sweasel.com

That’s why I always play stupid whenever possible. It’s saved my butt many times!

After-hours job creep. Lose/lose, boo, hiss! It’s what happens when employers see you as a lot more accommodating than you feel.

My damn auto insurance company won’t send me a hard copy proof of insurance which you must have to register your automobile. I don’t have a working printer and don’t plan to buy one to print a one page cert twice a year. So I take my .pdf file to the local Office Depot and they print it for 17-24 cents depending on if they print just the cert or the whole file.

This last time I had to stand in line behind a lady who wanted the full treatment, design, layout, and printing several hundred brochures. It was embarrassing after that major print job was done to step up and ask for my 17 cent proof of insurance.

So I’m thinking, why do I need insurance if I can just alter the dates on the pdf file and print that for 17 cents.

ya. I know.

The trick is to do a really bad job, and then (this is important) act like you’re really, really proud of the crappy work you did. Give the impression you poured your heart and soul into it, and would be utterly crushed at the slightest hint of criticism.

They’ll never ask again.

My Gaga (grandad) told me to never be good at anything. My sister told my cousin, both aged 10 at the time, that a gentleman always wears underpants under his shorts. Words to live by.

gebrauchshund has it exactly right. I first learned about the concept of the earnestly fucking things up from a book -The Good Soldier Svek

Svejk is a Hungarian who volunteers for the army immediately upon the outbreak of World War I. He shows up at the recruiting office in a wheel chair… When they take him anyhow, he is the most enthusiastic volunteer ever, and the hardest worker, but no matter what job he is given, he somehow manages to screw it up. However, no one can really get angry with him because he tries so hard. So, as the war progresses he keeps getting simpler and simpler (and safer) jobs, and manages to get farther and farther away from the front; at one point he gets separated from his unit enroute to the front by train, and despite asking the help of every official he meets, somehow manages to go in the wrong direction every time. He never does get to the fighting….

The book was banned for soldiers in almost every military in Europe. I kept a copy of it on my desk during my four year stint in the Air Force, but sadly, no one ever asked me what the book was about.

In your case Weasel, the best practical application might be to be two or three days late getting done because “you want it to be perfect, and it’s not good enough to show anyone yet” and then very proudly turning in the most half-ass piece of work ever. You may need to volunteer two or three times before they start finding excuses to turn you down, but in the long run, it’ll be worth it.

Note: if they have already seen the quality of work you can do, you or Uncle Badger may need to mention how happy you are that you can handle deadline stress again without cracking up like you did in that unfortunate incident (that wasn’t really your fault) that led to you leaving your job in America and coming to live quietly in the English countryside.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_Švejk

One of the (relatively quite few, really) advantages to being primarily an on-contract worker: Any and all “extracurricular” work may be undertaken as requested, of course, at most any time; however, the rate of pay is at time-and-a-half (double-time if on Saturdays after 12 noon, or on Sundays or National/company holidays), and there are NO freebies…they therefore only give me shit like that if they really, REALLY need it done right, have already tried (and failed) to get it done by direct-hire cow-irkers, and have a stiff deadline coming. Win/Win!