surveyed insist that “no one from their company – either management
or labor – has recommended voting for a particular candidate because it
would benefit the organization.”

This is unfair. How can we brown-nosing toadies express our deeply felt,
personal political opinions if no one tells us what they are.

Forty percent of survey respondents responded that they are “comfortable
talking politics with their supervisors.” No doubt! I’m entirely comfortable
asking my boss who I should vote for. And I’m sure my boss feels the same.
After all, she tells me how I should work, think, dress, eat, invest, wed,
and sleep, as well as providing valuable counsel on how to raise my
children, take my vacations, or choose an aroma therapist for my Schnauzer.
In fact, I am so accustomed to following orders, if my boss didn’t tell me
which candidate to choose, you’d definitely find me in the voting booth,
staring dumbly at the ballet and muttering, “I don’t know. I just don’t
know.”

Fortunately, there are a few firms that care enough about the welfare of
their hapless employees to specify an official corporate candidate.
According to the AMA study, a measly 7 percent recommended voting for a
particular candidate. Now, that’s the kind of company you want to work for –
they understand that employees don’t want to think for themselves. Heck,
most of us don’t want to think at all.

Also, according to the survey, we learn that most companies are not only
failing in their duty to instruct their employees on how to vote, more than
three quarters of the senior executives surveyed report that their company
does not contribute to a particular party.

This lack of interest in buying politicians is definitely a sign of trouble.
If your company does not own or even lease a few quality congressmen and
senators, how are they going to protect you and your job when more
civic-minded competitors start beating you over the head with their
checkbooks? If your management still clings to some old fashioned idea about
“ethics,” I suggest you form your own PAC, or political action committee.
With just modicum of arm bending and, if necessary, leg breaking, you can
certainly wring a few thousand dollars out of your coworkers to use for
bribery and influence peddling. I believe it’s even deductible!

Remember – as a citizen, it’s your job to support our political system.
Remember also – it’s our political system that supports your job. So, follow
your conscience. And if you checked your conscience at the office door when
you took your current job, do what I am going to do. Vote Vegetarian!