There Are People Who Maintain Clean Email Inboxes, And There Are those Who Don't

And I straight up don't get those people who don't. Just 1,000 things floating around in their work inbox, no sub folders, no email rules, just the wild wild west in your inbox. You have to be a damn psychotic to be able to put up with that mess. There should be studies and TLC reality shows about these nutso's.

Me? I much prefer tumbleweeds blowing in my inbox. I'd say my average day I spend about 40% of the time doing real, actual work, 30% of the time searching for and consuming interesting articles, and the other 30% of the time purging my inbox of anything and everything.

Work related that could mean research before answering? File it, out of sight, out of mind. If it's one of 20 or so corporate wide emails I'll get that day that in all likelihood I'll never need to read? In the trash. An email from my friends about the weekend or fantasy sports? Respond right away and then delete the old message.

I don't know how anyone does it any other way. I need a pack of Tums just to open my inbox Monday morning after a weekend of not checking in. I can't imagine coming in to that mess every single day. It's unfathomable how people function in that manner.

The number one excuse these inbox hoarders give: "well when someone asks for something I don't have to search all over the place, its just in the inbox somewhere." Yea ok pal, you go ahead and search for that needle in the haystack. I'll be the guy just checking through a few appropriately titled sub folders...And yes every once in a while I do run into a situation where I've got someone standing over my shoulder asking if I got their email (HATE this), only to have to sheepishly retrieve their message from my deleted folder ("How'd that get there?"), but I'll take that awkward situation 100 times out of 100 over having a myocardial infarction every time I need to look back for an old email.

My Only Real Goal in Life

A candid inside look at Barstool Sports headquarters...and my ultimate goal in life.

I have to be one of the few people on earth that can look a desk littered with junk and a grown man eating a loaf of bread while surfing the internet who thinks "I want that," who actually make a moderate attempt at it, but just can't make it happen.

This picture literally ruined my afternoon yesterday because I realized the chances of me ever being that old man, eating a baguette in a sea of filth, coffee, and the far reaches of the internet, is the slimmest of slim.

Just destined to a life of fluorescent lights and overhearing annoying co-worker chatter from my depressing cube.

And my day is shot once again. 

Lying On Your Resume: Pretty Sure Everyone Now-A-Days Does It

Are people surprised about this? People lie on their resumes because A)Most people are pathological liars that love having pissing matches with each others resume's. B) They put it on there long ago and forgot all about it, and/or started to believe it. These guys nailed that one down. 

As a piddling middle manager I've gotten to hire my fair share of people, and with that I've reviewed mountains of resumes. One thing 90% of them have in common? Hilarious embellishments. We're hiring mainly entry level people, fresh out of college types, and some of the experiences these kids allegedly had during there 3 month internships is truly astounding. I'm talking ground breaking work, creating new efficiencies that saved their employer millions, implementing whole systems themselves, you name it, they've done it. These kids are accomplishing more in their non-paying internship than your average CEO gets done in a year. Dead serious. 

I have half a mind to start sending these resumes to our board of directors with a note saying something like: "Dear Board - Guys, this one's it! This kid is going to lead this company to new heights. I mean, look at his experience with synnergies and efficiencies at his previous job! Increased productivity for the whole company in just 12 weeks! All this and he's just one year removed from delivering pizza's and working at Target as a cashier. Just extrapolating that rate of growth out over a couple years and I think we're looking at the next Steve Jobs here." 

So does it shock me that this CEO at Yahoo completely fabricated an entire college major that didn't even exist? No, not at all. Probably tossed that on there like 15 years ago, got away with it ever since and didn't think to take it off...I mean, he's up for CEO at Yahoo, he's probably figuring work history is enough. If you want to question anything question why a guy that's like 50 years old still lists education on his resume. Again, he's interviewing for CEO! He's probably got plenty of relevant experience.

A Brief Casual Friday Afternoon Email Exchange

Casual Friday

 From: Let's Call him Borat
To: CW
Date: 01/20/2012 04:09 PM
Subject: Re: Friday

---

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when
you've made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for
the rest of the day.


longest I've made it into a Friday in a while... I once sent that at 830

____________________________________________________
 

From:       CW To:        Borat Date:        01/20/2012 04:11 PM Subject:        Re: Friday

HA, it's so true...usually happens for me right around the time when the hardcore caffeine buzz starts to fade. They let us wear Pats gear again today so this whole day was a struggle.

 ____________________________________________________

 From:      Borat

To:       CW

Date:        01/20/2012 04:18 PM

Subject:        Re:  [I]

---

Same here.. and I forgot haha, I was so hungover this morning I was lucky I could dress myself.. If I get "What, no pats gear?" one more time today I will snap


____________________________________________________

From:        CW

To:        Borat

Date:        01/20/2012 04:22 PM

Subject:        Re:  Friday

---

Forgetting about casual day is the absolute worst...you always look like the one guy who thinks he's better than everyone else.  People are definitely giving you the "what a dick" look behind your back today.

____________________________________________________

Yep...This is my work life

Top 10 Things I Did at Work on Black Friday

CW at about 6 PM Friday

So if you're following me on Twitter (and let's be honest, I know you're not, but you should) you had front row seats as I live Tweeted my way through the official 4th least productive work day of the year (1. Day after Christmas, 2 and 3. first Thursday and Friday of March Madness 4. Black Friday), just a blow by blow stream of tweets detailing a procrastinator at the top of his game...But since most of you aren't following me on Twitter, here's a brief summary of the Top 10 Things I did at Work on Black Friday:

1. Cleared My E-Mail box out - this took all of 10 minutes, it was easily the most "work friendly" task I completed all day.

2. E-mailed the Maestro on the plight of our working conditions and checked up on our daily levels of antipathy towards our respective jobs, good news, all time highs!

3. Twittered...A LOT. - So much so that my battery ran down to empty before lunch. Had to go ask a co-worker if I could borrow his charger just so I could get through the day, made up some story about forgetting to plug in the phone last night and streaming music on Pandora, because lets be honest, you can't just walk around the office telling people you've been working so hard on your twitter game that your phone's battery died at 11:30 AM

4. TGI-Fridays for an extra long lunch consisting of a burger, a couple beers, and a good chunk of the LSU-Arkansas game. I think if my work knew they had the choice of either paying me for overtime, or extended lunches watching college football, they'd probably defer to overtime. But they don't know, and don't have the choice.

those two spikes? Weds and Fri.

5. Checked out my Klout score - My Klout score went through the roof Wednesday and Friday, and I can't help but notice that it directly correlates to my lack of actual productivity at work...I like that if HR ever calls me about the fact that I contributed exactly 0 to the company over those two days, I'll at least have evidence that I really was doing something, it just wasn't an employer friendly something, that's all.

6. The Wikipedia "Random Article" Button - Which was fun for like 45 minutes until it brought me to this: Dyke March. Maybe its time for Wikipedia to get two different random article buttons, one safe for work and one NSFW (note, its ok if you're at work and click it, just don't scroll down beneath the opening shot like I did). Kind of put damper on the Random Article button for me.

7. Watched the Hockey game streaming on NBC.com - My company blocks every streaming service you can think of, somehow all 12 or so males in the office on Friday figured out we could stream the Bruins game live, though...It was a Black Friday Miracle!

8. Regretted those beers from lunch - I spent the hour of 3 PM - 4 PM debating whether I could get away with sleeping under my cube, George Costanza style. Ultimately I decided not to...I was the highest ranking member of my group in the office that day, it just wouldn't set a good precedent...Twitter all day and watching live sports on my computer is one thing, but I draw the line at actually sleeping in the office.

9. Walked Around with an Especially Hurried and Important Gate To Fill Up My Water Bottle - A specialty of mine, I'll just storm out of my cube with a ridiculously serious face on and a walking pace that could only be described as "faking being annoyed and overworked." It's so over the top its obvious, yet somehow it works...as long as my team members see the appearance of me working hard, they'll work harder...Which of course allows me to slack off, because they're doing all the work.

10. Took 5-6 bathroom breaks throughout the day...Just posted up in the handicap stall and browsed Facebook updates of people I haven't talked to since highschool...A large majority of you are freaking nuts, battling the Black Friday crowds...Sure I'm saying this as a guy that was hiding in a bathroom stall playing with my phone, but still.  Also, twice my breaks were interrupted by people just puking their brains out in the stalls next to me. Are people getting shitfaced at family Thanksgiving now? Is that a thing?

Blogging from Home Last Week was Like a Dream Come True

Ahhhh, the home office, such a sweet, sweet memory.  Right now Instead of lounging between my bed or my unnecessarily comfy office chair, I'm baking under fluorescent lights, with nagging co-workers, and a chair from 1998. 

I took two days off last week with no real plans whatsoever (we can't rollover days, and I get so many that I literally can't figure out what to do with them), so I took the opportunity to live out a sort of fantasy camp for myself, the home blogger...And it lived up to my wildest dreams.

 Just so you can get a mental image of what was going down, I pretty much stayed in bed all day, didn't get dressed, just put on sweats and a robe, didn't leave the house, ordered Chinese for lunch (the walk from my room to the door to get the food was the furthest I journeyed from my little lair), I was set up with my wireless keyboard and mouse, hanging on my bed, blogging and monitoring twitter and my e-mail chains on my ginormous 23 inch monitor, and watching the hilarity and hijinks of Michael Scott and the gang on demand, pretty much for two days straight. That's it, that's all I did. I browsed the internet, made some jokes over e-mail, posted a ton of blogs, and watched tv all day. It was everything I've ever wanted. 

Like look at that setup I've got going...anyone that ever tells you that blogging from home is still work is just straight up lying to you. 100%, they're just being a dick. I took a nap with my mouse in one hand and my remote in the other at one point.

When's the last time you did that at work? Never. Exactly. I loved the whole experience so much that I've been racking my brain all weekend to try and figure out how people make real money doing this, like what do I have to do? Do I have to start pimping lorna-doones and snuggies for your feet? Will that work? Is that the key to blogging from home successfully? Taking a break from snarky commentary and fairly obvious observations once in a while to pimp cookies and stuff that you can buy and Bed Bath and Beyond? Because I'll sell my soul for a chance to do this full time at home, I have no problem with it. Seriously, someone help me out here, I need this. I'm not cut out for the real world, I don't like bosses, fluorescent lights, words like "right sizing" and "foster" , and corporate wide e-mails announcing the promotions and title changes for a bunch of secret handshake executives. I do like robes, beds, random internet videos, writing, and advertising money.  Someone help me make this work. Please. 

Sincerely, 

Sobbing gently in my cube today.