The Thing About Work: Showing Up and Other Important Matters [A Worker's Manual]

by Richard A. Moran

Overview

• Why does a CEO who has already made hundreds of millions of dollars continue to work?
• Why does a rock star who has made a bundle continue to tour?
• Why do retirees’ miss work as soon as they stop doing it?
• Why do we all wrestle with our life’s work and talk about it incessantly?

The thing about work is that we love it, we hate it, we need it, we miss it, we measure ourselves by it, we judge others by it—we are addicted to it. Work often defines us and fulfills us. Yet, today’s rapidly changing workplace environment is stressful and confusing to deal with.

In The Thing About Work, Richard A. Moran takes a ground-level perspective on what is happening at work and how to thrive in the new professional world. Through funny, prescriptive vignettes and short essays, Moran finds the “white space” in the company manual—those issues that you encounter every day at work but which are not covered in employee training. He uses hilarious and true stories from his own life and others’ to answer questions like, “Should you take your dog to work?” and “How late is late?” and “What is that foreign object growing in the refrigerator?” This very contemporary view of work will prove invaluable for the modern employee.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351817707
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/14/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	846 KB

About the Author

Richard A. Moran is the President Emeritus of Menlo College in Atherton, CA. He is a noted San Francisco based business leader, workplace pundit, bestselling author and venture capitalist. He is best known for his series of humorous business books beginning with bestselling Never Confuse a Memo with Reality that started the genre of "Business Bullet Books."​

Moran previously served as CEO and Vice Chairman at Accretive Solutions. as a Partner at Venrock, Chairman of the Board at Portal Software and as a Partner at Accenture. Moran has served on the Boards of Glu Mobile Games, Winery Exchange, and Mechanics Bank among others. He currently serves on the board of PerfectForms, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, and the Steinbeck Innovation Foundation.

Rich Moran also serves on the management team of the Irish Technology Leadership Group, is a Partner at SVG Partners, and a member of the Global Irish Network, a network launched in 2010 and that is comprised of 350 of the most senior Irish and Irish connected business people from over 40 countries.

In the public or not-for-profit sector he serves on The Council of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is the Chair of the Audit Committee at the Noyce Foundation, the National Board of Visitors at the Indiana University School of Education. Previously he served as a Regent at Saint Ignatius College Prep and Chair of Project Open Hand, both in San Francisco. Moran also serves on the Accountability Structures Expert Panel for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Rich Moran is a radio personality featured on KCBS Radio in San Francisco. He is The host of "​In the Workplace", a program that discusses workplace issues and airs weekly to over a million listeners. He is also a frequent contributor as an Influencer on LinkedIn.

Table of Contents

The Thing About the Refrigerator; Where the Rubber Meets the Air; The Saddest Three Letters in Business; The “At the End of the Day” Thing; What's the Plan?; Does Low-Hanging Fruit Exist?; The Chickens Need a Raise; Showing Up Still Matters; The Working from Home Thing; Are You Responsive?; Coffee Is the New Lunch and Other Coffee Matters; What Is That Smell?; Making a To-Do List Is Not the Same As Getting Something Done; Can We Cancel All Meetings but Keep the Doughnuts?; How Late Is Late?; The IT Guy Is the Most Important Person You Know; Dogs in the Halls; That Double-Secret Probation Thing; All My Mentors Are Dead; The Three Best Business Books Ever Written; The Thing About Getting Hired and Fired; Getting Hired Is a Probability Function; Networking—It's All About Traffic; Words That Matter in the Hunt; Gigs Are a Beautiful Thing; Tell Me About Yourself and Other Lies; Coffee Can Kill a Career; Why Do Interviewers Talk So Much?; Hello? Anyone Out There?; Reference Checking and Your Secrets; The Interns Are Coming; Performance Review Benedictions; Get Fired at Least Once—It Can Be Good for Your Career; If You Are Going to Get Fired, Get Fired Fast; When Resigning, Do It Fast; I Don't Love You Anymore; How to Fire a CEO; Lunch Is Neither a Good Time to Fire Someone nor to Get Fired; What Kind of Gone Is Your Job?; The Use of F-Bombs Won't Help You with Your Next Job; When Terminated, Pay Less Attention to Delivery Mode Than to Content; It Is Not Difficult to Get Fired—It Is Difficult to Get Hired Again; Never Resign Before Landing Another Job; My Career Clock Is Ticking; Moving from Boy Wonder to the Gray Hair in the Room; Is It Too Late?; The Make More Money Thing; That Personal Brand Thing; What Do You Do?; Start All Over!; That Ten Thousand–Hour Rule; The Work–Life Balance Thing; Not My Job; The Job Title Thing; Projects, Projects, Projects; The Networking Thing; Talking About Pay!; Working in the Polar Vortex; Is Work Killing Us?; What Happens on the Road Does Not Stay on the Road; Availability Is Not a Skill; Career Paths Are Accidents; When Playing Hooky Is Okay; They Will Never Survive Without Me; Are You Remarkable?; How to Get a Raise; Sell, Baby, Sell; How Busy Are You?; One Size Fits All?; Wait Until Your Father Gets Home; Saying Versus Hearing; Feedback Follies; Sex, Listening, and Other Considerations; Sharing Too Much Can Become a Habit; Pornography Is Not Your Friend; Love in the Elevator; It's Best Not to Be Seen Naked by Colleagues; Naming Children Is Not a Spectator Sport; Why Doesn't Anyone Listen to Me?; Love and Hate Relationships; A View into Work; Beware the Buttons; What IS Business Casual?; On Multitasking and Other Sins; Nothing Like the Smell of Pot in the Morning; Are There Awards for Bad Judgment?; Keep Those Business Cards; Blind Squirrels and Acorns; Keeping Up Is Hard to Do; Get Me Some of That Inner Work Life; Gadgets and Gizmos Galore; The Facebook Thing; Does Facebook Work at Work?; More Than an Abbreviation; Cancel My Subscription, Please; Three Things E-Mail Is Not; Am I Ringing?; Does Cell Phone Etiquette Exist?; Password Pressure; I Forgot My Computer!; That Google Doodle Is Smart; The WTF Thing; About Those Tattoos; I Want My Cubicle!; Apple Store Anxiety; Pluto Is the New Benchmark; Oh, That Sinking Feeling; A Wealth of Webinars; Dancing with Office Chairs; Tech, Tech, Tech, and More Tech; Another Technology List; High on Whiteboard Markers and Presentations; What's Your Walk-Up Song?; Are Sports Metaphors Dead?; Presentation Poisons; The Praying at Work Thing; The R Word and the B Word; Where Is the Elevator?; Eating in Your Car; Redundant Conversations Again; All Aboard; Even Lunch Is a Quandary Wrapped in a Dilemma; The Thing About Skinny Suits; Cars and Your Work Persona; Welcome to Abilene; Do Assholes Always Win?; The Asshole Hall of Fame; Being Nice at Work; The Three Best Bosses You Will Ever Have; Management Gurus?; The Corporate Culture Thing; On Powerful Women; What's an Office?; Can You Hear Me Now?; Watch Out for Fibbing; What's Important?; Is That Day Really Necessary?; I Have a Suggestion; THE Worst Boss Announcement; On Ditch Digging; Are We All Bosses?; Some Authentic, Some, Not So Much; People, Pay Attention; Death to Performance Reviews; Frequent-Flier Miles and Other Addictions; Pings, Pangs, Buzzes, and Vibrations—Productivity Reminders; Business Travel Tango; The Big Work Lie: “Out of Office”…REALLY?; The E-Mail Thing; Those Best Companies; Hello, My Name Is…; About Those Weekends; Red Licorice Can Kill Your Organization; The Backpack Is the New Briefcase; Unequal Distance; Travel Disasters I Have Known; Business Travel Things; Ambiguous Victories and Nebulous Defeats; Let's Improve Morale Around Here; Is Sitting the New Smoking?; When Is Starting Early Starting Too Early?; Stop Reminding Me; Please Stop Doing Stupid Shit; Lunchtime Stress; Is Cycling the New Golf?; Oh, Those Sick Days; How About Gender Appearance Equity?; Guilty As Charged; That Permanent Record; Calling All Characters; The Boss Is Back; Are You Happy?; Reason to Be Thankful at Work; Fist Bumping; The Importance of Being Urgent; What Matters?; Last Call; Special Holiday Bonus Section; Holidays at Work; Holiday Party Dos and Don'ts; A Holiday Missive; Holiday Homestretch; The Giving Dilemma; Is It Total Stress or Long Lunches over the Holidays?; To Deliver or Not to Deliver, That Is the Question; The Stress of Holiday Cards; And Goodwill to All; Three Ways Halloween Can Kill Your Career; The Halloween Hangover; Will You Be Mine?; Back to School Again; Those Summer Schedules; When to Play Hooky; It's Super Bowl…Monday; Celebrate St. Patrick; A Final Word