When the mere thought of work makes you sick as a dog, wanting to vommit...

There was a CSI episode where Sarah said that smiling prevents regurgitation. So, being in an industry where image is everything, a smile can work to your advantage in more ways than making you pretty:

1. Let's first start with the obvious. A good smile makes you pretty. It makes people respond to you in a more positive way. It creates a human connection. It makes following-up more bearable (even just a weee bit more) to disgruntled, hot-tempered ideas-factories. Not like you care.

2. A smile makes your voice sound pretty. Very useful if you're faking enthusiasm over the phone. It disguises your sinking, loathing feeling for talking to a god-forsaken fashion victim who feels that you're close friends. After hearing that oddly satisfying "click" after your newly-found close friend bids you an irritatingly cheerful goodbye, drop the phone on the cradle like it was a boulder mashing a clove of garlic. You can drop the smile too.

3. It prevents regurgitation. The most relevant of all. You're sick of work. You wish you could plunge a knife into every throat letting out a totally nasty, irrelevant but percievably humorous remark in a lousy attempt to lighten up a meeting. You absolutely hate having to deal with co-workers who are a floor below you but who think that they are floors above you. You'd love to vommit on their self-proclaimed thrones everytime they pull out an i-can-afford-to-be-difficult-because-it-wont-be-my-fault attitude. But no. You smile. You whip out the fakest but most genuine-looking smile that could possibly fool even an FBI agent. Because at the end of the day, they really could afford to be difficult. And you can't throw up on them.

Maybe I should shift careers. Should I just be in CSI, where throwing up will be no problem at all. But until I get a degree enough to qualify me for Crime Investigation, I'll just have to content myself in playing pretend.

Smile now. Throw up later.