5 Things I Have Tried To Get Fired
Tags: Humor, Make Money
As promised yesterday, I decided to make a post of some of the things I have been doing lately to try and get out of this job. The sad thing is, I have failed miserably at it. It is going to take a lot more effort (or lack of) on my part to actually get canned from this position.
So here they are, the 5 things I have been doing to try and get fired:
1. Going in late and leaving early
On a day-to-day basis, I come in approximately 30 – 40 minutes late and just stroll in like I own the place. When I am hungover, I usually walk in a good hour late and look like I am about to die. So far, not one person has ever said anything to me about it so I might as well keep it up.
Also, on a near daily basis, I leave work early. Once in a great while I will actually sit here until 5 PM, but usually I leave around 4:40. Those 20 minutes make the day feel that much shorter. Besides, it’s not like I ever get anything done in those 20 minutes anyway…
2. Taking two hour lunch breaks
For the last 2 months, I have been consistently going home for lunch and cooking. I believe my lunch hour is supposed to be an hour, but I usually take a good 2 hours before I get back to work. I typically leave around noon and get back at 2 pm.
Sometimes I drink a beer or make a margarita while I am at home and just sit out by the pool and enjoy myself. Other times I fall asleep on the couch and realize I have been home for 2 hours and still need to make the drive back.
The longest lunch break I have ever taken was well over 3 hours long and not one person said anything when I got back to work.
3. Sitting on AIM all day
About 4 months ago, I decided to download AIM on to my PC since I was so incredibly bored. Ever since then, I have sat on it the entire time I am here everyday and chat away with all my friends.
My instant message logs usually start at 8:40 when I get here and go throughout the day until I leave. Even when I am on someone elses computer working on something, I remote into my desktop and keep chatting away.
Sometimes I even hide somewhere in the building and sit on different computer and chat. People usually just assume I am fixing something since I am the IT guru of the place. It sure has made my day a tad more enjoyable.
4. Surfing the internet
I have surfed the internet since the first day on the job. It started out with a few websites here and there while I had some downtime. Now, I pretty much use the internet religiously. I check Facebook at least 10 times a day, Myspace a few, and just about every other website you can think of.
I sit on my blog and write these articles and do my best to promote it. Entrecard and Blog Catalog also take up a good majority of my time here at work. In my prime, I was hitting 300 drops a day on Entrecard since I had nothing better to do.
I also balance all of my bills and make sure I pay them online. I figure I would rather spend my time at work doing it then wasting my precious time at home.
At some point, I might as well start downloading porn off the internet. I’m not even sure if anyone would notice or care. If they do monitor my internet usage, it is amazing that I have gotten this far.
5. Scheduling fake meetings in my Outlook calendar
This is the mother of them all. About 2 months ago, I looked at my calendar and realized it was too open. So I have been scheduling fake meetings ever since. I usually name them things like “PC Upgrade”, “New Equipment Setup”, or whatever else I feel like putting in.
That way, when people try to schedule something with me they see that my calendar is busy. Talk about a great way to get out of stupid meetings I could care less about.
What is even better is when people come up to my desk with a technical question. Do you have time to take a look now? Nope, it looks like I have a meeting in 5 minutes so it will have to wait til tomorrow.
~ Bonus ~ 6. Bathroom Stalls
I figured I’d throw in a bonus thing I have done a lot of. Ever since February, I have spent a lot of time just sitting in bathroom stalls amongst the building.
Sometimes I will read a book, other times I will nap. If I don’t feel like doing either of those, I usually text message or write things down in my notepad. The key is to mix it up with different floors so that way no one notices that the same shoes are in the bathroom like 10 times a day.
They might start to wonder…
So there you have it, a few things I have been doing A LOT of lately. I figured it was only a matter of time before I got canned, but nope. It has been over 4 months of this and I have gotten nothing more than positive remarks on my job performance.
It is starting to feel a lot like Office Space, I’ll probably end up getting a promotion soon….
PS. If you have any tips or suggestions on what I should try next, feel free to comment.
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The reality of most corporate jobs in America is that you’re paid to take up time. As long as you consume time and don’t bother anyone it really does not matter if you do or don’t do work. At most big companies, the most valuable part of you is that you’re an expense to them, which offsets their profits and reduces their tax bill. Sad but true.
I did all but #5 and 6 at my last job, even took naps at my desk. Wasn’t my fault, I repeatedly asked for tougher projects and more responsibility since I clearly was able to handle everything they threw at me but in the end the status quo remained.
In fact I almost did get a promotion but my department stopped it from going through because they felt I was such a vital asset to them. That was when I quit. I have much better things to do with my life than sit in a cube and pretend to do work for some corporate entity that in the end serves to make the already rich that much richer while keeping the rest of us pre-occupied with busy work. Corporate America is pretty much a prison developed to keep you from doing real work and making a real difference in the world.
Also, with all the lawsuits against big corporate America for wrongful firings you’re going to have a super-tough time getting fired. Literally, if you wheel a keg in and sit there doing keg stands and smoking cigars you might just get a corner office.
If you’re truly dedicated to getting fired you could mention the company you work for in this blog, though I’d advise against it for fear of getting blacklisted. Steal a corner-office perhaps? Start scheduling meetings with executives where you yell at them? Send out twitter style memos about everything you do all day?
Yeah that is what I hate the most, the fact that you are paid for time. I always fly through projects and finish them in a flash. But then I end up having to sit here and do absolutely nothing but dream of a life outside of this cube.
One of these days, I might just bring in a can of beer and drink it likes its a soda. See if anyone even gives a crap.
Dragging a keg in here sure would be something to blog about, maybe even make a video haha. I might just start inviting friends to come hang out at my desk. Hook up PS2 to my monitor or something.
Its sooooo damn boring, but at least it’s friday and almost noon. Time for that lunch hour drink
Awesome blog you have here. The parallels between you and myself are uncanny. Both Justin’s, both graduated college a year ago, both with a web related degree and both HATE the 9-5 cubicle “lifestyle”. Just trying to make my living on the web and never sit in a cube again. Happy blogging!
try the combo of not bathing and nudity. trust me.
Dude, that’s too funny… I reminds me off the olds days when I actually had a “real” job…
Sounds like you just need to find a job that can challenge you and give you something to do that you actually enjoy. You obviously aren’t cut out for the mundane 9-5 thing. Nothing worse than being bored all day!
Maybe it’s time to try starting your own business!
Just saw this article on another blog about Results Oriented Work Environment at Best Buy. It’s all about they focus on performance and not time, which means you can come in late and leave early or work wherever and whenever you want as long as you get your work done. Might be worth looking into.
That’s some pretty funny stuff! Let me add a couple other things for you to try that actually got me fired
1 – This worked at McDonald’s when I was younger, but it could be effective for you – My manager yelled at me in front of the rest of the burger flippers and the customers. The janitor left the bucket of water in the back. I took the bucket, walked out the back door, around to the drive through window and tossed the entire bucket of water through the window. At the same time she was yelling at me to never come back – I was already taking of my shirt and through that into the drive thru window as well.
2 – I was working for large national laboratory as a billing manager. I have to give brief background here – I was hired from the outside to take this position. There were two people in the organization that had applied and I got the position over them. During the course of time I was there, a new senior billing manager was hired. One of the people that was overlooked previously got to her immediately. All the changes that I implemented that made everything more effective and efficient, this new senior manager asked me to stop doing because this other employee but a bug in her ear about something. I refused to stop doing what I was doing since I was very effective. The senior manager stopped an electronic process that I had designed – which caused a huge paper backlog. She wanted me to manually process this backlog. One day I went in to the data room, grabbed one of the boxes of all the papers that got backlogged and just tossed it in the air letting all the paper get strewn through-out the entire data-entry processing floor. Again – while she was in the process of yelling at me and firing me..I was already on my way to HR to turn in my badge.
Anyway – I think you might be seeing a theme here with me…I like to toss shit around! LOL. It could work for you as well!
#1 Send an email to human resources and CC it to your supervisor[s], the covering insurance company, *and* the president of your company, CEO, and CFO, and COO, with the subject: “Cover my Birth Control Pills” or “Is Prozac under my Insurance?” or “I NEEEEEEED Viagra BAAAAAD” – whichever. [Your gender will not matter since we're going for unstable emotional health but not off the charts.]
#2 Carry around a dry erase board and marker for a week pretending you’ve got laryngitis.
#3 No matter what your supervisor asks of you, respond back, “Do you want fries with that?” Look serious when you ask this. [I was reminded of that one due to BoBo's comment...hehe]
#4 Decorate your cubicle or office with pictures of crucifixes, magazine pages of crucifixes, or real crucifixes. Make signs of the cross with items like pens and paperclips on your desk. Bring in fake doodles of crucifixes. When you doodle, start doodling the cross. [Not Jesus or anything...just the cross.] If anyone asks “What’s going on with that?” Simply say, “That’s a personal endeavor. Will you pray for me?”
#5 Start bringing a thermos to work and carry it with you everywhere. Look secretive as your pour your liquid and drink it. Keep mouthwash visible on your desk or when you get bored, go to the bathroom and gargle mouthwash in front of co-workers.
If I were working in corporate again [I only did it for 9 months - that was all I could handle although my company was great] I’d love to try these just to break up the monotony.
I think a big problem is that our whole corporate culture in this country is based on amount of time working rather than productivity and efficiency. I think saw a survey somewhere that most people spend at least several hours or more a week surfing the internet.
Personally, I spend a huge amount of my work time on the internet. It’s not that I don’t get my work done, I’m just really efficiently. I honestly can do about a weeks worth of work in one day, if I buckle down and focus.
You could probably get away with not even showing up for work at all. You should definitely check out the book, “Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris. It’s right up your alley.
Good post!
-Matt
I love the blog! Hilarious post! I know of two ways that definitely gets one fired… going out to the car to take a few hours nap. and taking off after lunch, to go see a movie.
Yeah, why don’t you try just leaving for the day at your lunch break once a week? You could also search for jobs online while at work, and purposely leave it up on your screen as people walk by or come over to talk to you. Or you could start circling classified ads for jobs in the paper and do this at your desk and then leave the paper on your desk when you leave. Or bring a book about “finding your next career path and read it while at work at your desk. I know you probably don’t want another “job,” but they don’t have to know that. Let me know how it goes!
I just have to say that is awesome, my last job I was tied to the phone for hours at a time teaching burger flippers how to fix computers. I took my 2 week vacation and never showed back up.
I’m surprised that nobody started suspecting you were a drug addict with all of your visits to the bathroom stalls all of the time and being in them for so long, haha.