RPT-Author offers tips for relaxing on the job

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* Learn tricks of successful, powerful people, book says

* Being absent builds status, author writes

By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Never mind the recession. Workers can still find ways to do less and get away with it, says the author of a tongue-in-cheek look at the workplace, "How to Relax Without Getting the Axe."

The secret is learning and adapting the tricks of powerful, successful people, said Stanley Bing, whose book, subtitled "A Survival Guide to the New Workplace," comes out on Nov. 17.

The new book is an updated version of Bing's earlier book "Executricks, or How to Retire While You're Still Working," tailored to meet today's hard economic times, he said.

"It's a perilous workplace environment but, that said, it should be possible to learn from the way that successful people manage their time and manage their careers," he told Reuters in an interview.

"It is a handbook for people who haven't yet attained what they would consider powerful status, to be able to use some of the same tricks that their bosses do and make it work."

Bing is actually a pseudonym for Gil Schwartz, who is executive vice president of corporate communications for CBS Corp. He began using the name Stanley Bing several years ago when he was writing a column for Esquire magazine.

CREATING ILLUSION OF AN OFFICE DOOR

He and his book are loaded with strategic tips such as how to delegate, which he says is "at the heart of all power," how to identify a remote problem to justify an expense-paid business trip and how to create the illusion of an office door for privacy, even in an open workplace of cubicles.

For a "virtual" door, he suggests, turn the computer screen away from other people, personalize the work space to make it uncongenial to visitors and cultivate "patterns of unfriendliness."

"It also marks you as somewhat antisocial and difficult to deal with, i.e. executive," he writes in the book, published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Of utmost importance is the art of being absent to build status, a trick made all the easier with the abundance of e-mail, cellphones and other technology, he said. While once presence was necessary, it has become almost suspect, he said.

People can be in their offices too much, prompting others to wonder, "Why are they here all the time?" he said.