Workplace Insanity

HOW TO MAINTAIN A HEALTHY LEVEL OF INSANITY IN THE WORKPLACE

• Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice.
• Find out where your boss shops and buy exactly the same outfits. Wear them one day after your boss does. This is especially effective if your boss is of a different gender than you.
• Make up nicknames for all your coworkers and refer to them only by these names. "That's a good point, Sparky." "No, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree with you there, Cha-cha."
• Send e-mail to the rest of the company telling them exactly what you're doing. For example: "If anyone needs me, I'll be in the bathroom."
• Hi-Lite your shoes. Tell people you haven't lost them as much since you did this.
• While sitting at your desk, soak your fingers in Palmolive liquid. Call everyone Madge.
• Hang mosquito netting around your cubicle. When you emerge to get coffee or a printout or whatever, slap yourself randomly the whole way.
• Put a chair facing a printer. Sit there all day and tell people you're waiting for your document.
• Every time someone asks you to do something, anything, ask him or her if they want fries with that.
• Send e-mail back and forth to yourself engaging yourself in an intellectual debate. Forward the email to a co-worker and ask her to settle the disagreement.
• Encourage your colleagues to join you in a little synchronized chair-dancing.
• Put your trash can on your desk. Label it "IN."
• Feign an unnatural and hysterical fear of staplers.
• Send e-mail messages saying there's free pizza or donuts or cake in the lunchroom. When people drift back to work complaining that they found none, lean back, pat your stomach and say, "Oh you've got to be faster than that."
• Put decaf in the coffee maker for three weeks. Once everyone has withdrawn from caffeine addiction, switch to espresso.

Hard Work

Hard work never hurt anyone, but why take the chance?

Business One - Liners & Laws

Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it, get a larger hammer.
Anthony's Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner or the workshop.
Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first always strike your toes.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company, Nowadays it insists on it. - Columnist Russell Baker
Banacek's Eighteenth Polish Proverb: The hippo has no sting, but the wise man would rather be sat upon by the bee.
Barker's Proof: Proofreading is more effective after publication.
Becker's Law: It is much harder to find a job than to keep one. - Jules Becker & Co. (Becker goes on to claim that his law permeates industry as well as government, "...once a person has been hired inertia sets in, and the employer would rather settle for the current employee's incompetence and idiosyncrasies than look for a new employee.")
Belle's Constant: The ratio of time involved in work to time available for work is about 0.6. - from a 1977 JIR article of the same title by Daniel McIvor and Olsen Belle, in which it is observed that knowledge of this constant is most useful in planning long-range projects. It is based on such things as an analysis of an eight hour workday in which only 4.8 hours are actually spent working (or 0.6 of the time available), with the rest being spent on coffee breaks, bathroom visits, resting, walking, fiddling around, and trying to determine what to do next.
Bennett's Laws of Horticulture: (1) Houses are for people to live in. (2) Gardens are for plants to live in. (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
Berkeley's Laws: (1) The world is more complicated than most of our theories make it out to be. (2) Ignorance is no excuse. (3) Never decide to buy something while listening to the salesman. (4) Most problems have either many answers or no answer. Only a few problems have a single answer. (5) Most general statements are false, including this one. (6) An exception - test a rule; it never proves it. (7) The moment you have worked out an answer, start checking it; it probably isn't right. (8) If there is an opportunity to make a mistake, sooner or later the mistake will be made. (9) Check the answer you have worked out once more - before you tell anybody. - Edmund C. Berkeley