How to Impress Your New Boss, in 3 E-Z Steps

Take notes, there will be a quiz:

1. When he stops by, be eating pretzels. At 9:33 a.m. Make sure you have one in your hand and you are chewing another. Because not only can you NOT say "Hi" immediately, you will have to reluctantly, uh, discreetly, drop the pretzel back into the bag.
2. You should be listening to your iPod (bonus points for Sirius radio with antenna visible). Thank god for "rear view mirrors" on monitors. Objects are closer than they appear.
3. Wearing a sloppy gray fleece sweatshirt and jeans makes the statement "I got to work today, what more do you want?" (Actually this attire earns bonus points too, if he is wearing "business casual" button down shirt/ no tie, and Dockers. Because it means he didn't pay a dollar a day to the designate charity to dress down this week, ergo he thinks it's stupid to do so, and/or that no one should wear jeans to work. Oh, joy.)

At least I wasn't reading a blog... at that moment...

The important thing is to act nonchalant, like "yeah, whatever, I listen to music, you know how much work I get done...don't vex me. Did you need something? Ok, bye bye then."

Keep in mind that this is the company wherein I can receive an email like this one, which I swear I got first thing this morning, with a cc: to my boss:

We, the members of the Something Something Project Team, would like to recognize

Carly Andmylastnametoo, all bold and centered exactly like this

for his/her* contributions as a Line of Business Coordinator.The SSPT blah blah blah blah...(this paragraph describes what they struggled to do...and oh man did they do a CRAPPY job, in my opinion)

We are very grateful for the time and energy that Carly has given to this initiative, and we want to thank him/her for the hard work.

I've never really been thanked like this for a project. The irony is that about 2/3 of the way through the project I sent the project manager a 2 page email listing about 10 things I felt she was doing wrong(sent it on the last Friday before Xmas, ho ho effing ho). Bitchy? Well, yes, but the next stop on her rollout schedule was the corporate headquarters. I genuinely felt they would roast her over a large bonfire if she kept doing things exactly the way she was doing them. I honestly was trying to save her sorry ass. Her documentation was wrong in multiple places, we were getting errors we should NOT have been getting, and the vendor was completly useless. She proceeded to ignore or argue with all of my feedback. Ok, it's your funeral.

*Note, the funniest part of the email; I am now of uncertain gender, despite the fact (?) that my first name is most definitely a female name. This will ABSOLUTELY impress my boss.