After landing that job, you think you can now take it easy. But keeping your job is even tougher, what with countless others just waiting for you to slip up so they can slip into your place. If you’ve been guilty of more than a couple of these missteps, don’t be surprised if you get your walking papers pronto.

1. Don’t be bound by time. Have a reputation for coming in late and being the first to bolt at the stroke of five. For added measure, take long lunch and merienda breaks, as well as frequent unannounced absences especially when crucial projects are on the line. When you’re not always in your seat, your boss will likely decide she likes it better that way, and find somebody else who’s more visible.

2. Whine and gripe. Spend your work hours complaining to anyone who cares to listen about your dead-end job, your lousy superior and the company’s idiotic policies. Gossip about your peers every chance you get. Regale everyone with your personal problems and crises. These actions will convince the higher-ups it’s time they put a stop to your misery by getting you out of the job you hate so much.

3. Practice mediocrity. Do only the minimum requirements of your job. Make no innovations or suggestions to improve. Don’t try to learn new skills. When you barely make the grade, you not only won’t get promoted, you will surely head the boss’s dispensable employees list.

4. Prioritize personal matters. Disregard all restraint when handling personal business while in the workplace. Use the phone constantly to make telebabad with family and friends, set an appointment with the dentist or conduct business on the side. Apply the same recklessness in the personal use of the e-mail and the Internet, conveniently forgetting that all these activities can be tracked and recorded against you.

5. Ignore workplace etiquette. Don’t observe common decency. Borrow stuff without asking-and don’t bother to return them. Rifle through other people’s papers without permission. Be querulous and quarrelsome. Reek of alcohol. Such unprofessional conduct will earn you the ire of everyone, particularly management.

6. Antagonize your boss. Dawdle with the projects your manager gives you. Make faces when she asks you to do something. Poke fun at her to others behind her back. When you are uncooperative and unreliable, your supervisor will soon realize you’re a burden and danger to her department and neutralize you.