Work Daze

I’ve never been more shocked in my life!

According to a recent survey from the Nosey Norberts at CareerBuilder.com, nearly 25% of workers admit to making up fake excuses when they’re late for work.

Personally, I think being late for work is an unforgivable sin. When you’re late, you get a lot of attention and you usually have to work hours longer for every minute you missed. That’s why I recommend that you always arrive at work on time, if not a little early. It also doesn’t hurt to announce your presence with a hearty “Good morning, fellow team members!” shouted from the depths of your cubical.

It doesn’t matter if you’re only talking to the few losers who actually come in early on purpose. With this simple ploy you will gain the respect of your managers who will ignore you for the rest of the day, allowing you to goof off in peace and quiet until it’s time to slip off your slippers, put your teddy bear back in your bottom desk drawer, and sneak out the fire escape at 3 PM.

If you’re a late liar, don’t think you’re going to get credit for the creativity of your excuse. I don’t know how many times I’ve related in graphic and dramatic terms worthy of an episode of “Law & Order”, the kittens I’ve saved from trees, and the baby carriages I caught before they careened down the hillside. My manager still thinks I’m a slacker.

As you might expect, the survey results show that a majority of the 2757 employers surveyed – 67% to be exact – “would consider terminating an employee if he or she arrives late several times a year.” The other 33% “say they don’t mind if their employees are late as long as their work is completed on time with good quality.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather work for one of the skeptics and face termination on a daily basis, then have to deal with a boss who has unreasonable expectations. It should be enough that, late or not, you show up at all. Who could possibly live with a supervisor who actually expects “quality?”

Perhaps the most surprising part of the survey concerns the specific excuses your fellow workers are using to explain the basic human desire to ignore the alarm clock, pull the covers over your head, and sleep until Oprah. Which is exactly the excuse used by 17% of the 6,987 workers surveyed. They overslept.

7% blamed “a long commute,” a particularly lame excuse because it opens you up to a management demand that you sleep in your car in the parking lot, like the rest of the underpaid plebes whose homes have been foreclosed. The same problem exists with the most popular excuse, clocking in at 32%, in which the tardy employee puts the blame on traffic.

[Don’t expect sympathy from your boss when you use the “stuck in morning traffic on the way to the office” excuse. It was your bonehead decision to go home the night before.]

I suppose there’s good news in learning the 73% of managers surveyed actually buy their employees’ reasons for being late for work. Could it be that our bosses are actually as dumb as we’ve always believed? You must have respect for the 27% who “say they are skeptical of the excuses.” Hey, if you knew your managers were so sharp, you’d probably never have floated that story about your identical twin to explain why you were seen dancing on top of the bar of the Kit Kat Klub with two of the new interns.

If the results of this survey prove less than helpful, the Snoopy Sallys at CareerBuilder.com have done us a solid by providing a list of the “most unusual excuses employees offered for arriving late to work.” I suggest you cut and paste in on the steering wheel of your car:

• “While rowing across the river to work, I got lost in the fog.”
• “Someone stole all my daffodils.”
• “I had to go audition for American Idol.”
• “I wasn’t thinking and accidentally went to my old job.”
• “The line was too long at Starbucks.”

Pure gold, but here’s my favorite, since it combines an excuse with a plea for a higher salary:

• “I didn’t have money for gas, and all the pawn shops were closed.”

Better get in late, early tomorrow if you want to use it before I do.

It isn't every day that I find fodder from a fashionista, but today I struck
workplace gold. And I discovered the mother lode in, of all places, the
style page of "The Wall Street Journal."

There among the late-breaking, leg-breaking news about the latest footwear
trends, like "power heels," I stumbled -quite literally, in my 4-inch,
Taryn Rose, peeky-toe sandals - on a smashing Ellen Byron "Tricks of the
Trade" column titled "How a Dermatologist Looks More Awake."

I must admit that, at first, I had little interest in how "celebrity
dermatologist Patricia Wexler" tricks clients like Natasha Richardson and
Christie Brinkley into thinking she is alert and fascinated in their
epidermal episodes, a deception she accomplishes by applying a "quick
camouflage to dull skin and puffy eyes."

Then it struck me! Even those of us who would have no problem looking
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed if standing toe-to-toe and eyelash-to-eyelash
with Natasha or Christie may face serious job peril if the big boss can see
the boredom and despair in our eyes. Face it - management wants you to look
fresh and dewy when faced with this year's version of last year's vision
statement.

Which brings us to Dr. Wexler's tips for tired eyes and the exhausted worker
bees who hide behind them. Fighting a lack of hydration is vital.
"Dehydration can make wrinkles more prominent" the good doctor teaches us,
causing the skin to "appear thinner and deepening bluish discoloration under
the eyes."

No question you need a thick skin to survive at your job, so you'd better
start increasing your water intake immediately. If you are one of those
people who find it embarrassing to tote a gallon jug of Three Mile Island
Nuclear Enriched Spring Water around the office, may I suggest that an
excellent way to make water palatable is to drink it with a healthy
additive, like 12-year old Scotch.

Applying a moisturizer is another possibility, but cosmetics can be
expensive and frankly, may not be necessary, considering all the crying you
do.

"Exfoliation is [Dr. Wexler's] next line of defense," writes Byron, citing
the physician's "microdermabrasion treatment of tiny, smooth grains that
buff away the surface layer of the skin" to produce the "fresh, pink glow
that makes you look refreshed."

Again, there's no reason to rush to AutoZone and shell out for a fancy vial
of rubbing compound. Just stand a little closer to your supervisor as he
balls you out for your latest, job-related blunder. The scolding hot hair
produced by your manager, combined with the lacerating quality of his
halitosis, will do more than "buff away" the surface layer of your skin. It
will strip the skin off your bones, leaving you with the "fresh, pink glow"
of a skull immediately after being dipped into a vat of stomach acid.

To help combat tired eyes, Dr. Wexler "looks for creams that include
caffeine, cucumber and yeast extract, ingredients that help deflate
puffiness." How I wished someone had told us this earlier in our career!
Instead of dunking donuts in our bad office coffee we would have dunked our
eyeballs. And when we drank too much with our buddies after work, we'd be
sure to have ordered a bowl of cucumbers and yeast extract into which to
fall face first. Those years of falling into cheeseburgers have done zero
for our complexion.

[In a pinch, Dr. Wexler "applies ice-cold tea bags to her eyes." Didn't work
for me, but I did have luck applying fifty-pound bags of fertilizer. My
manager didn't come near me for almost two months.]

It is when we turn from the palliative to the preventive that Dr. Wexler and
I part company. "She avoids alcohol, spicy foods and drinking caffeine,
especially on flights." For me, being completely sober on an airplane would
have my eyes opened so wide in terror that I would arrive looking like a
teen-queen slasher victim in Prom Night VI. On the other hand, lots of
alcohol lets me ride the red eye and still arrive looking fresh and alert.
Hey, if you want to stop time, what better way than to let yourself be
pickled.

If all else fails, Dermatologist Wexler hides behind big Jackie-0
sunglasses. "They hide her tired eyes until she has a chance to care for
them." Personally, I like to hide under my desk. It hides my entire body
until it's time to go home and use my eyes for what they intended for -
watching The Hills.

I’m not ashamed to admit it. I am head over heels ga-ga in love with Alan Sklover.

If there’s a Mrs. Sklover, I hope she is not the jealous type, because there is no way I am giving up my Alan. He may not be the most handsome man, or the richest, but he has one attribute that makes him totally irresistible – he is willing to stand up for thee and me in our ongoing battles with the dark forces of management.

I first discovered my legal love bunny when I came upon an article on his website, skloverworkingwisdom.com. “The 21 Necessary Precautions Resigning from Your Job” was the name of the treatise and I have to say I was impressed by Sklover’s analysis of the pitfalls that could befall us as we skip happily from our present employment servitude to the brighter, greener pastures of our next position.

For thee and me and all people who spend the majority of every working day contemplating how happy we would be working someplace else, having a Sklover on our side is like money in the bank.

And we will need money in the bank. As Alan writes in his legal love note, “resigning from a job, and transitioning to another, is deceptively complex, as the process is just loaded with potentially serious risks.”

For example, consider Precaution #1 – “Must you give notice?” Most of us dream of the day when we can tell our managers to “take this job and shove it.” It’s a daily, if not an hourly fantasy, and usually includes a dramatic recitation of our supervisor’s many professional and personal sins presented in a historical context and concluding with an Oscar-worthy curtain speech studded with inspired name-calling and general vituperation.

As satisfying as such a confrontation can be, my Alan sagely points out that if you indulge yourself by giving notice the traditional two weeks before you plan to leave you may find yourself in for 14 days of reprisals, not the least of which could include your soon-to-be ex-employer poisoning your new position before you get the chance to screw it up yourself.

Precaution #6 focuses on the issue of what you can – and can’t – take with you when you leave. Considering that you’ve spent the best years of your life chained to your cubical, you may have come to think of your office equipment as virtual body parts. You wouldn’t leave a leg behind when you make your exit; why abandon your computer, your phone, your carpeting?

Even if you manage to resist pulling the acoustical tiles from the ceiling, Sklover warns about going home with any information that could be considered a trade secret, like the names in your Rolodex or the bookmarked porn sites on your hard drive. My best advice in this situation is to simply burn down your cubical before you leave. And get a lobotomy. You never used your frontal lobes in all your years at your present job; why start now?

Precaution #14 warns that you should be prepared to be “shown the door.” As Sklover points out, many companies believe that the proper response to a resignation is not a two-week fade-out phase-out. Instead, before the ink is dry on the resignation graffiti you scrawl on the wall of the conference room, you’ll be marched to the front door by two burly HR geeks who will ceremoniously boot you out into the parking lot, after first turning you over and shaking out all the company-owned pencils and paperclips you have stuffed into the pockets of your poncho.

So, take the smart and honorable approach. Steal all your office supplies the day before you resign.

Precaution #15 concerns the dreaded “exit interview” and includes the one fundamental truth that should be branded on the cerebellum of every human who gets a paycheck – “Don’t ever believe your HR rep is your friend.”

Ask anyone who has ever whispered their most intimate secrets into the empathetic ear of a HR professional. These marshmallow-sweet and compassionate individuals who drape themselves with a cloak of caring are more synthetic than sympathetic, as you will quickly learn as your innermost secrets are typed up and sent up to management, with copies to the companies lawyers, forensic accountants, and paid character assassins.

This brings up the only problem in looking for love in Sklover. You could realize that the risks of leaving your miserable job are so dire, you might as well stay.