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How to Look Busy at Work

Posted by Erik Even on Jul 15, 2009 in Advice, Employment

If you’re at work, you should be working.

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!

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Advice for Commuters

Posted by Erik Even on Jul 14, 2009 in Advice, Employment

I live in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, which has the fifth worst average commute time in the nation, at 26.5 minutes. But I’ve had jobs that required a hour-and-a-half commute each way, and that’s not unusual.

Commuting to work can create a great deal of stress, and that stress can bleed into your work life and your home life. But there are ways to make commuting easier.

Leave home much earlier than you usually have to leave. It may take you 45 minutes to get to work most mornings, but there is always going to be an accident, or construction, or a loose animal in the lanes, and the time of your commute doubles or triples. Unfortunately, employers often don’t care why you are late, just that you are late. So arrive early. Get some coffee. Be the first person at your desk — it’s very impressive.

Of course, if you have a family or other responsibilities, it may not be viable to give up even more of your time to your commute and employer.

Buy gas on your way home, at a regular location you use all the time. Never leave gas purchases to the morning — you’ll just make yourself late for work.

Listen to books on tape. You’re not going to learn anything from that wacky morning zoo radio show. Take advantage of the extra time each day to expand your horizons.

Don’t work in the car. Sure, you’re making up for lost time — until you die in a fiery crash because you had your BlackBerry jammed into one ear while you tried to take notes and drink from your Starbucks brushed-metal coffee mug. Work can wait until you get to work.

Carpool. Many employer offer incentives to workers who carpool. If you can find other employees who live in your general area, this is a great option.

But remember you are putting your arrival time in the hands of others. Make sure you have a back-up plan so you can get to work on time if the carpool driver bails. Make sure everyone in the carpool understands that if they can’t make it that morning, to give the others as much notice as possible.

Also, split the cost of gas evenly. Don’t try to get more money from people who live farther away, or break it down by mile, or try to charge for “wear and tear” on your car. Just split the costs evenly — it’s better for everyone.

Got any suggestions for commuters? Let us know in the comments!

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How to Keep Your New Job

Posted by Erik Even on Jul 8, 2009 in Advice, Employment

In this economy, a job is like a bar of gold. A bar of gold encrusted with diamonds and pearls, with the cure for cancer etched into it.

Forbes magazine says 25% of new employees don’t last a year, and 50% are gone by 18 months. So if you land a new job, it’s quite important to keep that job. There are plenty of other people who want it.

Some advice for the newly employed:

Make sure you and your boss have the same understanding of your job description. Maybe you applied for Assistant Regional Manager, but your boss hired you for Assistant to the Regional Manager. Or perhaps you and your supervisor agree on the title, but not on what the job responsibilities are. Employers have a tendency to make positions more attractive than they are, just as job applicants exaggerate their own qualifications.

If there seem to be any differences between what you and your boss expected, bring the issue up at once. You might be doing a great job at what you thought your position was, while your boss might think you’re screwing up. Clear the air, make sure you’re on the same page, and don’t overuse tired cliches like “clear the air” and “on the same page.”

Don’t march in on day one and try to change everything. Some particularly egotistical people (especially in management) think they need to establish themselves on the first day as the new gun in town. As soon as they hit the ground, they are running –right into other employees, who may not appreciate the new person marking his or her territory.

Don’t try to remake your office, department or company as soon as you arrive. First, there may be perfectly valid reasons why your new company does things the way they do them. And second, your bosses and co-workers don’t know you or trust you yet. No one wants a stranger to show up and tell them everything they’re doing is wrong.

Spend at least a few weeks meeting your co-workers and discussing why they do what they do the way they do it. Then, once you’ve established yourself, start making suggestions to co-workers, and instituting your way of doing things with subordinates.

Promote yourself. You may be doing great work, but when the layoffs come six months from now, the newest hires will be the first to go. And if none of the managers can remember who you are or what you do, they will have no compunctions about letting you go.

Meet as many people as you can at your new job. Stay in communication with your supervisor, and keep him or her apprised of what you’re working on. Go to work parties and after-work drinks. Get noticed — it’s much harder to lay off a friend or acquaintance than a total stranger. And networking will promote your career in other ways as well.

Be honest if you don’t know what you’re doing. New hires are often terrified to admit they’re not sure how to complete a task, or are unclear on their job requirements. If you don’t know how to deal with something, there are two choices — face the embarrassment of admitting this to your boss, or never get the task done and turn what may be a small problem into a big disaster.

I’ve had to go to a new supervisor and say “I don’t know how to do this,” and face the boss’ confusion and anger. But your resume said you could [job skill]! What kind of a [insert job title here] doesn’t know how to do this? The problem may stem from you and your boss have differing ideas about your job description; or maybe the person you replaced had a different skill set than you do.

But keeping your problem a secret will only make it worse. Learn what you need to learn, and the problem is solved.

Don’t be tardy; dress appropriately; stay late; work hard. I shouldn’t have to add these, but apparently not everyone knows that the first 90 days of your job are like a trial period. Do your absolute best.

Got any further advice for new employees? Let us know in the comments.

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How to Deal with the IT Geek

Posted by Erik Even on Jul 1, 2009 in Advice, Employment

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.

Got any additional advice, or better yet, funny IT support stories? Let us know in the comments!

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Are You Unfirable?

Posted by Erik Even on Jun 15, 2009 in Advice, Careers, Employment

Last week I asked are you employable? But if you have a job already, you already know the answer to that question.

The cast of The It Crowd. Only one is unfirable.But if you’re employed, in this economy, you can’t rest on your laurels. Ask yourself — are you “unfirable?” (I know, it’s not a real word.)

There are things you can do to lower the chance that, when your firm lets people go, you’ll be leading the procession:

Save the company money. If you can think of a way to save money, don’t keep it to yourself. Suggest it. Even if it’s just a one-time savings, your employers will remember the favor — and they may count the savings toward the cost of your salary.

Be irreplaceable. The easiest way to do this is to be great at your job. Also, having an irreplaceable skill set helps — this is easy for IT people, who can set up a computer network that only they will understand, guaranteeing permanent job security. But if you’re the only person at the company who understands the filing system, or who knows all the vendors, or who knows how to put the orders into the computer, then your job is just a bit safer.

Be a member of the family. This won’t save you if the firm absolutely has to cut jobs, but it can only help. Befriend your co-workers. Be pleasant and sociable with your bosses, even the difficult ones. Pitch in for birthday and wedding gifts. Go to Happy Hour every once in a while. You will (1) make new friends, possibly lifelong ones; (2) develop contacts that can help your career in the future, (3) make your workplace function better, and your job more enjoyable; and (4) make it that much harder to lay you off when the time comes.

Be reliable. This can be very hard — after all, there are genuinely unreliable people, but they never last long at any company. What’s hard is when a reliable person encounters unavoidable personal issues — family, health, economic — that while perfectly sympathetic and understandable, still mean you’re the one who is late to work, or leaves early, or misses days, or can’t work beyond normal hours. And when it comes time to lay people off, that’s what employers remember.

So what can you do if life interferes with your job? I don’t know. In this economy, if the life issues are relatively minor — school issues for your kids, marital problems, general economic stresses — then do everything in your power to insulate your work from these, even if it upsets your family.

If the issues are major — divorce, a death, a long-term illness — then maybe there is nothing you can do, except face the fact that your job is in danger and do whatever you can to prepare for that.

Have an affair with the boss. Just kidding. Seriously, that’s a bad idea.

Know of other ways to become “unfirable?” Let us know in the comments!

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Unemployed? Start Blogging!

Posted by Erik Even on May 6, 2009 in Advice, Employment, Job Search

Uncle Sam wants you -- to blog!If you’re unemployed right now (or even if you’re not), there are some very good reasons for starting your own professional blog.

Especially if you are an expert (or an aspiring expert) in your field, you can use a blog to put your name out there as a go-to guru for your industry. It’s far better than just putting up a resume site, because the content of your blog will be propagated across the social networking community.

Having your own professional blog will show prospective employers and clients that you are a serious, dedicated professional in your field, who has expertise to share with colleagues.

Some advice for your professional blog:

Find a reliable web host. In other words, don’t use Google’s Blogger, or any other free blog hosting service. You need a host that takes customer support seriously. And using a professional, for-pay hosting service shouldn’t cost you more than $100 a year.

Find a host that has an application to automatically install blog software. That will save you a lot of trouble.

You don’t need your own domain name. If you want one, that’s perfectly cool, and shouldn’t cost you more than $10 a year. Buy the domain name through your web host  — that simplifies things immensely. But you don’t need one. People are going to find your blog through Google or Technorati, where domain names don’t matter.

Use WordPress. It’s simply the best blog software available right now. It’s easy to use, and it’s free (which in this case isn’t a bad thing). I’ve never needed technical support for WordPress in the years I’ve been using it. If you do end up needing support, however, you’ll have to pay for it.

Keep your private life separate. Don’t discuss your personal life on your professional blog. You can start a separate personal blog if you want, and talk all about your children, hobbies, or obscure sexual fetishes. But keep your professional blog on target. And certainly don’t write about anything you wouldn’t bring up around the water cooler at work.

Post new content every week. Visitors who like your content will bookmark your blog or add it to their RSS reader. But if there isn’t regular, new content, those people will stop checking. At the bare minimum, post once a week. Twice is better — and several posts per day is best of all!

Link to other blogs in your field. It may seem odd to link out to sites that are most likely competing with yours. But this is how blog software, and the blog search engines like Technorati, work. The more often you link out to other blogs, the more often they will link back to you, driving up your hits. When you do link to another blog, or add any outbound link, explain to your readers what the link is about, and what you think of it.

Don’t embarass or criticize former or current employers. This is death for your career. No firm wants to hire someone who will bash their company online, either while an employee or after they leave. Unless you’re blowing the whistle on some kind of illegal activity, don’t air your dirty laundry in public. If you want to criticize general trends in your industry, wihtout naming names, that may be okay. But if you have a current employer, they still may not approve. It’s a fine line — tread it carefully.

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How to Avoid Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Posted by Erik Even on May 4, 2009 in Advice, Employment

Carpal Tunnel cutawayCarpal Tunnel Syndrome is one of the most common workplace injuries, and can leave workers in pain, decrease their productivity, and even prevent them from holding down a job at all.

According to The National Institutes of Health, CTS:

“…occurs when the median nerve, which runs from the forearm into the hand, becomes pressed or squeezed at the wrist… The carpal tunnel – a narrow, rigid passageway of ligament and bones at the base of the hand - houses the median nerve and tendons. Sometimes, thickening from irritated tendons or other swelling narrows the tunnel and causes the median nerve to be compressed. The result may be pain, weakness, or numbness in the hand and wrist, radiating up the arm.”

While many things can cause CTS, one common cause is stress from repetitive hand and wrist movements — exacltly the kind of movements you make when writing, typing and using a computer mouse.

CTS is treated with drugs, physical therapy, and/or surgery.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to help prevent CTS.

  • Perform stretching exercises
  • Take frequent rest breaks
  • Wear splints to keep your wrists straight
  • Use correct posture and wrist position — back straight, forearms level with the desktop
  • Use an ergonomic mouse

Just by being aware of the danger, you can take steps to ensure that you’re never afflicted with CTS.

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Don’t Let Stress at Work Lead to Depression

Posted by Erik Even on Apr 27, 2009 in Employment

A stress case.According to a study in the latest American Journal of Epidemiology (I read it each month, after I finish The Fortean Times and Entertainment Weekly), reducing on-the-job stress may help lower the risk of depression.

Canadian researchers found a correlation between levels of work stress and incidence of major depression. The study is based on data from a Canadian National Population Health Survey of 4,866 people.

In any given month, 4.4% of US workers suffer major depression. Such depression can severely affect productivity and employability.

It’s just common sense that work stress can cause illness, which in turn creates more stress.

Some advice for employees:

  • Learn to firewall your work life from your home life. In other words, try not to take your work stress home with you.
  • Set aside a few minutes during the work day to just relax and breathe — maybe at your desk, maybe in an empty conference room or out in your car. Don’t think you have the time? You’ll be far more productive — it’s worth the time.
  • Talk to HR about your stress issues. They might be able to help you out, depending on why you are so stressed out.
  • Exercise, maybe before work, maybe at lunch, or after work. Go jogging or join a gym. This will help immensely.



Some advice for employers:

Some managers think the best way to motivate people is to put the fear of God or the dole queue into them. The theory is that a good employee will benefit from stress, working harder and faster. Someone too “weak” to handle the stress must not be good at their job.

You are wrong.

Your employees are overworked and unhappy — and they get sick. A lot. They either miss work entirely, or work from home, or come to work and make everyone else sick. Whatever happens, you are losing productivity, not gaining it.

Also, ability to handle stress does not correlate to talent. By driving away employees who can’t take the abuse, you may be losing the people who are best at their jobs, and hanging on to those who aren’t.

Some workplace environments cannot help but cause stress. But if you’re not the boss of an emergency room or air traffic control tower, or the teacher of an eighth grade classroom, perhaps you can tone down the stress a bit. Healthy, happy, relaxed employees do better work, and more work, than a cube farm full of stress cases.

And maybe your health benefits costs will go down.

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Tips for Casual Friday

Posted by Erik Even on Apr 17, 2009 in Advice, Careers

Casual FridayChances are, today is “Casual Friday” at your office. As of 2,000, 50% of American businesses have a Casual Friday.

Even businesses that don’t require suits, ties and skirts will relax their already lax rules on Friday.

Unfortunately, many employees make the mistake that “casual” means “wear whatever you want.” This is almost never true. Unless you work in the adult entertainment industry, your workplace will have rules and expectations regarding “casual” dress.

Some tips:

Pay attention to what your colleagues wear, both on Casual Friday and during the rest of the week. Take your cues from them. Don’t worry about what people in other departments and at different levels wear. Just because they let that guy in Shipping wear shorts, doesn’t mean you can wear them at the Friday business development meeting.

Casual doesn’t mean sloppy, dirty, old or torn. If you’re firm is going to let you wear jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers on Fridays, make sure they’re relatively new and in excellent condition.

It is never appropriate to dress provocatively at work, and Casual Friday is no exception. No skin-tight clothes, no bare midriffs, no inappropriately plunging necklines. Of course women are in greater danger here. If you’re wearing a sexy dress to work because you’re going out Friday night, just cover up with a jacket or vest.

Sexually provocative clothes aren’t the only problem. Don’t wear clothes with inappropriate slogans on them, such as t-shirts with religious or political themes, or profanity. And those jeans with the word “sassy” embroidered across the seat? No.

Work is not a gym. Unless you work at a gym. So no workout clothing, please.

No sandals or other unusual shoes. It’s Casual Friday, not a Grateful Dead concert. And I know your Birkenstocks are probably the most expensive shoes in the building — save them for the weekend. Also, I once knew a woman who caused an uproar at work by wearing clear plastic high-heeled shoes that lit up when she walked. Save them for the stripper pole.

Finally, unless you have some kind of important business meeting with a client, or a funeral, or a secret job interview with a rival firm, don’t wear conservative business attire on Casual Friday. You’ll make everyone who is more casually dressed feel uncomfortable. Be a team player — go get a casual collared shirt and some Dockers. You’ll be glad you did.

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More About Learning to Type

Posted by Erik Even on Apr 9, 2009 in Careers, Employment

QWERTY is QWAPPYThe first commercially successful typewriter was invented in 1867 by Christopher Sholes, a Milwaukee newspaper editor and printer.

Sholes had a problem — if someone typed too quickly on his typewriter, which originally had its letter keys arranged alphabetically, the typebars would jam into each other and stick. So Sholes spent six years experimenting with keyboard layouts, until he devised one that slowed an experienced typist enough to prevent jams.

In other words, he intentionally invented the worst keyboard layout possible. It’s called the QWERTY layout, based on the first six letters of the top row.

Now look at the first six letters on the top row of your computer keyboard. Yes, almost every keyboard in the world (and the world’s few remaining typewriters) uses the QWERTY layout. So does your BlackBerry.

So if you’re going to learn to type, should you learn the world’s worst possible typing system? Just because it’s popular?

There are alternatives. The most well-known is called Dvorak, but not because it’s first six letter keys say DVORAK. (In fact, they say PYFGCR.)

The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak, an educational psychologist and professor of education at the University of Washington in Seattle. He wanted to replace QWERTY with the fastest possible layout. And in the age of computer keyboards, jamming is not so much of an issue.

Various sources claim that Dvorak typing is between 74% and 93% faster than QWERTY.

So which should you chose? If you type Dvorak, you’ll be much faster and more efficient, but your employer will have to set up your computer for the Dvorak system (a simple task on Mac and Windows machines) and buy you a Dvorak keyboard. (Unless you never look at the keys anyway — then it doesn’t matter what keyboard you use. Also, some people yank the keys off their QWERTY keyboard and rearrange them for Dvorak.)

On the other hand, just about everyone on the planet uses QWERTY, and just about every employer on the planet expects you to use it.

I guess the best choice is to learn both, if you have the time and inclination. Which you probably don’t.

But seriously — if you can’t type, learn how. QWERTY or Dvorak. You’ll be glad you did.

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