Fesh Factor 2.0

After my successful pitch for a column at our internal newsletter, I decided to explore if the world was ready for some of my sick sick articles. The victim was: The Warsaw Insider. A monthly life-style magazine, that's targeted at expat and foreigners living in Warsaw. I approached the editor and she asked me to draft something that is around 600 words! Now, this is longer than my average post, but I went thru my old work and pieced together something ..........and wasn't expecting much. Got a call-back, it will run in November edition!

I give you a sneak peek of the upcoming Fesh Factor article in the Warsaw Insider magazine:

The Fesh Factor

Busytoids

In my 5 years with the Evil Corporation, I’ve seen busy. You know, those weeks when your world is falling apart and you wonder who mysteriously left half of yesterday’s pizza on the porch and you discover the dog in the microwave. But recently I’ve noticed that everyone at the office is busy all the time. And I mean everyone, be it the Global Operations Director or that new hire working on that amazingly-stupid-and-dangerously-brain-cell-reducing project. According to a recent survey, 9 out of 10 corporate employees have answered ‘Yes’ when they were asked: Do you consider yourself busy? Okay, so I made that bit about the survey up. I needed to add some creditability to my article and I was too lazy to look it up online, you got me.

I guess it’s another one of those corporate stereotypes. Overtime, this stereotype got associated with young hot-shots who make it big and skip the ladder and jump on the corporate elevator, they were always busy, right? So more and more of us Homo Corporatuses (Man The Corporate Offices Dweller) are aspiring to that level of busyiness. We consider it a measure of how successful we are, if we are more busy, chances are we are more successful. We chose to be busy, even subconsciously. More importantly we chose to let other people know that we are busy. It’s become a status symbol, like driving a Beemer or wearing a Bottega Veneta.

So at that point you can more or less classify yourself as a busyitoid or a non-busytoid. If you’re a busytoids then excellent, keep up the good work. If you are unfortunate enough to discover that you’re a non-busytoids, now is the right time to panic. Chances are, your boss is thinking to fire you at this very same moment because you’re not acting busy enough at work. But fear no more, I’m here to help transform you into a high performance busyitoid. Here’s my quick 5-point rough guide:

1. Whenever someone is passing you in the corridor and says: Hey, how's everything? always answer: Busy, busy!
2. Don't answer mails on time, and when someone asks you about the mail they sent you, complain for 5 mins about the 700 mails you get daily. They don't know you get 10 messages half of which from people you don’t know offering you different ‘miracle products’ to enlarge your penis.
3. Don't get back to voice mails, you will sound very needy if you answer back, and what are you going to say: I'm returning your call! That's just a reputation killer.
4. Always block your calendar even if you don't have meaningful stuff to do. For example: 9:00-10:00 stare at the screen mindlessly; 10:00-11:00 think about my happy place ...etc. Makes you seem very busy for people wanting to book you.
5. Most importantly, always, always show up late for meetings. Come in with a pill of papers and spend the first 5 mins explaining how today is a "crazy day".

You follow this guide for 4-6 weeks and I promise you that your chances of promotion will at least double!

You should probably also know that a few of us busytoids have realized how much of a joke all of this is, after living this lie for so long. We searched and found our ‘blue pill’ out of this lie. We live in secrecy in the corporate offices, hiding, waiting. It’s easy to spot us though, we’re one of the few remaining people in the corporate offices who when asked: How is everything? We still answer, with a smile: Fine, how about you?

FeshFesh

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