Work Daze by Bob Goldman

Hold onto your hat! I am going to make a confession so shocking that it will knock your hat off and rock your socks. So, I guess, you should hold onto your socks, as well.

Here goes: Sometimes, when I'm the only person in the break room, I will eat a piece of fruit without washing it first.

It's true! Even though I know all about pesticides and germs and rodent droppings and all the other really good reasons for washing fruit before you eat it, I still go right ahead and bite that apple, munch that pear and slurp that nectarine.

I'm not confessing this deviant behavior to brag about my daredevil lifestyle. I am coming clean about eating dirty fruit because I want to boost my career.

Used to be that if you wanted to rise up in the work force, you had to bury your secret sins, like the fact that you got your MBA from the back of a Wheaties box. But today we live in an age when people live their lives in front of TV cameras. If Paris Hilton and Spencer Pratt are your role models, and I know they are, how can you expect to emulate their success by hiding your dirty little secrets from the prying eyes of colleagues, co-workers and managers?

But don't take my word for it. Alexandra Levit, a career columnist for The Wall Street Journal, has recently penned a paean to the power of the public confession in a piece titled "Taking Risks to Boost Your Career." As Levit so rightfully writes, "Tough as it is for cautious people like me to accept, if you don't occasionally take calculated gambles, you won't get ahead as quickly as those who do. You will also never get over your fear of the unknown, and life will be predictable and dull."

Putting aside the pleasures of a dull, predictable paycheck for the moment, you have to agree that one way to turbocharge your career could involve unbuttoning your buttoned-up workplace persona to expose your inner blabbermouth.

Consider, for example, exhibit A — the career of Penelope Trunk. Like yours truly, Trunk is a nationally syndicated columnist, but unlike me, Trunk "shocked the business community when she revealed intimate details of her personal life on her blog."

Since shocking gossip is catnip to a scaredy-cat like me, I immediately rushed to www.blog.penelopetrunk.com, and I have to admit, she does reveal some shocking secrets.

Nothing as alarming as my tree fruit perversion, but if you consider it shocking to mix workplace advice with incest, eating disorders, and sexual hi-jinks, you've come to the right blog.

What makes Trunk's presumably true confessions relevant to thee and me is the fact that after revealing her shocking revelations, her blog "shot up in popularity and eventually garnered over 30,000 subscribers." This power boost, in turn, ignited interested in her next business venture, "BrazenCareerist.com, an online professional network for Generation Y."

X-Rated Y's we can only assume.

The lesson for you, cowardly reader, is clear. If you are tried of floundering in the turgid backwater that is your career, it's time to start taking risks. And just because your sex life is dishwater dull, it doesn't mean you can't turn your work life into the "National Enquirer."

Go for it! Admit to your supervisors that you are having sex with the aliens in the human resources department. It's risky, yes, but they'll appreciate your candor, and will speak about you with respect long after you've received your walking papers. Or confess to your manager that you have absolutely no interest in your job, and that an ape could be more effective. Or be really risky and make the point by showing up to work in a gorilla suit. That's the kind of gutsy move that will get you promoted or sent to a quiet place with full disability. Either way, you win.

If you're in the job market, let recruiters know that your personal hero is Bernie Madoff and that your hobby is embezzling. Risky, yes, but they'll remember you when a job comes up in financial services.

"The smartest risks have a limited downside and a huge upside," concludes Levit. I agree. And I fully expect my readership will grow exponentially now that I have come clean about my fruit fetish. It's a career booster I know I will appreciate when I get over this nasty case of food poisoning.

Bob Goldman has been an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@funnybusiness.com. To find out more about Bob Goldman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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