Step 1: Look over your shoulder to make sure no one sees you reading this.

Step 2: Target a large, corporate office where you’ll be as unimportant as you feel. (Insider Tip: Choose an office with cubicle cover.)

Step 3: Dress in nondescript business attire and participate in co-worker banter to avoid making others feel uneasy by your presence. (Insider Tip: Use these social moments as opportunities to conduct reconnaissance of desks.)

Step 4: Do the bare minimum at your job to remain undeserving of recognition. (Insider Tip: Staying at a lower rung in the corporate ladder will also give you the resentment you need to fuel your kleptomania.)

Step 5: Wait until afternoon when co-workers tire and take frequent breaks.

Step 6: Primarily target desks furthest from yours, but throw in a few neighborly casualties as well to obscure any discernible pattern.

Step 7: Begin with smaller, less valuable items like paper clips and tacks. Then work your way up to pens, notepads, rulers, pictures of coworkers’ children, highlighters, staplers, hole-punchers, and finally the holy grail – whiteout. (Insider Tip: With the exception of pictures of coworkers’ children, have your own distinct version of these items visible beforehand so as to deter suspicions of you).

Step 8: Later, hide your own stationery and dramatically (but not too dramatically) declare that it has been stolen as well.

Step 9: Pinpoint biggest loser in office and distribute propaganda to encourage mob mentality accusations against them. (Insider Tip: Bathroom graffiti is an excellent means of disinformation.)

Step 10: Once you have raided your office of all the whiteout, lay low for a couple weeks, then quietly resign and find another job at the office building down the street.

Bonus Step: Close this window and erase browser history. (Insider Tip: Don’t follow Brainflora on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, sign up for our Email Newsletter, or publicly associate yourself with us in anyway, including by reading our next nourishing idea New Year: Soooo Good, So Far).

Pollinate: