If Employee On-Boarding Was Like Drivers Ed...

Welcome, new employee. You won't be an associate until you get through your permit period. But we'll help you pass that test. It'll be important that you follow all of the rules--like stopping at stop signs, driving at or below the speed limit, putting on turn signals and with enough notice to other drivers, yielding to others' right-of-way--until after you pass the test. Once you become an associate, you only need to follow the rules when the enforcer/auditor is around or other employees/associates are watching you. Of course, if you're at an off-site conference with representatives from other companies, you will only admit to following the rules and regulations, lest someone  in the back seat accuse you of not putting on your seat belt as you should.

For your guidance, we've shown the rules you'll need to follow while you have the employee permit, and what is allowed after you become an associate. After you read and understand this short guide, remember: forget what you were taught unless a cop, excuse me, an auditor asks you what the policy or procedure is.

Employee Rules	Associate Behavior
Precise breaks are taken whereby you return to your work station exactly 15 or 30 minutes after you left your work station.	Meander back to your work station when you have fully decompressed from the anguish of the work assignment or the annoying co-worker. Carry important-looking papers or have a ‘meaningful’ conversation with someone that justifies the tardiness, especially have a discussion with someone in management.
Do not approve any customer allowances unless expressly permitted by the rule book.	Ask for forgiveness for verbally approving a contract with a customer or supplier when you first couldn’t convince your boss to approve it.
Collaborate as a team player and compromise for the good of the organization.	Make sure others know that the other department is wasting their resources while you don’t have enough to get done what you’ve been asked to do.
Willingly respond to requests outside of your scope if it’s going to help a customer or someone else.	Do what you like to do and ignore your own distasteful job duties, especially ignore any pleas to help in activities with which you don’t feel comfortable.
Follow all procedures and policies to the letter.	Take the short-cuts, and make every situation follow the same procedure no matter what the scenarios, exceptions or different applications that are described by the policies. Once you get a routine on how to handle customers, paperwork, etc., don’t let it or them deter you from your habit by actually reading the procedure that customer A is not treated the same as customer B, and so on.
No matter what your position is, all benefits, tools, education requests, perks, expense approvals and so on are approved strictly according to our employee handbook, policies and other guidelines.	Exceptions are made for and taken by the people we like or have enough clout. So make sure everyone likes you, or act like you have the clout.