HOW TO TORMENT YOUR EMPLOYEES

1. Never trust anybody, especially your employees. Pay surprise visits when people call in sick. Make sure they're really home. Take their temperatures. 

2. Take credit for your employees' good ideas and hard work. Don't recognize their contributions. 

3. Stick to your guns. Being decisive is more important than learning from your mistakes. Changing your mind is a sign of weakness. Other points of view just undermine your authority. 

4. Don't train your employees. Make it difficult or impossible for them to get other jobs or to do theirs with skill and enjoyment. 

5. Reward punctuality and diligence above innovation and ingenuity. Employees' noses should be kept (a) clean, and (b) to the grindstone, not (c) "poking around in things that don't concern them." Which brings us to: 

6. Keep secrets. Employees don't need to know about your company's mission and goals, its financial condition or even its day-to-day operation. Have lots of closed-door meetings; emerge looking mysterious and self-important. 

7. Keep business and personal matters separate. Tell your employees to leave their problems at home. Reward long hours and penalize people who would rather spend evenings with the family than the photocopier. Forbid personal phone calls. Quash budding romances, discourage friendships and for heaven's sake don't have a company picnic. 

8. Run a tight ship. Monitor everything: e-mail, pencils, photocopies (especially around tax time). No coffee at the desk (easily discouraged by charging 50 cents a cup). 

9. Make clear distinctions between senior staff and hourly wage-earners. Regarding the latter, don't trouble to learn their names. Call the women "honey" and the men "boy." Regarding the former, take frequent long, liquor-laden lunch breaks with them. 

10. Pay minimum wage. Don't promote. Don't be concerned about high turnover. When your employees go on strike, outsource everything overseas, where laborers know their place and there are plenty of 9-year-olds looking for jobs.