[Pat quietly prays for the sweet relief of an aneurysm.]
Pat, when morale is too low, the employee feels unappreciated. This causes productivity to drop, leading to layoffs. How would you describe your morale?
It’s great. I’m excited to come to work in the morning.
Pat, when morale is too high, the employee feels entitled. This causes productivity to drop, leading to layoffs.
In that case, I’d say my morale is fair … -ish?
I’ve asked around about you, Pat, and almost everyone who had any idea who you are said you’re a capable employee probably.
I guess that’s good, right?
At the same time, my own advancement at the company hinges on my ability to justify my position by ensuring that at least 15 percent of my employees receive a negative review.
I’m not sure I understand.
I know. Pat, I’ve been professionally trained to ensure that nothing you hear today—none of the words I say—should come as a surprise to you. Which is why I’m slipping you this piece of paper.
It just says “Disappointing.”
Pat, your performance has been disappointing.
But you just said I was capable.
Nothing in the corporate world means what it does in the real world. Let me show you. How would you describe yourself in the workplace?
Well, I guess I’d say I’m a deliberate thinker.
Translation: too chicken to make a decision.
I’m definitely a vibrant social presence.
Alcoholic.
And I pay very careful attention to detail.
So you’re a pain in the ass.
That’s not fair. I think my co-workers would say I’m valuable.
Interesting. While you were talking there, I got to thinking.
And … ?
Oh, it wasn’t about this. Pat, I’m not going to sugar-coat it: you need to forge the bandwidth to action a granular, user-centric synergy silo that connects the dots between baked-in deliverables and incentivizing a robust, collaborative conflict-resolution diagnosis.
I appreciate your bluntness.
Let’s talk about career goals.
Well, I want to take on more responsibility with the goal of one day becoming a manager myself.
Bold. Now let’s talk about your plausible career goals. Actually, hold that thought. Tell me instead: what are your stretch goals?
My what?
Stretch goals: your theoretical career aspirations that we both know you’re incapable of reaching but that signal to me that you possess sufficient ambition to not be regarded as corporate deadwood.
Um … Olympic volleyballer?
Perfect. Moving on. Pat, there’s a concept in the performance review literature called Ranking Scales. It’s a way of evaluating staff by comparing them to one another, so there’s a best, a second-best, a worst. Personally, I think it’s unwise and destructive to tell people precisely how they rank. So I’ll just ask you to go ahead and guess.
What?
I’ll give you some of those “getting warmer/getting colder” signals.
I don’t understand the point of this whole process. I come in here once a year to talk about goals but there’s never any follow-up. What are you getting out of this? How is this helping me with my job?
I’ll be the one to ask the questions here, Pat. My next question: what is your job again?
Recessions
We’re all looking for ways to make ends meet during tough times, but there are only so many coupons you can clip or charitable organizations you can defraud with an elaborate Ponzi scheme. What follows are some less traditional ideas for saving money, each of which has actually been recommended on the actual internet.
Well, you can scavenge. We might as well start there. The Scavengers’ Manifesto is a new guide to “discovering how salvaging, swapping [and] repurposing can save the Earth, your money and your soul.” Wow. I, for one, did not realize that a trash can full of maggot-infested ham could do all that. I also didn’t realize that saving my soul would require me to finish eating some dude’s pizza crust. Church never mentioned that.
Still, there’s no denying the growth of “dumpster diving,” which is on the fast track to becoming a medal sport in the Hobolympics. And remember as you rummage: one person’s discarded syringe is another person’s source of hepatitis!
But maybe you’d be more comfortable with a less drastic change in lifestyle. Why not start small and save on a barber by trying a home haircut? Sure, your hair will look terrible—but at least you’ll potentially injure yourself. A blogger named Frugal Dad noted: “Guys, you will need someone to help you with the neckline, unless you are good with mirrors”—or, failing that, good with tourniquets.
While it’s true that the recession is a joy-snuffing abyss of bleakness and despair, thank God we still have our kids to hold, cherish and shake down for loose change. Remember: a penny regurgitated is a penny earned.
For many advice-givers, children are our most precious resource—and should be mined for savings accordingly. One mother says she’s taken to sewing fake designer labels into her daughter’s bargain-bin clothing. A dad boasts of cutting his son’s allowance to “help him understand” what a recession is. And one blogger suggests forcing your children to shower with you to save water. (Who knew traumatic memories could be so environment-friendly?)
Bottom line: your children will hate you. But you can win them back. One fun thing to do as a family during hard times is to closely track the precise duration of the mind-numbing tedium that defines your shared misery. But who can afford a new calendar every 365 days? (Answer: almost everyone, but stick with me here.) Why not do what the folks at Walletpop.com recommend and reuse your old calendars? “There are only seven permutations … so why buy a new one for 2009 when you can pick up an old one on eBay from years that match?” I knew I should have listened to my broker when he recommended a portfolio weighted heavily in Leif Garrett calendars.
But saving serious money requires more ambitious measures. For instance, you could save big on eggs by raising your own chickens. Websites like Backyardchickens.com will help you along. And don’t worry—the people on these sites are just like you and me. They’re totally normal. For instance, when the topic turned to whether to eat your hens after their egg-laying days are behind them, one woman sensibly responded: “If we were all starving to death I would chop off an arm or leg and feed it to my kids before I would eat one of my laying hens!!!” (Awww, Mom. Arm sandwiches again?)
Which brings us to death. All things being equal, it would be best if you didn’t die during the recession. But if you must die, the least you can do before you go is build your own coffin. There are a number of books that can help, including Do-It-Yourself Coffins for Pets and People—which touts itself as “a joy for the experienced craftsman,” especially if the experienced craftsman happened to have hated his late mother-in-law.
Looking for an even cheaper option for the dead? Burial at sea. It doesn’t cost a penny and it lends itself to a serene ceremony. That said, you may wish to learn from my mistake and ensure you use a body of water larger than a wave pool. As I told the staff and, later, the authorities, I was as surprised as anyone that my pony floated.
Finally, there’s the whole matter of wooing and sex. In a time of crisis, only a monocled madman would consider paying as much as $10 for flowers, candy or a hooker.
So why not do what a man in Michigan’s Thomas Township did and have sex with a car-wash vacuum hose? All you need are four quarters and, according to the Saginaw County Circuit Court, ninety days to spend in prison after pleading no contest to charges of indecent exposure. Vacuum sex and three square meals a day? Now that’s making the recession work for you.
Too busy working to sexually penetrate a home-cleaning device? Good for you. To remain
employed during a recession, you must become the MacGyver of the workplace—a person capable of saving his or her own job while armed with only a paperclip, a wad of gum and, if at all possible, a thick sheath of photographs of the boss fondling an intern.
To stay among the ranks of the employed, you need simply to follow my Seven Habits of Highly Not Fired Yet People:
Make yourself indispensable. You can do this by working really hard and becoming more productive, but that’s a pain. It’s probably easier just to swallow the CFO’s hard drive. Also, there’s hostage-taking—a surprisingly effective attention-getter in the short term. And remember: prison offers solitude and none of the hassle of vetting whom/what you have sex with. Two birds, meet one stone.
Suck up. Remember how you used to take an apple in for your teacher? It was pathetic and even the mention of your crass sycophancy makes me physically ill, but let’s face it—you might have been on to something. Find out your boss’s favourite morning drink. Is it coffee? A latte? The blood of the weak? Then place a cup of it on his desk in a casual manner, matter-of-factly mentioning, “Oh, I just happened to be walking by Tim Hortons/Starbucks/an orphan’s outstretched arm. Enjoy!” Tally one imaginary brownie point—and don’t forget to write down the address of that orphanage.
Give birth to octuplets. Your boss is only human, if you discount his mechanical heart, titanium endoskeleton and general, all-round werewolfery. And it’s human nature to want to spare those who have the most to lose. Becoming the parent of eight babies gives you the kind of family credentials that even most Osmonds can only envy. But stay alert—some of your co-workers probably have children too. It falls on you to take the high ground and point out just how ugly and unworthy of love they are.
Are you gay? If not, can you pretend to be? Being perceived as openly targeting a minority is one of the great fears of any organization that isn’t the Republican Party. For this angle to work, it’s all about proving your homosexual credentials. Thankfully, countless thousands have paved the way. Think about it: those people at Cher concerts—they can’t really be there for the music, can they?
Go to the washroom … for about eighteen months. They cannot fire what they cannot find.
Make subtle death threats. The keyword here is subtle. But in another, more accurate, way, the keywords here are death and threats. Yes, you want to avoid prosecution, but you also need to get your point across. For starters, try “testing” your chainsaw during staff meetings. On one hand, this makes you a person that everyone wants to get rid of. On the other hand—your hand, the shaky, blood-spattered one—you’ve got a chainsaw. Go ahead and take an extra ten minutes for lunch. No one will say a word.
Divert attention from yourself. If the end seems near, gesture theatrically to a point in space, then yell “Look, over there!” The people who’ve come to fire you will eventually turn back in your direction, but you’ll have cleverly bought yourself three to five precious seconds. Check and mate, Human Resources.
Spam
Most people think of email spam as annoying, but I’ve always enjoyed it. It’s like getting a tiny novella delivered to my inbox for free—an exotic fiction designed to grab my attention, my imagination and, should seventy-eight of my IQ points happen to stage a wildcat strike, my money. But I’m worried about today’s spammers. They appear to have lost their creative spark.
Not long ago, I received from “DHL Delivery Service” the following message: “When do you want your Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars to be delivered to you?” That was it. That was the entire con. Earlier, an equally imaginative proposal had arrived: “I am Mr. Vincent Cheng, GBS, JP Chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited. I have a transaction of 22.5 Million USD for you.”
Oh, Mr. Vincent Cheng: I’m disappointed in you. Like most veteran users of the internet, I have certain quality-based expectations of those who attempt to swindle me out of my life savings. For one, I expect spelling errors—many, many spelling errors. I also expect a shaky grasp of English verb tenses. And I expect—nay, I demand—that the return email address of a purported wealthy industrialist such as yourself be something along the lines of [email protected]. But more than all that, Mr. Vincent Cheng, I expect salesmanship. I expect effort.
And I expect way more lying.
Here, let me help you out a bit. You need to tell a story, okay? Entice me into your highly dubious world. Make me understand who the fake you really is. I’ll get you started: perhaps you’re (a) the frail widow of a military dictator, (b) the glamorous wife of an exiled tycoon, or (c) the wiener dog of Leona Helmsley.
Paint me a picture. Make it seem possible that you have access to formidable cash reserves but that—just like in most good Hollywood romantic comedies, and all the lousy Richard Gere ones—there is a fishy but remotely plausible obstacle keeping you from retrieving the money. For instance, it could be the fact that (a) your late husband’s military rival is now in command, (b) your spouse faces trumped-up tax-evasion charges, or (c) the safety deposit box is too high for you, a humble wiener dog, to reach—even standing on your hind legs.
Once I’m committed emotionally, once I’ve bought into your personal tragedy or hilarious canine shortcomings, that’s when you try to hook me. That’s when you tell me (a) “I’ll give you 30 percent of the proceeds,” (b) “I’ll pay you a $2-million consulting fee,” or (c) “Woof!”
Now get out there and defraud me like you mean it, Mr. Cheng. That’s how Contused H. Latina, Kermit Bolton and Hines X. Meggy used to do it, back in the day when bizarro monikers were the trendy way to elude spam filters. (Now, of course, most people instinctively click delete at the first glimpse of an exotic name like Chase Wang or Jewell Mayo. In fact, I don’t know how many emails from Chase Wang I’d deleted before I discovered that Chase Wang is a real, non-fake person. He works for a PR company in California. I am sorry for ignoring you and not believing you exist in corporeal form, Chase Wang.)
Happily, there is still one spam genre where low-life schemers keep putting in the effort. Consider the urgent email I received from “Serg.” The subject line attracted my eye and at least one other part of my body: “Lindsay Lohan drops bikini bottom.” Intriguing, I thought to myself. Plausible. So I went ahead and opened it. The full text of the message read as follows: “So large that you will have to change your underwear size.” And then there was a link.
Help me out here. I can understand how a certain type of person can fall for a certain type of financial-based scam. But what kind of guy reads “So large that you will have to change your underwear size” and thinks to himself: hey, this sounds like a reputable solicitation for a safe and effective method of increasing the size of my precious genital organ—I think I’ll give it a shot! And what comes in the mail if you place an order? Pills? A mallet? A stout man to grab hold of it and start walking that-a-way?
More to the point—do you have any idea, Serg, how big a penis would need to grow to compel a change in underwear size? I don’t either, but I suspect the words “serpentine” and “hey, stop stepping on that” would be involved.
And what about Lindsay Lohan and that bikini bottom? What happened to that little promise, Serg? I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t trust you with my bank account information either.
Mount Everest
Attention, media: it’s not a tragedy when a Western climber dies on Everest. It’s not even interesting. People die there all the time because it’s EIGHT FREAKING KILOMETRES STRAIGHT UP.
And don’t get the idea that someone successfully reaching the summit is compelling, either. Not anymore. By now, we’ve all read enough about Everest to assume that anyone who makes the peak has basically been pushed, pulled, piggybacked or conveyed in the manner of a human wheelbarrow by Sherpas, for whom reaching the summit is about as exciting as the end of a dull commute.
Sherpa No. 1: What an accomplishment for yo
u, a humble bond trader from Chicago, to reach Earth’s highest point. Now can you please get out of the BabyBjörn?
Sherpa No. 2: And can we start heading down? I gotta take my kid to soccer practice and pick up some milk.
Everest long ago surrendered its mystery and majesty. Today the mountain is covered in trash, excrement and corpses—it’s basically 1970s Times Square. Making the trek is so trendy that most climbing seasons result in human gridlock near the summit. Did you see the photos from a couple of years back? There were more climbers waiting to ascend than in the lineup outside the women’s washroom at a John Mayer concert.
The Despair of Winter III: Forecast for the Week Ahead
On Monday morning, freezing rain will move through the region. Temperatures will fall sharply in the afternoon, leading to the risk of a flash freeze, followed by snow, followed by sleet, followed by more snow, followed by hordes of yeti coming down from the hills to feast on the weakest among us. The high will be –18C. With the wind chill, it will feel like –18C but windy.
On Tuesday, temperatures will warm abruptly, but only for long enough to mess up the backyard rink you’ve spent weeks flooding and shovelling. Snow will begin in the early afternoon. It will change to rain, then back to snow, then briefly to the swarms of frogs associated with Biblical plague, then freezing frogs and, finally, to those ice-pellet thingies that sting like hell when they hit your eyeballs. The pellets will be shaped like Bible frogs. As the temperature plummets, Environment Canada forecasts that your mood will shift overnight from desultory to depressed to borderline homicidal. Exposed skin will freeze in the time it takes to say “I’ll be fine, mah faaaace wuhnt freeezzz uhhhp.”
On Wednesday, a polar vortex will churn through the region, bringing snow-nami-like conditions that include high winds, low visibility and plummeting ice clusters the size of a baby’s head. Also, you know that parka you just got back from the cleaners? Environment Canada forecasts a 7 percent probability that you’ll rub it along the side of the car on your way to work. Not to worry, though—the dirt will match up nicely with the salt stains along the bottom of your pants. Daytime highs in the afternoon are expected to hit –39 degrees. An ideal day to enjoy anywhere between twelve and seventeen seconds of the great outdoors!
The Future and Why We Should Avoid It Page 13
