Codes of Conduct

Illustrations by Jason Lee
Avoiding Negatively Impactful Strategic Initiatives
Imperatives regarding total anecdotal veracity may be suspended to avert emergency.
(See item 1.)

In theory, the office is a place where goals are fulfilled and prosperity generated. In practice, as evidenced in the following stories gathered from interviews with office-bound laborers in a range of industries, it’s a fertile breeding ground for threats to livelihood and sanity. And while the obvious response to many of the admittedly extreme situations described below would be to quit as soon as possible (which is something that several of our sources did, in fact, do), the issues raised can help illuminate situations in which resolution is not so easy to find. Read on for advice on how to use common sense, good manners, and the occasional deployment of well-intentioned deceit to make bitchy, passive-aggressive e-mail exchanges a thing of the past.

1. Swimming against the current of a terrible idea.
Problem
“I’d been at an Internet company for about a month, and we were trying to figure out how to draw attention to our booth at a technology conference. Someone suggested we hire dancing midgets on the logic that they were small people and our clients were small businesses. It kind of started out as a joke, but pretty soon someone was getting out their phone, like, ‘I know a guy who can make this happen.’ I got pretty angry because it was just embarrassing and offensive. But everyone told me that maybe the problem was that I couldn’t handle the industry.”

Solution
Even the greenest, most-midget-marketing-ignorant employee has unique expertise in one area: all the places he used to work. With the moral license allowed in the higher pursuit of saving one’s new employers from an unwise idea, it should be possible to craft a cautionary tale of failure that’s relevant enough to the current situation to be convincing, yet vague enough to be kind of true. (“We tried something sort of like this once, but it didn’t really work … ”) Thus what is in reality the recognition of a transparently terrible plan can become, with only minimal dishonesty, flattery directed toward colleagues too savvy to repeat the mistakes of the past.

2. Curing a cubicle headache.
Problem
“We have this loud talker. It’s unbearable. If he’s in the room and he’s talking, you can’t get anything done. We’ve said things, but he just thinks it’s a joke. Now if you want to get someone’s attention, you have to IM them, because everyone bought noise-reduction headphones.”

Solution
Direct confrontation of a cubicle scourge can lead to resentment and retaliatory charges of hypocrisy. Or, as this example indicates, it can lead to nothing at all. To convey the seriousness of the issue without incurring a permanent grudge, consider staging a scene in which you take advantage of the open office plan by aggressively chastising a co-conspirator for his own loudness—making sure the encounter takes place in front of the nemesis and ends with your fellow actor apologizing abjectly for being so insensitive to co-workers.

3. Punishing a psycho boss.
Problem
“I was just starting out and wanted to make a good impression with the president of the bank I was working for, and he starts saying, ‘The problem with Jews is this, the problem with Jews is that, and if Israel only did this,’ all this anti-Semitic stuff. I’m Jewish, and I told him I wasn’t going to sit and listen to those kind of things. I got up to leave and he says, ‘Kid, sit down. I’m just surrounded by yes people, and I wanted to see if you had any balls.’ ”

Solution
When the perpetrator of misbehavior (e.g., strange, possibly anti-Semitic head games) is at the top of the food chain, the rumor mill is a wheel of sweet justice. Spread your story with the clear conscience that comes from knowing it’s the only way to get back at those who’ve achieved immunity through power! (Although, for the record, it should be noted that the consultant who shared the story says he’s been friends with the offending bank president for fifteen years.)

Mitigation of Sonic Seepage
Expect decline in rates of “watercooler conversation” consequent to employment of noise-canceling auditory equipment.
(See item 2.)

4. Giving instructions to idiots.
Problem
“We have an assistant who makes millions of errors at a time. Once she was given a list of things to buy and the list had a typo on it. She said, ‘I have been looking in all the office catalogues and I can’t find anything called a calthaculator.’ Another time she was like, ‘The fax number you gave me didn’t work, so I randomly added a 123 at the beginning and it went through.’ ”

Solution
At least she didn’t buy 123 calthaculators! But seriously, folks. The best way to deal with rank incompetence is to pretend you’re correcting a simple misunderstanding, which will help the transgressor save face while you raise the issue and add some sort of double-checking redundancy system (e.g., personally signing off on every fax cover sheet). Micromanagement is most effectively passed off as mere adherence to the tiresome requirements of faceless management meddlers. “I’m just a functionary in an inefficient bureaucracy” is one of the most eminently believable excuses for any action, no matter how absurd, in office life.

5. Learning about others’ social lives.
Problem
“I worked with a guy who was about 40 years old. He was on a business trip in Africa and brought a male prostitute back to his fancy hotel. Homosexuality was illegal in that country, but he apparently knew the part of the capital to find gay prostitutes. He went skinny-dipping with this guy in the hotel pool in the middle of the night. When he woke up the next morning, all his money was gone.”

Solution
If it’s possible to remove yourself from a situation before someone else realizes you’ve seen him in a compromising position, do so; if you can’t escape, it’s crucial to transition as quickly as possible from instinctive astonishment or laughter to the raised-eyebrow, seen-everything manner of a wry private detective. Sharing one’s own story of foolish debauchery, implying “what’re you gonna do?” equivalence to the immediate situation, might also help. If you must tell someone what you saw, find a Keeper of Workplace Secrets outside the office: a friend who gives enough of a crap to learn the names of all the people you work with, yet is remote enough—ideally based in a different time zone, or if you have a time machine, a different century—that there is very little danger he’ll ever intersect with your professional circle.

6. Getting into the club.
Problem
“A guy can ask any junior guy out to drink, which helps them advance. But no man wants to seem like they’re hitting on someone, so they won’t ask a woman out to lunch alone, or a drink. They don’t form a bond with junior-level women because they don’t see us as little versions of them. I don’t remind them of themselves when they started, so I don’t get that mentorly treatment.”

Solution
To enhance her chances of getting to the top without having to sleep her way up, the enterprising young woman should consider developing an interest in the hobby that reeks of camaraderie, yet is scientifically proved to reduce potency and libido: golf.

The “Cheeto Factor”
Snack-dust deposit triggers Egregious Stupidity Exception to blame-sharing protocols.
(See item 7.)

7. Bringing a deadweight up to speed.
Problem
“Once when I was in school I was in a meeting with a few other summer associates getting an assignment from a more-senior member of the firm. During the meeting, one of the people I was working with on the project ate two bags of Cheetos and covered all the documents in orange Cheetos fingerprints. I think she was mentally unbalanced.”

Solution
Unfortunately, albatross collaborators don’t always oblige your anxiety by having flaws or Cheetos habits so obvious that no one could possibly hold you responsible. If simply doing their job for them and begging to never be assigned to work with them again isn’t feasible, you’ll have to take one for the team—from yourself. Return from a meeting with your supervisor in a conspicuously downbeat mood, and then explain it by grimly—yet collegially—describing how badly you just got chewed out, and what serious trouble you’ll be in if everyone doesn’t start working harder.

8. Owning up to mistakes.
Problem
“I was supposed to put together this huge chart. My immediate boss signed off on three different drafts, but when I pulled together the final draft for the head guy, a notorious asshole, I had written ‘council’ when it should have said ‘counsel.’ He came running out of his office like ‘This org chart is shit! Who did this? Does he know how to spell?’ I had only been there a month, so someone told him my name. And he yelled, ‘His name is Shit!’ So I changed it to ‘counsel.’ ”

Solution
Obviously, the sanest response to someone going nuts because you made a single spelling mistake is to find a new employer, which is what actually happened here. But if no one had ratted out the beleaguered org-chart compiler, and if his boss had been a little less of a loon, it’s possible he could have rectified the situation with a standard two-tiered apology system: a public admission of guilt followed by a not-too-supplicatory e-mail to the wronged party outlining very briefly what should have been done. (“In the future, I will strive to avoid the confusion of homonyms.”) And if Mr. Shit (not his real name) had not in fact been responsible for the error, the most honorable approach would have been to fill in the actual culprit on what happened and leave him the choice of narking on himself.

9. Working with mooks.
Problem
“All my boss talks about is how many girls he fucked in college. And he always says things to his office friends like ‘I wish I didn’t have a girlfriend; I’d totally fuck her’—referring to some girl who just walked by—‘Maybe you should fuck her! But make sure she doesn’t do coke. Girls who do coke have STDs.’ ”

Solution
One non-litigious method of keeping superiors from making crass comments in your presence is to fake a type-A personality. If you come across as all business all the time, offending colleagues will think of you as a nerd not worth including in their banter—no great loss in this case.

Contributors: Ariel Brewster, Jonah Green, Jocelyn Guest, Kai Ma, Paul Tullis, and Rachel Wolff.

Codes of Conduct