They say that when you hit your 40s, your life is half over. We prefer to think of it as HALF EMPTY. Our age has finally caught up with our outlook on life. Remember, it is possible to turn that frown upside down...but you might pull a muscle.
By Rick Kaempfer & Dave Stern
What is the American dream? If you work hard, and go the extra mile, your loyalty and diligence will be rewarded.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, in this largely unregulated free market era, nearly every industry has become dominated by huge corporations. Once you work for one of these soulless, faceless giants, the American dream doesn’t really apply anymore.
People can reward loyalty, diligence and hard work; corporations cannot. To a corporation, a worker is an expense. When it’s time to cut expenses, (and it will always eventually be time to cut expenses), loyalty, diligence and hard work rarely enter the equation. This is why Wall Street gets a boner when a corporation announces mass layoffs. Bye, bye expenses.
It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.
The person who rises to the top of this sort of business has to be cold, calculating, and detached in order to maximize profits. He must see the worker as a meaningless cog. A number. A part of the financial equation. No more. No less.
The boss’ job is to get maximum output from his overworked employees without raising expenses. The only way this can work is to have a bunch of people playing by the old rules, not realizing they no longer exist. By the time they figure it out, the boss has achieved his goals, and the employee can be replaced by someone else who hasn’t figured it out yet.
So what is a meaningless cog to do?
The way we see it, you really only have 3 options.
1) Keep banging your head into the wall expecting the old rules of the American dream to suddenly re-emerge. (Good luck with that approach)
2) Become one of the cold, calculating people that can rise to the top of the current system.
3) Spend your time making the people that do rise to the top as miserable as humanly possible.
More and more meaningless cogs want to opt for option #3 simply because option #1 doesn’t work, and option #2 is really rolling the dice with a potential afterlife destination.
Unfortunately, Option #3 is quite the high wire act. The level of difficulty has scared off more than a few employees. Everyone makes the same mistake. They look down. Don't look down. It's just a high wire. You can walk across that thing. You've done it a million times without even realizing it.
If you can implement a very sophisticated passive-aggressive arsenal, and you can manage to keep a straight face amidst a simmering red-faced boss—-buckle up for a high unlike any high you’ve (legally) experienced before.
Your good friends at Half Empty are here to help you develop some strategies, and overcome your fears. Come on out on the high wire. There's room for all of us.
Who should you target?
While it sure would be great to target your company’s CEO…he’s beyond your reach. If you go on the high wire outside his ivory tower, he'll just push you off. He does that sort of thing for fun. And when you fall from that kind of a height, you may never recover.
The local boss, however, is fair game. He has chosen Option #2 because he wants to become one of those untouchable guys in the ivory tower. It’s his goal. His weakness is that he isn't there yet...and his high wire is only a few feet off the ground.
How do you target him or her?
Here are a few hints to make your day more fun.
*Praise his rivals
Are there other Vice Presidents at the company on the same level as your boss? Start praising them every chance you get. Here are a few sample options. Feel free to customize them for your use.
1) “Boy that Dick Smith sure knows how to maximize those revenues. They must love him at corporate headquarters.”
2) “Have you seen Dick Smith’s house? Wow! Now, that’s a palace.”
3) “I was just talking to Gladys in Dick Smith’s department. I can’t believe the CEO calls him so often just to say hello.”
See how this works? You can’t possibly be fired for talking up another VP. You’re all on the same team, remember? You aren’t criticizing your boss—you’re complimenting a valued co-worker. How petty can your boss get? I sure hope Dick Smith or his good friend the CEO don’t hear about this firing.
*Call every woman in the office by his ex-wife’s name
And slap your head every time. “Sorry—I don’t know what is wrong with me. I apologize.” What if he doesn’t have an ex-wife? Please. They all have ex-wives. If by some miracle they don’t, then use the name of his secret mistress. (C’mon—that’s common office gossip knowledge, isn’t it?) If you’re worried about offending the other women in the office, simply tell them what you’re doing. You’ll probably find that they'll happily allow you to call them “Myrna,” once they know why. They’ve been looking for a way to enact Option #3 themselves. It’s win-win.
*Live up to the letter of the most ridiculous office policies
If you work in any industry that requires certain safety procedures, you’re golden. You know they don’t really want you to follow those rules—they just created them to legally cover their butts. See what happens when you really do it. If you don’t work in an industry like that, you still have options. Have your employee handbook on your person at all times, and open it to the page in question when the boss violates nitpicky company rules (“Hmmm, now where is that inappropriate office language section? Hmmm, now where did I read that part about personal phone calls? Hmmm, now where is that section about using the postage meter for personal correspondence?”)
*Baked goods
In a corporate environment there is always one or two suck ups that buy baked goods for the office. Somehow they think spending $4.70 on a dozen donuts will get them that big promotion. Use this to your advantage. Find out which donut your boss likes best and grab it before he does. Make sure you tell the suck up how delicious that pastry was within ear shot of the boss. He can't fire you for eating a strawberry bismark, now can he?
*Parking debris
If you work for one of those companies that reward their incompetent middle management with special parking spaces, you're in luck. Simply leave debris in their space before they arrive. Since, most of these schlubs don't get in until 10:00 AM this shouldn't be too difficult. Broken bottles, dead cats and hobos work best.
*Fake voicemails
In most offices there is one guy that can do a spot on impersonation of the CEO. Have him leave your boss a bogus voicemail at 4:40 on Friday afternoon. Somethinglike, "I'll need that Billingley report first thing Monday morning, and it better be complete". Your boss will spend the whole weekend trying to figure out who Billingsley is.
Think about it. How will your boss' boss react when he fires you for following or enforcing company rules?
Those are just a few to get you started.
If you’re a fellow Option #3er, we’d love to hear some of your suggestions, too. Send them via e-mail (anonymously is fine), and we’ll feature some of your ideas in a later column.
Remember, if you’re going to get fired anyway, you might as well get fired for something ridiculous like being too complimentary of coworkers, or being too much of a stickler for enforcing corporate rules.
That's the new American dream.
If you really want to see these techniques taken to their logical extreme, you’ll want to pick up a copy of Rick’s novel at www.encpress.com. The lead character (Zagorski) is the all-time king of the passive-aggressive irritators.
If you missed any previous Half Empty columns, click here: http://halfemptyarchive.blogspot.com
