ArcaMax

Emily Post won't help you.

The queen of etiquette, circa 1922, had little to say about what to wear in an office. Women, especially, were hopeless cases. "Mood, temper, jealousy ... are the chief flaws of women in business," she wrote. I'm afraid those flaws could also apply to men in business, one or two, anyway.

Of course, Emily Post lived...Read more

You never forget your first resume. The excitement. The anticipation. The lies.

Sure, you were a front-line, business-development representative with bottom-line P&L responsibility, specializing in supply-chain management based on customer-satisfaction metrics. In other words, you were a carhop at Rude Rudy's Burger Babylon.

You never forget...Read more

You really aren't any good at your job, and you're even worse at hiding it. The mistakes you make are going to sink your career and your company. That's why everyone at work hates you.

This isn't my opinion; it's yours.

The words come straight from your "inner critic" -- that persistent interloper who hides inside your brain, criticizing you...Read more

Every office has them: drama queens and drama kings whose highly theatrical soliloquies about their trials and tribulations suggest that they believe, as Shakespeare wrote, "all the office's a stage."

Well, maybe Shakespeare didn't put it exactly like that, but Dr. Cynthia J. Young made the same point in a recent article in Forbes, "How to ...Read more

$24.4 million.

That's how much Meta, the parent company of Facebook, spent to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2024. It's a lot of money, and it raises an uncomfortable question -- how much did your company spend to protect its most valuable employee, y-o-u?

Somewhat less than $24.4 million, I'm guessing.

If you are feeling unprotected and ...Read more

It isn't often that I disagree with The New York Times, but this time, they've gone too far.

It was a recent Work Friend column that raised my hackles (and when my hackles are raised, you need a really tall ladder to get them down.)

The headline, "My Boss Wants to Sleep on my Couch Every Week," describes the dilemma a reader sent to the ...Read more

I have an idea -- instead of waking up every morning feeling fraught and frustrated with your job, you retire. Hang it up. Toddle off into the sunset. Take this job and you-know-what it.

Sounds good, don't it?

No more mean managers. No more conniving co-workers. No more asinine assignments. No more doomed doables. Instead, it's just you, ...Read more

Congratulations! You made it through "Dry January." It was a struggle, but you did it.

Then came "Freedom from Fidgeting February" and "No Mayhem March" and "Avoid Anxiety April." Again, not easy, but well worth the effort. And now comes the most difficult month of all.

"Make No Complaints May"

Considering the many miseries of your job, it ...Read more

Feeling stressed at work?

I don't blame you.

The economy is looking rocky. The entire concept of job security feels like a quaint idea from another century. Your manager gives you too much to do and too little time to do it in. Your chances for getting another job are fading fast.

Yes, you have many reasons for feeling stressed at work, but...Read more

It happens every workday morning. You wake up full of energy and optimism. You leap out of bed and rocket to your workplace. Bursting with vim and vigor, you tackle the projects that stand before you, a hard-driving dynamo from 9 to 5, who does not rest, even for a second, until you have accomplished everything that is expected of you and more...Read more

"Maybe you just aren't fun anymore," a reader wrote to me recently. With all due respect to this reader, are you fun? No, please, are you having it? What is so fun out there, hmm? Is someone having a party full of Nerds Gummy Clusters and total disassociation?

Apparently, the tone around this column space has trended too serious for some people...Read more

CEOs are pounding their desktops. "Back to the office!" they cry. "Back to the office, say I!"

You really can't blame them. To a CEO, an employee is not just someone they pay. An employee is someone they own.

It was COVID-19 that sent employees sliding into home. Not only did remote work keep employees healthier, but it also made them ...Read more

Are you an "outie" or an "innie"?

If that's a question you can't answer, you're not watching "Severance."

The buzzy sci-fi drama on Apple TV+ tells the story of Lumon Industries -- a giant, malevolent corporation where the onboarding of some[ML1] employees includes a special surgical procedure. A company neurosurgeon inserts a chip into the ...Read more