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Keys to Success
1. Never walk down the hall without a document in your hands. 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 bathroom.
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.
2. 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 societal 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
defense is to claim you're teaching yourself to use the new software,
thus saving valuable training dollars. You're not a loafer, you're a
self-starter. Offer to show your boss what you learned. That will make
your boss scurry away like a frightened salamander.
3. 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 casual 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.
4. 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 the lunch hour. That way, you're regarded as
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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