What not to know and when not to know it

The recession has likely affected you in one of two ways. You’re either in Prey mode, hunkered down at your work station hoping, like a frozen rabbit, that no one sees you. Or, you’re hunkered down at home, living off your unemployment, and fairly certain that no one sees you. This may not work, but it’s not a bad plan.

Or, you’re in Proactive mode, absorbing the responsibilities of 4 laid-off colleagues and trying to figure out a thousand other ways to make yourself indispensable. If you’re home and laid off, you’re doing a similar thing with your multiple resume drafts, trying to jam eight great employees into one human.

Stop it.

Just because there’s a recession on doesn’t mean that all great truths have gone out the window. For example, it is still possible to know too much for your own good. For you Proactive types, here’s a list of things you shouldn’t learn how to do:

• Make coffee. This is harder to justify if you drink coffee, but it can be done. If you wait long enough someone else will make it. If you know how, you’ll be making it all the freaking time. Just don’t.
• Answer the phones. Transfer — wha? Page someone — huh? Stand there looking bemused and stupid long enough and they’ll get someone else to cover. Or did you want this on your resume?
• Understand the worst software. There’s this Acme Amazo 3.7 software that everyone is supposed to work with but no one does because everyone hates it, so instead they’re all making crappy reports and things in Excel and Word and even Adobe Illustrator. Someday, someone’s going to remember why it was vital that you’re all on Amazo 3.7 and throw a major fit. All the amateurs are going to come running .  .  .  to you? Why is this good?
• Be bilingual. NInety-nine percent of the time this is not so useful. Half of one percent of the time, it’s great for directions and restaurants when you’re not with people from work. The other half a percent of the time you will use it in work situations that are neither pleasant or fun (“Steve, tell him he needs to MOVE his CAR away from the LOADING DOCK.” “Steve, ask him if our company is now owned by a GERMAN BANK.” “Steve, offer him the CASH in my PASSPORT.”)
• Use those mechanical skills. Okay, even in the middle of your most psychotic self-improvement episode, you know this one: don’t unjam the copier. Don’t fix the fax. Don’t press someone’s ON button for them, and don’t show them how to use a computer microphone, headset, speaker, modem, flash drive, digital camera, cell phone, keyboard — you get this, deep down, right?

You have enough to do. Put down the nail gun, the vending machine cord, that pan of cookies you’re baking, and pick up the tools you’re supposed to use. For your job or the job you want.

Ruby ^[1] wants to hear how it goes.