Why shouldn’t you do the same to them? You should. You should unapologetically bleed them dry for everything they’re worth.
We should normalize the exploitation of employers.
Here’s the badass way to do it.
Run away from promotions as if they’re a deadly virus
The corporate world promotes promotions like junkies promote sharing needles with each other. It’s real bad.
“All you need to love your work is to climb the ladder.”
Bullsh*t. I’ve had those nonsense promotions. You get paid a bee’s d*ck more money to do ten times the work. And you have to enter into these petty little corporate political games. It’s a trap.
“Susan really is a biatch dontcha know. Her department never delivers on time.”
Who cares. It’s not your money anyway.
Instead of taking a promotion, stay in the front-line jobs where it’s easier to go unnoticed and pass responsibility for screw ups onto other random departments. The game is to unashamedly blame.
Create a war zone border around the work you do
If I’d let him, my last boss would’ve had me working Sundays while at church with a laptop on my lap.
The guy couldn’t get enough. He was high on Excel spreadsheets every day. I had to give the poor guy some rules.
- I don’t work weekends.
- I don’t answer the phone outside of business hours.
- I don’t work or care about anything if it’s a public holiday.
- If our IT systems go down at 3 am, I’m not getting up to ring a single customer. IT can do it.
- If you send me an email, I’ll likely not reply as I get hundreds. Call if it’s important.
Now, admittedly, I could do this because I was a high performer and had relationships with senior leaders. To mess with me would have been a death wish on the old man’s career.
Not everyone has the luxury of that much leverage.
But you can build leverage. You can create relationships with people at work in high places. Or get customers to be your raving fans so there will be protests if anyone dares try to fire you. Or you can just become wildly valuable to your employer so you become untouchable.
Business is about value created, not compliance.
If you create value you can set the rules and put up Berlin Wall boundaries.
Don’t be a #leader
Leadership is the kool-aid of the job world.
Screw that. Being a leader means you’ve got to take on extra responsibility that takes away from whatever you want to do outside of work hours. Leadership at work is overrated. It teaches you some decent skills but it also signs you up for a world of pain.
You can end up becoming a mommy to all sorts of adult babies who don’t know what they want in life.
But the #1 reason to avoid extra responsibility is to save time.
Time is the currency of life, not silly little leadership games designed for babies in penguin suits.
Use their time for your personal online business
I’m guilty your honor.
I abused the crap out of my employer in those final years. I wrote online while in meetings. I reconciled my accounting software while at customer presentations. I sent my newsletter out when the CEO came for one of his come-to-Jesus speeches.
My mantra is to cheat on your job with a side hustle, because they’ll cheat on you if they find a better employee. Or they’ll cheat on you come bonus or pay rise time. Or they’ll cheat on you when they hire a new employee to do the same job as you and pay them 30% more.
But the #1 time an employer will cheat on you is when you need them most. When a recession strikes or a pandem!c happens.
What will they do?
What they always do, Pinky — layoffs.
Some guy or gal in HR will create a spreadsheet and whack your name in a box to get fired.
If you’re lucky you might get called to a 1–1 meeting to be told by your boss. During the bat virus of March 2020 you got laid off via a Zoom call.
Now I hear many tech companies are just laying their employees off via email. That’s what it’s got to. That’s how important you are.
I ain’t mad at it. If they’re gonna cheat on you, you may as well beat them at their own game and do it first.
Unapologetically work on your side hustle or online business without giving two-tenths of stuff all. Everyone does it. Why not you?
I even did my supermarket shopping during the workday. But don’t tell my former boss. Okay, actually, you can tell him. We already got a divorce 🙂
Final Thought
Working on your own thing will always make way more profit than working on your employer’s projects.
Most people know this. So invest the time where the maximum profit will come from.
Then, hopefully, one day soon you’ll make more money outside of your job than you do from a salary. That’s the glorious moment when you can quit — or stick around to raise hell.
Cheat on your employer cause they’ll cheat on you.