Ensight – Jeremy Wright

Notice that this is also in the humour category. I only take this post half seriously. Some nice Friday humour mixed in with some thoughts I’ve been having recently.

7 Surefire Ways to Get Yourself Fired

1. Work hard
2. Make yourself look good
3. Communicate
4. Be a team player
5. Take responsibility
6. Generate ideas
7. Be honest

I’ll have an ironic list of 7 Surefire Ways to Get Yourself Hired in a bit. Here’s the serious stuff:

Work Hard

Nobody likes someone who does their best. Their constantly preening about things they’ve done, telling everyone how something recently got fixed, got better or was installed. It’s far better to keep your head down. Anyone who puts their head up gets it chopped off. The irony, of course, is that you never took the job to work. You took it to get free money, free coffe, free donuts, and a secure place to Google for Blackmail on your coworkers. Why should you work when you’re doing so many other important things?

Make Yourself Look Good

Sure you come into work all nice and tidy on Monday ready to rule the world, looking all spiffy. Your coworkers look like they’ve just come back from a barn party in Moonshine Land. Who do you think they’re gonna take it out on… The boss? Nuh-uh sister, ain’t happening. You be the scapegoat today. The reality is that the worse you look, the less people will look at your work ethic and your performance. Nobody ever got fired for wearing tweed.

Communicate

Knowledge is power. Telling people what you know or what they need to know to work decreases your power. Holding it to yourself means they need to be beholden to you for the smallest things, which means you can get the big things out of them. Big things like extra sprinkles on your donuts.

Be a Team Player

The problem with teams is that nobody gets recognition. Obviously you don’t want it, but in a team environment everyone will get it and everyone will get attention. And what will happen when the tiniest thing goes wrong? Everyone will get the blame (or worse still: you will). It’s far better to work solo, but to not to anything great (see: Make Yourself Look Good) or do anything so important that if it screws up someone will notice. If you can fenangle it, try and make “filling up the coffee” your key responsibility. Actually, no, scratch that. Because if you forget your boss will come down on you. Try and make your job “ensuring operational cohesion between support and foundational structures” (ie: making sure the building doesn’t collapse). Why? Because even if it happens everyone will be so shocked they won’t actually blame you.

Take Responsibility

Stand up, and get knocked down. Volunteer and get your hand chopped off. In fact, the only time you actually want to take responsibility is when someone has done something horribly wrong that couldn’t possibly be your fault. This will simply confuse the issue and it’ll dissolve into useless bickering. Which is the perfect time to run out and grab a donut.

Generate Ideas

You’d think this’d be crystal clear. If you have an idea, you are taking ownership. Ownership means visibility. Visibility means you lose a limb. Come on people! Besides, generating ideas also means you have to think. And if you’re thinking, you aren’t “ensuring operational cohesion…” and all that jazz.

Be Honest

Of course, being honest assumes you’re regularly talking to people. Talking to people means they’ll learn your voice. It will also mean they can say “yeah, I was talking to Timmy and he assured me he’d get that done”. NOT talking to people means you can point out that you’ve never talked to that individual in your life. Thus exonerating you. For good measure you could also accuse your accuser of wearing underwear that’s one size too small. This will buy you time to, at least, grab two donuts.