Reliable workers are relied upon, while the jerks get the perks.

Almost every workplace has employees who arrive late, leave early, take long lunches, never finish their work, and leave others to pick up the slack. Yet they gets raises, promotions, bonuses, profit-sharing, overtime pay, and extra vacations. Even after cooking the company books, these jerks still ride off happily into the sunset pocketing employees' pension funds and shareholders' profits, awarded with multimillion-dollar golden parachutes.

It's time for you to get some of those perks, too. It's really not difficult. You only need to be megalomaniacally egotistical and know you will rise to the level of your incompetence. Do what others have done, and you too can be satisfied knowing the pension plan you pocket may be everyone else's.

Megalomania

Megalomaniacal egotism is absolutely required to pile up those perks. You must have a highly exaggerated, delusional concept of your own importance. With some practice, you could eventually have those delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence of, say, a Kenneth Lay of Enron fame.

Start small.

Like Amber did.

Amber worked typing medical reports. She believed she was over-qualified for the job, and thought she was really an artist. This was her day job. She was paid by the number of pages she typed, and it was her responsibility to submit a record of each day's page totals.

She was very clever, that Amber was. The first thing she did after being hired was become friends with the boss. They did lunch. She gave the boss art lessons.

A time clock was installed because of complaints about Amber's work hours. She arrived late and left early, causing those ridiculously reliable people to complete her assigned accounts . Amber refused to punch in or out. That dumb old time clock couldn't possibly apply to her . Neither did the rule about turning in accurate records of her production totals.

Even after she was accused and admitted to flagrantly inflating her page counts and salary, she was not fired, and no charges were brought against her. She eventually paid the company back.

There is no reason why you cannot reap rewards with little effort on your part. Stop showing up so early and working through lunch. Follow the first person out the door at closing time. Do just enough work to get average annual reviews and yearly bonuses. You'll get the same amount of money even if you knocked yourself out. Eventually you will move up the corporate ladder, rising to the level of your incompetence.

Rise to the level of your incompetence

Sam knew exactly how to do this. He is a Ph.D. in a university medical center. While his coworkers conducted cutting-edge research on HIV and AIDS, Sam rehashed the same tired, old shrimp allergy research data into grants and scientific journal articles. No one, other than his coworkers, knew the subjects in his research were the same people he had been writing about for years. He was so concerned about being found out, he spent hours reparaphrasing his paraphrasing. He insisted the administrative assistant give up her Saturdays and come to the office to retype, cut and paste his bogus papers for publication and grants.

Sam covered all his bases. He made sure his grants paid the administrative staff salaries, so he had absolute control over their time. While the same administrative assistant who showed up every Saturday also stayed into the wee hours of weekday mornings with the other researchers, while they tweaked their publications, Sam insisted she show up for work at 9 a.m. on the dot.

She was the first to jump off Sam's ship. Sam told her, "I know you are leaving because of me, but if you stayed I would continue to treat you the same way."

Eventually, all the other researchers left, finding new jobs.

Sam was alone on his ship. Now all of the administrative staff was at his beck and call. He answered to no one and everyone answered to him.

You can have a department to run all by yourself too, with top pay and power, doing very little to get there, and even less once you arrive.

Identify your best incompetent qualities. Everyone has some. Are you slightly slow on the learning curve, or can you be if you had to? Have a ready cache of excuses when you are questioned about some commitment you did not keep: traffic, long lunch line, kids, technical difficulties, car trouble. These tried and true excuses have worked for many others, and will most probably work for you, too.

While those misunderstood giants of capitalism are being carted away in shackles by the law, forced to put up their mansions as collateral for bail, in America's democracy they are, of course, innocent until proven guilty. Sure the corporations they work for are bankrupt, and their shareholders are left holding sacks of air. Sure, the workers under them have been left with empty pension funds. But they strove for and reached the American dream, and you can, too.

Know you deserve to be a gazillionaire, and that any jerk can be president of a multinational corporation, or even the United State