Technology: Workplace Rules and Guidelines

Much has changed in the workplace over the past two decades,  I had an opportunity to give some administrative support to a Corps in North Carolina recently and discovered that nearly a year away from the routine had created a need to reestablish some productive disciplines.

An email from my brother nineteen years ago titled "Technology:  Workplace Rules and Guidelines" is a reminder of the way technology has dramatically affected the way we do business -- no matter what the business is.

Here are some suggestions from that 1997 email.  (Honestly, I cannot figure out the title.  It has little to do with technology, or rules and guidelines!)  You can read the whole document at gotterdammerung.org.

• Put a chair facing a printer, sit there all day and tell people you're waiting for your document.
• Insist that your e-mail address be "zena_goddess_of_fire@companyname.com" (or "thor_god_of_thunder@companyname.com")
• Every time someone asks you to do something, ask them to sign a waiver.
• Make up nicknames for all your coworkers and refer to them only by these names. "That's a good point Sparky." "No I'm sorry I'm going to have to disagree with you there, Chachi."
• Include a piece of your children's artwork as a cover page for all reports that you write. (If you don't have children, draw stick figures yourself.)
• Schedule meetings for 4:14 pm.
• Encourage your colleagues to join you in a little synchronized chair dancing.
• Compose all your e-mail in rhyming couplets.
• Install a set of buttons and lights in the arm of your chair. Talk into your daytimer.
• Put up mosquito netting around your cubicle.
• Decorate your office with pictures of Cindy Brady and Danny Partridge. Try to pass them off as your children.
• Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
• Subscribe your coworkers to those free trade journals. Give them wacky middle names. Example: Bobby "Pud" McNeel.
• Compose all your e-mail in rhyming couplets.