Five Office Dos and Don’ts for Killing Time When the Network Goes Down

Do: Entertain coworkers by drawing fun caricatures of them on sheets of legal paper.
Don’t: Sing “Helter Skelter” as you pass the sheets through the paper shredder.

Do: Offer to go out for coffee.
Don’t: Offer to charge the escort service fees to your corporate Amex.

Do: Use the time to clean your computer keyboard and mouse for better performance.
Don’t: Use the time to cleanse your naked soul in the redemptive waters of the admin’s Poland Spring bottle as performance art.

Do: Help organize the supply closet.
Don’t: Help sort photos of your coworkers making out with each other at the last holiday party into categories like “Sluts from Accounting” and “VPs Gone Wild in the Coat Room.”

Do: Encourage a meaningful discussion among coworkers regarding corporate team building and productivity strategies.
Don’t: Encourage a role-playing session by offering to portray the video mosaic patch shielding Paris Hilton’s butt crack on The Simple Life in a squeaky cartoon voice.

There's a Traitor Among Us

... and his name is Krucoff.com. Insight, wit, pluck, and gumption of a young man half as jaded as he actually is, is what you will find there. He is Krucoff, but you are smarter.

How Average New Yorkers Spend Their $30,000 Annual Salary

Note #1: If you live in Brooklyn or Queens, adjust these figures by multiplying your...oh forget it. You're too stupid to comprehend this anyway.

Note #2: This chart has an interactive drop-down menu by city/state that dynamically generates comparative data for each locale. Regrettably, we cannot offer this functionality at no-cost. We couldn't find any "pro-bono" database programmers on CraigsList and we ended up getting ass-raped by some NYU ITP punk. (If you see this kid around downtown, please kick him in the nutz.) PayPal $35 to gotoguy@lasagnafarm.com if you want access to this highly valuable marketing tool.


Chapter 2 - A Numbing Look at Your Numbers
Now that chapter one of Book of Wages has shown you what you and your peers-in-$30Gs are like, let us take a closer look at what you could be like. If you saved some of that money. For a long time. A really long time. Some of this may hurt a little, but rest assured that girls always say that humor is the most important thing they look for in a man. But you wouldn't know that: you can't afford to even go out.

At $30,000 a year, you're not going to be able to save much of anything, but, for the sake of argument, if you could manage to somehow save 5% of your income annually ($1,500), it will take you:

2 months to afford the really good drugs.

4 months to afford an entire set of 1973-series Wacky Packages cards, including classics, "Scary Jane" candy, "Crust" toothpaste, and "Cover Goul" mascara. (Courtesy eBay)

3 years to afford a single night in the Coco Chanel Suite, Hotel Ritz Paris. Add one year for a bottle of champagne from the mini bar, and another year if you plan to order local talent for an hour's "company."

75 years to afford the kind of Jakob the Jeweller bling bling that would make Nas and Jay Z respect you.

186.67 years to afford a 2004 Lamborghini Murciélago. Add 5 years for one year's insurance, 24 years if you live in New Jersey.

4533.33 years to afford an 8,500 sq./ft. loft in Tribeca. Add 11.7 years for each year's property taxes. Add 100 years to wire the place for sound and digital cameras to stage a web-based "social experiment." Add 10 years to pay legal fees in lawsuit brought by former girlfriend over toilet-cam issue.

You're at the bookstore and spy a handsome red and white book. You lift it. It hurts your arms. Your muscles have seriously deteriorated since you can't afford the gym membership anymore. But still, it's a nice book. Regal even. You flip it over to look for the price and then put it back. "$13.95 is a lot for a stupid book with maybe 10 words per page," you think to yourself. "Maybe I can download it from the Internet. After all, the authors should know that as someone who only makes $30,000 a year, I can't afford this."

Fortunately, the editors of LasagnaFarm feel your pocket pain and financial fucked-upness. Barely. We remember making $30,000 each summer during college at our dad's law firm just for collating shit. That was awesome. We now pull in bills so large that "phoning it in" means we have a Rolodex reserved solely for escort numbers. In any case, we understand the lower echelons of our capitalist society because we do watch the MTV and selected programs on public television. We took notes in our spiffy Palm Pilots, on the bottom of Big Mac boxes, and in the margins of those dreaded free weeklies disguised as newspaper print. All of this was done to provide you, the undeserving schlub, some comfort in knowing you are not alone. (Except on Thursday and Saturday nights, sorry but that's party time for us moneyed folk.) All week long we will provide the Farm's inaugural FREE digital-only book in tortured HTML. Enjoy and always ask for seconds.

Chapter 1 - Ramen, The Fifth Food Group

Facts to spew on:

Sampling of $30,000 jobs in various cities. Remember, it’s a big country, someone’s gotta clean the shit up.
Ad Sales Assistant, Cable Channel - New York, NY
Night Manager, Waffle House - Fayetteville, NC
Independent Bee Keeper, P/T – Wilton, CT
Help-Desk Operator, Retail Chain – Columbus, OH
Ticket Scalper – Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX
HVAC technician – Juneau, AK
“Sweeper” on Chelsea Clinton’s Secret Service Team – Classified Location
Ebay Comic Book/D&D Module Re-seller – Just About Anywhere

The average person making $30K a year in Alabama has been married twice, has 3 kids, 2 pigs, and enjoys $1 drafts at a place called Rhett's. The average New Yorker making $30,000 lives in a 10' X 10' apartment and vomits almost every morning.

18% of downtown NYC 30Kers frequent Grilled Cheese on the Lower East Side and worry that the $2 extra for bacon will mean you have to skip the subway and walk to work tomorrow morning.

Heidi Klum doesn’t get out of bed for less than $30,000 a day. 86% of you hate getting out of bed at all.

30% will be making $50,000 in two years at a job equally as suffering but with longer lunches; 45% will still be stuck at $30K and thinking about a career change to something more "creative"; in under 1 year 21% will have their trust funds kick in; and 4% will fuck their way to an $80K executive assistant position in 6 months.

50% of you have an old high school friend as a roommate who you can now barely tolerate. 22% of you have an old high school friend as a roommate who you can barely tolerate and lets his girlfriend live with him in his room but she doesn't pay rent and leaves the A/C on when she goes out all day.

10% of you have fantasies about putting a web cam in your old high school roommate's room so you can watch him and his girlfriend do it, because 8% of you think she's kind of hot even though you hate her.

81% of you work jobs you didn't need to go to high school in order to get, which is why your salary is lower than Kurt Cobain's heartbeat.

Bill Gates made $30,000 in his mother’s womb - during the 2nd trimester.

6% of you don’t own toothpaste and still need to give back that "loaner" interview suit to your brother.

In the making of Charlie's Angels, Cameron Diaz made roughly $30,000 during her bathroom breaks. (This is an estimate due to the highly speculative nature of Ms. Diaz’s crapper time.)

And sadly, 62% of you still need help filing the 1040EZ tax form.

Day One in our Three-Part “Book of Wages” Series. Check back later, we're even gonna bust out some mad chartz and stuff. In the meantime, supplementary reading material is provided here.