Are you a wannabe dictator? If so, I have great news!
Political dictatorship has become inopportune, but ruling the office is totally within reach.
In HOW TO RULE THE WORKPLACE LIKE A BOSS, you will discover how to never learn from your mistakes, crush your employees’ spirits, consistently steal the spotlight and become the boss on the back of your team.
If you think self-development is for pussies and Donald Trump is your model of success, wait no longer and embark on this 43-principle journey to a nadir of convenient double standards and narcissistic denial!
In fact, why don't you start now and read the three principles below?
Principle #1: Thou shan’t ever question yourself
The rule of all rules.
The first commandment.
The alpha and omega of your grandiose sense of self.
Write it down until it sinks in and bathes your subconscious like coconut bath beads. Make it your daily, hourly, minute-ly mantra. Have it tattooed on your genitals! If you are as committed as I am to self-non-development then you will not, under any circumstances, look at yourself in the mirror. In fact, why don’t you put this book down for a second and go unhook all the mirrors in your apartment? I just saved your life. You’re welcome.
Self-awareness is for idiotic, happy-go-lucky wimps--sensitive, whining, vegan hippies with a useless bachelor in Philosophy and an impractical love of humanity. Yuks. First you start acknowledging your feelings; next thing you know you’re talking about your hobbies and life plans on a platonic date; before you know it you’re happily married with a cheeky suburban wife and two healthy children that you drive around in your lexus hybrid. BO-RING. Life is much more fun when you make people around you miserable. And doing so requires discipline, my friend. The discipline to never, ever acknowledge that you might be at fault. Leave lucidity at the door with those worn-out sneakers of yours--they don’t suit you. Everything you do is bathed into a golden halo of perfection; you are an angel descended upon Earth from a superior heaven of beaming gold streams and hand-massaged unicorns.
Look, do you think that my alcoholic, codependent wife and my two fat and insecure kids would make it front page of the--yet to be published--American Pride magazine? Surely not! I would replace them with a borrowed chesty model and two miniature blond-heads for the occasion. But this is beside the point. The point is, in a twisted way some might argue, the more miserable they are, the more they depend on me, and the more they depend on me, the more control I have over them. This is how you make yourself indispensable. Maybe not lovable, granted, but indispensable--that’s all that matters.
This mind-blowing, effective principle is also applicable at work. My office’s turnover is 60% and we’ve had four depressions this year? How’s that related to me? How could it be--and more importantly how could one prove that it is! So you see, there’s no point bothering. I did have this employee once, arguing that I had fired two-thirds of the staff for “dubious reasons” and that management’s complete lack of communication was allowing all the rumors and toxic atmosphere to proliferate… I pouted and asked him, “how can you blame me, when there isn’t a single day that I don’t wonder how unlucky one can be to have that many terrible employees in one office?” Then I fired him. I won’t lie; the fact that I live in a no-labor-law tax haven does help in applying this book’s principles. Something to consider for yourself. Didn’t Einstein or whoever say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting a different result? Well, I’ve been doing the same thing over and over again and guess what? I am not expecting anything different. Everything is great. I am amazing. It’s your genius that is relative, Einstein!
It is not that everything is always going my way and I’m steering through life like a yellow submarine through the Beatles’ lyrics. But when things go south, and they do I’ll reckon, I know whom to blame for it. Others. Others are wrong. Why? Because the alternative is that I might be, and that is unacceptable. I’d much rather project my selfishness and insecurities on them. Okay. Others are not always wrong: there are times when they do not disagree with me, when they do as I expect. Look, it’s unfortunate but the dire truth is that we’re not all born equal. There are the incompetent, stupid, lazy, unreliable, and then there’s me. And maybe you, if you follow the principles of this book closely enough. Yes, good news! There’s hope! Being a dictator has become old-fashioned but ruling the office is totally within reach.
Ah well, who am I kidding, really? That’s all fun, but that’s not the real rationale for committing to self non-development. There may be a deeper incentive. If you’ve lived all this time not looking at yourself in the mirror… what will happen once you do? What will happen once you realize that all the lies and manipulations, the pretenses and the hustle, it’s all been because you were running away from yourself? That you were scared, that YOU are the wimp. That you’ve been in pain for so long but you’ve never understood it because that’s all you’ve ever known? Oh my friend, believe me, this is not a blow our fragile yet grandiose ego could take. Better to leave this one for the next life. Don’t face yourself in the mirror.
And so, because I care about me and you remind me of me, I have designed this powerful, unique list of self non-development principles. Call me the Sun Tzu of the corporate world!
READ ON, MY FRIEND, TOGETHER WE SHALL NEVER GROW--WE SHALL MANAGE WITH OUR ASSES.
Principle #16: Emails are the lightsaber of the skillful manager
Emails, with gusto, use, you shall. And Yoda turned his fat wrinkled head and patted your cheek. You thought it was only acceptable to have to bear the horrendous sight of that little thing from that close because you’d just eaten a whole plate of garlic pasta with enough of the allium to reduce Edward Cullen to a pile of ash.
With a spirit akin to Luke Skywalker bravely sailing the universe to save his Princess Leia, you shall email with verve and email with hidden agendas. Emails are the arena where passive aggressiveness may proliferate and rein, aided by the eternal benefit of the doubt as you may always deny its use through a skilled interjection “What? Oh no, of course I didn’t mean it this way!” “I accidentally CCed top management... Sorry!” Or even better, “Oh please, you are so paranoid! Why do you have to take everything negatively?” As you may have begun to understand by now, accusation is the number one defensive tactic of the seasoned manipulator. When my wife went all flushing and tantrums because I flirted with our hot neighbor at the annual Suburbian Boringness Reunion, I just rolled my eyes, shrugged and interjected a tired “Gosh, you are so paranoid! It’s high time you consulted for your excessive jealousy…” Truth be told, I later had some extramarital intercourse with previously mentioned neighbor, but it really was my wife’s fault for giving me the idea to begin with. How good can life get! Remember my friend: losing starts by acknowledging others’ feelings; always make sure others doubt themselves first, which is a particularly potent method with women who’ve been told that the men know best since they were old enough to poop their Pampers. “You’re so irrational! Are you on your period or something?” is a perfect method for taming my wife whenever she wishes to discuss her “feelings” or something she deems important. How could I go there? Last time I was able to successfully decrypt one of my own feelings was twelve years ago after eating a 72 Oz steak of what I retrospectively understood, tainted meat. The feeling was EXTREME PAIN, by the way.
But back to topic, will you. Each time you write an email, you may start by asking yourself: “How would Darth Vader write this piece of electronic communication exactly?” It will make your days more fun and invariably move you in the right direction. Leave the capitalized words, overuse of exclamation marks and outright aggression to the amateurs, for we’re smarter than that.
I will advocate in favor of a complete disregard for writing conventions. You may write the content of your message in the subject line and leave the body empty, especially if the message is two to four sentences long. You may skip salutations and start directly by a meaty paragraph containing a few sentences with no punctuation or capital letters. Cherry on top of the cake: use vague and ambiguous vocabulary and scrap out unnecessary letters. If the recipient of your email does not spend ten minutes deciphering it you’re not doing a very good job, Darth Vainer!
Below is an example of how to perfect your email communications for effective management.
Do NOT write--
Subject : Analysis of YTD P&L - Explanation of Service entry
Body:
Hello Larry,
Thanks for the good work on our year-to-date P&L.
Looking at slide 6, line 5, the Service box is at $4,500k, which doesn’t make sense to me. I thought Service was only used for Capex accruals, which should then amount to $2.3m. Can you explain the difference?
Thanks
Boss
Instead, write --
Subject: service doesn’t make sense in ytd pnl. please explain why 4.5. is too much.
Body:
(picture a middle finger raising high and proud as the American flag on the moon in 1969)
Or, alternatively, write --
Subject: pnl wrong
Body:
lookg at ytd results u made m surprisd by the numbrs cld u explain y service different pls advse soonish thx
Boss
Remember, communication aims at confusing the enemy. The more confused they are, the smarter you look. Plus, if you wrote something outright foolish, they’ll never be able to prove it. And anyway, of course you are too busy for trivial matters such as punctuation and indentation! Let your subordinates spend time understanding what you want. Revel in all this attention directed toward you.
CCs and BCCs can reveal your best friends, especially in the beginning of your career. You’d be well advised to CC the relevant manager each time you prove a colleague wrong. No need for going to see the colleague in person and discuss the matter together, even if she’s so close you can see her dumbass forehead jutting out above your computer screen. That would be a collaborative attitude, also coined as a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot attitude. If you don’t believe me, believe History. I’m not sure “Collabo” was a compliment in occupied France. Collabos deserved to be tied to a chair in a dark and damp room and fed GMO-free organic straight tahini by the barrel while made to listen to a bunch of stoned hippies discussing how love energy in the universe may or may not be responsible for the creation of ganja. And so do the French. As for BCCs, they are the weapon of choice each time you wish to ridicule someone or demonstrate how stupid they are. They are also a great way of letting some people know how much others dislike them. To be used for extreme cases though.
Another use of email is through programming the time at which they are sent. Of course, as the boss, you want to set an example as to how much time commitment is required of employees. A good way to do that is to end the day by writing a bunch of useless emails and program them to be sent any time between 9pm and 2am. Your employees will either admire your commitment or feel guilty that they’re not as dedicated; in both cases, you win.
Principle #14: Bonuses are not marvels
I am not so keen on distributing bonuses in so far as we’re not talking about mine. Bonuses are supposed to be a motivational tool, but they seem to have the reverse effect. Let me illustrate.
Have you seen X-Men: Apocalypse? Well, I just did and, let me tell you, it was a masterpiece of a Hollywood action-packed superhero movie! I missed the first ten minutes though, so I hope I didn’t miss anything important. In this story, a brave man called En Sabah Nur, with an eccentric sense of fashion yet a perfectly healthy ego, has been taking a quiet nap in a buried chamber in Cairo’s underground since ancient times. The man is minding his own business, not asking for trouble, on this very long nap. But one day a CIA agent (a woman, of course!) inadvertently forgets to shut the hatch leading to the chamber and the sunlight making its way inside wakes him up. Obviously pissed, En Sabah Nur wakes up in a rage and the woman just has enough time to escape his righteous ire. As he strolls through the streets of a 1983 Cairo with the breath of a dead gangrenous rat and with eyes barely able to sustain the brightness of the day, he runs into a female market thief. The lady picks his curiosity when she avoids getting caught by invoking a whirlwind (or was it a big fart?). He follows her with the caution of a stalker, eventually protecting her from the men who were chasing her. After a few much needed arrangements to her fashion style, like a Karl Lagerfeld of doom, En Sabah Nur offers her a job, “I offer you to kiss my ass, shut up for the rest of the movie and conquer the world, all this for free! Well, I offer housing and meals though.”
The market thief obviously accepts the job, especially after En Sabah Nur shows his ability to touch a TV screen and screw up the reception. “The world has gone astray,” he concludes. At this point, we get a hint that he’s not the most optimistic character. But the evident charisma that emanates from his silvery person finishes to convince us that we shouldn’t care too much about his reasoning. He then sets to find three other employees across the world, offering salvation to these lost souls, as well as an opportunity to wear sexy dark clothes. “Come work for me for free, and I shall make you my slave!” he tells each of them, and of course they trot gaily to his side and join him in his purple teleporting bubble.
Meanwhile, in a freak school located in the U.S., a smurf lady with red hair (a woman, of course!) is organizing a rebellion with a few of the students and one professor. Highly disorganized, they get caught by the military who obviously would want to put any empowered woman behind bars, as it just hurts the eyes to see such a spectacle. Or maybe it is just the blue-ness of this non-squeamish lady that is hard to stand. Anyway, eventually our group of under-aged super heroes will make it to Cairo to confront our charismatic leader En Sabah Nur. There, a long battle will ensue but hopefully it seems our silver leader is invincible, until, at the very last minute… What? What? The red-haired lady suddenly awakens the full strength of her powers and in as long as it takes to smash a fly, En Sabah Nur is vanquished.
“NOOOOOO!” I scream in horror in the movie theater, and all heads turn toward me. “My leader! My sun, my glory! How can they kill the good guy??”
My wife yanks at my arm rapidly, “This is NOT the good guy, honey! This is the villain. Now stop making a fuss, you’re embarrassing me.”
As we leave the theater, my wife makes a remark about the red-haired lady who annihilated any hope for humanity when she killed En Sabah Nur: “See, honey! This is why we need women in the workforce!” She laughs at her own joke, but I keep sulking. As soon as we get home, I run to our bedroom and lock myself in to cry tears of sorrow.
Now, you may be wondering what the link to bonuses is. Well, very evidently, when En Sabah Nur offered the job of their lives to his four disciples, did they start asking for salary, perks, benefits and bonuses? No. They didn’t inquire about a bonus because following a great leader was enough reward to begin with. Any extra profit would rightly go to the chief. Now, I understand that one must pay for housing and food, and this is what a salary is for. But apart from that, all the rest is blind generosity from the company. People should be happy to work for you, without asking for financial benefits.
Some advocates of bonuses argue that it is a good motivational tool, as it rewards performance. When I hear such an argument, I usually drop my glass and my jaw simultaneously; sometimes I must even reach fast for a glass to drop. And when even a CEO utters such an argument, I am close to a heart attack. What a lack of self-esteem! Your employees should be happy to give you their best performance without any bonus! The whole idea of “motivational tools” suppose that people are not motivated to begin with… I don’t get it. I’ve always been so motivated! I wake up early in the morning and as I do my aerobics in front of the TV, wearing my bright pink training tights, I repeat to myself, “I’m the boss! Today I will win! I’m the boss! I’m a big winner!” Maybe people just lack a morning routine, I don’t know… Anyway they should work on their psychological problems themselves and not expect the company to deal with their depressive symptoms by giving them bonuses.
We can debate the topic of bonuses as much as you want; I know I’m right. I’ll have to leave you now, dear reader, as I must go and craft my complaint letter to Marvel for the outrageous ending of this otherwise great movie.