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, YouTubeTikTok, 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: