BWA HA HA just kidding. Apart from certain important personal matters that may have to be dealt with at work (making doctor’s appointment, dealing with your bank/cable company/phone provider), there are times you won’t be busy, if for no other reason that you need a mental health minute.
But some bosses don’t realize this, and expect you to be 100% productive, 100% of the time. So it’s important to know how to look busy without getting caught.
Fortunately for you, I’m an expert.
Position your monitor so no one can see it but you. If possible. When someone comes into your office or cubicle, you’ll have the opportunity to Alt-Tab your way from World of Warcraft to Excel.
Always keep important programs open on your screen. Or you can create a screen capture of your monitor when busy, and make this your wallpaper image.
Turn off your screensaver. If your boss sees your screensaver running, he or she will know you haven’t used your computer in the last 15 or so minutes. This is especially embarrassing if you’re sitting at your desk.
Keep lots of paperwork out on your desk. Tidy=slacking.
March around the office looking stressed. Let other workers see you walking quickly past, on your way to that very important… whatever.
Have a folder or binder with you at all times. If you have a binder, you must be busy, right? But make sure it’s something relevant, in case your boss asks you what you’re carrying.
If your job requires you to be on the phone, then pretend to be on the phone. If your job does not require the phone, then don’t try this — you’ll look like you’re slacking or making personal calls.
Talk to your co-workers about how busy you are. Get that rumor going that you’re the busiest one in the group. But be cautious – spend too much time talking up how slammed you are, and your coworkers will figure out what you’re doing.
FedEx packages to yourself. It’s expensive, but it really makes you seem important — like Steve Martin in Bowfinger.
Got any more advice for the successful slacker? Let us know in the comments!
Computers are now a vital component of almost every job out there. It doesn’t matter how good you are at sales, or medicine, or the law, or accounting, or administrating — if you can’t navigate an operating system or use email, you are not qualified to be a salesperson, doctor, lawyer, accountant or administrator.
But using a computer at work means that at some point, you will need help from the IT Department. Many workers dread dealing with IT for a number of reasons. Computer experts tend to have their own language and their own strict views about how computers should be used. They sometimes look down upon people who are not as tech savvy. And IT as a career tends to attract a small but troublesome group of hostile men with a spectrum disorder, who take joy in abusing computer users.
Fortunately, the stereotypical computer geek is rare, and most IT professionals are normal people like you and me who happen to know C++ and can tell you how to tweak your Blood Elf Warlock’s talent tree for maximum efficiency.
I used to work in IT support, despite being almost entirely unqualified to do so. During that time, I saw things from both sides, user and IT pro. Here’s some advice for dealing with IT — but first, a video look at life from an IT person’s point of view.
Before you call IT, check for wetware errors. Most of the time, your computer issues will stem from some small mistake you made, and can easily fix yourself. Your computer is the hardware, its programs are the software, and your brain is the wetware. Is the computer plugged in? (Users hate this question, because it seems to insult their intelligence. Yet I assure you from personal experience, people forget to turn on their machine, or accidentally yank the plug out of the wall, all the time.) Did you try turning it off and on again? This solves many issues, especially memory problems. If your program “disappeared,” did you simply minimize the window? These are the questions any IT person will start by asking.
This leads directly into:
Don’t be afraid to try to diagnose the problem yourself. People who are afraid of computers will call IT the second anything they don’t understand happens. They think that if they tinker with the machine, they’ll somehow destroy it. But long gone are the days when one might enter “C:/ del” and accidentally erase their entire hard drive.
It’s very hard for you to do anything that will genuinely screw up your system. Try to figure out the problem on your own. Then, if you’re still stumped after 5 or ten minutes, call IT.
Don’t take out your anger on the computer tech. Yes, it can be frustrating to have computer issues. And on a few occasions, the problem may actually be the IT department’s fault. But most of the time, users freak out because (a) they don’t understand what went wrong, (b) they’re very busy with work and need their computer, and (c) they feel stupid that they can’t solve the problem themselves.
Your IT tech is trying to help you. So don’t abuse him or her. The fastest way to get your computer back is to work with, and not against, IT.
Describe the problem precisely, in detail. Every IT support person on the planet has suffered through this conversation:
User: My computer is broken. IT Guy: Well, what seems to be wrong with it? User: I don’t know! It’s broken! It Guy: What is on the screen right now? User: Nothing! IT Guy: So the screen is blank? User: NO! There’s stuff but I don’t know what it is!
This is not only entirely unhelpful, it will antagonize the IT Guy, and all his friends in the IT Department. It is actually not the IT tech’s job to drop everything and come running the second you get frustrated with your computer. There are lots of other things an IT person does all day, and babysitting you may not be the best use of their time.
Tell the support person exactly what’s wrong. If you don’t know what something is called, carefully describe it. Do you want an IT person to actually come help you? Then sell your problem as a real problem.
Practice infinite patience. Some IT people will be hostile jerks. By being aggressively and consistently nice, you may win some of these people to your side. Others will never stop hating you, because they hate all human beings and they hate life — that’s why they went into IT. But you need these people, and being calm, patient and polite is the best way to deal with any difficult person, not just IT people.
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BWA HA HA just kidding. Apart from certain important personal matters that may have to be dealt with at work (making doctor’s appointment, dealing with your bank/cable company/phone provider), there are times you won’t be busy, if for no other reason that you need a mental health minute.
But using a computer at work means that at some point, you will need help from the IT Department. Many workers dread dealing with IT for a number of reasons. Computer experts tend to have their own language and their own strict views about how computers should be used. They sometimes look down upon people who are not as tech savvy. And IT as a career tends to attract a small but troublesome group of hostile men with a spectrum disorder, who take joy in abusing computer users.
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