My Epiphany

You kills more flies with honey than vinegar.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

I love cliches. Obviously there is also a kernel of truth in them, or they wouldn't have become cliches. Truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of lemonade (unless its pink and has blueberry vodka in it. Haven't tried it? You must) but I know that these are true. However actually practising them...well it feels so much better to be bitter and openly hostile.

Or does it?

I remember, months ago, when John wanted to try and be my life coach (back when he told me that he didn't really want to get to know me because he thought I wasn't a nice person. such a charmer that John) he would say things like "if you pretend that you're happy you will start to feel happy" and "it takes 30 days for something to become a habit".

Well John, you may be onto something.

But I don't think that you intended for me to use these against you.

I guess one could say that I have had an epiphany of sorts. But while some would choose to use their powers for good, I choose evil.

I'm going to mess with their heads and claw my way into favour.

You know how it works. The superiors have blatant favourites, and these chosen few are able to chat all day, pass their work off to others, and generally dick around without consequences. And I want to be that a-hole. I want to check my facebook openly and have no fear of reprimand. I want to chat on the phone, text about weekend plans and know that no one will say anything.

I'm not going to do it by kissing a**. I can't stand that. I'm not going to compliment anyone's hair or clothing choices (unless actually earned- Veronica looked nice today and she has low self esteem, I thought I'd give her a boost), or blow smoke up John's a** ever. Like EVER. I'm not going to work harder, come in earlier or stay later.

No, no. I'm going to get there by playing their game. Because it is a game. And I've been watching. It doesn't look that hard.

You can do it too.

Really.

Step 1. Find your niche. Create a process or a duty that makes you indispensable. If you are the only one that knows how to do it, no one else can fill in for you. Make sure you tell everyone that you're the only one that knows how to do this, that its really challenging and that they should be glad they don't have to do it.

Step 2. Always speak loudly so that everyone knows that you are talking about important work things. It might just be a really normal conversation, but that's OK. Louder is better.

Step 3. Engage in banal conversation with your superiors. Weather is best. Ask them about conferences and weekend plans. Pretend to care. They will warm up to you and wonder why you never talked like this before. Make sure to greet them in the morning and say good bye when they leave (because they always leave first).

Step 4. Inside jokes. Pay attention to what happens around you and when engaged in conversation with any superior, sharpen your wit and create harmless jokes about your co-workers that everyone can appreciate. If said superior begins a joke (rare but not unwelcome) roll with it. Bring it back to a work question if you can. This way they will know that you are always thinking about work (when in fact, you rarely think about work).

Step 5. Always have a list of questions at the ready to ask. Looking at people.com? Quickly minimize and turn around, pre-emptively asking about sending letters to clients, or making a list of reminders- anything to distract from the fact that you were looking at Kim Kardashian's makeunder. This goes along with C.Y.A- Cover Your A** and is probably the single most important part of this ingratiating process. The superiors do it all the time, and now you can too. Make sure to include a smattering of Management-appropriate terminology such as "challenging", "team work" and "owning the process".

Follow these 5 simple and effective steps and you will quickly find yourself in a favoured position, complete with less work and fewer consequences. After one week I'm definitely on my way.

Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend!