“How to get ahead” or “Advantage Player”

Some of you may be wondering what you can do to look like a model employee with minimal effort, so I am putting this little guide together to help you out. This is not complete, of course, so if you have any tips, please let us know!

• Try to find a job where there is a lot of turn over. Managers and supervisors hate turnover, so if you are in a job that has a lot of it and you stay there longer than most of the other employees, they will be very happy with you.

• Try to find a job where they will be hiring more people after you are hired. Being the “new guy” is not enjoyable and you will be in a higher standing with your boss if there are other people who know less about the job than you do. (However, when you are the new guy, make sure you make use of the following phrases on your co-workers {Never your boss}: ‘No, I’m not trained on that’, ‘Sorry, I haven’t learned that task yet’, ‘Could you please help me with my TPS reports, apparently there’s some memo that I didn’t get.’)

• Brownnose. And get good at it. Who cares what the other employees think? You are there for you.

• If your boss is of the opposite sex, especially if your boss is a man and you are a woman, make sure you smile nicely at them every time you see them. You would never want to cross the line to something that could be considered flirting, but charming your boss should be something you do daily. Overuse of manners is definitely encouraged.

• When the boss gives you small tasks, something that they want done by the end of the day, do it right away and hand it to them as soon as possible. They will be impressed that you did it so quickly and still have time for the rest of your work.

• When the boss gives you large tasks and sets a deadline, you don’t have to start these right away. You should break the task down into 2-4 parts which you can space out over the deadline. Let’s say your boss gives you 2 weeks to do a project. First, you need to put it off for at least 3 days to think about it. Then you can work on it for about 2-3 hours in one day. Take a couple days break and then work 2-3 hours on it again. By then, if you still aren’t done with it, you still have 3-4 days left to complete it. You should turn it in 2-3 days early, but never more than 4 days early or the boss will give you shorter deadlines in the future.

• If the boss walks by and catches you looking at a website, you had better make sure that they don’t catch you again that day. A good idea is to have your email or a spreadsheet open behind the browser window so that you can bring that to the front as soon as you hear someone coming.

• Don’t have a clean desk. At the same time, don’t have an overly messy desk. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Your desk should have a bunch of work spread across it, even if it is just papers and looks like work.

• Every once in a while, come up with some “fantastic new idea” for you boss. It could be anything that you don’t already do. You could make a little flip board that says where you are, (lunch, break, copy room, vacation, left for the day, etc) which you can leave on your desk if you away from it. Your boss will be impressed with your ingenuity.

• One way to get ahead with coworkers: When they start complaining about another coworker or boss, you never want to agree with them, but you want them to think you agreed with them. It is kind of a tricky task. You will just need to make sounds, not words; at least not words that say you agree. Example: ‘Wannabe Bimbo told that customer that she needs to fill out form B when they really need forms C and D and need to be changed with accounting. I told her how to do it. She’s so dumb.’ Your response: ‘Hmm, really?’

Three things happened in this situation:
• Your coworker thinks you agreed and are on their side.
• Your coworker ranks you higher than the person they complain about.
• If the boss ever finds out about your coworkers complaints, you can say, ‘Yeah, she came and complained to me all the time, even though I never wanted to be involved.’

Hopefully you have some more tips to help us all out. Let me know!