Tell us your naughty stories

This isn't that naughty, just a little subversive. I used to be the team lead in the tech support department at a company that manufactured high tech products. Our research department where all the super secret new products were developed was anshort walk from our building.

I discovered that there was a meeting room in that building full of super secret, half finished, one of a kind products- and anybody could book the room.

So I booked the room for our weekly team meetings (which were a waste of time anyway). So every week we (a bunch of geeks) got to check out the new stuff, while the other tams talked about customer satisfaction and average hold times (bleh$.

I told my team that although we weren't doing anything wrong, if we asked for permission we'd surely be denied. We never got in trouble, and we had tons of fun. Later on I figured out how we could spend an hour playing games once a week, but that's another story.

Typically, all organizations get bureaucratic when they grow above certain level, and still work the same way they used to -- and even then it's difficult.

My typical response has been to play by their own rules: If they say I've omitted some attachment from some application (the formal applications always seem to be important!), I swamp them in paper, which usually makes them more reasonable;

I go around them in the organization, and reach the bureaucrat from on top -- their work is surprisingly effective, when pushed by their own bosses;

If they try to play me out of the game by refusing to give me passwords to accounts I need for my work -- they'll tell me to clean up their server and then give me a regular restricted user account, because to give me admin privs, they'd have to click a radio button -- I will just go around snooping to get the credentials for some "general" admin account, as the computers have several admin accounts, although some are more equal than others. But they really don't store their passwords the way they should! ;)

I loved this story about weaseling a useful piece of code in a product update that was at the top. Been there, done that. :D

Sometimes the admins just don't check the code, even if they had the knowhow.

Yeah, using that hack in college might be a little more shady. I have always subscribed to the belief of "you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer" so my actions were usually fueled by my opinion that the writing assignments that my instructor was giving out were essentially "stupid". I know, that's a pretty crappy form of justification but that was also around the time that I was learning html and graphic design which I considered more worthwhile ways to spend my time.

Well, I participate here in hopes I can finally wrap my brain around "how to make money". So far, no magic faerie dust has been found to help me fly, financially. I would totally love to be the next person to post "Thank you HN. X months ago you helped me with my business idea and now I have left my BigCo job, moved to the city of my choosing and am happily working from home!!!"

Historical facts:

1) People tend to speak highly of my writing ability -- even published authors and publishing company founders -- and I have had what began as an email of mine on a list wind up being quoted (after much editing) in a book.

2) I tend to be very polarizing: People either love me or hate me. Not much in between. The only thing I have found so far that reduces the amount I get attacked is to go out of my way to avoid public praise. This isn't a real good tactic for advertising something but has worked well for helping to encourage a budding grass roots movement for folks who are really deathly ill and whom all the experts have written off.

3) People find me provocative, which is generally a bad thing if you are trying to be helpful. In the entertainment industry, "provocative" is a good thing. I also tend to be a ham, which is something I find I have to seriously tone down when trying to "give advice". That isn't working well for me. My sense of humor is critical to my ability to cope effectively, so it is practically lying for me to give advice without a few (er, a few zillion) tongue-in-cheek, humorous observations thrown in.

4) Comedians are the people with the socially accepted role for making the kinds of social observations I am very good at making. Giving people that information straight up really, really bombs. I know: I've been doing it for years (and going down in flames for it, over and over). The serious version of my observations goes over about as well as dousing someone in gasoline and setting them on fire.

Anyway, I would love it if you were right and I could easily make big bucks this way (or even enough little bucks to leave my job). But it isn't fitting with my understanding of the direction I need to go.

Okay, I'll play along:

How many pages does the book need to be?

How much can/should I charge for it?

How on earth would I promote it?

Where can I find such info?

I have always wanted to be a writer but at the moment my one and only goal is to figure out how to make money from home so I can leave my job and move elsewhere. I'm really not sold (on the idea that I can make money telling people how to not lawyer up). But I am most certainly hoping and praying for some idea that will make me some fast cash so I can be out of here early next year, which is not far away at all.