Work Daze

Married to the Job

2008-07-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

My wife and I used to commute together. It was economical. It was also scary.

Trapped in traffic in a mini-van, arguments that merely simmered at home, boiled over like a hot radiator. Driving to work was bad, but driving home was worse. The problem was all the repressed rage that had built up during the workday. Normal people find a healthy outlet for their frustration – they drink.

We drove. Crawling along in rush hour, the Missus and I didn’t have to hunt for a target on whom we could unload. We had each other. I know we had promised to love each other, until “death do us part,” but this was worse than death. This was commuting.

With this kind of experience on my resume, you will understand why I was so interested in an article titled “Would You Hire Your Husband?” in “The New York Times” of June 29th. According to reporter, Geraldine Fabrikant, women all across America are hiring their hubbies. As Ms. Fabrikant writes:

“At a time when high-profile women have suffered some shocks on Wall Street and when women in general still struggle for pay parity, a group of entrepreneurs have proved that women are comfortable not only with running their companies, but also having their husbands working for them.”

Being a no-profile person myself, I can’t profess to understand what is in the minds of these high-profile females, or why, with a world full of able, eligible candidates, they decide to look no further than the other side of their king-sized bed. [In your case, the hiring entrepreneur would have to recruit you from the den, where you were sleeping peacefully on the davenport under a blanket of empty beer cans, but you get the point.]

Hiring your husband is one thing. Managing him is another. According to the article, the job of successfully supervising your spouse requires the woman to “make a conscious effort to ensure that her mate is getting appropriate recognition.” Apparently, some men are so lacking in self-esteem that their sensitive egos get squished when delivering the kind of bowing and scraping most bosses require.

“Men and women are made differently,” explains Laura Colin, the author of “Family, Inc.,” a study of family businesses. “It is the testosterone thing – men are more compelled to dominate and get credit than women are.”

But is the problem of a man’s testosterone level on the level? Not all men have a need to dominate in every situation, though you do have to admit, it would be nice to have one area of your life in which you can rule the roost. It’s bad enough being a lackey at home. You don’t want the same position at work.

Actually, the whole power struggle between husband and wife in the workplace is a lot more complicated that the “Me Tarzan. You CEO. ” scenario described above. According to an unnamed Chicago therapist interviewed by Fabrikant, “a wife’s fear of making her husband feel emasculated in the workplace is a real consideration.”

Pure nonsense. If men were afraid of emasculation, we’d never get married.

Husbands, who work for their wives not only have to walk on eggs at work, but face the ridicule of their buddies when the workday is over. One female CEO describes the “Who’s the Boss?” situation as “uncomfortable” simply because other men made fun of it. “Oh, you can’t get a job except working for your wife,” went the teasing and the taunting when hubby stopped by for a mid-day attitude adjustment at the Kit Kat Klub.

I suppose this would be demeaning, but it’s certainly not the worse situation. How many of us are working at jobs we hate because our wives won’t hire us. They’re way too smart.

Often, what makes the wife-boss scenario work is a clear delineation of duties – at work and at home. Many of the husbands interviewed had certain areas of expertise, which freed the wife to do what she did best. Men who, at home, were tasked with taking out the garbage, were given specific critical duties at the office, like managing the executive coffee-run. This gave the wife time to do high-level thinking, like strategizing on whether she should replace her hubby with the hunky new hire in the shipping department.

Bottom line: if you don’t get along with your bosses, consider yourself lucky. You may have to take their garbage, but you’ll never have to take out their garbage.

Cold Comfort

2008-07-12T13:52:00.001-07:00

Bad news, fellow worker-bees. Global warming may be raising temperatures at company branches in the North and South Pole, but back in here in headquarters, we’re freezing our buns off. Summer is here, and the air conditioners have been cranked up to “kill,” leaving many of us about as productive as a Popsicle.

Yes, it’s true. The colder you get, the less you accomplish. An extremely scientific study by Alan Hedge, an ergonomics professor at Cornell University, has determined that the number of keystrokes produced by a number of laboratory-rat workers at 68 degrees increased by 100% when the temperature was raised to 85 degrees. [Let’s hope your management doesn’t hear about this study, or the temp. in your office will immediately go from chill to bake to broil.]

The colder workers also made more mistakes, the Dr. Strangelove of ergonomics discovered. This is understandable. It’s definitely difficult hitting the right keys on your keyboard when you’re wearing mittens.

I learned about Professor Hedge’s breakthrough work in a recent “Career Couch” column by Phyllis Kokki in “The New York Times.” According to Kokki, there are a multitude of reasons why our workplace summer of love quickly becomes a summer of complaining.

“The problem in the way people experience temperature depends on a range of factors,” reports the reporter, “including body type, clothing, activity level and proximity to other people and to vents, computers, and windows – as well as individual preferences and expectations.”

The part about “activity level” is especially poignant, since our principle goal in the workplace is to experience as little activity as possible. Some of us have even started to study meditation and mind control to learn the ancient secrets of “sitting quietly,” leaving our minds vacant for enlightenment, or for happy hour at the Kit Kat Klub, whichever comes first.

Another key factor in how we experience cold is less philosophy and more physiology. “The muscles of the body generate about a third of its heat,” Professor Hedge explains, “and women tend to have less muscle mass than men.” [Hey, the professor said it, not me. If you women are going to prove this theory wrong by beating someone to a pulp, Cornell is that way!]

Not all of the explanations for our long, cold summer make as much sense as a lack of activity or our miniscule musculature. Another professor, Gail S. Brager, of the architecture department at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that our summer of suffering stems from a “lack of control.”

“Think about how much more control you have over your comfort at home,” opines the professor. “You can open windows, turn on fans, heaters or air-conditioners, change clothes or move to a different room. At most offices, you lose that control. Someone else is pushing the button.”

Professor Brager is right about losing control, but she is dead wrong if she thinks that it affects our behavior. At this point, we’re so used to having no control over our lives, that a simple management decision to turn our workplace into a meat locker is hardly a matter we’d dispute, or even notice. I don’t know about where you work, but I haven’t pushed a button in years. [Come to think of it, last time I did push a button, two HR drones and an IT nerd burst into my cube and took my button away.]

The clothing you wear – or don’t wear – also makes a difference. Remember Professor Hedge, the keystroke king? He also reports that your ankles are particularly vulnerable to cold. For those of us who have put on adequate adipose to turn our ankles into “cankles,” the problem is even more severe.

For this exact reason, some of you may consider bringing a blanket to work, which you could drape over your shoulders, letting the warm wool dangle over your well-chilled legs, frozen ankles, and icy feet. Comfy as this may sound, career-wise, it’s better to freeze. There’s something about sitting in the conference room looking like Whistler’s mother that may suggest to management that you are not the dynamic, energetic, go-getter they will want around next winter. And let’s face it – nothing is more chilling than the idea of unemployment.

Why not suggest your company turns off the air conditioner and replaces your Aeron chair with a block of ice? That will keep your best feature nice and cool, and when happy hour comes around, you’ll have plenty of ice.

Waist Not. Want Not.

2008-06-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

OK, fatty. Put down that jelly donut and step away from the conference table. I don’t care if you are a big boss or a total loss, if I see powdered sugar on your chin, I’m going to do something drastic, like call the HR department and report you for making unwanted advances on a box of Entenmann's.

Tough love? Perhaps, but it’s only fair to warn you. You may think no one has noticed the extra inches you’ve added to your waistline since the New Year. You may believe that no notices the junk in your trunk, but you’re wrong.

Management has noticed, and they’re out do something about it. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing that management does best – fire people for trivial reasons. In this case, the reason is fat.

“Waistlines Expand Into a Workplace Issue” is the headline on Kelley Holland’s “Under New Management” column in the June 22 issue of “The New York Times.” And while being caught in the computer closet with a bag full of chocolate croissants is not yet a firing issue, those of us who have played the workplace game of hide and seek with downsizers and cost cutters can smell a “fireable offense” a mile away.

It could be that your managers are overwrought at overweight employees because the company knows that it is healthier to be Paris Hilton thin than Bubba the Love Sponge fat. It could be, but it ain’t. It’s money that drives your managers to drive you in anorexia. “Obesity costs companies $45 billion a year,” according to reporter Holland who cites research by the Conference Board and RTI International, a research institution. [These statistics would probably be different if the research had been conducted by the Sara Lee Institute, but what can you do?]

The cause of these costs is not, as you’d expect, the price companies pay for adding steel reinforcements to the seats of Aeron chairs, or widening cubical doorways to insure egress to the rotund. Turns out fat people may be fun to be around, but they are expensive to have on your health plan.

“Obesity is a more powerful trigger for chronic health problems than either smoking or heavy drinking,” economists at the RAND Corporation have determined. Their research also reveals that fatties miss work more frequently and “tend to be loss mobile on the job than their thinner counterparts.”

This last barb could be explained by the really obvious fact that fat people are more likely to be stuck in their desk chairs. They’d like to jump up and run across the office to help a supervisor in distress, but they’re so wedged in that they can’t reach escape velocity. Fatter people could also be smarter. They know that volunteering in an office environment brings many more risks than rewards. Plus, they may not want to leave the three hundred bags of M&Ms they have stashed in their bottom desk drawer.

Sadly, what is riling up the big thinkers in corporate America is not the prejudice that is being unleashed on those of us in the chubby minority, but the fact that managers are not speaking up loudly to promote the cult of thinness.

The experts want our managers to operate like the Japanese, where a recent Federal law mandates that companies measure the circumference of their employers to insure that they are within national guidelines. “Those exceeding government limits -- 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women -- will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight,” reports “The Huffington Post.”

Here, in America, some companies are taking a less Orwellian approach and actually offering cash incentives to employees who start slimming. Giving discounts and rebates on gym memberships are other ways enlightened companies try to lighten up the staff. Some even build gyms inside the workplace, taking over office real estate that once housed corporate vice presidents, and replacing the dumb bells with bar bells.

Best of all, a few company officials are finally beginning to understand that being overweight does not represent moral weakness, but is, instead, a disease. And about time. After all, we’ve accepted the pathology of the loonies who manage us, with their toxic demands to come to work early and stay late, not to mention their life-threatening desire to participate in meaningless “mission statements.”

They’ve taken away our dignity. The least they could do is leave us our donuts.

Man of Steal

2008-06-24T18:17:00.001-07:00

It’s a tough question in a difficult economy – what do you do if you hate your job, but are afraid to quit, and your boss is too dumb to fire you?

You could complain constantly to anyone who will listen, or take out your frustration on the family guppy, or you could do something positive and life-affirming. Like stealing a stapler.

Or a box of rubber bands, or a #2 pencil, or a ream of paper, or a light fixture. You could even come in one day with a pair of industrial shears and cut out around the perimeter of your cube, netting you a nice patch of industrial carpeting that would look just lovely in your man cave.

If you think that stealing office supplies is an unusual way to pay back your boss for your many grievances, think again. According to the recent “Workplace Snapshot” survey on Office Supplies Theft from the nosey-parkers at Spherion, nearly one in five of your co-workers report to having taken office supplies for personal use in the last year. And if one in five admits it, you have to believe the real percentage of culprits is much higher -- say five out of five?

Of course, many of us who take office supplies are not involved in premeditated crimes. How often have you been forced to work long and late to protect the posterior of some dim-witted supervisor? The office has emptied out, and the air conditioning is turned off, and after hours of drudgery, who could blame you if you absent-mindedly stuff half-dozen laptops in the trunk of your car?

Sad to say, many instances of office theft are as well planned as the bank caper in “The Italian Job.” According to John Heins, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Spherion, employees are not just striking out in an entrepreneurial mode. They are striking back.

“It’s important to consider employees’ intentions regarding the personal use of office supplies. With one in five workers putting in ‘excessive’ time on the job according to the U.N.’s International Labour Office, it is certainly possible that employees simply don’t regard the personal use of office supplies as stealing, but rather a matter of convenience or a small reward for their hard work.”

In other words, if our bosses gave us half the perks they lavish on themselves, we wouldn’t have to take our annual bonus in paper clips.

If you are beginning to suspect that your fellow employees do not know the difference between right and wrong, rest assured that the Spherion survey shows that’s 74% of workers feel it is wrong to steal office supplies. Still, only 22% of those who did manage to conquer their ethical convictions feel guilty. Perhaps, when compared to the behavior they see from our elected representatives and our anointed managers, pocketing a gross of ink jet cartridges drops from mortal to venial on the sin scale.

The primary reason workers gave the survey team for having taken office supplies for their personal use was that “they needed them.” (42%) Funny, most bank robbers say the same thing.

One-third say that they stole because their boss or the office manager said it was OK. I don’t know where these people are working, but I want a job at one of those companies. The office managers I have suffered under invariably get extremely agitated when you take advantage of your employer’s generosity by breathing too much company air. This leaves 18% of workers who say they take office supplies because “the company will never miss them.” I hope this isn’t true. Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I like to believe that at least one pampered CEO is tossing and turning on his feather bed, unable to sleep because he suspects that somewhere in his far-flung empire, a lowly peon is pocketing a package of Post-It© notes.

Most of the petty theft is petty indeed. 66% of office supplies taken are pens, pencils and rulers. Only 8% risk doing hard time with high-priced items like laptops, PDAs and cell phones – an increase of three percent from last year’s survey.

Our managers may call this crime, but I say it’s loyalty. We want our home to be an exact duplicate of our workplace, even if we have to risk a business trip to San Quentin to make it happen. Prison life may be awful, but it certainly can’t be worse than life in the office.

Golden Coffins

2008-06-15T18:10:00.001-07:00

Gee, maybe you can take it with you.

Consider Brian L. Roberts, the CEO of Comcast. Should Mr. Roberts be so unfortunate as to die while in office, his life would end, but his salary would continue. In fact, it would continue for five full years and yes, during that period, he would also collect his annual bonuses.

James M. Bernhard Jr. of the Shaw Group has a similar stipulation in his contract. This CEO gets an extra $17 million dollars in exchange for a promise not to compete with the company for a period of two years following termination of employment. The payment is due even if Mr. Bernhard dies while on the job. No one quite knows how he is going to compete from the grave, but if anyone can do it, it’s Lucky Jim.

There’s a lot not to like about these sweetheart deals, known in the compensation game as “Golden Coffins.” Are we outraged by executives running amuck while the rest of us are running aground, or are we angry because these guys make more dead than we ever will when we’re alive?

The matter of lavish posthumous paydays was the subject of a recent front-page story in “The Wall Street Journal.” Since the Journal takes a rabid pro-business stance, I can only assume the author, Mark Maremont, is not trying to shake a finger, but to point a finger at a one more bloody perk that some vampire CEOs may have forgotten to suck from the necks of their increasingly anemic employees.

Defending humongous salary payments to the dead has not been easy for corporate compensation committees. “Companies defend the practice as an appropriate way to take care of an executive’s family after an unexpected death,” reporter Maremont writes. “They also note that the benefits often are negotiated as part of a pay package that has many components.”

The discovery of these spectacular death benefits may be news, but their existence dates back to corporate pre-history. Only a change in the federal disclosure rules have forced companies to reveal the outsized deathbed gifts being lavished on top of the giant salaries and a panoply of pricey perks.

[If you earn less than $50 million a year, alive or dead, don’t even try to understand these “components.” They’re way beyond you. You probably don’t even understand why it is necessary to shovel on the six-figure perks to retain a top executive who is six feet under the ground. As in – “ I don’t care if Jane is dead. I don’t want her working for the competition!”]

When XTO Energy CEO, Bob R. Simpson, kicks the bucket he will find the bucket filled with the proceeds from a $3 million dollar insurance policy. It’s a skimpy reward, even for a dead man, but don’t worry about the Bobster. Had he died on December 31 of last year, he could have also taken with him a $111 million “bonus,” plus $20.5 million in instantly vested shares, plus – let’s be fair here -- $4.4 million in salary. And if you think you can’t take it with you, why does CEO Simpson’s death trigger an additional $158,400 payment listed as a “car allowance.”

Hey, you don’t expect him to drive through the Pearly Gates in a Kia, do you?

Eugene M. Isenberg, CEO of Nabors Industries has himself lined up for over $275 million dollars as his last day payday – an amount that is actually more than the company’s entire first quarter’s income for 2008. That pot of gold at the end of the rainbow must be looking pretty good to Isenberg who is 78 years old. The concept of making more than a quarter of a billion dollars simply for giving up breathing must be very attractive. Fortunately, the CEO received over $500 million in compensation between 1992 to 2007, which probably took the edge off all that heavy breathing he had to do.

We could rant and rave over these swollen salaries, but I have a better idea. Next time you get your annual review, and your supervisor dangles a 4% raise before your red, swollen eyes, ask if you are worth more to the company dead or alive. Considering the cost of all your screw-ups, management will probably be glad to double or triple your salary if you add “a quick painless death” to your goals and objectives.

Maybe you really can’t take it with you, but with the pittance they’re paying you to stay, you might as well try.

A Sickening Situation

2008-06-06T20:44:00.001-07:00

Has this ever happened to you?

You walk into work feeling great. You’re happy, healthy, full of pep and vim. Then, as the morning progresses, you start feel weak and woozy. Your vision clouds. Every time you try to express your feelings to your manager, your throat contracts and you find you can do little more than rasp out a feeble, “OK, I’ll do it your way.”

By the afternoon you can hardly breathe. You’re tearing up every time you face your computer, and the thought of a late-in-the-day meeting makes your heart start to pound so rapidly you start eying the company defibrillator. When it’s time to go home you’re so tired and sick that you know you will be able to do nothing more that evening than flop on the sofa, sucking down brewskis, and watching the conclusion of “America’s Top Model.”

If this sad description comes close to describing your everyday worklife, here’s good news. The problem might not be your awful, soul-crushing job. Really! Chance are, you aren’t sick of your work. You’re sick because of it.

Lisa Belkin, the Life’s Work columnist at “The New York Times” opened my scratchy, red eyes to this critical issue in a recent screed entitled, “Sickened by the office (Really.) Her theme is that even in allergy season, many people are not suffering from ragweed, but from the ragging they get at work.

The syndrome is called “work-induced allergy” and, according to Belkin, it is “fairly simple to diagnose: the symptoms worsen as the workday progresses, and lessen after you leave. And you feel fine on weekends and vacations.”

And you thought you simply hated your manager!

The specific causes for work-induced allergies listed in the Times article are rooted in the physical world, rather than the psychological torture which we suffer in our workplace Abu Ghraib. The white coats at The Mayo Clinic’s web site (mayoclinc.com) agree. They list 16 professions that are especially at risk for occupational asthma, including veterinarian, cabinetmaker, baker, and hairdresser. [I believe in the new Adam Sandler movie, “Don’t Miss with the Zohan,” the fearless, hairdresser super-spy is eventually brought down by the fumes from a jar of Dippity-Doo.)

For the worker in the more traditional office environment, Ms. Belkin puts the blame for our weakened conditions on sneeze-inducing carpets, rather than snooze-inducing meetings. I’m sure that the cheap building materials and shoddy health standards our companies provide are to blame for much of our misery, but carpets and drapes are hardly the entire cause of our problems at work.

After all, it’s one thing to be allergic to peanuts. It’s quite another when you’re set off on a depressive, downward spiral because of a supervisor who is nuts.

Fortunately, some of the recommended cures for allergic reactions will also work when trying to protect yourself from a psychotic supervisor. For example, sitting at your desk wearing a full-face ventilator mask attached to a C-PAP machine will not only assure you a source of clean, fresh oxygen, but it will also allow you to spend the day dozing without anyone being able to see you’re asleep.

Another workplace irritant that has received a good deal of press lately is the automatic allergic response many of our fellow employees suffer when they come in contact with a co-worker’s odorific perfume or cologne. Right now a number of cases are bubbling through the court system as the judges try to balance the rights of the occupant in the next cubical to be free from nausea and migraines with your right to slather yourself in Paco Rebanne.

[While I would be the last person on earth to tell you to use chemical warfare to defeat an office opponent, if you can rid yourself of a competitor simply by spritzing yourself ten times a day with Calvin Klein’s Obsession, I say, “spritz away!”]

One final fact that is clear in the issues surrounding workplace irritants is that while the employee is certainly free to complain to management or even to the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA,) you may risk more than a stuffy nose.

One ailing worker who complained found that management “started treating me like a potential lawsuit, giving me bad reviews and sending me for meetings with H.R.”

My advice: stock up on antihistamines and start stock piling Kleenex. Being sick as a dog is no fun, but anything is better than a meeting with H.R.

Gassed

2008-05-31T21:58:00.001-07:00

Don’t you just hate when reality gets in the way your everyday life at work?

Take gas prices. You probably haven’t noticed it, but gasoline prices have been on the rise lately. As I’m writing this, a gallon of good stuff costs over $4.00 and by the time you read this, it could easily be $6.00 or $8.00 or a $100. There’s nothing you can do to control the price, and it doesn’t matter whether you blame it on the greed of Saudi Arabia or the apparent desire of every worker in China and India to “see the USA in a Chevrolet.” [I guess we should update that old advertising chestnut. How about “see Korea in a Kia.” Or, “see Rwanda in a Honda.”] It all goes to show, I guess, that you never should have capped that oil well in your back yard.

What’s amazing about the high price of gasoline today is that it is not only influencing the way we live, it’s also affecting the way we work. According to a recent survey, “more than four out of ten professionals (44%) said higher gas prices have affected their commute, up from 34 percent in a similar survey two years ago.”

I’ve been ruminating about it, and I think the last time reality changed my work life was when the dinosaurs died off, and we no longer had to board up our cubes when it was Tyrannosaurus mating season. But paying so much at the pump has consequences, and this recent poll, conducted on behalf of Robert Half International, shows the changes workers like thee and me are now willing to consider.

Like the 46% of us who report “increasing carpooling or ridesharing.” This is a big number and a big change. If you’ve ever tried it, you know how easy it is to drown in a carpool. You’ve got to spend at least an hour a day with three or four different personalities, and you’ve got to do it early in the morning, a time when few except television weather people, feel bright and social. Or in the evening, after eight to ten to twelve hours of being bashed and battered by abusive managers, psychotic co-workers, and a temperamental copying machine that has it out for you.

Considering how awful it is to drive with people you know, one can only imagine the hell that is ridesharing. In this situation, you line up at some centrally located corner and hop in whatever car comes along. If you think Russian Roulette sounds dangerous, consider the dreadful possibilities of Toyota Roulette! What kind of crazy person is going to give a ride to a crazy person like you?

Other work style changes that are being considered due to the – quite literally – highway robbery of today’s gas prices include driving a more fuel efficient car (33%), telecommuting more frequently (33%) and looking for a job closer to home (30%.) I was disappointed to see that only 18% are thinking about biking to work. There’s nothing I enjoy more than racing down the highway behind a schmo on a Schwinn.

You won’t be surprised that 59% of respondents responded that their companies are not helping to offset the rising cost of commuting. 18% have increased the mileage reimbursement for company travel. That leaves 72% who still base their reimbursement on the cost of driving a Calistoga wagon across Oklahoma in 1834.

If prices continue to rise, I expect many companies will have to respond. Don’t be shocked if your company helps you cut down on your daily commute by allowing you to sleep in your cubical. [In the night time, I mean. No one is going to take away your fundamental right to sleep during the day.]

If you have a particularly generous management, they may even allow you to keep working 24/7, thus eliminating your commute altogether. Can’t you just see it? Representatives from HR hand out blankets and those itsy-bitsy little pillows the airlines used to offer. You might even get a pre-packaged, semi-nutritious meal – or be offered the opportunity to purchase one at your desk. [No cash! Credit cards only.]

You could then work contentedly through the night, knowing that you are saving money by not spending on overpriced gas, or any of the other luxuries no can now afford, like buying a house or having children.

Don’t like this new way of working? You have two choices: move to Saudi Arabia or buy a bike.

Interview You

2008-05-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

It's just what I need - one more person to add to my "I owe you an apology"
list.

Bruce Weinstein, Ph.D. emailed me a couple of weeks ago because he thought I
would like the see an advance copy of the workplace advice column he writes
for BusinessWeek online. Like I have time to read during the month in which
The Hills wraps up for its fourth blockbuster season!

"Ask the Ethics Guy" is the title of Bruce's column and the must-know
subject of the must-read column was "The Art of the Successful Job
Interview." Now that Heidi has turned her back on her big PR job in Las
Vegas to move back in with Spencer, I have had time to peruse the prose of
The Ethics Guy.

To tell you the truth, the info was very revealing. Who knew there was an
alternative to the gold standard of interview behavior: weeping, followed by
pleading, followed by throwing yourself on the floor at the feet of the
interviewer, crying pitifully as you beat your little fists on the carpet as
you beg for the gig?

This alternate approach, as formulated by Weinstein, is based on ethical
principles. (Principles! Now we need to have principles!) Each principle
brings with it a piece of advice on how to successfully master the interview
process. Whether the ethical approach to interviewing will bring you peace
of mind, as well as a paycheck, is a matter in which The Ethics Guy wobbles.

"Taking the low road may lead to a job offer, but at what cost?" asks
Weinstein. "If you have to become someone other than yourself, what does
this say about your integrity? And what will happen to you, professionally
as well as personally, if it comes to light that you lied to get the job."

What will happen to you, personally and professionally, is that you can pay
your cable bill and upgrade your diet to Chef Boyardee from Fancy Feast. As
for becoming "someone other than yourself," isn't that what being employed
is all about? No one is going to take a look at your real self, lounging
around the living room in your PJs and your bunny slippers, and decide,
"Hey, let me write that person out a paycheck." Face facts -- it's not being
ourselves that gets us the job and keeps us employed.

Despite his failure to understand the unethical nature of work, The Ethics
Guy is willing to share his principles for successful interviewing, and
since I have no ethics, I will share them with you:

1. Focus on what you will bring to the company.

It's not all about you, Weinstein insists. I agree. But it's also not about
what you can do for the company. What it's all about is the person who is
interviewing you and how your hire can make her or him look good. If you
sense a weak ego on the other side of the desk, make sure you show the
interviewer that behind your polished profile is a real screw-up and a
slacker. Remember - bosses don't hire candidates who show them up. They hire
people whose poor performance shows how great they are in comparison.

2. Be honest.

"When you don't know the answer, it's much better to admit this than pretend
otherwise." Good idea, but what if you're a "seasoned employee" and have
trouble remembering certain obscure information, like your name? I say: if
you don't know the answer to a question, just give an answer you do know.
That's what politicians do, and they're never out of work.

3. Don't badmouth your previous employer.

"He was the biggest jerk I ever worked for" is not recommended as an
effective, or ethical, way to describe your last boss. This goes against our
previous principle, be honest, so if you're going to trash your supervisor,
be totally truthful "He was the biggest jerk I ever worked for," you can
ethically say to the hiring manager. "But everything I see in this interview
tells me you'll be an even bigger jerk."

Dr. Weinstein's over arching idea is that before you look for a job you
should "look within." "To realize a company's mission successfully, get to
know what your own mission in life is." Of course, if your mission is to
get a really well-paying, really easy job where no one will ever bug you,
better forget the ethical approach altogether.

Pleading, crying and begging may not be ethical, but they work.

Idle Idol Talk

2008-05-18T17:13:00.001-07:00

Shame on you!

I don’t mean to scold, but your behavior at work has seriously disappointed me and, if you could be honest with yourself for a change, it has disappointed you, as well. So now you know who is to blame if I have to get punitive with your puny self – nobody but Y-O-U.

That’s right! Thanks to you, I won’t be using these precious 750 words we have together to discuss a spiffy new self-help, self-analysis, self-selfless book called “Who Are You and What Do You Want, A Journey for the Best of Your Life.” This is a pity, people, since the authors, two perky PhD’s, Mick Ukleja and Robert Lober, have a breathtaking, breakthrough concept, Four Dimensional Thinking, which requires only that you ask yourself four key questions to “refocus, plan and get the best out of your life.”

Only four questions and you could get a grip on topics such as “Self Esteem and Reflection, Prioritization, Entrepreneurial Spirit, Love and Relationships, Mentoring, Growing Your Business, Challenging Your Mind, and Settling Life Goals.” But why bother? The authors could throw in tips for a truly valuable skill, like “Growing Mushrooms in Your Bottom Desk Drawer,” and you still wouldn’t have time to answer their four questions.

Not you! Not when you’re spending every billable hour discussing the latest results of that dopiest of all TV shows, American Idol.

Yes, I know about your secret obsession with Ryan Seacrest and the video bafflegab that every year sets out to find the greatest pop star no one will remember five minutes after the season is over. If it’s any comfort, you are not alone in obsessing on who Paula loves and Simon slams. According to the Spherion Snapshot Survey, a full 33 percent of American workers are frittering away the hours between nine and five with endless, over the cubical wall discussions and debates over which of the Davids will be voted off and on and on and on. [Yes, dogg, it was tragic that Syesha was eliminated. Let’s shut down all the telephones in the sales department for two hours in mourning.]

Not surprisingly, only 17% of workers polled say they are conducting their Idol pre- and post mortems during working hours. Hard to believe, but I guess you’ve finally figured out it’s better to lie to the Spherion Snapshot than admit to management that you and your fellow yentas are getting paid big bucks to debate whether Archulta senior is helping or hurting Archuleta junior.

Of course, not everyone is so childish and churlish to waste the company’s money talking about a truly dumb TV show like American Idol. 21% of you have decided to waste the company’s money talking about the even more colossally foolish and really quite embarrassing Dancing with the Stars.

Whether you are an Idol idol or a Dancing devote, you have plenty of company in America’s workforce. As the survey shows, men and women from almost every age group are deeply committed to skipping work to talk TV. Some of you – about 40% -- even justify your unjustifiable behavior by claiming that “talking about television increases office camaraderie.” This may be true, but you might want to poll management on the issue. I haven’t asked the nosey parkers at Spherion, but my guess is that a certain percentage of bosses would rather have less camaraderie, more productivity. Say 99.99%!

Fortunately, these brutally-fought contests will soon be over and with nothing to distract you except American Gladiator, you may be able to find time for the important matters. I don’t mean work. I refer to the four questions that are the heart of Four Dimensional Thinking.

They are:

Who are you and what do you want?
Where are you and why are you there?
What will you do and how will you do it?
Who are your allies and how can they help you?

Because I know you’re busy discussing how in the world Jason Taylor could be a finalist after his pathetic performance in the paso doble, I’ll answer for you. Let’s see: you’re a big loser and you don’t want anyone to know it. Where you are is stuck in a nowhere job and you’re there because no one else would hire you. What you will do is try to hang on as long as you can, a feat you will accomplish mostly by hiding. And you have no allies. Everyone hates you.

What else can I say? Except – let’s dance!

Warm heart. Cold cuts.

2008-05-09T21:22:00.001-07:00

What can you say about some who can't tell the difference between an office
romance and a tray of deli meats? To quote the estimable Mr. T – “I pity the fool!”

And I do. But there is one individual who does understand the link between a serious relationship with a hunk and a hunk of turkey breast. That’s Oscar Meyer. Yes, the first – and last – name in b-a-l-o-n-e-y is no baloney when it comes to charting the ossilations of osculations in the office. So involved are the meatmeisters in moving from a slice of ham to a slice of life, I could almost believe that sexual obsession is circulating in the Oscar Meyer executive suite, not unsurprising when the most exciting part of your day is shrink-wrapping shards of cured, diced pork.

How else would you explain the recent survey fielded by Oscar’s minions, the results of which have been recently emailed to Work Daze headquarters? “Office romances are heating up across the country,” the urgent communication states. “Single employees are engaging in love connections on the job.”

[In my day, love connections – whatever those are – were not limited to single employees. Obviously, married employees are having their cold cuts at home, and their love affairs, as well.]

Not one to rush to rash conclusions, Oscar Meyer makes their shocking revelation based on the results of a scientific survey. 1,046 men and women were surveyed by Impulse Research Corporation, which certainly should have a grip on the average employee’s basic need to grab onto something in these difficult times, whether it is a secure job or the new intern in human resources.

The results of this research project reveal that “nearly seven out of 10 Americans have engaged in an office romance at one point in their careers.” Considering the inmates and oddballs in the offices where I have served out consecutive life sentences, I don’t buy it. I think what they meant to say is that seven out of 10 Americans nearly engaged in an office romance. Like the time the new receptionist demanded you take her to the coat closet for a passionate interlude, or, would have done so, if she didn’t find you a disgusting, repulsive, old perv with the sex appeal of a turnip.

[On the other, she – or he – simply could have been one of the 40% of Americans who feel that a romantic relationship at work is “not appropriate.” Since this leaves 60% of the office staff who is looking for love in all the wrong cubicles, it should encourage you to persevere in your attempt to find Mr. or Ms. Right at work. To which I say – don’t let anything deter you, unless, of course, it’s another restraining order.]

75% of all surveyed admitted to having a crush on a colleague, and I think we all know how unsatisfying unrequited office love can be. How many times have you fallen for a hunky IT technician who has spun your hard drive and calibrated your mouse? But you never knew how to make your move. Now you do!

Don’t send flowers. Don’t write sonnets. Just give deli meats.

Here at last is the missing link between love and liverwurst. Follow me now, through the tangled reasoning of the sex-crazed Oscar Meyer execs. Because we American office workers are randy and ready, and because we are all working so hard we have no time to socialize, the invention of the “new hot and melty flatbread sandwiches” you know as Oscar Meyer Deli Creations, allows romance to blossom between love-starved wage slaves sharing a “hot and melty” lunch break.

Got it? Traditional gambits such as cocktails after work or putting roofies in the break-room coffee pot are as old-fashioned as chasing the boss around the desk. “Almost half of the survey respondents think the lunch hour is the best time of day to get to know a fellow colleague,” the survey finds. Assuming your collegial love bunny isn’t allergic to pastrami, Oscar Meyer can hook you up.

Now that you know that the way to a co-workers’ heart is through their stomach -- as long as their stomach is filled with provolone and mortadella – I can only encourage you to get out there and start lunching. And when the wedding bells start ringing for you and your office hottie, don’t forget who got you there.

Remember -- Oscar Meyer Deli Creations are perfect for weddings, honeymoons, and long dreamy afternoons together at the unemployment office.

What's Your Excuse?

2008-04-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

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.

The Eyes Have It

2008-04-13T20:06:00.001-07:00

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 Think, Therefore I Quit.

2008-04-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Come Back, Little Worker Bee

2008-03-27T19:47:00.000-07:00

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.”

Munificent Obsessions

2008-03-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Big Brother. Big Bother.

2008-03-16T19:59:00.001-07:00

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?

Long Time No See Job

2008-03-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

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.

Office Politics

2008-03-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

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!

Career Tracks of my Tears

2008-02-23T07:17:00.000-08:00

No, no, no! I’m not crying. It’s just a little dust from my desktop that got in my eye. I do so little work around here, that dust and debris tends to pile up, and lately, the cleaning staff has been ignoring me. I guess they didn’t like the shiny new quarters I handed out for Christmas presents.

Or maybe it’s powdered sugar that got in my eyes. I downed that last box of donuts pretty quickly, and my stomach is covered with white powder. It looks just like Mount Rainier. This emotional eating at work has got to stop. Or perhaps, I need to switch to Bear Claws.

Or maybe I should just have a good cry. I certainly have plenty to cry about, and unless I miss my guess, so do you. Let’s face it – thanks to our current economic mess, our jobs have gotten harder; our bosses have gotten meaner, and our opportunities for advancement have gotten thinner. In fact, almost everything has gotten thinner, except our waistlines.

As appealing as it may seem to cook up a breakdown, you may be concerned about the message it would send to your colleagues and supervisors. And you would be right to be concerned. According to Peggy Klaus, “a top communication and executive coach whose client list reads like a who’s who of corporate America,” crying in the workplace is a definite no-no.

“Crying derails discussions and makes co-workers and the boss feel very uncomfortable,” Klaus counsels. “Further it makes male colleagues view you as not being tough enough and female perceive it as manipulation to get what you want.”

This makes sense. You certainly don’t want to make your boss feel uncomfortable, right? Bosses who are uncomfortable may act irrationally and decide to take rash actions, like ending their own lives or, more likely, your career. At the same time, you don’t want to make your male colleagues view you as a wuss. Even if the reason for your tears is a major life crisis, like the coffee room vending machine running out of Gummy Bears, co-workers who see you cry may consider you easy prey, and make you do their homework or give you wedgies at staff meetings.

Having the female staff view you as a manipulative brat also has dire consequences. The ladies in your organization could gang up on you, and kick you out of the popular clique or give you wedgies at staff meetings.

In fact, it is to women that consultant Klaus is directing her remarks. Inspired by Hillary Clinton’s inspired bit of tearmanship in the New Hampshire primary, Klaus is concerned with the plight of female workers who are “fearful as coming off as overly emotional, and thus, taking self-control to an extreme, appearing unauthentic, stiff or even unfeeling.”

While I certainly appreciate the problems that face women as they break out of their traditional gender roles, I must criticize Klaus for not being more sympathetic to the male of the species. We men also have to stifle our inner crybaby.

Ms Klaus explains the female orientation of her work by pointing to research by biochemist William Frey, a Minneapolis-based balling expert, who found that women on the average cry four times more a month than men (5.3 versus 1.4 times.)

For me, this research only proves that women are better able to handle job disappointments and career downdrafts. Most men I know have reason to cry 50.3 times a month, yet only manage to turn on the waterworks a measly 1.4 times. The other 49 times we’re holed up in the coat closet, sniveling quietly and wiping our noses on the boss’s Armani.

Another scientist in the crying game, Boston University psychologist, Dr. Leslie Brody, reports that “men in conflict turn feelings of anger against the other person, whereas women turn their feelings against themselves.” This may be true, but I find that women are really good at hiding their feelings. For example, when I announced that I was resigning from my current position and would be leaving the company forever, the only crying I witnessed from the office manager, the HR director and my direct supervisor were cries of delight. Clearly, these women were blaming themselves and compensating for their inner pain by pretending to be happy. Of course, when I told them I was kidding, and would never even think of leaving, their reaction was pure Hillary.

Poor women. Does anyone have a hanky?

Romancing the Job

2008-02-15T07:56:00.001-08:00

Valentine’s day 2008 is history. The red roses have wilted. The last heart-shaped nougat is now firmly affixed to my thighs. And here I am – just discovering a timely e-press release from those hopeless romantics at InterviewStream.com.

“Valentines Dating Tips Help You Land a Dream Job” is the subject line of this massive missive from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, the bucolic hamlet where Shawn Graham, author of “Courting Your Career,” and Randy Bitting, InterviewStream honcho, have put their heads – and hearts – together to bring us the “Top Ten Tips for Romancing Your Dream Job.”

I assume winter in Conshohocken is a cold and dreary environment in winter, because in the process of typing up their tips, the two dating experts have clearly overheated their hormones. “From the moment you walk in the door, what you say –verbally and non-verbally – will often determine whether you’re going to ‘score’ with your dream company,” suggests smooth-talking Shawn with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink. “One of the most important skills to possess as you head out on the job market or dating scene is the ability to sell yourself and then to seamlessly ‘seal the deal,’” adds randy Randy.

I don’t know what’s going on in Conshohocken, PA, but I think someone should call Dr. Phil, and fast. I mean, are we getting advice from seasoned business executives or overly hormonal frat boys?

Once Graham and Bitting can cool their jets, I can see the real value in their approach. This is not just another case of HR Girls Gone Wild, but solid advice that serious job seekers can use if they want to, in the words of the press release, “get past first base with an employer.”

For example, consider Tip #3 “Always ask their number.” Requesting a business card is just like asking for a phone number, the romance gurus tell us, and thus, appropriate behavior when “you hit it off with someone you’re networking with.” Fair enough, but be prepared for the job-search version of the famous wrong-number brush off. If you’ve ever called a proffered number only to find yourself talking to a complete stranger who has no idea of the memorable evening you supposedly spent together, bonding in the VIP room of the Kit Kat Klub, you won’t be surprised when the phone number on the business card for the CEO of Worldwide Integrated Breadsticks, Inc. connects you directly with a 7-11 outlet in Mumbai.

Or take Tip #5 – “Break the ice.” The pick-up artists at InterviewStream suggest you prepare your opening remarks well before hitting the job market dance floor. But “avoid canned or overly rehearsed answers – the dating equivalent of lame pick-up lines.” I agree. Use original, irresistible lines, like “Hire here often?” or “What’s a nice manager doing in a dumpy company like this?”

Tip #6 suggests that you “give the right signals to heat things up.” We’re talking body language here, and as you’d expect, “non-verbal communication is critical.” That’s why, when I go to an interview, I ignore the chair and lie on nearest couch. If there’s no couch, I conduct the interview from a closet. I want my future employer to know that I’m not a threat; when I’m on the job, I’ll either be sleeping, or hiding, or both.

Tip #8 instructs us not to “bash our ex.” Absolutely! Why ruin a perfectly good interview with a lot of useless conversation about your former employers and the restraining orders they had to take out? If your new boss wants to find, he can simply read the court transcript.

The final tip, Tip #10, cautions against being a “run-away bride or groom.” No question you will be one smooth operator when armed with these tips, and will easily be able to waltz away with the prettiest job offer on the recruitment club scene. But you don’t want to settle for a one-night stand. According to Graham and Bitting, you need to be able to commit. “Word travels fast,” they explain, and your reputation as a candidate who loves ‘em and leaves ‘em could cost you your dream job when it finally sashays your way.

On the other hand, if you do run from every long-term job relationship, and instead, spend your time and energy trying to hook up with some rich guy or gal, who will insist on supporting you and your slacker lifestyle, you’ll never go to work again.

And wouldn’t that just break your heart?

Too Tired To Retire

2008-02-03T19:27:00.001-08:00

When can you retire? Where should you retire? Can you afford to retire? What will you do after you retire? Have you noticed, friend, that everyone is talking about the R-word – retirement?

Frankly, I retired about thirty years ago. I kept working, of course, but I totally gave up any idea of getting ahead at my company or advancing my career. As long as I could do nothing and get paid for it, I was a happy camper.

Being retired at work is not as easy as it may sound. Making your managers believe that you are actually working when you really goofing off takes, well, a lot of work. In addition to scurrying around and pretending to look busy, you also have to make everyone believe that you care – that’s hard. Drop your guard for even a moment and admit to a manager that you think the job is all a bunch of baloney and overnight, you could find yourself welcoming shoppers at Wal-Mart.

Now that I’m approaching retirement age, I see there’s another problem to quitting work, but continuing to receive your paychecks. Now I have to listen to my soon-to-retire coworkers talk about all the wonderful leisure time they will soon be enjoying as they spend their endlessly idle days relaxing with no deadlines and zero responsibilities.

Instead of looking forward to my golden years, I find my self disappointed. Doing nothing all day but relaxing? That’s the way I’ve been living for years!

Unfortunately, even if you are one of those oddballs who have spent the majority of your working life doing real work, retirement is not without its problems. Or so I recently discovered after spending a busy afternoon at the office, hiding in the computer closet, perusing a special section of “The Wall Street Journal” called “Encore: A Guide to Retirement Planning & Living.”

The front page feature of this special section is a “Baby Boomer’s Guide to Social Security,” which contains a number of pressing questions about our nation’s senior citizen retirement plan. But the biggest question of all was not covered – is there anyone who is not currently matriculated in a mental institution who actually believes social security will be there when you need it?

I mean, we’ve all heard the same statistics. In the past me and thee were part of a whole platoon workers coughing up a significant percentage of our paychecks to support all the geezers on social security. But in the future – when you will want to belly up to the trough – the entire burden will rest on the shoulders of a few Gen-X layabouts who, trust me, have little interest in spending their hard-earned cash to make sure your Lime Ricky has a spring of mint.

Of course, you may not be depending on social security to fund your retirement. You may have a fat pension like America’s auto workers and airline employees. Oh, wait a minute. Those pensions turned anorexic, dried-up, curled-up and blew away. At least you have your retirement plan – your IRAs and your 401(k). And let’s face it; nothing is as solid as the stock market. Unless it’s the value in your home.

And you thought retirement was supposed to be fun.

Even if you can afford to retire, you have to figure out what you are going to do in the thirty or forty years modern medical science promises to those of us who make it past 65. Some people choose to do nothing, except snooze and play golf – basically the same activity-- while other retired folks try to “give back” by working for cultural organizations and non-profits.

If you are not a fan of opera or art, a job as bouncer at the Kit Kat Klub is an excellent way to contribute to culture. Choosing a charity is more difficult since the position for which you will be best qualified is recipient.

A retirement choice which is definitely growing in popularity is the concept of a second career. Now that you’ve spend four or five decades screwing up one job, use your remaining days to screw up a brand new occupation. Thus, sales managers become folk singers and folk singers become baristas and baristas become sales managers and around and around we go until we all fall down, dead.

Personally, I never plan to quit working. I hate my job and I’ll never be a success, but trust me, it’s a whole lot easier than retirement.