4:31 PM
Gil Student
And now for something completely different...* Based on my many years in corporate America, or rather corporate New York City, I present my accumulated wisdom in the form of:
Survival Tips in Corporate America
1. Always carry a calculator with you to meetings. People respect your opinion more if you have a calculator and you'd be surprised how often it comes in handy.
2. Take your first few vacation days as personal days. Personal days do not carry over into the next year.
3. When taking the NYC subway, take either the first or last cars (in that order) because they are the emptiest.
4. Be quick to take the blame for everything. People respect that and eventually stop believing that it's your fault.
5. Be flexible about work schedules when you can because of the times when you cannot. Offer to work on legal holidays.
6. Always complain about how much work you have.
7. When you don't have much work, don't be obvious about it. People intellectually know that people do not have constant workflows, but they don't like seeing it.
8. Hoard medium-sized binder clips. There are few more precious commodities in the corporate world.
9. Memorize important numbers. You can be the biggest moron, but if you're the only one in the room who knows the company's revenue for the past five years or how much money the top five clients paid to the firm last year, you will be respected.
10. At the end of the year, when you realize how many sick days you are about to lose, call in sick at the smallest sign of illness. But don't fake being sick because that is probably theft of a day's pay.
* If I may borrow from a commenter, if you understood that reference then you have violated 20 biblical prohibitions, 16 positive biblical commandments and 13 rabbinic prohibitions.
