I don't like to brag about my many, magnificent accomplishments in the field of workplace studies, but I do believe a Nobel Prize is appropriate for my insights into what has become a major trend in business today -- the big boom in looking busy.
Note to the Nobel committee: I said, "Looking busy." In our down economy, few people out there are "really busy," unless they work in human resources, and can fill their days by stuffing pay envelopes with pink slips. For the rest of us, our work flow is drying up, turning our once-crowded workdays into desolate desert landscapes with nothing to see, or do, in the vast open spaces between coming in late and sneaking out early.
In such arid workplace conditions, the basic genetic instinct for survival triggers the basic genetic instinct to look busy. "I know we've discussed firing Frobisher," is what you want your manager to conclude, "but she must be doing something valuable, because she's so darn busy all the time."
Given the low level of mental acuity in management, fooling the boss into thinking you've got work to do shouldn't take a lot of work. After all, they did buy the story of your latest sales triumph, even when you explained you had taken payment in magic beans.
Still, even the best of bad workers can learn some new tricks. This explains why I was so delighted to see a Page One article in the SundayStyles section of "The New York Times" dedicated to the subject of Working Hard To Look Busy.
"Looking busy when you're not in order to fool the boss can be something of an art form," writes reporter Jan Hoffman. "But now, when business is very slow, and the possibility of layoffs, icily real, looking busy is no joke."
The need to look busy when you're not is a real disadvantage to your co-workers, who have been occupied in years previous with being highly productive. This presents a big opportunity to people like thee and me, who have spent the boom times busily avoiding work, and are now ready to leverage our highly developed slacker abilities.
Consider Hoffman's report of the big-time lawyer who put an oscillating fan next to his desk to trick the motion detector in the office lighting system to believe that a sentient being was moving around in his cube, burning the midnight oil. From Day One, we've been trying to convince management that there was a life force in our cubicles during the daytime hours. Forget the fan. Running a chinchilla farm in your file cabinet not only keeps the lights on but it provides extra income at holiday time.