Idiot's Guide to be a Star at Work

You. Yes you. Are you an incompetent slob whose idea of a good days work in office is to change the toilet roll? Or do you think applying nail polish in office is too tiresome a work.  Are you the modern day Shidas whose touch turns everything to shit? Do you think that your life’s aim of able to grab a pretty money grubbing whore can be only be fulfilled by swindling a lot of money from your own firm? Do you have trouble getting up 12 and can’t keep your eyes open after 1 but still want to be the employee of the month?  Do you wanna be one-up on the son of a bitch who stole the corner office from you without his hard work? Are you all this and more? Did you have questions like how to suck up to my boss without gagging on it and more? If yes, then look no further, all the answers are here. With this guide you can be the star performer on paper without your butt leaving its beloved; the comfy seat.

Now always remember two things –

First your boss is also a human being; that means he likes his ego massaged, he likes presenting ideas in meetings which show that revenue can be increased to 20% and simultaneously employee morale can be increased to 18.5% by implementing a new idea. That you volunteering for water day makes his management look good somehow and the likes.

Second point, your team mates are also human. This means that they are also incompetent assholes who like to be get-by by doing minimal work. So you can get a lot of dirt on them which they have swept under the carpet. And most importantly they are as insecure as you, so when you say “Umm Rajesh there is problem with the document that you sent, can you tell me about it” it will bring the fuck ups they did tumbling out without you even reading the document.

So armed with this knowledge you can put this guide in action –

First things first, humans rely on their sense of sight the most, much above their common sense. The more they see you the better it is. Though this is the complete opposite in a sales job, but more on that later. So try to get a seat where your boss has a view on you and then stare in your computer all the time while playing Farmville or reading the ‘Sexy Poonam Pandey pics uploaded’. In between scan through a lot of documents bewildered like you are about to zero down on the Grand Unified Theory, it makes it look like you have a lot of work on your hands but not near enough time. If you can’t do both then stay on the phone at least with a solemn face so it looks like official business even if you are calling your Aunt in Muzzarfarpur. Though if in sales smile a lot and switch to – “Haan sir ho jayega, nahi sir aap to hamare preferred customer hai , itne bade order ke liye to main personally hee aaunga” and then explain your aunt later. Also best policy in sales is to leave office as soon as your boss comes in with your bag and come back just before when he normally leaves. This way you can catch up on afternoon siesta, buy grocery and chocolates for Gudiya and still seem like you are running around in the field all day.

While we are on the subject of time, remember like a good joke, unprotected sex and fake orgasms, timing is everything. Nobody cares who comes first to office, because nobody is there to see it. But people do care who leaves office last. Due to some bug left in human brain’s programming by god people seem to think that people to leave last are the most dedicated to finishing the task. Nobody seems to figure that morning 8 to 6 and 11 to 9 both constitute 10 hours, but everybody get the stinking look from everyone else when he or she plans to leave at 6. And it is best to leave after the boss, after he gives you that smug satisfied smile saying “I’m happy my Minions are hard at work”. Better still is that you send out all of your mails when you are just leaving, makes people notice that you are in office this late. And if you are facing an uncontrollable urge to get stoned mid-week or a hair-dresser appointment call or meet your boss and say – “I have to leave as there is an urgent family emergency.” Then go on for 15 minutes that how much work you did today and how much problems there are besieging the company currently. Makes you look responsible while not taking a dime of your back and making your boss forget the real issues. And what would really bake your cake is to tardy up your work on weekdays while you slept , drank and read “7 ways to find new job” through it and volunteer to work on the weekend for finishing the work.

Remember that like football matches, math exams and counting periods, in the end the numbers matter. Now it doesn’t have to be the number that actually reflects your work. If it would have been, you wouldn’t be reading this blog and would be thrown in the sewer where you really belong. So whore up the other numbers. Like the number of seminars conducted, number of client initiatives taken, the number of white papers published or the number SCR work undertaken. This is brilliant because it first and foremost looks good the appraisal form and secondly gets you respite from your real job which you suck at anyway. So volunteer for the next Poverty day parade, organize a conference for your dealers on the topic – ‘The use of fourth generation IT Tools to leverage consumer response for better customer psychic mind recall”. Prepare a white paper on “Social networking and Craner’s line: A Study” and ride the merry go round on more such bullshit.

Also remember that not what all Hollywood movie tell you is all crap. Being the yes man works wonderfully. And being the ‘Yes Sir’ man works even better. So buzz off with what the official policy says, always address your seniors and in some case your colleagues as Sir/Madam, Bhai/Didi , Dada or Jee or Garu or some other local equivalent. Nothing massages their ego like their humble servant bowing down to bask in the radiance of knowledge and experience. “Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, definitely yes sir” said on a phone call works like a charm. Of course that causes serious dent on your self-worth but I’m sure you never had much to begin with. And the hot tip of the day from Sarkari offices is - that always begin your official conversation with unimportant unofficial non-sense like your how was your last vacation, how are our parents doing etc etc, ”Bhabhi jee aur Pintu kaise hai ?” is probably the best line to start with something dreadful even when you have no interest in Bhabhi Jee or Pintu.  In some weird cosmic hyperbole, alien conspiracy kind of way it makes the other person feel that you connected to him.

But this is nowhere no way enough to be the star employee. For that you have to be a credit whore. That is hog up all the credit immediately as the work is done. Best way to do that is to join the team just before they are ready to deliver and get included in all the praise. But that might not be possible every time, so instead volunteer to collate and review the document and then surreptitiously sneak in your name as the author and send it to your boss with keeping the whole village in cc. Now ccing correctly is an art that is hard to master but pay well when you have. So send a lot of mails everyday with keeping your superiors in cc even if it is not relevant to them, it gives the illusion that you are always up to something, but remember it can also backfire if somebody does ‘Reply to all’ while pointing out your mistake. If that happens switch to a phone call immediately and ask him or her what’s wrong while keeping a sob story ready that it was error caused by lack of time or high pressure or because you confused it with something else or anything else. Just don’t get them to know the real reason, your stupidity. Works especially well if you are a girl or a newcomer. So tattoo this golden rule – Take all your bouquets on mail and brickbats on phone calls. And it is good to be sucker for appreciation mails, comes in handy at appraisal time.

Like the bible, Mayan calendar and the movie I am legend, start undertaking any project with the warning of apocalypse. Raise 10,000 issues right at the beginning stating why the work cannot be done, or at least in the given time frame. Doesn’t have to be real issues, slow computers, lack of AC Taxis available in  the city to meet clients, Civil war in Somalia and the flattening of the earth at the poles can be used as an excuse for not doing the work. Then ask for twice the time required and thrice the resources and then start tracking the market on moneycontrol.com and sit comfortably. Whenever asked the status after that, always say “It is going fine sir, we are showing good progress, and most of the work is done”. Start hauling ass when the deadlines approach, and start looking for somebody to pin the blame on, in case the work is not finished, which is a virtual certainty given your ineptitude.

In case nothing worked for you of the above, which can be only for two reasons viz. your manager is actually how a manger is supposed to be, that he can see through your bullshit. Or you suck at following simple advice like you suck at everything else. Then this certainly will. Now peel your eyes and read carefully this next piece of advice – KILL YOU SOCIAL LIFE. Which I am sure you have plenty of (It is my general observation that people who are the biggest screw ups at work are the most jovial and interesting people to know). Send your wife to her home for a long time, break up with your boyfriend, keep cancelling on your friends till they stop calling you, scold your kids so badly that they don’t wanna see you and get used to drinking alone. Soon you will see yourself working for longer in the office, attending calls at 11 in the night, meeting clients on the weekends, not taking any leaves in the office and being the darling of your boss. As you have nothing else to do than work and work and work and maybe a doctor’s appointment once in a while, for high blood pressure, ulcers, carpal tunnel or any other life style disease.

P.S. – If any of this works for you please send me some money from your next raise, I need money to go to Macau.

Find more Idiot’s guides for –

Understanding BSchoolers

Writing a book

Living a fabulous life on FB

Living among guys

But

You say you love me

And say you would take me true.

I like you and us. But

will you take my demons too?

You say you like me smile

And the pictures I with my words drew

Those are most pretty. But

will you take my sorrows too?

You say I take you to the sweetest spots

As you laugh under the yew

 I told you just the funny ones. But

will you hear for my tragedies too?

You say we make a handsome couple

And hang our pictures in purview

Oft though I rem and I cry. But

will you frame my red eyes too?

You licked your lips and smacked your tongue

When I cooked your favorite stew

That was a feast. But

Will you drink my poison too?

You embraced me as we sat,

By the fire just us two.

Ours was the warmth. But,

Will you hug my loneliness too?

You said I lit your fire

And heavy a breath you drew  

We were in rapture. Will you But

Moan, when I blurt Her name too?

So this is what I am to give

The laughter, the love anew,

The passion and with that. But

Will you take; Me too?

Catch 22

Co incidentally when I wrote the last post about the Night that I came across this paragraph in Catch 22  which I was reading that time;  the very next day. This reverberates what I wanted to say but much more beautifully in a circular way that only Joseph Heller was able to capture   -

"What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere."

Night

“Nights are too good to just sleep through them” – Anirudh Singh Chauhan

There is something strange and mystifying about the night. It makes the most ordinary sub-urban residences look like the den of most sinister crimes and fornication. Lonely street lamps cast long and dark shadows. And pipes become snakes, bushes become monsters and the old watchman is the cloak and dagger.

The night makes me realize the triviality of ourselves. Just as the street lamp is a small speck of light fighting a losing battle with the omnipresent darkness coming in from all sides to engulf it. Same is the case with us; we are just tiny specks in the big universe trying to sustain ourselves through the play of cosmic forces in whose plans we don’t even figure.

Then the sound of a wailing siren of an ambulance rips through the shroud of silence in the night; unrelenting and inconsolable, like a mother who just lost her child. Someone somewhere is dying. Someone somewhere is beating his wife in these nice quaint houses, someone somewhere is getting drunk to force himself on his girlfriend behind those pretty curtains, someone somewhere is wishing for his mother-in-law never to wake up from her sleep in those spic and span houses. Because that’s what man is. A predator; and night is the time for predators to come out. Night is to man what the grass is to the viper. The grass sways with the wind, is soft to touch and is easily trampled underfoot; but it the grass that hides the viper till he comes close enough to strike.

But that is only the part of the charm of the night. It shows you the pretty moon and twinkling stars which the sun hides from you every morning. But the night is also concealing, it respects your privacy. The night is quiet, it respects your peace. And most of it all it is adjusting; it only lets you see what you want to see. Somewhere in this night only a woman is sleeping in the embrace of her soulmate convinced that no sorrow can touch her. Somewhere in this same night a kid is burning the midnight oil, sacrificing his tonight convinced that it’ll bring him a better tomorrow. And somewhere through this same night a man is driving towards his loved ones convinced they’ll never be apart again. Night is to man what a shield is to a Knight. It protects him of the brutality and the sword of his day life.

But most of it all night is to man what day is to the earth. It makes us possible to make sense of him. There are no masks, no pretentions in the night. No makeup, no corsets, no suits to hide behind. Nobody to keep up the facade for, no approvals to take for his actions, no opinions to be formed by his speech. The night doesn’t conceal anything about a man, it reveals it. In the dark man is his true self.