On Looking Busy

It pains me to no end that work in my chosen profession could be so goddamn boring. True, there are moments of intensity that can sustain hours of guilt-free chilling, but there also hours where "looking busy" is the name of the game. Here are some ground rules

--Always have a stack of papers at the ready. Shuffling works wonders.

--Keep your email open in a tab. There's always a chance you could be "emailing Pam in LA".

--When all else fails, type numbers into a spreadsheet. Microsoft Exel scares people.

Now, there are things you must never do unless you know, know, that you're alone and will not be bothered:

--Make a paperclip chain.

--Watch movie trailers.

--Talk to yourself.

The good thing is that a lot of bosses have sympathy for the underemployed, and will make great shows of accepting one's ruse:

"Hey, got that spreadsheet, huh? Good job."

"Yeah, no prob. Gotta run these costs!"

Then there's the case of my last boss. A southern caricature who talked and looked like this:



except with tighter jeans and a bigger bald spot. This was a man who did not understand the necessary evil of looking busy and tried to stamp it out with busywork. Tasks ranged from the innocuous like putting gas in his car to the vile, like providing a "European Breakfast" spread of meats and cheeses every morning for people in the office, who never ate it. During production, we spent four hundred dollars a week on food for an office of twenty people. It often wouldn't fit in the kitchen, the meat and cheese would go bad, and we would have to throw it away.

I've been at my new job for two weeks now, and I've done and awful lot of looking busy. But I'd rather make a chainmail vest out paperclips than buy some motherfucker three kinds of brie.