Rise and Shine

1. It’s still dark outside when I get up (5 points)
2. The room has a faint hint of dawn’s light when my alarm goes off (3)
3. I am the master of my own schedule (0)

Leisure

1. I try to go to the restroom (even if I don’t need to) more than three times in one hour to pass the time (5)
2. I have occasionally thought about going to the restroom (even if I don’t need to) while at work in order to escape boredom (3)
3. I only use the restroom at scheduled break-times and never even think of taking unscheduled breaks(3)

Climate Control

1. The Mohave desert are probably cooler than my job location (5)
2. I can survive with a tank top or short sleeves (3)
3. I usually wear a light cardigan to fight the chill (1)

Paraphernalia

1. My job requires a sunhat, Gatorade, Windex, pruning shears, tools or other cleaning/maintenance supplies (10)
2. I bring nothing because a monkey could do my job (5)
3. My job requires Critical Thinking skills so I usually just bring a blackberry, laptop, and/ or a pen (0)

Compensation

1. Uncle Sam would pay me more to stay home and watch TV (10)
2. I make less than the national average for my job title ( 5)
3. I am able to live comfortable fulfilling life on my salary (0)

Insurance/ Planning for the Future

1. “I’m probably not contagious”, or “It’ll probably go away” or “Grab the duct tape and aspirin, I hope we don’t have to amputate this time” (25)
2. “Top Ramen and Waffles again, we have to the deductible this month” (10)
3. “Thank goodness I had my insurance card with me, otherwise I might have had to fill out extra paperwork” (0)

Attire

1. My work attire comes with a name tag and rubber soled shoes (5)
2. My work attire is pretty casual (3)
3. My work attire is formal and/or business casual (0)

Food

1. “I thought I had a tic tac in here somewhere, oh well”(10)
2. “Where’s the taco truck?” (3)
3. “Should I have one martini or two?” (0)

Regarding The Boss

1. ” You’re lucky I’m on parole this month” or “Where is my concealed carry permit” or “If I wear sunglasses, maybe he/she won’t know it’s me” (10)
2. “Has he/she ever heard of fa-breeze” (5)
3. “My boss is usually tough but fair” (0)

Internal Fraternization

1. “No means no”, “It’s never as good as the first time”, “I really need this promotion”, “put that camera away” or “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas (25)
2. “Is he/she checking out my junk?” (5)
3. “Maintaining cordial and professional relationships with colleagues is the key to success” (0)

Bonus

• My job requires holding a sign and standing on a sidewalk ( 100 points)

Your Results:

0-15= A+ : You are just too legit to quit, you lucky duck

15-45= C-: Consider quitting, you’re better off selling stuff on eBay or Craigslist

50-100 F : See ya! Go home, and let Uncle Sam spring for the donuts from now on. You don’t have to take it anymore

Over 100 F-: Consider a life of crime( just kidding) , 3 hots and a cot

Fortune Cookie Writer

Image via Wikipedia

This is a great job for all of us aspiring writers. Just thinking we can have some of work actually read by thousands of people. Just imagine sitting at your keyboard whipping off a couple of thousand fortunes a day. What could be better? Maybe the job of stuffing all those fortunes into the cookies?

Hair Boiler

Ahh! The aroma of boiling animal hair filtering into your nose all day long. This job is certainly distinctive, or should I just say stinky. It is an actual job. It calls for the employee to boil animal hair until it curls then they store it for later use. Funny they don’t say what it is ever used for. I keep picturing this warehouse filled with curled hair.

Snake Milker

Image via Wikipedia

This job requires a bit of training to see how to get the venom out of poisonous snakes for the purpose of making anti venoms. While the purpose of the job is a good one, I am not sure that hazard pay is not part of the package deal for this job.

Dog Food Tester

Image via Wikipedia

Scarlet O’Hara would have loved this job as it would have guaranteed that she would never have gone hungry again. This is a real job where a human taste tests various dog foods to make sure it would taste good to man’s best friend.

Forest Fire Lookout

Image via WikipediaDefinitely not a job for a people person. This job consists of sitting in a high tower all alone watching out for signs of forest fires. A few places tried hiring newly married couples for this position but I am not sure that this was such a good idea as all that time alone may have led to this becoming a job for a large family when things heated up a little.

Weed Farmer

No not the kind of weed you get arrest for. This is a farmer that grows the kind of weeds all the other farmers are trying to rid themselves of. I guess they make a fair living growing the weeds which they then sell to different laboratories who want to study them. I wonder if they study these weeds to find more proficient ways of getting rid of them.

Hot Walker

This is the guy or gal who walks horses after they race in order to cool them down. Rather a weird title for a pretty neat sounding job.

Bird Poop Jewelry Maker

Another real job, done by real people. Proving once again that people will buy anything!

It is truly amazing the things people will do to earn a little money. Maybe my job isn’t so bad after all.

It’s Monday morning, and you are again reminded that you are a worker drone. You work in a profession with lots of contact with the general public, so you put on your best-mannered façade. The public can be rude to you, yell at you, and you must be the friendly embodiment of company service. You yourself have virtually no personality, so that you tend to forget by midweek that you are anyone at all. Your boss is the only one entitled to have an opinion or criticism. So, all of those years of critical thinking in college have landed you a job as “the great American working stiff.”

As a working stiff, you are a puppet, more dead than alive. The world holds you intensely accountable. Who are you accountable to? You are accountable to all of the corrupt politicians, lawyers, doctors, corporate executives and the like who pull your strings. The left steals half of your earnings to house and feed crack heads, prison inmates, and the like. The right steals the other half to line their pockets, buy yachts, and build extensions to their homes. You are right in the middle, right between the legs of the beast. That’s it, you are the one getting screwed.

It’s an odd fact that the hardest-working, most patient, and fair people in our society get the shaft more than anyone else. We are nickled and dimed half to death by our puppeteers.

A little bit of color, a dash of personality in our drab lives would be refreshing. Our worlds require something more than just a Dilbert cartoon to adorn our cubicles, something more than a goofy mug in the sink that has unknowingly been spreading influenza throughout the drone empire. We need Picasso to come in and give our bosses three eyes and four ears, in blue. We need Cristo to wrap the whole freakin’ building in purple paisley satin.

Oh, yes. We also would also like the liberty to tell rude people to put it where the sun don’t shine. We’d like the freedom to tell the dolts exactly what we think of them. Without losing our jobs, that is.

And we’d like to see some accountability for our higher-ups. We like the corporate execs and the politicians to join the crack heads in prison. It wouldn’t be no resort prison, neither. It would be a full-fledged correctional facility, where you dare not drop your soap in the shower.

So, you now have some food for thought this evening as you chug down a congested highway back to your starting square. You can curl up onto that nice puffy pillow and dream of cutting the strings. The puppet is free.

This Jewish copywriter lived in New York City when he started his career in advertising. Which is not surprising because New York City is filled with Jews, and Jewish copywriters. Every advertising agency has at least two or more Jewish copywriters and two or more Italian art directors, who usually work with the Jewish copywriters.  I was the exception though; I worked with a Japanese art director. The Japanese hate the Jews more than the Germans do. Or so my Japanese art director told me. She told me this the day we met, and every day she proved it to me.

A lot of the people who work in an advertising agency live there too. When one leaves at 5:00 it usually means it’s a half-day, or they are going to lunch. Advertising is very important to the people who work in it. It is more important to them than their wives or husbands, children or even lovers on the side, all of whom they rarely get to see except on major holidays and the twelve weekends a year they don’t have to work.  People who work in advertising make up 50% of the divorce rate in the Untied States. When a copywriter talks about his or her “baby” they are referring to the detergent commercial they wrote.

Along with copywriters and art directors who “create” the ideas for advertisements, an advertising agency consists of: The chairman of the board–who’s job it is to spend all the money an agency makes on big houses yachts, and a Rolls Royce; the president–whose job it is to spend whatever money is left, on smaller houses, sail boats, and a Mercedes; creative directors–who run the creative department through ulcers, heart attacks, and sometimes even after death (Creative directors are over worked). Producers–who are like jugglers because they must handle the production of TV and radio commercials and have to keep production costs down while keeping agency commissions and production values up; research people–who’s job it is to kill as many great ideas the copywriters and art directors come up with as possible; media directors–who place the advertising that doesn’t die in research, and who have the difficult task of deciding whether to run a 60 second commercial once during the Super Bowl, or a 30 second commercial sixty times during reruns of Gilligan’s Island; traffic people–who handle the production of print advertising, which is called “traffic” because it is a very stagnant job and they are stuck in it; secretaries–who’s job it is to type the copy copywriters write, but who in reality do most of the writing, and everything else for the copywriters; receptionist–who must look like Bo Derek, speak English, and be able to pronounce the name of the agency to qualify for the job; people who work in the mail room–who must have an I.Q. of less then 6 in order to qualify for the job; and of course account services. No one knows what they do.

How you ask is a fast food manager like a police officer. We are always settling disputes. Customers are always arguing that something was wrong with their orders. We than have to calm them down and find that happy medium where all parties can agree.

2nd Occupation: Auctioneer

We all have those timers on that drive thru. You still have to greet the customer. Than ask what kind of sauce, ketchup, etc. that they would like and last but certainly not least wish them a good day and hope they return. For you who are customers reading this now you know why we’re talking so fast you’re not sure what we even said.

3rd Occupation: Nanny

The legal hiring age is 16 years old. Come on now, to make a long story short how many parents feel comfortable living a 16 year old at home to rely on themselves for 4 to 8 hrs. every day? Fast food managers are glorified babysitters! We are always looking to see where they are and what kind of trouble they’re getting into now. I love most of em to death but they can drive you a little crazy.

4th Occupation: Counselor

When you work together every day you soon feel more like family. Thus here comes the arguments and at times the tears. We are always trying to help solve some problem or crisis that someone is having. We listen and console and give the best advice we are capable of handing out.

Fast food is one of the lowest paid professions there is and in my oppinion one of the hardest. We are doing a total of five jobs and in the perfect world would get paid for all five an hour. We all know by now this is not a perfect world. But I would’nt change it for the world. Some of my best friends I’ve met at work and I truly love it when one of my customers tells me to have a great day! So for now all I have left to say is

Welcome to_______ can I take your order?

Always Carry a Document

They say that people carrying out documents as they walk around the office premise looks like they’re into something big — important meetings, conferences, etc. Above it all, carrying loads of stuff as you go home makes the impression that you work longer hours than you do.

Use Computer to Act and Look Busy

Technology is everywhere. Due to it’s abundance, often times, it’s being abused. In fact, in this strategy, using a computer looks like “work” to the casual observer. But the matter of fact is, you’re actually using it when sending and receiving personal e-mails, chatting, surfing non-work-related stuff and building social networks. Warning: when caught by your boss, you can tell him you’re teaching yourself to use new software, thus saving valuable training expenses!

Keep a Messy Desk

Keeping a messy desk makes the impression that there’s too much to do. To the observer, last year’s works looks like the same as today’s work: it’s volume that counts — pile them high and wide!

Screen Incoming Calls with a Voice Mail

People don’t just call because they want to give you something for nothing — they call because they want you to do work for them! If somebody leaves a voice mail message and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour. That way, it looks like you’re hardworking and conscientious, when in fact, you’re being a devious weasel.

Look Impatient and Annoyed

Looking impatient and annoyed always leaves the impression that you’re under pressure and very busy, thus making it look that you’re doing a lot of work.

Leave the Office Late

Guilty of this one? Me too — always leave the office late, especially when the boss is still around. This makes a “good impression” that you’re preparing the stuff you’ll be doing for the next day, when in fact, you’re just making the draft of the article you’ll be submitting to Triond. On your way out, make sure you walk past the boss’ room.

Create Sighing for Effect

Sighing sometimes make the impression that you are under extreme pressure. Extreme pressure equates to loads of work, thus making you look like a very hardworking person.

Stacking Strategy

Stacking a lot of working documents and files around your wokring area, not to mention, thick manuals and books, makes the “good impression” that you’re not just a very hardworking employee, but also the type of employee who gives more that a hundred percent of himself.

Build Your Vocabulary

Read and learn from different sources like computer magazines and pick out all the jargons and what’s new. You can use these words or phrases freely when in conversation with bosses. You don’t have to understand the technicalities of the words, but using them gives you the impression of an intelligent person.

Have Two Jackets

Having two jackets comes along very handy if you work in a big, open office. Always leave a spare jacket draped over the back of your chair — this gives the impression that you are still on the premises. You can then wear the second jacket while swanning around elsewhere.

Believe it or not, but in my past experiences with certian offices, I’ve practiced 7/10 (seven out of ten) of these strategic office skills. How about you?

1. Everyone thinks the world of you. Actually, we’d like to send you to another world.
2. Your breath smells of alcohol, you won’t keep your hands off of me, and you make lewd comments. You should be the poster boy for sexual harassment.
3. Our corporation used to be in the black. Thanks to your hard work and dedication to the destruction of employee morale you have managed to put our company deep into the red.
4. The only person that ought to be laid off in this company is you. A hamster could run this company better than you.
5. Brilliant idea increasing our health premiums by 50%. I’d be careful walking on the shop floor. Your health could be at risk.
6. After twenty years of hard work and personal loyalty, you have decided to give me a day off of work. What will be next? Are you next going to pay me minimum wage?
7. You’re instituting a weight reduction program? Great! You’re going to fire any employee who doesn’t lose twenty pounds in one month? Not so great. I hope that you’re the first one to get canned. After all, they don’t call you Mr. Henry “Fatso” Jenson for nothing.
8. Thank you for instituting the No Smoking policy, the No Personal Email policy, the No Social Conversations policy, the No Eating Food on the Premises policy, and the No Going to the Restroom More than One Time a Day policy. I have a new policy to offer. It’s called the No Listening to the Boss policy. I think it will go over extremely well.
9. Putting two employees in one cubicle should really cut cost and reduce energy. I see that you are having the hottest secretary in the company in your cubicle. I’ll be sure to pass the news on this to your wife.
10. Having five company meetings in four hours is a bit excessive. Listening to your monotone voice is worse. Looking at your boring statistics puts me to sleep. Watching you scratching your baldhead, fidgeting with the pencil, and picking at your nose is abysmal. Finally, telling ethnic jokes and making rude comments is the worst. You have about as much charisma as a dead toad.

First of all, it’s not the cashiers fault everything is so pricey. Trust me; most cashiers aren’t making any money, so the price of things affects them too. You taking your frustrations out on them will only slow your checkout process down. Yes, there are ways the cashier will punish you for your crappy attitude and actions. I’ve listed some basic no-no’s when checking out at the grocery store.

1. Your cashier is not your personal shopper. Their job is to run the register, not go get the groceries you’ve forgotten.
2. The store sets the price, not her. Don’t yell at her because your apples jumped ten cents a pound. If it was up to the cashier, the price would jump 50 cents because you’re being a jerk.
3. Be prepared! Have your store card ready, your debit/credit card swiped and your check partially filled out. Your tardiness is just slowing the process down.
4. Its not the cashiers fault if the item scans wrong. Once again, their job is to ring your groceries, not price everything in the store. Someone else messed up on this one.
5. When the cashier is waiting on someone, please wait your turn. Whatever you need is not important enough to rudely interrupt another person’s transaction because you are impatient.
6. Be patient! Sometimes the stores are busy and you might have to wait in line. The cashier is as frustrated as you because they’ve probably just dealt with three jerks before you.
7. Everyone has a bad day, even the cashier. A mistake is not the end of the world and most can be fixed with a click of a key.
8. Don’t put your money on the belt! The belt will roll and eat your money and then you will be mad. The cashier will want to tell you that you shouldn’t have placed it on the belt in the first place, but will probably hold their tongue.
9. If the store has certain policies the cashier must follow, chill out! The cashier probably thinks the policies are as stupid as you do, but they have no choice but to follow them.
10. Be nice! Treat the cashier as you’d like someone to treat you. After all, you probably haven’t had to wait on hundreds of people with 50% of them being jerks all day.

Follow these basic rules and I’m sure your shopping experience will be a bit brighter. Don’t and I’m sure you’ll be well on your way of getting a reputation at your local grocery store and will be labeled. Nobody will want to wait on you, and if they do they’ll be ready for your jerk attitude. Watch your apples or the price might go up!