An Unspoken Social Taboo
Gone are the days of doing “absolutely nothing”, right? Ever noticed this as well? That people always have to look busy when they’re truly not. Happens everywhere all the time now. Only the richest, most content people in the world actually have times when they can be caught unapologetically doing-absolutely-nothing. Today, it’s become like a luxury to have times when we’re doing absolutely nothing. Imagine answering your phone and your friend asks, “What are you up to?” And you answered, “absolutely nothing, I’m not doing a damn thing!” How nice would that be? You may be thinking to yourself “how can I get there?” Well, here’s one great way to start – keep your cellphone in your pocket or out of reach, that’s a great beginning!

I went out of my neighborhood to retrieve a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin. On the way home I saw a young man, probably early 30’s standing curbside in front of his apartment complex waiting for ride or to catch a city bus. This guy obviously had no car but he had a cellphone and that was enough to at least make him look like he was doing something constructive, he looked “busy” as he studied something on the face of his cellphone when I passed by. These days this is the standard, even if you’re not busy and have zero going on in your life by looking for a text or an email advertisement, or some response to what you wrote on social media you can achieve the way this world wants you to look – busy! If you’re not busy then at least look the part?

Be Your Own Boss
I was a salaried guy a few times myself before I began a career as a money manager where everyone basically eats what they kill, so to speak. Still today, anyone working for a financial firm whose job it is to bring in assets and live off of trails/fees from those same assets is not on a salary [unless they’re also tasked with managing the office then that could require being paid some regular salary]. The best thing about managing money for a living is the fact that we were NOT restricted to a salary. Believe it or not, that is nirvana because I made a ton more money over time on my own than I would have made being restricted to a salary and some small annual increases in pay. Not to mention having to deal with management about future raises etc. Instead, I circumvented all that and achieved raises every year from my own efforts. 🙂

The Origin of Looking Busy
A salaried job is where one is trained and learns over time the art of looking busy even when they’re really not. This behavior is going on in every office in the country Monday thru Friday, but especially on Fridays! And believe it or not, looking busy got a whole lot easier with the proliferation of desktop computers in all offices across America. Then all we employees had to do was find out where our bosses or supervisors were at any given time. That information would help us determine their daily habits and when they might be near our desks or offices, which was key information for any employee in any salaried job having to “look busy”. The last thing you want to do when you’re receiving a salary is to be caught “not busy” by your manager, that’s like a major taboo. Let me put it another way, if you’re not busy and need to be assigned new tasks, which happens from time to time, always confront your manager with that news first, never let them come by and find out that you’re just goofing off on company money.

A Word on Suck-Ups
You will find “suck-ups” in every office across America. These are the people that basically prostitute themselves for favors and favoritism from their immediate supervisors within any office environment. We had them at every firm I ever worked for, salaried or fees/commissions mattered not, they were there. I was never one of these people. Usually suck-ups in an office are those employees with less skills and knowledge for the task at hand and this is their way of navigating for survival. Nothing wrong with being on the good side of management but some of these idiots took their games way too far IMO. Understand something, a managing director or supervisor can see these type employees as advocates for their own ambitions so it tends to be sort of a symbiotic relationship, for a time anyway. You have a choice here, you can be an office suck-up and might even receive office favors not available to others but just make certain that everything you do is lawful and above reproach? I know of a couple cases where employees like these committed fraud and ended up serving time in federal prison, so their reign of sucking up to the boss didn’t end too well.

Change is Probably Not in the Cards
Personally I don’t see things changing, salaried employees will still spend time faking it when they’re not busy. I’m not sure it makes much sense because we’re there to work, but I’ve been guilty of it myself in the past, hence this writing. On the other hand, most jobs entail tasks that we would rather not do but still those tasks sometimes land on our desk. People on street corners will still pretend to be busy as long as they’re accompanied by their cellphones or laptops, and people will take private calls in grocery stores and airports where we’re forced to hear them. Look, they’re busy okay? And it’s like the person that looks the busiest in the world wins, or something like that. Part of this is the desire to fit in to a society where everyone else appears to have something going on [constantly] and so we get caught up in the same behavior… I hope you landed on this page and it enabled you to at least “look busy” for what, all of five minutes?