I spend a fair amount of time posting these Worst Jobs in America things but really when you get right down to it, I think I might actually have the worst job in the good ol’ US of A. Selling temps was never something that I really enjoyed even when the economy was firing on all cylinders and now that we’re limping along like the offspring of an unholy Baron Davis-Jason Schmidt union it’s even worse. With a worsening economy comes a more locked-down work environment, which means running tons of extra reports that show where you’re losing ground (everywhere), where you can penetrate more markets (nowhere), what challenges you’re having (emotional, spiritual, mental, physical) and how you might be able to overcome them (lobotomy, lithium). There’s also an added Big Brother factor when times get tough—there are threats of email and internet monitoring so here are BG’s tips for getting away with abusing stuff on company time:
First and foremost, get all your ESPN news and coverage without even going online at work. First thing every morning, cut and paste every single blog update into MS Word and email to yourself with a deliciously deceptive title like “Tuesday Sales Leads” or something horrific like that. I’ve been doing this for the past twelve months with great success. I set my alarm about 5 minutes earlier than I normally would and immediately cut/paste between 25-35 pages of text:everything from Buster Olney to Rob Neyer to the NBA Daily Dime—and don’t forget the ESPN chat transcripts, those are a goldmine, especially Keith Law’s, which routinely go upwards of 15 pages alone (his personal site is great too). I work close enough to my house to where I go home at lunch I’ll repeat the process with all of the new posts and chats during the day. Is it ideal? No, of course not. But is it effective? Yeppers. And for those of you complaining that you can’t spring for the INSIDER account—subscribe to the magazine here for $13 per year and enjoy free INSIDER the whole time.
Podcasts are a piece of cake too—rather than stream them at work, download to your flash drive and then install onto your work station. No bandwidth, nobody knows.
Our third and probably least effective option is the use of a semi-reliable proxy server (thanks to Greenie for that one) which lets you to browse anonymously while removed of your company’s server, allowing access to sites that would otherwise be off limits. The real downside is the inability to sign into anything, but still, if you want some janky yahoo fantasy sports advice it’s there for the taking.
And for those of you with iPhones who think you are sly and nobody notices when you’re checking scores or emailing around, come on—they’re not that subtle. If you’re lucky enough to work for a cool company that encourages new technology that is wonderful and awesome but if you’re a schlub like myself you need all of the tricks you can come by to keep these corporate bozos off your back. Now go make some sales calls.
