Always reconnoiter restaurants carefully when you come in. If you spot your I-Boss eating at a table with associates, position yourself with your back to him, but try to stay within earshot. This is always a hoot because the person trying to schmooze the boss knows you can hear what's going on. This is also why you carefully index the key points your I-Boss makes back at the office. You can proclaim to your table companions how these very ideas will revolutionize the industry. Proclaim, that is, just loud enough for your I-Boss to hear. With you quoting your I-Boss article and verse, he won't hear a word the person at the table with him is saying. Maneuver yourself at parties and receptions to do the same thing. Always position yourself so your I-Boss will "overhear" you singing his praises. If praising your I-Boss in these social situations is too on the nose, praise his ideas. Say to your cocktail companions, "I don't remember who said such-and-such, but it's a fabulous idea." Your I-Boss will probably excuse himself from his present conversation and join your group to take credit. Parties and receptions are also good opportunities to work over moles and kiss-ups, planting valuable messages in their puny brains to carry back to your I-Boss. They might not get many social opportunities outside of these parties, so make them feel welcome, even if it's not your party. Your I-Boss will be pleased if he observes from across the room you treating his moles well.

Don't Order the Crab

When dining with persons who can cash your ticket, try not to embarrass anyone at the table. God, Machiavellian, and many Sadistic Bosses usually have advanced table graces. I was trying to increase the amount of consulting I was doing with a certain television network some time ago and was invited to dinner with a very senior vice president who was known for his impeccable taste in fine dining and fine wines. He prided himself on proper etiquette. The fact he expensed thousands of dollars every month on fancy meals and obscene gratuities made him popular with many a maitre d' in major cities around the world. We were dining at a swank west-side eatery in Los Angeles with several members of his office entourage. I know enough about fine dining to start with the outside silverware and work in, but not much else. Still a power meal neophyte, I paid no attention to what he or anyone else ordered. With the network picking up the tab, I ordered the "market price" crab. The wine was in the range of $100 per bottle, which I found out too late gets you tipsy much faster than the $24.99 stuff I'm used to. When the main course was finally served, I was feeling happy and confident despite my diminished capacity to execute the intricate procedures required to crack crab shells and extract the meat. My tongue was probably stuck out of the corner of my mouth as I struggled to get a grip on a large crab leg with the silver nutcracker. The VP's entourage was hanging on his every word when I finally cracked open the shell sending mucus-colored crab juice spraying across the table. Fortunately, most of it missed his face, landing instead on his $3,000 Italian suit. The splatter pattern spared no one on his side of the table. The women and men of his entourage shrieked in unison. True to his stature, the VP sat serenely as a gaggle of waiters blotted him with white napkins. I haven't worked for that network since. Business meals, receptions, and parties are not recreational activities to an ambitious person who knows how to work the room. They are privileged opportunities to conduct reconnaissance, build alliances - unholy or otherwise - and strategically position yourself for success. Never forget that food can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Eat slowly, chew carefully, and swallow before taking another bite.

Following the television network dinner debacle, I wrote down "table etiquette needs work" on my self-inventory. I'm glad the 12 steps leave a little wiggle room to conduct remedial work. If I had to get it right the first time, on a strict schedule, I'd probably be a relapse statistic. To continue taking personal inventory is a good idea because the more layers of the onion I peel away, the more I seem to discover. The more I probe my personal idiot issues, the more I understand Idiot Bosses and how to deal with them. The personal inventory exercise is particularly helpful in the context of my career because I am forming a picture of how boneheadedness in my personal affairs is mirrored by boneheadedness in my professional affairs. Idiot Bosses are idiots at home, too. If I remain seized up with anger and resentment toward Idiot Bosses, I'll keep trying to peel their onions instead of my own. Chopping their onions is a more appropriate way to put it. No, hacking them to itty-bitty pieces with a machete is the honest way to put it. But as we agreed articles ago, that kind of bitterness and revenge seeking only spoils our day, not theirs.

Working the Meal

A one-on-one meal is a rich opportunity to tell your I-Boss everything he wants to hear without being labeled a turkey around the office. Just make sure the waiter is not a recently downsized colleague who still has your associates' e-mail addresses. I could have and perhaps should have used the offsite coffee meetings at Coco's to butter up Big Bill. But I had that demon resentment gnawing away inside me and I didn't take advantage of my opportunities. Back then I lived a one-dimensional victimhood in which everything I did was right and everything Bill did was wrong. In that twisted mindset, everything I did was virtuous and everything he did was evil. I never stopped to consider that he was a human being, too, trying to sort out his mess of a life as I was trying to sort out mine, and probably having the same amount of success, no more, no less. Besides being unproductive, such narrow thinking was tedious. I'm the one who lost sleep at night tabulating and comparing my virtuous deeds to his evil ones. I was miserable while he, for the most part and most of the time, appeared happy. In his eruptive moments, he blew up at everyone and everything. The poor man was incapable of storing up hostility, resentment, and rage, and letting it eat at him day and night, the way I could. Looking at the bright side, Big Bill always picked up the tab at Coco's. If you've been resisting lunch invitations from your I-Boss, try accepting once in a while. He might pay for it. Disneyland was my first real management job with an expense account. True to my tradition of missing opportunities, I didn't understand how expense accounts could be used as wealth-building tools until it was too late. Shortly after I became a "suit," a memo was circulated admonishing executives to stop taking each other out to lunch and expensing it. I had never imagined doing such a thing. My timing leaves something to be desired. Not that I'm a Boy Scout, above stretching the privileges of position within reason, it just hadn't occurred to me. When the memo hit, I remember thinking to myself, "Gee, I could have been going out to lunch at expensive restaurants around Orange County instead of eating in the commissary every day?"

Your I-Boss might be willing to take you to lunch and expense it because he's brash enough to do it. Planets often align themselves in ways that benefit I-Bosses, so much so I sometimes suspect God has a special place in his heart for idiots. Maybe Idiot Bosses truly are His little boo-boos and He feels sorry for them. Your I-Boss's boss might expense her lunches with peers and subordinates and doesn't want to rock the boat by enforcing a prohibition on it. Perhaps nobody up the food chain has established a policy to forbid it or bothers to enforce existing policy against such things. At Disneyland, I doubt the top executives ever stopped expensing, their lunches. They probably just enforced the policy on middle management where I lived. Your I-Boss might unwittingly get by with expensing lunches because someone in accounting is robbing the company blind and allowing some fudging on expense accounts as a smoke screen. Whatever the reason, if your I-Boss pays for lunch, enjoy it and shut up. Even if your I-Boss insists on going Dutch treat, it could be worse. He might be a regular prankster and think it's a cute trick to ask you to lunch and then stick you with the bill. The latter is more likely to occur with a Sadistic or a God Boss who considers your picking up the tab a form of tithing. Big Bill always paid when we went out for coffee or a meal. It was another way for him to remind me that I owed him. Besides resenting, his innuendo, I didn't feel the need to get out of our employees' earshot because I didn't have anything to hide from them. If anything, I was too open and loose-lipped with company information as I discovered the night Mrs. Bill and April bushwhacked me. Making the most from business meals begins with following a few simple rules:

■ Understand what a business meal means to your boss. Some think meals are work time, others think they're opportunities to talk about everything but work. Whichever the case, your boss sets the agenda, not you.

■ Are business meals a cover for your boss's desire to slam back a few before returning to the office? If so, use the designated driver or doctor's orders excuses to not join in the drinking. If the boss has alcohol problems, he might be under secret-yet-serious scrutiny by higher ups. You don't want to be entangled in the net that might be set out for your boss.

■ If your boss is a drinker, that's his business. As long as he's not endangering your life or his own, let it go. You probably just know enough of the story to be dangerous.

■ Don't battle over the bill other than to impress your boss that you're a team player. Even if you don't want to feel beholden, who pays the check does nothing to alter who the boss is. If your boss wants to play the big shot, what possible benefit can you derive from spoiling his moment? Save your money.

■ Don't turn down your boss's invitation to dine with him. Claiming that you have too much work to do only works with sadists and they probably won't ask you anyway. They'll do everything they can to keep you from eating. If your boss asks you to lunch, go. Your company is obviously more important to him than the work you're doing. Resist setting your priorities ahead of his.

■ Make the most out of the opportunity to make your points to the boss while he's a captive audience. Or use the time to listen and learn. Every time bosses open their mouths, they are bound to provide you with valuable information about what makes them tick and what pulls their triggers. Knowledge is power.

Working Through the Meal

I worked for one group vice president who never stopped for lunch and didn't approve of anyone else taking a midday break. Fortunately, his office was in New York City and I was based in California. George was tall and intimidating. He smoked long cigars and left the office promptly at 5 p.m. to slam down hard liquor at any one of New York's finer restaurants, sometimes pausing long enough to eat dinner. I don't recall if he picked up the tab when I was with him or if I expensed the meal because I was the one traveling. Lunch, however, was a moot point. George believed breaking for lunch wasted time and energy, and it was difficult to focus people after a "lunch two-hour" as it was called around the New York offices. George wouldn't even tolerate the disruption of having lunch brought in. I can recall a boardroom full of George's unit general managers, of which I was one, starving, turning pale, weakening by the moment, suffering low blood-sugar hallucinations, with stomachs growling in concert with one another. Finally, someone summoned the courage to speak up. "George," the GM said in a quivering voice, "do you think we can break for lunch?" The rest of us exchanged cautious glances as George sat back in his green leather chair and took a puff on his long cigar_ "If you need to," he said with a sigh, "go ahead. But I'm going to keep working." That was that. George was being a kind boss, allowing his sniveling, spineless, weak, milk toast general managers to go eat, "if they needed to." The only option to prove we were not sniveling, spineless, weak, milk toast general managers was to stick it out until 5 p.m. and then go gorge ourselves like the starving animals we were. After boot camp with Big Bill, I was able to function well with Cigar George. I was able to apply Big Bill lessons to George. It wasn't that I developed calluses to protect myself from belligerent men in powerful positions; I truly learned to empathize and see them as human beings who were just as susceptible to stupidity as I was, but too mean and seized up in their own stuff to discuss it. Once you stop resenting and playing the victim, it is amazing how comments, behaviors, and attitudes that would otherwise have driven you into hiding dissipate into thin air. Vacation Requests I'm much more willing to meet offsite these days. I've even found that meeting offsite has some practical applications, especially in dealing with I-Bosses. If your I-Boss gives you grief about requesting your vacation time the way George gave people grief about going to lunch, take him offsite.

During your meal together, lead your I-Boss into a conversation about his vacation. Milk it for all it's worth. Encourage him, beg him not to leave out a single detail. Pay attention to the adjectives he uses to describe the landscape, the wind, the waves, the smell of fresh pine forests, whatever. If he says two weeks just didn't seem long enough, make a mental note. After he has worked himself into a euphoric state, tell him you want to take the same amount of time he did, go where he went, and, using his adjectives, have the same experience he had. Once the time off is granted, go where you want to go. His nostalgia, combined with that full-tummy feeling, will be the best possible moment for you to ask. Nothing back at the office can match it. Hopefully, you're eating alone with him. But if that's not possible, take your shot anyway. You just gave your peers a lesson well worth the price of admission. Being away from the office tends to make people forget deadlines, pressure, and problems of all kinds. Get him to commit before you finish dessert. Food works well with all boss types. Even masochists and paranoids feel cheerier with a blood-sugar rush. Asking a God Boss for your vacation over an off-site meal, especially if you're paying for it, increases the probability of success. His kingdom will be a little less familiar. His omnipotence will seem a little less omnipotent. Overall, he's more vulnerable. Back at the office, you'll need to do much more penance to get the dates you want. Picking up the tab might be enough to put him over the edge. Machiavellian Bosses can be handled similarly to I-Bosses vis-a-vis the restaurant vacation request. Using his descriptions, tell him you think the head of the company should require all employees to take vacations exactly like his. Promise him you'll tell everyone at your vacation destination that your boss [so-and-so] sent you. He'll be most cooperative if he thinks your vacation will help expand his sphere of influence. Sadistic Bosses are a complex challenge when it comes to vacation requests. In a restaurant situation, poke at your food but don't eat. Lay your fork down and sigh. When she smiles that serpent-like smile and asks what's wrong, tell her you have vacation time coming and you just hate to go on vacation. She'll be suspicious at first, but stay with the program. Explain that all you ever do on vacations is worry about the work back at the office. No matter where you go, you can't get your mind off the pile on your desk. Describe how you always fret about the money you spent traveling to an exotic place only to sit on a sun-swept beach in complete misery. Plead with her not to make you go. Tell her if she forces you to take vacation time, you'll insist on taking work with you. Slam-dunk. Tell your Masochistic Boss you'll take lots of pictures and tell him every detail of the fun you had as soon as you get back.

You'll even call in and let him listen to the surf once in a while to help him die of envy. Mention how you'll leave travel brochures on your desk while you're gone and download a picture of paradise for a screensaver so he can be miserable every day you're away. He might even extend your time off. Asking a Buddy Boss for vacation time is dangerous. She'll readily grant you the time off. But she'll want to come with you. Offer to organize an office vacation slide show party when you return. She might go for that. If she still insists on accompanying you, hang tough. Try telling her you're meeting a stranger from an Internet chat room, your mother is coming along, or there's a typhoid warning where you're going. If nothing dissuades her, you might need to include her in your travel plans. But all is not lost. Insist on booking the tickets and ac commodations. Blaming it all on the travel agency after the fact, send her to another continent while you wing your way to an undisclosed destination. A Paranoid Boss will suspect you are going to use your time off to further the global conspiracy against him. Win his temporary trust over lunch by offering to test his food. If he still resists granting time off because you're involved in a plot, invite him to go along. You might need to actually purchase a companion ticket and hand it to him. Make sure it's fully refundable if you want to get your money back when he refuses to go. A one-on-one lunch with a Paranoid Boss is best for a vacation request for the same blood-sugar advantage as with the others. His confidence might be elevated just enough for the companion ticket to work. Promise to give him your complete itinerary and telephone numbers of the places where you'll be staying, including the local American Consulates. Lean over the table slightly and whisper that you'll carry a sealed envelope on your person at all times containing the names of all the conspirators to be mailed to him in the event of your untimely death. If you live through your vacation and don't mysteriously lose the envelope, you'll present it to him upon your return. Hopefully, he'll buy into enough of your nonsense to grant you the time off before he figures out that the only way you would know if his lunch was safe to taste is if you were part of the conspiracy to poison him. A Good Boss will need no such manipulation. She'll bug you to make sure you take all the time you have coming because she's truly concerned with your personal and professional health and well-being. When you return, she'll probably take you to lunch to hear all about your time away. Don't forget the pictures.