Secret #1: When my feet are under my desk (i.e. 95% of the time) I don’t wear shoes. Then when I need to get up for some reason I do this frenzied foot-search to try and find them and put them on in less than two seconds while still appearing professional and together.

Secret #2: My desk is in the corner of the office, far from the door, where the wastebasket is stationed in the threshold. To maximize efficiency (i.e. because I’m lazy), instead of walking repeatedly to the door when I have to throw something away, I just horde a little trash pile of crumpled paper in the corner of my desk, sort of tucked under my monitor, and take it with me when I need to exit the room for something (food, bathroom, meeting, food, bathroom).

Secret #3: When scheduling a meeting with a busy person, I call them with stalker-like, dogged persistency. For instance, in trying to get a meeting with Senator Dick Durbin, I faxed a meeting request to his scheduler Friday with info on the bottom that amounted to “CALL ME! FAX ME! EMAIL ME!” then left her a voicemail saying, sweetly and professionally, “DID YOU GET MY FAX? CALL ME! FAX ME! EMAIL ME!” then this morning I left her another voicemail saying “REMEMBER MY FAX AND MY VOICEMAIL? CALL ME! FAX ME! EMAIL ME!” and this afternoon I’ll be leaving her another voicemail. It is only like this that things get done.

Secret #4: I have been here a week and I still haven’t really memorized the office layout, and I often get lost on the way to the fridge or the fax machine or whatnot. However, the thing is laid out in a rough circle, so I usually just pick clockwise or counterclockwise and wander around under the assumption that eventually I’ll get where I’m going, then eventually I’ll get back from whence I came. Of course, I excel at maintaining the front that I know exactly where I’m going, thank you, yes, I work here, why do you look so surprised at seeing me wander past your cubicle for the fifth time on my way to nowhere?