ArcaMax

You know what they used to say: Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone.

Not today. Today, everybody is crying, and the world is not laughing with you; it's laughing at you.

Who can blame it?

Whether your workplace is a massive corner office or the crowded corner of a wobbly kitchen table, the future looks bleak, and the ...Read more

Just because I drink my kombucha from a Harvard mug while sitting in my Harvard sweats and waving a Harvard pennant, singing "Fair Harvard, we join in thy jubilee throng," people think I went to Harvard.

Can't imagine why.

The truth is that I didn't go to Harvard, but I did do the next best thing: I read an article in the online version of ...Read more

Remember when going to work meant you actually left your house?

Remember when you sat next to someone who wasn't your roommate, your spouse, your child or your doodle?

You tried to work, but it was impossible. You were constantly distracted by endless interruptions and meaningless conversations you simply had to overhear, all amid the ...Read more

Everyone loves virtual meetings, right? When we hear Zoom, our hearts go "Zing!"

Or do they?

Once you've had a few dozen virtual meetings (today!), you know that success in cyberspace exposes you to a new set of challenges.

Consider early morning meetings.

To participate, you have to turn on your computer, which means you have to find your...Read more

Got your invitation. I really wish I could Zoom with you, but (choose one):

A. I've already scheduled a high-level Zoom meeting with Oprah.

B. I've been abducted by Martians, and Martians, as everyone knows, prefer FaceTime.

C. I don't have a computer.

Did any of these lies satisfy you? If not, I've got plenty more. Once you've given up your...Read more

Don't throw your cat.

In video meeting etiquette, that's Rule No. 1.

A Vallejo, California, planning commissioner interrupted a video meeting to "introduce my cat" -- perfectly normal and totally acceptable business behavior. But once said tabby had met the other participants, the planner casually flung his cat off camera. The cat landed ...Read more

Has your job put you in a bad mood?

That's good.

That's right!

When it comes to success in business, and maybe in life, bad is good.

Ask Hugh Grant. The "loveable, floppy-haired prince charming" on screen is so crabby and gloomy off screen that ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley calls him "Grumpelstiltskin." Did Hugh's bad mood keep him from a...Read more

Bad news, bub: Everything you know about working is wrong.

Well, maybe not everything. You still have to suck up to your boss, and it still is something of a positive if your mother is the CEO of the company, but the simple day-to-day, hour-to-hour behavior that was essential to success has changed.

If you doubt me, ask William Arruda.

Arruda...Read more

What do experienced work-at-homers know that you don't know?

It can make you crazy. It can also make you fired.

It's true!

There are advantages to working from home. The hours you used to spend sitting in traffic will become a distant memory when your daily commute consists of making your way from your desk to your refrigerator and back again...Read more

It's easy to count the joys of working from home. The calculation becomes more difficult when it comes to the joys of vacationing at home.

Personally, I count only one: You're not working. But for slackers like thee and me -- workforce warriors born with superpowers that allow us to appear like we are working and get paid like we are working ...Read more

You probably don't have all the vacation time you would like, but you definitely look forward to the number of days you have.

It's an accomplishment, really. Getting your managers to let you take time off takes a lot of hard work. It also requires engaging in some tense negotiations with your implacable workplace enemy, the HR department, but ...Read more

If there's one part of working that you have mastered, it's the valuable technique of not working.

Anybody can go to a job and be productive. It takes a very special person to go to a job and be invisible.

Yet, invisibility is what you need if you want to make the most money possible doing the least possible amount of work. To accomplish ...Read more

Our sermon for today concerns a workplace problem that everyone has, except me.

Everybody is dying to read what I write at work. Take you, for example. But what you write -- an insightful memo, an urgent email, a game-changing report -- nobody wants to read.

Or so says Aaron Orendorff.

Orendorff is the author of "Your Colleagues Don't Read ...Read more