20 Steps to sleep thru a recession

When the word ‘recession’ is utterred, what springs to your mind?
Chances are, there will be pictures of men in working caps and shabby, worn-out jackets, bearing ‘will work for food’ signs. Hard work to earn your bread and butter, with more hard work for dessert. In other words, an idler’s hell.

Or is it? Bless your pillows, the end might not be nigh. This is a guide, sculpted and polished by personal experience, that will try to tuck you back in bed.

Step 1:
Get a job. [doesn’t sound like we’re off to a good start, does it?]
Overplay all your (or anybody’s) qualities beyond belief and reason. Make up intricate stories for the qualities you don’t have. Remember, CV should always stand for Creative Void when you’re writing it.

That should make it quite easy for you to get a pretty good, highly-paying job, especially if you are going for the services business where no one asks you any real rocket science questions in the interviews.

Target a firm that is bound to face trouble (the adjective ‘new’ before the sector of the company tends to work quite well: look out for new economy, new media sectors).

Now that you have presented yourself as The UltraEmployee(, there will be few people who will resist your Oxbridge PhDs, your JavaScript excellence and the 5 languages in which you are fluent.

Step 2:
Once in, don’t work too hard. [getting better, huh?]
Anyway, if you do, it will become evident that the only reason you chose to specialise in Javascript is because the latter half of the word seems familiar, unlike all the other jargon that you cannot dream to spell.

Step 3:
You might even ask for a raise.

Step 4.
Be as bold, ruthless or even outright rude as you like at the office. It will probably make you look even more like the hotshot that you’re supposed to be. You will probably get that raise, too: no one wants to lose a star employee for being stingy. Not in a ‘human-capital’ centered world (it’s sweet when u can use the jargon to your benefit, isn’t it?).

Step 5.
You can now start being lazy. Go in after 9, 9:30, flirt with times past 10, and if you run against any problems, refer to step 4 or use the ubiquitous and eternal belatedness panacea: The Tube Was Late( (another TM, yes).
Use it again and again, and when people start giving you the looks (like people who live close to you), use it some more. Their shock will give you some more time.
As you will know, it is soooooo much fun to sleep in late with boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse, have a long breakfast, avoid the rush hour, and go in late to marvel at the dazzled looks on your colleagues’ faces. Particularly when you immediately announce that “you’re going to fetch a cup o’ joe” from starbucks (minimum 5min walk from office).

Step 6.
Use the Net to your advantage: connect with friends long lost, visit all the websites that could potentially be interesting, whether work-related or (usually) not. The excited expression on your face will get you some commendation for your enthusiasm at work.

Step 7.
Remember, don’t do much work (as if we had to remind you). Don’t let your superstar image carry you away into thinking that you actually could do the work that you promised to do. If you can, then you just pitched too low on step 1: you should have gone for the stratosphere, not just the clouds.

Step 8.
Take off-peak vacations, using all you annual leave in the first few months. Take long weekends to European capitals. Remember, as you explained in the step 1 interview, you’re fluent in several languages – isn’t it time you’ve used them?

Step 9.
Use up all your company benefits. If your company offers an annual gym subsidy, take it. Any stock options as a joining bonus, cash them in. Book yourself on all the courses that your company will pay for you under a personal development plan. It will make you look close to the wide-ranging, interesting, utopian persona you made up in your Creative Void (CV).

Step 10.
Be sick. Often. Don’t worry about the future and what will happen if you really do get sick. Stay in bed with girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/pet/favourite book. Take long breakfasts (again) and then indulge in some more interaction with girfriend/boyfriend/spouse/pet/book before taking a really long and enjoyable lunch, paid for by your work (don’t you forget that, it always brightens up the meal).

Step 11.
Go to your bank. Use your newly-risen salary to back a big, BIG, BIG loan. Get a mortgage too. Don’t worry if you’ve already got a house, get another one. Buy many if you can, using different building societies and banks, maybe even in different countries. Try to get a mortgage for that chalet in Aspen you’ve always wanted, or the loft in Manhattan, or the villa in Salzburg, or the beach house on the Côte d’Azur. Don’t worry about the rates –get that Manhattan loft if you have to pay more in interest than the house.
COMPULSORY DETAIL: tick Yes on the Loan Insurance Option (I hope you’re sniffing the insurance scam already).

Step 11.
Go to your insurance company(ies) and get all the unemployment insurance you can possibly get. Don’t mind the rates. Show them your superstar salary, it will help. Also, show them your above-average debt levels. They will convince the insurers that you really are in need of a back-up, for hard times like these. You can afford it anyway (

Step 12.
Before you get sacked for incompetence combined with lethal doses of idleness, watch the market work for you. While your manager is beginning to realise that you are not The UltraEmployee( Who Solves All The Problems, top management decides to lay off 40% of the workforce due to big-time budget hatchet jobs, from the wolf-turn-deer venture capitalists who funded the New Whatever Ltd you worked for. Your job is on the line.

Note: the firing principle will be, without fail, on the ‘last in-first out’ basis. This is because venture-capitalist-funded start-ups (refer to step 1) will be faced with dramatic budget cuts when the market goes downhill. But they’ve been too busy with ‘expanding’ and ‘growing’ to set up any kind of proper performance appraisal system.

Step 14.
Be amused as the CEO arranges a personal meeting with you to express his heartfelt agony as (s)he has to go through the painful axing process, throwing his beloved employees into the oceans of Temporary Unemployment.

Step 15.
Watch your bank pay off your huge debts for you due to this unexpected, terrible turn of luck. (Vide Step 10)

Step 16.
Walk with your head up (anyway, a person with your CV should have no problem getting another hot-shot job) to collect your redundancy compensation from the firm.

Step 17.
Laugh all the way to the dole office. In recession times, it’s pretty easy to to prove that you cannot get another job. Present your real Curricilum Vitae. Everyone will believe you. You might get some tax return as well, just to maximise your enjoyment. Loafing at the expense of taxpayers offers a very particular type of fix.

Step 18. Take your date to your Manhattan loft.

Step 19. Take your new and improved date to your beach house in the Riviera.

Step 20. While kicking it in the Med, start contemplating about a new victim to raid with your superstar CV.
Loaf through the recession and be thankful as long as it lasts.

(Elias Corossis 2001