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Beg, borrow, & steal your way to success
2004.05.23 — Business | Satire | Jobs | by BB Rodriguez
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Office sneak. |
I travel for business all the time and work out of client locations for extended periods. If there's one thing I've learned about working in someone's else's office space, it's how to get what I need. Partly, it's dealing with the office queen. But mostly, it involves a unsanctioned acquisition, by which, I mean stealing.
The office queen
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The first thing you want to do in an office is get to know the office queen. |
The first thing you want to do in an office is get to know the office queen. There's one on every floor, and it's always a woman. Sometimes she's a secretary (or "managing office supervisory assistant" or whatever) and sometimes she's a junior manager, but she's the one making all the equipment allocations, from staples to video projectors.
It's her job to 1) defend the resources in her realm and 2) use those resources against other realms. It is the nature of the office queen that she does not care about the work being done in her realm; she manages the resources used to do the work. As far as she knows, your budget and scope meeting with the steering committee is no more important than Omar's meeting to explore the feasibility of combining two database fields.
Get on her good side by saying how nice the facilities are, how much you're going to enjoy working there, and pumping up the importance of your work. Keep in touch with her from time to time so that you don't go to see her only when you need something. The more the office queen views you as a white knight rather than a pillaging invader, the more likely she is to make it her mission to get you everything you need.
If the office queen can't or won't get you the resource you need, there is another way. It is often simpler, since the office queen often has forms to fill out to authorize the allocation (forms which, it's quite possible, she made up herself and forces everyone to use). This is the unsanctioned acquisition.
The unsanctioned acquisition methodology
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The unsanctioned acquisition is the way to determine whether or not the item is still being used occasionally or if someone considers it their property. |
In the average office, a lot of equipment goes unused. But since it has been allocated already, the office queen may not want to reclaim and reallocate it. The unsanctioned acquisition is the way to determine whether or not the item is still being used occasionally or if someone considers it their property.
Step 1: Move the resource
The unsanctioned acquisition methodology is a multiphase approach that begins with moving the resource. Whether it is a chair, a printer, a white board, a cabinet, or a computer monitor, the first thing to do is move it to a new location not far from its previous location. Don't move it to your workspace. If someone moves it back or complains, you can still plead ignorance.
Step 2: Hide the resource
If the item is not missed after a couple of days, you can advance to phase two: hiding it. Move the item well away from its current location, put it in a cabinet, or stick it in the corner of a conference room. If someone comes looking for it, you can mention seeing it around somewhere, but leading them to it is too suspicious.
Step 3: Keep the resource
If nobody starts a methodical search after a couple of days, then you're home free. Bring the item to your workspace. For extra security, you might work the item into a casual conversation with the office queen. That way, if anyone complains about your acquisition of the item, you can say that the office queen "knows about it." Just dropping her name may assuage the complainer, but be prepared to surrender it anyway. Once you've been working with the resource, most office queens will figure you need one and will try to find a replacement for you.
f e e d b a c k
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