Those Non-HR Learnings
In a lull (a calm before a possible storm of work), I thought I would compile a list of things I have learned or affirmed this summer that would not make an official list:
- The average commercial (i.e., business-major) employee can approximately double productivity by effectively using Alt+Tab to switch windows.
- Restroom etiquette in office buildings is very elaborate.
- Custom ringtones have simply gotten out of hand.
- Despite the previous item, I have to say I wouldn’t mind to have that “I’m all-right, don’t nobody worry ‘bout me” song from Groundhog Day.
- Sleeping in cubicles is very easy to detect if the sleeping person snores.
- The average coffee-drinking employee will spend more time in a day telling people how they “really need coffee to get going” and, man, they’re “going to have to drink a lot of coffee today because there’s a lot of work I mean, man, yeah, I gotta go get that coffee” than they actually will spend getting coffee and drinking it.
- The average coffee-drinking employee drinks coffee out of habit and a desire for publicity, not a need for caffeine. This will contradict their public statements. It’s golf for people with no time.
- Bad employees always look really busy and stressed, even when they’re not. Worse employees never look busy and stressed, because they’re not doing anything. Good employees will usually appear to have just enough time for whatever you are asking for. Great employees are asking you what you need.
- Even a halfway-skilled arrangement of the words “learnings,” “competencies,” and “buy-in” will have you sounding like a manager in no-time-flat.
- HR and other people obsessed with emulating the “behaviors”/”behaviours” of the successful know this and do it regularly. Therefore, the above is a better test for a pretender than the truly successful. However, the current business environment makes it almost impossible to avoid these terms at times.
- The best test for a successful person in business is that they carry themselves like a badass, because they are a badass. This is not to be confused with arrogance; true badassity can be attained without sacrificing humility. The more polite Texas term for this behavior/behaviour is “swagger.”
- Appearing happy, interested, engaged, and charmingly in-just-over-your-head is probably the best way to win people over, get help, and get a good job done.
- Do the above until you’re a badass. Then just win people over with justified confidence.