KEYS TO BUSINESS SUCCESS

KEYS TO BUSINESS SUCCESS
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1. Never walk down the hall without a document in your hands. Peoplewith documents in their hands look like hardworking employeesheading for important meetings. People with nothing in their hands looklike they're heading for the cafeteria. People with the newspaper intheir hands look like they're heading for the bathroom. Above all, makesure you carry loads of stuff home with you at night, thus generatingthe false impression that you work longer hours than you do.

2. Use computers to look busy. Any time you use a computer, it lookslike work to the casual observer. You can send and receive personale-mail, calculate your finances and generally have a blast without doinganything remotely related to work. These aren't exactly the societalbenefits that everybody from the computer revolution expected butthey're not bad either. When you get caught by your boss--and you willget caught--your best defense is to claim you're teaching yourself touse the new software, thus saving valuable training dollars. You're nota loafer, you're a self-starter. Offer to show your boss what youlearned. That will make your boss scurry away like a frightenedsalamander.

3. Messy desk. Top management can get away with a clean desk. For therest of us, it looks like you're not working hard enough. Build hugepiles of documents around your workspace. To the observer, last year'swork looks the same as today's work; it's volume that counts. Pile themhigh and wide. If you know somebody is coming to your cubicle, bury thedocument you'll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage forit when he/she arrives.

4. Voice mail. Never answer your phone if you have voice mail. Peopledon't call you just because they want to give you something fornothing--they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That's toway to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail. If somebodyleaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work,respond during lunch hour. That way, you're hardworking andconscientious even though you're being a devious weasel. If youdiligently employ the method of screening incoming calls and thenreturning calls when nobody is there, this will greatly increase theodds that they will give up or look for a solution that doesn't involveyou.

The sweetest voice mail message you can ever hear is "Ignore my lastmessage. I took care of it." If your voice mailbox has a limit onthe number of messages it can hold, make sure you reach that limitfrequently. One way to do that is to never erase any incomingmessages. If that takes too long, send yourself a few messages. Yourcallers will hear a recorded message that says, "Sorry, thismailbox is full"--a sure sign that you are a hardworking employee inhigh demand.