Last night they showed one of my fave Seinfeld episodes, the one where George figures out that he can not only get away with not doing any work but be left alone if he constantly walks around looking stressed out. It's brilliant 'cause it's true.

Way back when, when I was working at that lame-ass dot.com that will remain nameless (speaking of which, hi Jessica and thanks for reading!), there was a guy there who was supposedly in charge of "business opportunities" for our no- way-in-hell-will-we-get-business-opportunities-department. Besides come up with ideas himself, he was supposed to take ideas from us, the people in the department, and then help us put it together. Supposedly.

As far as anybody could tell, he never actually did anything he was supposed to do. He never responded to our proposals, never made any deals, never did a damn thing. Instead, he just ran around the office all day, cell phone glued to his ear, barking something out to someone on the other line. Even better, on the times he did actually respond to a proposal, he never actually was able to work on it because he was constantly "too busy" to schedule a meeting. I once saw him walk over to my pod-mates desk, ask where she was because they had a 10:00 meeting and when told that she had gone to the bathroom for just a second, he just shook his head and said, "damnit, I just don't have time to wait. We’ll just have to reschedule." With that, he turned and walked away.

Despite the fact he never actually accomplished anything, despite the fact he never made the company any money, and despite the fact that everyone in the department- or at least the underlings- made jokes behind his back about how useless he was, Management loved him. Thought he was great.

I'm completely positive it was because he was pulling a Costanza. It's not like he was doing anything- in fact somebody told me that he was usually on the phone with realtors trying to buy a house- it looked like he was doing something. All he was doing by running around- cell phone in hand, with that look of extreme pain on his face- was just him working it. And worked it he did. Didn't get laid off, bought a house, and eventually got another, better paying job somewhere else.

And people wonder why the dot.com bubble burst?