Monday 26 January 2009
Workers finding creative ways to appear busy
But now, when business is very slow indeed and the possibility of layoffs icily real, looking busy is no joke. In retail and real estate, restaurants and law offices, many American workers are working hard to look necessary, even when they don’t have all that much to do.
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Workers finding creative ways to appear busy
By Jan Hoffman
25 January 2009
NEW YORK: To a passer-by, the chic clothing store on Mott Street in Manhattan looked like a tumult of activity. On a recent weekday afternoon, Carolyn Bailey, a supervisor, was fussing with the window displays of women’s clothing, shifting piles of perfectly folded sweaters, spacing hangers a finger-width apart, debating avidly on the phone with a higher-up about coordinating outfits.
Though she appeared occupied, intently so, she was creating an illusion of busyness. The shop was empty.
“You don’t want anyone from corporate to walk in and see you doing nothing,” Bailey said.
In a sunny economy, workers joke about frittering away the hours during seasonal slow times, confident that things will eventually pick up. Looking busy when you’re not in order to fool the boss can be something of an art form.
But now, when business is very slow indeed and the possibility of layoffs icily real, looking busy is no joke. In retail and real estate, restaurants and law offices, many American workers are working hard to look necessary, even when they don’t have all that much to do.
Their concerns are warranted. The country’s unemployment rate is 7.2 percent, more layoffs have been forecast for 2009 and employers have been shrinking workweeks. While staff reductions have left many remaining employees feeling breathless with too much work, at companies where downtime is glaringly obvious, employees are becoming creative about disguising idleness.
A portfolio manager, 30, who works for a private equity firm in New Jersey, scatters papers on his desk. When he skips out for long lunches, he colludes with friends in other offices to call him - and deliberately leaves behind his cellphone, with the ringer’s volume set to high. (Like many workers interviewed for this article, he requested that neither his name nor his company be mentioned, worried that his position would be at risk.)
A lawyer at the New York office of an international firm wanted to give the impression he was working late at night - but he was stymied by office lighting that would dim when he left the room. So he brought in an oscillating fan, which tricked the motion detectors into keeping the lights on long after he’d departed.
Flinging headlong into busywork is another way to seem indispensable. Re-indexing transaction papers. Studying regulations in areas with only a chimerical connection to one’s own. Writing notes to customers to thank them just for coming in to browse.
Of course, employers do tend to notice when busywork doesn’t contribute to the bottom line.
At law firms, which have been jolted almost daily by layoffs, busywork rarely translates into that all-important billable hour. One corporate lawyer, 40, who was a counsel in the Manhattan office of a 950-lawyer national firm, said that when the economy stalled last summer, he spent his days following the Washington news and calling clients in an advisory, nonbillable capacity.
“It was a way to show the client that even though things were slow, I’m still looking out for your best interests so that when things come back, you can turn to us as experts,” said the lawyer, who specialized in structured finance.
Scrounging for work, he called lawyers in the firm’s other practice areas, trying to market himself to pick up hours. Then calls went out to former clients. To old friends from law school. To friends from college. “But they were all looking to save their own skins,” the lawyer said.
His time sheets increasingly read, “professional development.” Earnest, but nonbillable. He volunteered for the firm’s diversity recruiting program. Law firms have an ethical obligation to take on pro bono work, so he explored that, too.
“A lot of partners who were anti-pro bono used to say, ‘If you do that, find another job!’ But they’re the ones who are sitting at their desks, twiddling their thumbs and doing pro bono to keep busy,” the lawyer said. He even read to a class once a week at a public elementary school in the city.
“I was busy not making money,” he said. “But because I was out there trying to do things for the firm that were valuable in a different way, I thought that might be enough.”
Three weeks ago he was laid off.
Certainly one beneficiary of so much downtime is the elusive client. On a recent Wednesday, the matinee lunch crowd at an elegant theater-district restaurant could charitably have been called sparse. But the maître d’ put on her game face. “It’s an opportunity to treat customers like kings and queens,” she said.
Concerned about staff morale during slow stretches, employers have ready lists of housekeeping chores. Richie Notar, managing partner at Nobu Restaurants, who flew around the country this month to rally the troops, remarked, “An idle hand is not good for any employee. It gives the impression that nothing is going on.”
On quiet winter nights, servers fill soy sauce pots and fold paper wrappers for chopsticks.
“It’s like origami,” he said. “It’s soothing and relieves anxiety. It’s a project, and they all smile when they do it.”
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