Abbreviate Your Emails

When sending emails do yourself and your colleagues a favor, keep it brief. Emails are great for communication, but if they become too long it makes you look like either a blowhard or someone who can’t spit it out.


I’m part of the MTV generation and I blame their truncation of videos (you're guilty too, VH1) for my extremely short attention span. Honestly, there are some goldfish that probably have a longer attention span than me. If it takes you more than a few paragraphs to get your point across, pick up the phone, or better still take a walk and deliver the message in person (given this country’s obesity rates, you could probably use the walk).

Use lots of spacing or paragraphs to make it easy on the reader’s eyes, as well. Whenever I get long blocky emails, I tend to glaze over and the point of the email (if there ever was one) is lost.

I’d write more on this subject, but I’m afraid I’d lose you after a few more lines (some of you are already gone).

No Fish for Lunch

One of the quickest ways to make enemies at work is to heat up last night’s fish dinner in the workplace microwave. This is essentially the workplace equivalent of a venereal disease. If people know it’s you, they will avoid you as if you had one. They’ll then go on to mock you and your meal choices behind your back.


I absolutely love seafood, but heating it up in a community microwave is like farting in a priest’s face during communion. It disgusts people and makes them think you’re better suited as a contestant on Fear Factor than working alongside them. Seafood is not normally that offensive, but in a community microwave, it’s like setting up a chum line in the hallway. Do yourself and your coworkers a favor, practice catch and release with your fishy leftovers.

Spare No Expense

As you travel for work you may be tempted (especially these days) to find the best deals and cut your expenses while you are on a business trip. Your efforts may truly be in the best interest of the company, but more often than not doing this will cost you even more money (and provide considerable headaches) in the long run. I’m not condoning blatant abuse of company monies and resources (I’ve seen more than my fair share of company execs do this with glee), but there is certainly a penny wise, pound foolish lesson for you fellow business travelers to follow.


Let’s talk tradeshows. Tradeshows are going to cost you an arm and a leg no matter what. Regulations, unions, and the organizations/associations/foundations for which you are there in the first place all have their hands out. You would be tempted to use alternative shipping, AV, and marketing groups to save a buck or 2 on the whole effort, but these groups are inevitably inferior to the official tradeshow service providers. Delivery of items is invariably late, customer support sucks, and hidden charges pile up fast. What you’re left with is a less than stellar show presence that can cost you customers and even your job. Bite the bullet, know that you’re going to get raped on inordinately high show fees, grin, and bare it.

Parking. When getting where you need to go, park close. Don’t circle round and round to find a more reasonable price for parking. You’ll end up late for your meeting and make a horrible impression (pay the $).

Lunch/Dinner. For God’s sake get a decent meal with whoever you’re meeting. Denny’s is not an option. If the meeting isn’t worth a couple hundred bucks for food, it’s not worth having in the first place.

Marketing Material. Sometimes you may find yourself having to print your own marketing lit on location. The copy-mart bloodsuckers (FedEx Kinkos, Office Max, Staples, etc.) are essentially printing money, and we all know it. The only joy I get from these vultures is watching them completely screw over some pharma rep who is ill prepared for a conference. These bimbos and himbos deserve to be the ones getting ropped for a change. You need these services, you know it, just tell them what you need and bend over. And ALWAYS ask for a proof. If you really want to fuck with them, tell them to do it again a couple times. It’s a small petty victory, but for some of you, it may make you feel a little better.

Remember, you don’t have to party like a rockstar, but frugality has its price (financially and mentally).

Be An Expense Report Retard

For those of you that travel for work, you know what a pain in the ass expense reports can be. Expense reports are kind of like bibliographies. Everyone has a different way of doing them (any of which are perfectly understandable), yet those in charge of these will no doubt bitch that the way you do it is incorrect. If I’ve gone on multiple trips with a multitude of business expenses, I absolutely dread the expense report to come. I’d rather file my taxes than fill that ER out.


My suggestion, is to basically act like a retard towards the accounting group in charge of processing your reports. What this will do is make them think slightly less of you, but at the same time feel sorry for you. They will bitch to themselves and some close colleagues about what a moron you are and how you can’t possibly walk and chew gum at the same time, but after a few trips, they will never confront you about this manufactured character flaw.

Don’t go overboard and try to expense items that may get you in trouble, but simply fill things out completely yet haphazardly. Smile as you hand your ER in, smile and say hi, and be on your way. You don’t want to befriend this person because then she’ll feel she can speak frankly with you about your shortcomings. Don’t be an asshole either, otherwise she will relish handing the report back to you with her required corrections. It’s a balance of pleasance, manufactured stupidity, and curtness, but this balance will offload a great deal of busy work from your plate.

Befriend your IT guy no matter how creepy he may be

It is a well known fact that all IT guys are inherently creepy. They spend way too much of their time in a virtual world without true human contact, and thrive on the power trips they take by applying cumbersome security log-ins and passwords to our computing devices.

Yet no matter how annoying these guys (and they're almost always guys) might be, we need them. We need them desperately. And if you take just a short time to stroke their ego (and only their ego) you'll be paid back in spades. They (like the rest of us) love to be able to hook someone up with additional access or a behind the scenes pass that only they can grant. It gives them worth, value. If you can show them that their help is greatly appreciated, they will adore you. That is, they will adore the privilege they give you.

This in turn will allow you greater access to your workplace essentials, and make you a better performer.

So, when your IT guy says something off-color, uncomfortable, or just down-right strange; Turn a blind eye, and just let him know how important he is. Who knows, he may even name a D&D character after you.