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Paul's Planet
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The Great Office Escape.
By Paul Abercrombie
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Fall is a time to celebrate. Kids head back to school and out of your hair. Holidays are returning and so will old friends and family.
And maybe more important, our appetite for avoiding work becomes as voracious as Rush Limbaugh at a Pfizer convention.
Unfortunately for many of us, summer has gobbled-up our vacation time. Still, we should be able to enjoy some downtime this fall.
That’s why I’d like to offer a few ways of escaping work for mini fall vacations.
A Mere Flesh Wound
Simply play sick or hurt. You can go for run-of-the-mill flu. When a real epidemic rages in your office, you’ll have fine cover. But this is not terribly imaginative. And many companies require corroborating notes from doctors.
Best bet is to fake an acute but hideous injury–the more dramatic and icky, the better. Indeed, why go for a sham head cold (which, let’s face it, is only good for two days off work tops) when you can pretend to have a massive head injury and take off the whole month?
You likely have all you need in your pantry to fake, say, a horrific head trauma caused by a fall from your bike. If not, go buy Ace bandages, cotton balls, red food coloring (Ketchup will do) and dark eye shadow. Fashion a bandage around your head that appears to ooze blood, darken your eyes to an appropriate level of insomniac wretchedness and shamble into work. Drawbacks include possibility that a co-worker or boss will have had medical training enough to see through your charade, and that you’ll smell like a Happy Meal.
Tobacco Road Trip
Take up smoking. No, don’t actually start sucking on cancer sticks. That’s moronic. Rather, pretend to be a smoker.
Think about it. Thanks to smoke-free workplaces, puffers must go outside for at least ten to fifteen minutes every hour while they leave the building to toke. That adds up to a whopping quarter of every working day!
To enjoy this fringe benefit of being a smoker, you’ll first need to buy a pack of cigs to use as a reusable prop. Whenever you’re ready for a break, brandish your smokes and blithely head for the door.
If your boss smokes, even better. You’ve just become the ultimate “team player.”
Biggest drawback: be prepared from time to time to actually inhale one of your stunt butts when your boss invites you to grab a smoke.
Big Fat Liar
Warning: this must be used sparingly, once or twice a year at most.
Bag work for the day. Sleep in; go to the movies; etc. When you return the next day and are asked by an incredulous and incensed boss where you’ve been, pretend you’ve heard an absurd joke, laugh and reply, “You guys are such kidders. You know I was right here all day.” If pressed, ask in a concerned voice if your inquisitor is feeling okay (as in, crazy).
Few people, even bosses, who are suspicious by nature, will imagine you’d so brazenly lie.
Duty Calls
Several days to a week before you’d like to take a day off, tell your boss that you’ve got jury duty. Act displeased. If you decide during your day off that you’d like to extend your mini-vacation, call your boss from a cellphone in the early afternoon and tell him that you’ve been picked for a jury and that you’ve been told that, because it’s a capital case, you’ll likely be sequestered for the duration of the trial. Express greater displeasure.
Note: because you&Mac226;ll be prohibited from talking about the nature of thetrial, you won’t have to come up with a real life case until you return to work. For this reason, you might prefer to say you’re part of asuper-sensitive grand jury.
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(c) Copyright 2006 Tampa Bay Metro Magazine
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