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You May Be
Working Today If…

"Cleaning up the dining area" means shoveling fast food bags out of the back seat of your car.

"Communication" is something your group is having problems with.

"Keeping up with sports" means adding ESPN's homepage to your bookmarks.

A normal week finds you eating both from vending machines and at the most expensive restaurant in town.

Art involves a white board.

As you read this list, you consider forwarding it to your email humor group.

Being sick is defined as "can't walk" or "in hospital."

Board members salaries are higher than all the Third World countries annual budgets combined.

Change is the norm.

Contractors outnumber permanent staff and are more likely to get long-service awards.

Dilbert cartoons hang on every cube.

Every commercial on television has a web-site address at the bottom of the screen.

Every week another brown collection envelope comes round because someone you didn't know is leaving.

Fun is when issues are assigned to someone else.

Interviewees, despite not having the relevant knowledge or experience, terminate the interview when told of the starting salary.

It crosses your mind that your email humor group may have seen this list already, but you can't be bothered to check, so you just hit "Forward" anyway.

It's dark when you drive to and from work, even in the summer.

Nepotism is encouraged.

Salaries of the members of your company's executive board are higher than most Third World countries' annual budgets.

The company logo on your badge is drawn on a Post-It.

The company welcome sign is attached with Velcro.

The concept of using real money, instead of credit or debit to make a purchase, is foreign to you.

The only reason you still recognize your kids is because their photos hang in your cube.

The work experience person gets a brand-new state-of-the-art laptop with all the features, while you have time to eat lunch while yours boots up.

There's no money in the budget for the five permanent staff your department is short of, but they can afford four full-time management consultants advising your boss's boss on strategy.

Vacation is something you roll over to next year or a check you receive in January.

When someone asks what you do for a living, you lie.

When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.

When you make a phone call from home, you accidentally start with a "9" for an outside line.

You ask your friends to "think out of the box" when making plans for Friday night.

You assume any question about whether or not to valet park is purely rhetorical.

You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date and sells for half the price.

You call non-email "snail mail."

You call your son's beeper to let him know it's time to eat. He emails you back from his bedroom, "What's for dinner?"

You chat several times a day with a stranger from South America, but you haven't spoken to your next-door neighbor yet this year.

You check the ingredients on a can of chicken noodle soup to see if it contains echinacea.

You checked your blow-dryer for Y2K compliancy.

You consider free food left over from meetings as a dietary staple.

You consider lunch "a meeting to which you drive."

You consider overnight delivery and interoffice mail painfully slow.

You consider weekends as "those days my spouse makes me stay home."

You didn't give your sweetie a Valentine card, but you posted one for your e-mail buddies on your web page.

You email your work colleague at the desk next, "R U ready 4 lunch?" and he replies, "N 5 min."

You faxed your Christmas list to your parents, but only because they don't have email.

You get all excited when it's Saturday because you can wear sweats to work.

You get really excited about a 2% pay raise.

You haven't played solitaire with a real deck of cards in years.

You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

You hear more jokes via email than in person.

You know exactly how many days you've got left until you retire.

You know the people at the airport hotels better than your next-door neighbors.

You learn about your layoff on CNN.

You lecture the neighborhood kid selling lemonade on ways to improve his process.

You need PowerPoint to explain what you do for a living.

You nodded and smiled throughout this entire list.

You now think of three espressos as getting wasted.

You only have makeup for fluorescent lighting.

You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.

You refer to the tomatoes grown in your garden as "deliverables."

You refer to your dining room table as the flat filing cabinet. (You actually "dine" standing over the kitchen sink or lounging on the sofa.)

You see a good-looking, smart person and you know it must be a visitor.

You sit in a cubicle smaller than your bedroom closet.

You think "progressing an action plan" and "calendarizing a project" are acceptable English phrases.

You think "working a half-day" means leaving at 5 o'clock.

You think Einstein would have been more effective had he put his ideas into a matrix.

You try to enter your password on the microwave.

You wonder if anyone will be left to attend your "going away" party.

You work 200 hours, get a $100 bonus check and jubilantly say, "Oh wow, thanks!"

You're already late on the assignment you just got.

You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.

Your "to do" list includes entries for lunch and bathroom breaks and they're the ones that never seem to get crossed off.

Your biggest fear from your computer crashing is losing your collection of Internet humor.

Your boss's favorite lines begin "When you get a few minutes…" "In your spare time…" "When you're free…" and "I have an opportunity for you…."

Your daughter just bought a CD of all the records your college roommate used to play.

Your daughter sells Girl Scout Cookies via her web site.

Your family of three has 15 phone numbers.

Your grandmother clogs up your inbox with requests for JPEGs of your newborn so she can create a screen saver.

Your grocery list has been on your refrigerator so long that some products on it are no longer manufactured.

Your idea of being organized is multiple-colored Post-Its.

Your pick-up lines now include references to liquid assets and capital gains.

Your primary source of sustenance is free food left over from meetings.

Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not have email addresses.

Your relatives and family describe your job as "works with computers."

Your resume is on a diskette in your pocket.

Your supervisor doesn't have the ability to do your job.