Dear Evil Skippy:
I’ve never won the lottery or married a millionaire, so I need to work for a living. There are days when I just can’t stand my job. It’s not bad enough to quit. It is just a bad mood or temporary burnout or no reason at all. Do you have any tips for turning my mood around on days like that?
– Dave
Dear Dave:
It sounds like time for a practical joke to me. Start with my Ten Commandments of Workplace Pranks and go from there. If you need inspiration, read Five Pranks That Did Not Get Me Fired.
Love always,
Evil Skippy
Readers –what are your favorite ways to brighten up a dreary work day? And what were your best workplace pranks?
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
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Dear Evil Skippy:
I had a heart attack at work a few months ago. I am fully recovered. FULLY. Nonetheless, my supervisor and co-workers are still treating me like a fragile invalid. I’ve told them many times that I don’t need a bunch of mother hens. Talking to them was ineffective – what would Evil Skippy do next?
– Healthy
Dear Healthy:
I’d enjoy the ride. Let them wait on you hand and foot for as long as you can. Maybe they’ll pick up a few lunch tabs, too.
If you’re too nice to take advantage of the low hanging fruit, be bold. First, tell your supervisor and co-workers that their unnecessary hovering, assistance and concern causes stress and that your cardiologist has ordered you to limit stress. Then, the very next time they treat you fragile, clutch your chest, slump to the floor and wheeze, “That did it! You’ve killed me!”
Once or twice ought to fix the problem.
– Evil Skippy
Your co-workers will get the message eventually. It is nice that they are concerned, even though their concern is driving you a little nuts. Keep telling them with kindness to stop and, as ES said, enjoy the perks in the meantime.
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
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Dear Evil Skippy:
Have you ever been afraid at work?
– Just Wondering
10 Times Evil Skippy Has Been Scared At Work
- The time Santa tried to strangle me. As reported previously.
- The time my training room went into lockdown due to a sniper on the loose.
- The day we ran out of diet cola before noon.
- The moment when a trial witness told me – just before she went on the stand to testify at an important trial – that she had multiple personality disorder and might “change personas” while testifying.
- The first time I “broke” the copier. (The next thousand “breakings” were routine.)
- The week of the stalking police officer. Long story.
- Getting food poisoning at a firm retreat and being afraid I’d be murdered for camping out in one of two bathrooms for about two hours.
- My first bomb threat. Receiving, I mean.
- The New Year’s Eve when I accidentally set off the fire alarm sprinklers at a fancy restaurant. It was a case of over-flambéing.
- The day it dawned on me that no one actually cleaned the office refrigerator.
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
Comments? Click the bubble below.
Dear Evil Skippy:
One of my male co-workers sent a text message to me late one night. It turned out to be a photo of his you-know-what. I was horrified and embarrassed. I reported this to my supervisor the next morning and showed him the text (after he insisted. I just wanted to delete it). He said he would take care of the matter.
A few hours later, my supervisor told me that he had counseled my co-worker and assured me nothing like this would happen again. According to my supervisor, the employee in question told him that it was an accident. He’d meant to send the photo to his girlfriend but entered the wrong number. He did not realize he’d made the error until my supervisor told him that I’d complained. The girlfriend and I have similar names and apparently my co-worker did not notice his phone was auto-addressing the text to me instead of to her. My supervisor said he could tell by my co-worker’s reaction that he had not known about the text going to me instead of his girlfriend.
I think my co-worker should be fired. In fact, I think he could be arrested. This is just like a flasher in the park. I have a difficult time looking him in the eye after seeing what I saw. Shouldn’t my supervisor have taken stronger action? I don’t want to work with a pervert.
– Can’t Unsee What I Saw
Dear Can’t Unsee:
Of course you should be mortified and embarrassed. Not because of the text but because you are a grown up and feel the need to write “his you-know-what” instead of whatever it was you saw. Based on the context, I think I know what you mean but how do I know for sure? You might be talking about a selfie of his hallux or popliteal. Slaps to you for mincing words and slaps for missing a great opportunity to accidentally forward the picture to everyone else in the office.
Now you can’t look your co-worker in the eye? Really? So where are you looking? His “you-know-what”? Stop obsessing about his you-know-what and get back to work.
– Evil Skippy
You are correct that co-workers should not send intimate photos of themselves to one another. However, it is no employer’s business whether or not employees engage in sexting on their own time. It’s none of your business either, as long as they leave you out of it.
Your supervisor looked into this – immediately, according to your letter – and counseled your co-worker after determining that he had not sent the message to you on purpose. (I only agree with the counseling if your supervisor was telling the guy to be more careful when addressing messages. It is none of your employer’s business if your co-worker and his girlfriend like to exchange pictures).
Unless there is more to this story and you believe your co-worker deliberately sent a picture of his best friend to you, you really need to move on. If you do suspect that your co-worker is lying and actually intended to send the photo to you, tell your supervisor about your suspicions and why you have them (such as because this employee engaged in unwanted flirting with you in the past or sent photos to other colleagues). If you do not have such suspicions, stop calling anyone a pervert and get over it. It was an accident.
Readers – agree or disagree? How would you have handled this?
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
Comments? Click the bubble below.
Dear Evil Skippy:
Some of my employees have switched to E-cigarettes. It makes the area where they take their smoking breaks more pleasant because there is no longer a toxic cloud hanging at face level, but now I wonder if some of these people are actually using the devices to smoke marijuana. There is not much of a scent so it is hard to tell for sure. Do you know of any way for me to know for certain if these are tobacco or marijuana breaks?
– Supervisor
Dear Supervisor:
There are lots of ways. Ten in fact.
Evil Skippy’s Top Ten Signs That Employees Are Smoking Pot At Work
- The breaks always start at 4:20.
- All the snacks vanish from the vending machine, even the weird ones no one usually buys.
- Giggling.
- Five employees; one smoking device.
- Whenever anyone talks about needing more smoking supplies, you never hear them mention a store. It’s always a “clinic” or “dispensary”.
- The smokers pass eye drops around before returning to work.
- The quiet and shy employees become outgoing and hysterical – especially to themselves.
- Unexplained contentment, often associated with spontaneous face-plant desk naps.
- If you break open a box of Thin Mints, there is a stampede. (This sign is not always reliable. Stone-cold sober people will often stampede for Thin Mints.)
- Sudden interest in the works of Harold and Kumar or Cheech and Chong.
– Evil Skippy
If employees act impaired at work, implement your company’s usual procedure regarding alcohol or drug use. Focus on conduct – not mere suspicions. You have to be attentive to keep the workplace safe, especially if employees are driving or operating heavy machinery as part of their jobs.
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
Comments? Click the bubble below.
Dear Evil Skippy:
I am a high school senior. I am taking a class about business practices and doing a paper about the main ways time is wasted on the job. I’m gathering information by writing to business leaders for their views. My mom works in human resources and she said if anyone knows anything about wasting time, it’s Evil Skippy. So – if you had to pick just one answer, what do you think wastes the most time at work?
– Jason
Dear Jason:
Employees. After that, it’s answering questions from high school students.
– Evil Skippy
P.S. Tell your mom to back off. I’m the one who gets to deliver the funny lines here.
Long-time readers of this blog know that I think workplaces have too many meetings. I can’t think of anything that wastes more time at work than unnecessary meetings (unless it is the employees who are addicted to convening them). Here’s a link to my article Murder the Meeting so you can read all about it and discover some ways to curtail the madness.
In close second place for Time Wasting at Work would be Facebook, Amazon.com and Candy Crush (or whatever is popular today).
Readers – help out a student. What do you think is the biggest waste of time at work? (Don’t say reading ES@W — that’s too obvious.)
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
Comments? Click the bubble below.
Dear Evil Skippy:
My job often involves lunches and dinners at big conferences. They tend to be at better hotels, but it’s still hotel banquet food. The selections can be pretty awful. I’ve found that if I contact the organizers soon enough, they can arrange for me to have a vegetarian entrée that is usually better than the rubber chicken or tough might-be-beef that everyone else gets. (I’m not actually vegetarian – I love a good burger.) My strategy would be perfect except for the other people sitting at my table. Most of the time, some nosey person will ask if I am getting a special meal for religious reasons or health reasons. It seems lame to tell them that I just can’t stand the bad cooking, but I feel awkward when the personal questions are asked. Is there a polite way to say, “None of your business”?
– Picky
Dear Selective:
Did you even read this blog before submitting your question? What makes you think I am an expert on anything related to being polite? Polite and I have never been introduced.
Instead of trying to be polite, focus on being effective. You want to stop the questions. So stop them. When someone asks about your reason for ordering a special vegetarian meal, tell them it’s because you have nightmares about animal screams at the slaughterhouse and can’t get the image of eviscerated chickens out of your mind. If necessary, add that you only eat meat that you have butchered yourself and describe in detail your method for making sausage.
Polite. Sheesh.
– Evil Skippy
While we all deserve some degree of personal privacy, try to be empathetic. Although it is usually considered a breach of etiquette to ask a near-stranger personal questions about religion or diet, you are at a conference table where most if not all of your fellow diners are struggling for something to say to a bunch of people they’ve just met. A few of these people will want to engage with others for networking purposes; others may just be looking for a way to keep light conversation moving along. Suddenly there is something to talk about – a meal unlike any others at the table.
Instead of getting defensive, smile and tell them the same thing you told me when someone asks about your meal: “There’s no special reason. I go to a lot of these dinners and get so tired of the usual offering. Are you enjoying the conference speakers so far?”
I know from personal experiences that today’s advice will work. I hate banquet dinners – sometimes it’s at an event in Seattle and they assume everyone loves salmon. (Hate it. Really.) Sometimes it’s at an event where I know from past experience that they think it’s a good idea to prepare the dinners a week ahead of time and “reheat” them a few hours before the big event. If you don’t act like this is a big deal, it won’t be.
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
Comments? Click the bubble below.
Dear Evil Skippy:
I work at a downtown office and commute to work by bus. One of my co-workers lives near me and uses the same park-and-ride transit center as me. I don’t much care for this co-worker. She is a gossip and stirs up trouble, although she is nice to your face. The other day, as I was getting off the bus at our stop, I noticed that she was sound asleep. I did not wake her up and she missed the stop. She ended up being about fifteen minutes late to work. After our boss counseled her for being late, she complained to him that I let her sleep. Our boss then told me that I was unprofessional and he expected better teamwork from me in the future. What gives him the power to lecture me about something that happened when I was not even at work yet? This seems extreme to me.
– Annoyed
Dear Annoyed:
You’re lucky you don’t work for me. I would have slapped you for being so dumb. All you needed to say was, “She was on the same bus today? I didn’t see her! I hope she wasn’t feeling poorly this morning because of another hangover.”
– Evil Skippy
Did you have an official obligation to help your co-worker? No. It was her responsibility as an adult to get herself to work on time, which includes waking up and getting off the bus. You did, however, act like a jerk for not extending the smallest of courtesies to your napping colleague. I don’t think you should be disciplined for being a jerk on your own time, but I also think it was fine for your boss to express his disappointment to you about your lapse in judgment.
Do you even see the irony of complaining about your co-worker stirring up trouble and then playing a practical joke on her that makes her late for work? I agree with your boss that this reflects poorly on you and your judgment. If it makes you feel any better, I also think your co-worker was a big baby for telling the boss what you did. It was ultimately her responsibility to be on time and it was immature to point blame at you. Hopefully, your boss did not take the weasel and followed through by counseling her about her tardiness when she tried to distract him with a whine about you. (You don’t understand the weasel reference? You must be new to ES@W – here’s what it is all about.)
Readers – what do you think? Should the supervisor have told this employee that she blew it or should he have left it all alone?
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
Comments? Click the bubble below.
Dear Evil Skippy:
How do you keep yourself inspired to do a good job when everything at work is stressful or crazy or just plain boring?
– Burned Out
Dear B.O.:
The fear of unemployment and no health insurance keeps me going every time.
– Evil Skippy
P.S. “B.O.”? Really??
I also love inspirational quotes. Not the sappy ones we see on cheap office art beneath gorgeous nature photos that only exist in the land of Photoshop. Quotes that really mean something. Like these:
Evil Skippy’s Top Ten Quotes About Work
1. Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
– Confucius
2. When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
– Calvin Coolidge
3. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.
–Donald Kendall
4. I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
– Douglas Adams
5. By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
– Robert Frost
6. If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.
– Ogden Nash
7. The harder I work, the luckier I get.
– Samuel Goldwyn
8. I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
– Jerome K. Jerome
9. You’re a supervisor. So supervise.
– Evil Skippy
10. I like to call in sick to work at places where I’ve never held a job. Then when the manager tells me I don’t work there, I tell them I’d like to. But not today, as I’m sick.
– Jarod Kintz
OK readers — what are your favorite quotes about work? Inspire me.
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
Comments? Click the bubble below.
Dear Evil Skippy:
I work with a couple of people who are regularly rude to other staff and cause disruption in the workplace. My boss says that staff should be themselves and while what my coworkers say is awful, it is nothing that is actionable. Is he right? If not, what would you say to convince him to take action?
– Frustrated
Dear Frustrated:
Be themselves? That’s crazy talk. What if the person is an impolite axe murderer? You would have insults and bloody body parts all over the office.
Worse yet – what if the person is a mime? Those people are really annoying.
Your boss sounds like a dolt. To convince him to take action, I’d tell him, “Supervise or get out of the way so we can hire someone who will really do the job.”
– Evil Skippy
Sadly, since you are not the boss, you don’t have the power to threaten this so-called supervisor with termination. There is not much you can say to your own boss other than pointing out the problems in the workplace. You’ve done that and received a very lame response.
The next step is talking to your boss’s manager (first choice) or someone in human resources. Be clear that you are not raising concerns about workplace harassment or discrimination. Provide examples of when the workplace has been disrupted in some way due to the co-workers’ conduct. Focus your comments on the disruptions and the impact of the disruptions. This approach will keep the conversation professional and also avoid making you look like a whiner. (I don’t think you sound like a whiner at all, but if you ambush the manager with a lament of “People are being rude to me!” it could easily sound more whine-active than proactive).
The bottom line here is your boss is neglecting his job with a lame theory of “Everyone Be Yourself!” Instead of being himself, he should try being a Supervisor.
You can find (and “like”) “Evil Skippy at Work” on Facebook and also follow ES on Twitter (@EvilSkippySays).
Evil Skippy and/or Jim are available to speak at your conferences and seminars! For information or to send a question for Evil Skippy to answer, contact us at:
Comments? Click the bubble below.
