Snakes and Ladders - Times Online - WBLG

Beware of traps laid to lure the MySpace generation

It's the Gen 2.0 equivalent of mouthing off to your boss down the pub. The superficial anonymity of the internet is a well-known stimulant for excessive sharing. But we're not always loose-tongued when it comes to the web - we're far more likely to spill the beans on our misdemeanours when asked about them casually online, rather than in a formal way, BusinessWeek reports.

A health and sanity check

Sitting at your desk from dawn to dusk, breakfast until dinner is a good way to develop a spare tyre around your middle, a deathly pallor and to fall out with your colleagues in IT, BusinessWeek (July 21) reports.

As well as a deluge of calls about printers developing a personality of their own and ignoring commands, tech support are constantly bothered by food-related mishaps. During a typical one-month period, 56 per cent of tech trouble-shooters are called in to clear up at least one messy eater's mess, a US survey has found. Believe it or not but workers regularly complain about keyboards sabotaged by crumbs and crisps inserted into the CD drive.

But my personal favourite is a story from Jon Aumann, a field-agent manager for Geek Squad, a tech-support firm, who once unscrewed a computer tower to find a sandwich with a bite taken out of it. So it's official: work makes people weird. Now, where did I put my lunch?

Scary close-up courtesy of www.cleaningexpert.co.uk

Life's a beach (but only if you book time off)

I'm not sure which is more shocking: the news that one exec in four would rather sweat it out at his or her desk than go on holiday; or, that those who do make a getaway are likely to find room in their bags for Coldplay, Madonna and the Beach Boys. (I know that it's rather fashionable to slate Coldplay these days but that doesn't mean it's wrong.) 

But back to the rather tired business of too many workers failing to claim their full holiday entitlement. A rather unimaginative 34 per cent of those hard at it blame an excessive workload for their failure to rest up and tan according to a survey by the Chartered Management Institute. While you lot are clearly beyond help, I suggest that you try delegation instead. Then in addition to racking up air miles, you can boast about mastering a new skill at your next leadership appraisal.

No one dies wishing he'd spent more time at the office

The sensible, grown-up approach to life suggests that we'll be better off in the future if we spend our present working hard, saving money and choosing salad instead of chips for lunch.

But guess what? We won't be happier, says an article in this month's Harvard Business Review.

Working outside the office

Visit London is encouraging freelancers, creative types and anyone else who'll be in London with a laptop this Thursday or Friday to skip the office in favour of a seat in St James's Park. Sounds nice - nothing but birds, squirrels and a million photo-happy tourists to distract you from your spreadsheet.

On the other hand, every time I've tried to work outside I sneeze like a crazy woman and spend so much time worrying about my laptop getting nicked that I barely notice that the screen is impossible to read in sunlight. Better to sit inside until your work is done then pop down to the park to relax.

Are you normal?

They may give the appearance of being hard at work, but just what is the person at the desk next to you looking at on their computer? Last night's TV reviews? Social networking sites? eBay bids for antique chairs from the latter Georgian period?

One thing that you can be sure to predict is that....you can't predict what they're doing. Because in cyberspace, no one is normal.

Not in Office Life (and some Morris Dancers)

Three cheers for the Armed Forces. They do a really great job, going to places we don't want to go to and doing things we don't want to do. And they might die. They deserve all possible credit. So hooray for Government plans, outlined on this webpage, and all the efforts of Quentin Davies, the MP, who has made it his business to cheer on our servicemen and servicewomen.

The trouble, surely, is that the people who run to lifeboats are heroes too. And firemen, police officers, doctors, nurses, and teachers. If soldiers deserve a special day for public recognition, surely all these other group do as well? We should also appreciate the voluntary workers - mums and dads, neighbours and friends. There are plenty of people working in the private sector who deserve praise for improving the lives of others.

7 reasons for not working from home

Computer programmers don't need to go in to the office to get their jobs done. As long as they have access to the internet (so they can use instant messaging to stay in contact) and plenty of coffee (helps to counteract the effects of a low-fibre diet) they can write away in their strange foreign languages pretty much anywhere.

But there are still reasons to commit to the daily commute. Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of Craigslist, tells Management Today one of them: "Even the most introverted techie likes to have people around to withdraw from." In other words, if you don't come in to work, your colleagues don't know that you're ignoring them.

If you'd like to know more about Buckmaster's approach to management, take a look at Carol's interview and podcast with him here. If you want more reasons not to work from home, keep reading.

'Fess up...they're on to you

Excuses, excuses. Who hasn't told the occasional porkie at work?* A former colleague of mine made it a matter of personal pride to come up with inventive reasons for his habitual lateness. They started out at the safe end of the believability spectrum with - usually plausible - "transport problems". These stopped abruptly after he realised his boss actually took the same train as him - yet miraculously arrived on time.

* In case my editor's reading this - I haven't, honest

Hot chicks with job goggles

A colleague has passed me a booked called 'How to eat like a hot chick'  - yes, it is rather naff and its approach strikes me as a rather irritating marketing ploy to sell yet another book about healthy eating, but it does have some amusing lines. And I guess if it works for some women, then why not?

It also has its own dictionary of buzzwords which includes such things as twitterpated which means "to be giddy and overjoyed and anxious with feelings of love", and OWL syndrome which "stands for overwhelmed with life."

But what's this got to do with management or work? Well in the section on beer goggles - the invisible glasses which you don after a few drinks that make everyone look way hotter than they actually are - there is mention of another kind of goggles, job goggles. Here is what authors Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent have to say on the topic: "We also want to warn you about another kind of goggles: job goggles. If you're bored at work all day, office colleagues slowly start appearing more and more attractive. This has nothing to do with food, but just be aware of it before you start snogging the office boy at your next office Christmas party."

You've been warned. Twitterpating at work will not be tolerated.