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How to Fake A Hard Day at the Office
futileboy writes "There's a great article in the WSJ about how to use technology to avoid work, while giving the impression of working. At the bottom of the article is "A beginner's guide to making it look like you're working when you're not." "
Having this story posted on Slashdot is like having an article on a paid porn site called, "A beginner's guide to masturbation."
If you use MS products to try and fake a hard day at the office, it would probably just be easier to put in a good, honest day's work.
Learn from the best, learn from Wally.
-jfedor
Today's violation of copyright:
... If everybody does that, the company goes bankrupt," says Stuart Gilman, director of the Ethics Resource Center in Washington.
(Let's hope they consider it a free sample)
Shirk Ethic: How to Fake
A Hard Day at the Office
By JANE SPENCER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
David Wiskus gives new meaning to the term "working lunch." The Denver tech-support worker installed a program on his Handspring Visor hand-held that allowed him to manipulate the screen on his office computer from a booth at a local diner.
As he lingered for hours over burgers and fries, he could actually open windows and move documents around on his screen via the hand-held -- creating the impression to anyone who walked by that the diligent Mr. Wiskus had just stepped away from his desk.
It has never been easier to be a white-collar slacker. While the uninitiated are still grousing about how mobile technology has created a 24/7 work culture and sabotaged their private time, a savvier crowd has moved on to a more rewarding pursuit: using technology to make it look like you're working when you're not.
The tactic isn't new, but the tools have gotten a lot more powerful. Executives have long discreetly asked their secretaries to flip on the office light to make Friday absences less glaring; leaving a jacket on the back of your desk chair is also an old trick.
But the latest generation of office accessories, from cellphones to the RIM BlackBerry, have brought a new level of sophistication -- and a host of new strategies for manipulating perceptions of your diligence.
The new options allow people to do far more than send e-mails from the beach. Services like GoToMyPC.com -- similar to one Mr. Wiskus used on his hand-held -- let you operate your office computer by remote control. You can even move the cursor on your screen, opening documents and printing them on the shared office printer.
Other strategies involve using existing technology in new ways. E-mail timers, a standard feature in Microsoft Outlook, let you send e-mails hours after you have gone to bed -- a painless way to suggest to the boss that you are burning the midnight oil. (In Outlook, open up a message, go to "options," and fill in the "do not deliver before" option.)
Instant Message programs, a more-immediate form of e-mail now used by millions of employees, can also be reconfigured. Typically, if you haven't touched your computer in a while, the people you chat with online see an "idle" message next to your name. Diehard slackers can crack into the program settings to make themselves appear perpetually available.
Psychologists call these games "impression management," a field whose rules have been transformed now that so many people communicate through technology rather than a handshake and a conversation. In some ways, the e-mail that arrives at 11 p.m. is the modern sign of a dedicated worker.
But others see all this as yet another legitimate technology that has been hijacked by people with skewed ethics. "If you're out playing golf, and you look like you've spent four hours in the office.
Even some lower-tech tools, such as call forwarding, have grown more sophisticated, making it a snap to answer your desk phone from your daughter's soccer game or the pedicure chair. Phone company SBC Communications Inc. currently offers five different call-forwarding services, including a new one that lets you transfer your phone to different phone numbers throughout the day.
E-mails Read by Jenni
Services like Yahoo By Phone also let you pick up your e-mail from afar, even without a hand-held gadget. For $4.95 a month, a computerized voice named Jenni will read your messages aloud over the phone.
Wireless e-mail gadgets like the Palm Tungsten W and the BlackBerry can also be tinkered with to help cover the tracks of an office absence. E-mails sent from a BlackBerry, for example, automatically sign o
how to use technology to avoid work
Buy a vibrator.
Best Windows Freeware
So, from what I read, it seems like an aweful lot of "wor" to not actually do any work. Manipulating the screen from your hand-held, sneaking around flipping on and off lights, printing phantom documents to the printer... It seems like you are doing just as much work as you would actually being in the office, except it's relativly unproductive...
It seems to me the way to go would to be use virtual offices where people can do REAL work from the coffee shop or from home without having to feel guilty that they aren't in a cubicle. Why is that concept so hard for many companies to understand and implement?
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, huddling over a wireless doodad, trying to remotely connect to your desktop, when you can plan a script in advance at your desktop, with a real keyboard and display, and save the script for reuse later.
:)
That said, please take the wireless approach - I work for a company that makes wireless doodads
no matter what my personal opinion is.... i have a dream that one day someone will let a thread ride, without a ms or *nix comment. ok so it will never happen, but a dream is a dream
This article makes it appear to be a lot of work to avoid...work.
It seems like it would be a lot more exhausting trying to appear to work and worrying about getting caught - especially since a lot of the "avoidance" such as checking and responding to email and voicemail actually IS work - than it would be to just work at the office.
I guess some people just need to feel that they are getting away with something.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Add a bunch of fancy titles to your name, including every known Microsoft cert you can get by using cram session, and maybe some of the new Linux certs as well--- and "consult".
Leave the real work for the grunts whom you are helping, and learn how to ask open ended questions to techs who don't express themselves like "normal" people do, so that they come up with their own answers. Don't forget, if you get into a bind, you can always check your resources and go ask on the internet, and just bring them back the emails/posting using the biggest words. More than likely this will cause a light bulb to go off above those tech's heads, and they will go code away for you. (While you consult with that cute secretary down the hall, of course!)
Articles like this may seem cutesy, but the sad fact is that corporate leaders see this and assume all IT workers are/can or will do this. This furthers the mistrust some corporate types have of IT managers and workers.
Worse, it'll make it easy for corporate leaders to rationalize moving *YOUR* IT job to India. The article doesn't seem too funny now, does it.
Damnit, my boss is a /. reader. Thanks for blowing my cover Taco! =P
--
mcpsoaak
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
Don't have it automagically send out on the tens or fives.
I liked to keep it on the odd minutes.
1 am is nothing, the 3 or 4 in the morning message have that feeling of really busting your ass.
I always liked Apple Remote Desktop for my control the machine from afar.
Hell I could sit at my Mac at home, remote in, turn on Virtual PC and admin the Novell Network.
(Un?)wittingly copied to /. of course. They manage to plug the RIM BlackBerry Handheld, GoToMyPc.Com, and Yahoo By Phone -- even going so far as to provide prices for the latter two items. Unfortunately the wsj does not appear to have an online advertisers index so I can't just look it up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I really don't care how hard you work as my employee. All I care about is results. If I need a project working flawlessly by next week, and its done, I don't care if you spent half the time playing Quake.
As a programmer myself, I know that code often gets done in spurts, and that a break (especially a nap!) can improve productivity quite a bit.
The problem is there are some people who can do it, and some that cant. If you aren't the type that can do it, you really can't fake it. The people you work for and work with all know what needs to get done. They won't be fooled by late night emails. When the due date arrives and you arent done, they will know you weren't up to snuff.
Had this article come out about a year ago, I might have used some of these techniques just to prove to some people I was doing the work that I was legitimately doing.
On my present job, I am blessed with having a boss that allows me to set my own hours. I typically come in at the crack of dawn (6 AM), have lunch at my desk, and leave by 2:30PM. Combine this with needing only 5 hours of sleep a night and it gives me lots of free time (handy considering my wife and I have a new house with landscaping that is in awful shape, so I suppose "free time" is really a misnomer here :) ).
About a year ago, though, I had trouble with people from other groups thinking I wasn't working my 40 hours a week (which I was), and a whispering campaign started. My boss fortunately stood up for me, since she knows I work those hours, but I had to prove it to everyone else. So I got in the habit of answering all my email from the previous day the moment I got in at 6AM.
Finally one of the ones that I suspect complained about me tested me by coming in early and dropping in at my desk at 6:15 AM. Surprise, surprise, I was actually there like I said all along.
I haven't had any trouble since.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Scott Adams has covered this topic many a times in several of his books and comics :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Regular readers of the WSJ don't need this advice any more than /. readers.
Most have trancended to such an advanced state of slacking that they can appear/disappear at their desks at will. They can read e-mails via mind control, and need no lowly cheater devices. Mere mortals fear their omnipresence! Bwahahahaaahahaa!
I don't know why I know that.
Irony: When slashdot posts an article about avoiding work.
Then spend a year surfing the web to test it :)
I read this somewhere on the 'net, so don't give me credit for it.
Step 1: You must have an office with a door, otherwise this won't work.
Step 2: Scatter some paper clips about the office, making sure to get some under your desk.
Step3: Close the door and lie down on the carpet. Place your feet firmly on the door and reach for a paperclip under your desk.
Step4: Sleep the day away.
If someone should try and opne your door, you will be jarred awake and you can say that you dropped some paper clips and were just reaching for them.
--
From my own personal experience, this works very well.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Maybe the person who modded Zentec as a troll is a high school or college kid laughing at how funny the story is, how clever you are, and how concerned all of us old fogies are about what's happening in IT.
But when real life jumps up and bites you in the ass, it's not so funny. I know a lot of people who are out of work right now and making very painful decisions about their future (i.e. - do I stay in IT or become a shoe salesman so I can keep up with mortgage payments).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Ever had this happen to you?
* On a project deadline, they feel your timeline to build the servers can be cut down from a 2 weeks to day, to make the project on time?
* Engineering forces a product down your throat, best of the customer blah blah. And forget to include an admin interface? Places the server 150 miles away, and puts it in a DMZ so you cant remotely manage it.
* Vendor builds a unix box, on the oldest version of an os known to man, and wont run any standard tools, and the only monitoring is a log file with "ERROR" in it.
* Customer is down, on a new service that dropped form the sky into your lap... No support tools, no access, and your Manager is asking why you are taking so long. Dont even think of asking for documentation.
* Your manager learns a new technology buzzword, and all the sudden, you have 10x more paperwork, and nothing has changed.
* The software you run crashs all the time, causing outages. The vendor blames you, and points to internal documentation they wrote "last week".
* Vendor A blames Vendor B for not following the SPEC, but your service is down, and neither will help you get it back in service.
* You call Tech support in the middle of the night to find out your contract number isnt correct, doesnt matter you are the biggest customer and have super duper platnium support. Call back tomorrow.
* In all staff meeting, managlement tells the staff about new work methods, which happen to just only affect you.
* You ask a question to one manager, and 2 hours later, an All Employee email goes out about the same subject, that everyone should have already known!
* You accept a new project, no training, no tools, no documentation, and its now production. Then they fire the Project Manager, Engineer and consultants the day after.
* Marketing sells wizzbang new product, forgetting to see if its really possible.
I tell you, the reason Dilbert and BOFH are so popular, its almost like real life....
This is especially a problem for programmer-types who need to get uninterrupted concentration, and can't do that in the daytime because they have cubicles rather than offices.
I tend to check my email before going to sleep, and one of my coworkers in Boston often gets started early in the morning - we've had email conversations at 2am on occasion.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Welcome to America, where appearances are much more important than anything else. Productivity my ass.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
the other day I was playing nethack at work, thinking that if I'm going to play a game it ought to be one without fancy graphics or anything too out of the ordinary from typical unix like work.
A couple minutes later the boss walks by my desk, drops his jaw in amazement and says, "Is that Rogue???" He was fairly impressed having not seen the game in years and asked for a copy of the source code.
Typically, if you haven't touched your computer in a while, the people you chat with online see an "idle" message next to your name. Diehard slackers can crack into the program settings to make themselves appear perpetually available.
... hang on ...
Sheesh, in MSN you can "crack" this setting by going into Options and unchecking the checkbox for 'My Status'
i.e. setting "Show me away when i'm inactive for 'x' minutes.
I wish 'cracking' other Microsoft products were this easy
GoToMyPC.com is not a bad program solely since it is "in thousands of popup and banner ads." It's a web-based app that includes a file-transfer component (TightVNC does not) and encrypts sessions.
For more information, CNet has a review. Please read it.
For more information, click here.
I noticed that myself - who would pay $20 for a friggin glorified VNC system? If the dynamic-IP adress is a problem, then just get a dynamic-IP redirection service like dynip.com - that's $25 per year for a big, user friendly business.
Great, I can replicate their service for 1/10th the cost, and could set it up in five minutes flat. Don't even have to memorize an IP address. Not to mention that with the IP redirection, you could also set up an FTP so you could get your files locally.
Hell, I don't see why anyone should ever need to use such a service. With ICQ2Go, Webmail service, and MSN I can log in to all my communications systems at any net cafe or handheld. I can keep in touch just fine - I only VNC to my machine to use the compiler.
E-Mail Timers
Yeah. Okay. Most users barely know how to send regular e-mail.
BlackBerry
That's why bb mailboxes are separate from regular mailboxes.
GoToMyPc.Com
Aside from probably getting you fired, every good admin blocks crap like this at the firewall. The only out from your PC is through the proxy and firewall. The only way in leads to the DMZ.
Instant Messaging
Also blocked at the firewall. Get to work!
Yahoo By Phone
You can't forward your mail an SMTP address, only local accounts.
Call Forwarding
Not our phones.
If you RT(F)A, a lot of these "techniques" are just ways to do your work while not at your desk.
... time to check what's new at ThinkGeek.
They suggest having emails fired off automagically in the middle of the night, using a blackberry to send email from the car, using GoToMyPC (which I assume is a VNC-type thing), getting calls forwarded to your cell, or picking up email with Yahoo by phone "to make sure you're not missing anything urgent".
The fact that you are doing all this from your car, the massage parlor, the park, or the deck of a cruise ship is kinda irrelevant. You are still *doing* it: still checking email and phone calls. Still manipulating documents on your PC. Just not in the office.
I guess some companies aren't savvy enough to realize that employees -- particularly IT employees -- don't necessarily need to be at their desks to do your job.
True shirking would be not doing your work. Or having an Inflatible You to stick in your chair and fool the PHB.
Hrmm
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
...I use is to set the timer in the BIOS to boot the computer at 0900. When I roll in around 0920 it looks like I've already arrived and I'm just away from my desk somewhere.
1. Deactivate the screen saver and energy saving features of the monitor. This gives your cubicle that fresh 'just stepped out' feeling all day long. No need for remote control products. If you don't like leaving your computer unlocked, set the screensave to a screenshot of your desktop with some important looking spreadsheet open.
2. When leaving early, use the stairs, or if in a taller building use the stairs to go to another floor to wait for the elevator. Nothing like getting caught by the boss at the elevator banks at 4:15.
3. If you can, ride your bike in to work every once in awhile. You'd be suprised how impressed people are by that shit. It gives the impression that you are dedicated and athletic - the boss will think that these qualities will transfer to your office work - coworkers will think you have a life outside of work, and be jealous, thus increasing your status in their eyes. Make sure to leave your bike helmet and gear prominently displayed in your cubicle to maximize the benefit.
4. Use dialup and remote control products to send emails on the weekend. The time of an email can be too easily overlooked - the date not so much. It's easy to log on for a few minutes on the weekend. Saves some Friday emails to respond to.
5. The time you leave work is much more important than the time your arrive. Nobody cares that the idiot that leaves at 3:30pm actually gets into work at 6am - the general perception will be that he's a slacker. Even if you get in at 10am, if the boss sees you hanging around at 5:45pm, you'll look dedicated.
6. Try not to carry a backpack or bag - on days when you don't need a coat this allows you to enter late without making it look like you just got there.
7. If you are planning to be late, call people and leave random unimportant voicemails early in the morning. When you see them at 10am they'll think you were there all along (note, some voicemail systems reveal the source of the call, so be careful).
8. Slacking in the middle of the day is much better than showing up late or leaving early. People are paying the most attention in the morning and at quitting time. Arriving early and leaving late will give the semblance of dedication, even if you are taking 2 hours lunches, and hour long trips to the bookstore in the afternoon.
9. Find a sleep hideout. Most places, especially larger corporate offices, have some nook or cranny where nobody goes in the afternoon. Maybe it's a corner of the caffeteria, or perhaps a storeroom somebody forgot to lock. These places are great for sleeping off a hangover, or just reading the newspaper when doing so at you desk would be too conspicuous.
10. When pushed for work, create documentation. Management loves documentation, and doesn't realize how little time it takes to create. A well formatted ten page document with a table of contents and some nice graphics might take a day to create, but the boss can easily be convinced you've been working on it for many days. Frequently submit 'drafts' to the boss (which he will never read) - this will make the boss feel guilty for holding you up, and give you an excuse to take more time.
I don't feel like watching it. It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
get a job doing something you enjoy.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
...by Jason Blair, formally of the NYT
Some employees are hard working, self motivated go-getters that are willing (under the correct circumstances) to burn the proverbial "midnight oil" in order to accomplish a goal. Other employees are pay-check collectors that look for hand-outs and will come up with a dozen excuses of why they can't accomplish their assignment in a reasonable amount of time.
What I've learned is that you'll never convert members of the latter group into members of the former. Very rarely does a slacker suddenly find inspiration and become a hard worker. I'm sure this isn't news to whoever might be reading this.
But why do we (as members of the hard working croud) care? Assuming a strong ethical standard exists in your management chain, slackers will either be terminated or reassigned to meaningless tasks while you enevitably rise up to the next level of the food chain. So what good does it do you (other than personal frustration over seeing a coworker shirk while you work your tail off) to try to convert those that don't want to be converted? Come on, give up!
On the other hand, hard workers can easily by exploited if the management chain is also a collection of slackers. In this situation they will either be slow to recognize your talent and hard work, or what's worse they'll recognize and exploit it (that's when you get pigeon holed into a task you don't necessarily enjoy or feel passionate about, but are responsible enough to take up the reigns because "it has to be done by someone"). When this happens, *you* (the reader) become the sucker in the situation, and need to find a new job.
Don't let yourself be taken advantage of as a hard worker when all around you are putting their AIM clients on "Always Active" - find a new job. Until you do that you will never be happy.
Hope this helps someone...
Do it for da shorties
15. "They told me at the blood bank this might happen."
14. "This is just a 15 minute power-nap like they raved about in the last time management course you sent me to."
13. "Whew! Guess I left the top off the liquid paper"
12. "I wasn't sleeping! I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm!"
11. "This is one of the seven habits of highly effective people!"
10. "I was testing the keyboard for drool resistance"
9. "Actually I'm doing a "Stress Level Elimination Exercise Plan" (SLEEP) I learned it at the last mandatory seminar you made me attend.
8. "I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to relieve work related stress."
7. "Darn! Why did you interrupt me? I had almost figured out a solution to our biggest problem."
6. "The coffee machine is broken...."
5. "Someone must've put decaf in the wrong pot."
4. "Boy, that cold medicine I took last night just won't wear off!"
3. "Ah, the unique and unpredictable circadian rhythms of the workaholic!"
2. "I wasn't sleeping, I was trying to pick up contact lens without hands."
And the #1 Thing to Say If You Get Caught Sleeping at Your Desk is...
1. "Amen..."
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Bums on Seats.
If 50% of people working from home 50% of the time. (shouldn't be too hard in office land)
You've just reduced the traffic(and pollution) by 25%.
you get an extra 1hr in bed because you don't have to travel, so...
Your employees will be fresher when they are at work.
Working remotely from home is the next logical step in employees rights, calling an employee up at any time of the day or night because you know they can work remotely is the next step in corporate abuse.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.