Professor Adam's How To Guide: Episode 322: Surviving your job / your job at IBM

Hello, class. How are we today? Billy, get that goddamn pencil out of your mouth. Today, class, we are going to talk about how to survive in a stifling corporate environment, such as my work area at IBM. Everything from survival tips (literally) to staring techniques will be covered in my powerpoint presentation.

Item 1: How to not lose your fucking mind: Bring in some type of music to listen to. I don't care if it's your own mp3 player or just a little cd player / clock radio/ toaster oven / dictaphone or whatever, but it will keep you sane. Sanity is very important at the workplace, especially the 283rd time your bosnian coworker plays her CD with the singer going "naaaa-ahahaha----aaaaa" for about an hour. I respect and get along great with my bosnian coworkers, but holy shit, their music is awful. It makes me want to....well, you know. The only thing worse than incomprehensible bosnian music is the KROC effect; a "popular music" station playing the same 12 songs all goddamn day. Do you have any idea how many times, I, personally, have heard the song "Hips Don't Lie" ? Several. At this point it's all I can do to come up with "reject titles" for the songs, like "Elbows, on the other hand, have been known to exaggerate, if not tell outright lies." You, meanwhile, can be rocking out to your Van Halen or Van Helsing or von Beethoven.

Item 2: How to shoot the shit. Step 1: Make sure your shotgun is loaded, and "draw a bead" in your mind on the shit. Next, ....oh wait. Shit-shooting is easy at any workplace, but especially at IBM. The reason is simple: no one has anything to do. Even if they (remarkably) have shit to do, they will gladly postpone the doing of their shit just to shoot the shit with you. Feel free to bullshit about sports, news, gas, whatever.
Item 2a: How to avoid shooting the shit. God, this gets tedious. You may think it's better than working, but ask yourself this: Which is better, rocking out in your mind to some AC/DC while you mindlessly push shit around, or having to commiserate with Senor Big Shot about how it now costs him seventy dollars to fill up his Escalade, instead of the usual thirty-five? I am so sick of the gas price discussion. Hey jerks, it's 30 dollars more every two weeks. It's not going to bankrupt you.

Item 3: Proper internet browsing techniques / etiquette

When browsing the internet at your workplace, you want to maintain an air of business, if not outright frustration. The key to this is facial expression. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you want to be able to read The Onion, news, comics, or whatever it is you sick bastards like to read, you need to adopt a facial expression that conveys this to the viewer: "I just got a whiff of some horribly rotting food," or, "The pain in my stomach is fast approaching the unbearable level," or, "It feels like a rabid wolverine is clawing at my kidneys." If these aren't working for you, try to imagine the look on your face when you get the Blue Screen of Death on your machine. There we go. You also want to move the mouse and click a lot. No mouse movement means you are probably reading something and not doing work. Also, no matter how funny something is, do not laugh. Laughter, while healthy, is your mortal enemy at the workplace, and is sure to draw the attention of your boss. To a boss, laugher can mean one of two things. 1: The employee is goofing around on the job. Action needed: much much much work should be given to this employee, so he doesn't feel like he has any company time to laugh.
2: The employee has finally learned to enjoy his job, which means he is clinically insane, and I need to call the Big Men with White Coats right away. Johnson, get me that goddamn telephone. I don't care if you're on it! I don't care if your wife is delivering your first born! Congratulations, Johnson. Give me the fucking phone, please.

Item 4: How to take a 90-minute lunch break. The key here is to wait until just after everyone else leaves for lunch. That way you can tell your suspicious boss that you, in actuality, only left a few moments before everyone else got back from lunch, and thus you are only a little over your allotted time for lunch. This method also works for turning 15 minute breaks into 30 minute ones.

Item 5: How to fantasize about getting fired
Getting fired sucks, right? Actually, in today's workforce, getting fired is a rarity. The corporate machine that is your company would have to do a lot of paperwork to fire you. Plus, they already know that you (at least pretend with me here) are a loyal, (kinda) hardworking employee, that is, most importantly, NOT a serial killer. So, you need to fantasize about all the different things you could do to get fired.
Fantasy 1: The Tour Group. The Tour Group comes through my company about once every two weeks or so. Sometimes it's all Japanese businessmen, sometimes it's a random assortment of businessmen from all countries. The tour group is curious about IBM, the products we make, and how we make said products. Try to be as conspicuous as possible here. Loud, rude, etc. But, if you truly want to get fired, simply do this: go outside and run, as fast as you can, around the building once. (This should take at least 10 minutes, IBM is big.) Next, go up to the tour group leader. You want to interrupt whatever it is he's saying. Panting, and out of breath, say, "Hey, we uh...we finished whipping the slaves now, so, uhh, what should we do with them?"

Fantasy 2: The mad lib fantasy. Take your _____ (noun) and place it into your coworkers' _______( noun). Then, when he is distracted by the ______(noise), ______(verb) your ID badge into his ________(noun). Wait for several weeks for the smell to build up, and then say that you are ________(adjective) disappointed with him, in the area of personal hygiene specifically. When he is confused, point to the ________(office noun) and say, "that didn't used to smell like ________(descriptive noun)." If he acts confused, ask him if he likes ______(fruit or vegetable.) When he is still confused, ______(verb) him in his _______(body part), and ask him if he likes THEM ______(same fruit or vegetable.)

Feel free to post / comment your own mad-libbed firing fantasy. That is all.

"When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." ~ George Carlin