Today being the day after Thanksgiving, and the day I am the only one in the office, I have been filtering through my old emails and came across one I wrote to some girlfriends from college, just after graduation. I was working as an Intern at an advertising agency right when the economy in Rochester started sucking and there wasn’t too many jobs to do. Here’s the email:
Here are some tips on how to waste your day. If they don’t help now, someday they will.
1. Spend about a half an hour first thing checking your email and surfing the internet. You can get away with it because everyone else is still filtering in and checking their mail as well.
2.Go get a drink of water. Spend a lot of time in the kitchen looking for things.
3. Bathroom breaks are a must too. With all that water drinking, you need at least 2 trips a day.
4. Scanning is fun. When given a scanning job, take as much time as you possibly can. Use only one machine and bring a magazine while scanning. You’ll look smart.
5. When given a project, take a long time doing it, not too long though. You could finish it fast and then look on the internet while you are working on it. The time will fly by.
6. Leave for lunch after your boss. That way he won’t know exactly when you left and you can be longer than an hour if you need to.
7. Take another bathroom break. This time go for the farthest bathroom in the building, it will take you longer to get there.
8. When your boss is in meetings or away from his desk, don’t do anything! You don’t want all your precious time spent working when you don’t have to.
9. Try opening large photoshop files and then saving them. That unmistaken loading bar will make anyone who looks at your screen think your working hard. And you can sit there and stare at the screen blankly.
10. Spread out a lot of papers on your desk like you were busy all day. Then go home exactly at 5pm.
Neadless to say, I didn’t have much to do and was “let go” a few months later. I say that in quotes because really they still needed an intern, but couldn’t afford to pay one anymore. But the good news is it prompted my move to Austin, and I haven’t looked back since. Well, except when I don’t have much to do…



