Good news, fellow slackers, goof-offs, and workplace ne'er-do-wells. The current economic situation may be reigning havoc on hardworking workers nationwide, but for those of us who have spent the last few years hardly working our way through a time of prosperity, this financial meltdown could be our time to shine.

At the risk of waking you from your midmorning nap, let me explain.

With credit markets crunching and the global economy shrinking, hard-charging, 110-percent committed Looney-bird employees could suddenly realize that no matter how much they work, and how well they perform, the business results are still going to reflect a fiscal condition that leading economists define as "stinko."

At times like this, a general state of malaise can settle down on your co-workers, replacing their typical gung-ho attitude with a level of depression that will be a shock to their systems, but quite familiar to you. You've been depressed since your first day on the job. As result, you've learned how to survive in a workplace world with no raises, no promotions and no hope. For the go-getters, the realization that there is no place to go and nothing to get can make these high achievers listless and unproductive. In other words, they could become you.

The need to recharge the batteries of the high-energy workforce is no doubt the rationale for an article I found lurking in the Management archives of The Wall Street Journal. In "How to Motivate Workers in Tough Times," reporter Erin White interviews Jim Harter, an author and Gallup researcher who "studies workers' commitment to their jobs." In your case, he performs this work with an electron microscope.

One of Hartner's key points is that bad times require managers to communicate more. "(Managers) have to put more focus in setting expectations, making sure people know what they're supposed to do."

I suspect this is very true. Anyone observing you would assume that your manager, in communicating what you're supposed to do, instructed you to (1) look busy, but (2) do as little as possible, so you can (3) spend the majority of your days carping and complaining, and (4) keeping the spread of gossip moving through the office at warp speed. And let me just say — you're doing a most excellent job of meeting these expectations.

Even if you occasionally stumble by actually getting something done, at least you know what is expected of you. According to Harter, "only a little over half the people in the work forces that (Gallup) has surveyed over the years clearly know what's expected of them in their job."

I find this finding very difficult to believe. If you don't know that you're expected to worship your supervisors and slavishly follow every dumb order they give, you're either an idiot or a supervisor yourself. Or both.

Harter also recommends that managers should be "helping people know they're part of the future." This would certainly be a positive move for our managers, but I'm not sure that the current level of reassurance — "we're sure going to miss you around here" — is sufficient.

Other mistakes managers make include the tendency to project their own stress into the otherwise carefree worker. For example, a supervisor who is wondering how she will be able to afford her pied-a-terre in Paris when her bonus is cut to only $5 million might find herself taking out her anxiety on the hapless direct report, who no longer has to worry about paying his mortgage ever since the bank foreclosed on his home.

Another classic management mistake in times like these is to forget giving recognition. "When times are tough, it's easier to think about correcting weaknesses than to think about recognizing people," Harter says. I think we can all agree that a diminution of the constant outflowing of lavish praise from our supervisor would be a shocking and worrisome development.

I'm not sure that comments like "You're not half the moron I thought you were," or "Every time I think my career is a disaster I look at you and feel much better," will make up for the lack of raises, but it would be an improvement.

This all goes to prove that it doesn't take much to motivate people like us. But forget about setting expectations and lavishing praise. It's too weird. All we need is a scratch behind the ears, and a dish of warm milk left by our workstation and we'll be fine.

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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