Never
walk down a corridor without a document in your hand.
People with documents in their hands look like
hardworking employees heading for important meetings.
People with nothing in their hands look like they're
heading for the cafeteria. People with the newspaper in
their hands look like they're heading for the toilet.
Above all, make sure you carry loads of stuff home with
you at night, thus generating the false impression that
you work longer hours than you do.
Use computers to look busy. Any
time you use a computer, it looks like work to the casual
observer. You can send and receive personal e-mail,
calculate your finances and generally have a blast
without doing anything remotely related to work. These
aren't exactly the benefits that everybody from the
computer revolution expected but they're not bad either.
When you get caught by your boss (and you will get
caught) your best defence is to claim you're teaching
yourself to use the new software, thus saving valuable
training expense. You're not a loafer, you're a
self-starter.
Messy desk. Top management can
get away with a clean desk. For the rest of us, it looks
like you're not working hard enough. Build huge piles of
documents around your workspace. To the observer, last
year's work looks the same as today's work - it's volume
that counts. Pile them high and wide. If you know
somebody is coming to your cubicle, bury the document
you'll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage
for it when he/she arrives.
Voice mail. Never answer your
phone if you have voice mail. People don't call you just
because they want to give you something for nothing, they
call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That's no
way to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail. If
somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it
sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour.
That way, you're hardworking and conscientious even
though you're being a devious weasel. If you diligently
employ the method of screening incoming calls and then
returning calls when nobody is there, this will greatly
increase the odds that they will give up or look for a
solution that doesn't involve you. The sweetest voice
mail message you can ever hear is "Ignore my last
message. I took care of it." If your voice mailbox
has a limit on the number of messages it can hold, make
sure you reach that limit frequently. One way to do that
is to never erase any incoming messages. If that takes
too long, send yourself a few messages. Your callers will
hear a recorded message that says, "Sorry, this
mailbox is full" - a sure sign that you are a
hardworking employee in high demand.
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