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Here are a few of the office culture timetables to check from time to time:

* Pace yourself...accordingly. What's the general pace of things? Is everyone rushing around looking ever so busy? Then you probably should not be practicing your Zen meditative walk through the hallways. Are people mellow in their speech patterns? Then don't let your tongue zoom at NASCAR MPHs.

* The times they are a-changin'. Do you have all the time in the world to generate that proposal -- but it had better be purr-fect? Or is sloppy better than seconds wasted? You can tell which option your culture finds more acceptable by which tends to receive more praise from Uppities. Btw, Uppities tend to measure efficiency against how long they think it should take to accomplish a task, not how long it actually took you to do it. Always ask your Uppity when she wants delivery. You just might need to turn that project around like Speedy Gonzalez. See, señorita?

* Watch the daily tides & swim accordingly. Observe when people wash in and when they wash back out. In some cultures there are high expectations of overtime without pay, and the on-the-dot nine-to-fiver is perceived as an annoyingly anal alien. You don't need to directly mimic the timing patterns of your culture, but the closer you match your coworkers' schedules, the less alien you will seem.

* Ponder the monthly phases of the paper moon. Know what the company policies are and how the process works. If expense reports must be filed monthly, don't turn in six months' worth at once, whining you didn't have the time to do them. M did this all the time, and in doing so she both brought into question her administrative abilities and irritated the nice accountants. Worse, though, was what happened to one of The Girls Who Call Us, Jean, a printing-equipment salesperson. Jean got stiffed to the tune of almost ten grand when she didn't follow the policy and file her expenses routinely. Because Jean was so hell-bent on selling and completely ignored the climate in her company, she wasn't tuned in to the signs that it was going under, and she let her expenses pile up for almost a year. She was unexpectedly laid off, the company went bankrupt, and she never saw a dime of the money she'd spent out of her own pocket. In a highly bureaucratic culture, internal paperwork is an essential part of your job responsibilities, and in all other cultures it's still important and you must stay on top of it, no matter what else you have going on.

* Adjust seasonally. When's crunch time? Which department gets slammed, when, and how often -- annually, monthly, weekly? Don't be running to accounting asking for a copy of your W2 from three years ago during the stay-all-night height of budget season. If you know when the worst times are for each person and division, you can put yourself in a great position to do favors by being Miss Sensitivity and offering to help out. Do a quick coffee run for the accounting team before you punch out for the night. Or do as J used to do when she knew particular departments were pulling late-nighters and drop off a sympathy six-pack or a bottle of tequila and a few shot glasses.

* Check up on the annuals. Read the company handbook and ask coworkers how often people tend to get promoted. Is it every third Friday, or only in sync with the viewing of Halley's comet? If you know that people are promoted regularly, feel free to go in after six months on the job when you've exceeded expectations and ask for a bump. If promotions are next to never and you ask for one prematurely, you are doomed: stingy cultures call this "entitlement."

* Watch the other guy's watch. Everyone has good and bad times of day -- not to mention the month. Make it your business to learn coworkers' cycles and chart them on a mood forecaster spreadsheet, which will help you predict the most auspicious times for meetings, requests, and delivering bad news. "Lucas: won't answer questions till after 5 P.M." "Elias: crabby before lunch; cheerful after." "Tia: don't speak to her until she's drained her second cup of coffee." "Gary: has 3 P.M. deadline every day."

* Show them a good time sensitivity. In every culture: Don't keep people waiting. Don't say you'll call back in two minutes if you know it will be twenty. If you need help, ask: "Is this a good time?" If you call a meeting, keep it as brief as possible by being prepared.

Look for the Uniformity Label

Oh, this one drives us nuts with The Girls Who Call Us. So many of them tell us, "Look, I have my style, and I'm not going to change it. I'm great at what I do! What does the way I dress have anything to do with my abilities? How dare they try to tell me how to dress!"

We agree! But tough doodly-doo for all of us. The way you dress in the office has a ton to do with your abilities -- it can get them completely ignored! Even if there is absolutely no written official dress code for your office, there is a dress code. The whole thing about office attire is a very sensitive issue because it pits individual style against the collective culture -- dicey stuff. Dressing too distinctively can seem like an act of disloyalty against the culture.

When J was working in the Boston advertising agency, even though that company prided itself on its culture of creativity, virtually everyone wore superpreppy clothing. J, not one to be straitjacketed, clung to her New York City Sexy Mama look. On days when she wore something even remotely conservative (as in not skintight), a nice older gentleman, who was clearly trying to help her out with-out getting himself sued, observed that she "looked nice" and gently suggested that when she wore foundation makeup she "looked better." When J finally got the hang of the conservative thing, she then landed a job at Rolling Stone. J spent months frumping around that terminally hip office culture in Ann Taylor red or blue suits, opaque stockings, and practical pumps, all of which she later realized pegged her for a big fat D-U-D. Finally a colleague tipped her off that the French twist had to go. J regrouped and regroovified her wardrobe to fall into step with her hipper-than-thou coworkers.

Think of it this way -- when it's snowing out there, you don't take it as an affront to your personal sense of style or your intellectual capabilities that you need to pop on a pair of boots instead of slingbacks. Check out the clothing climate of your office: * Think of uniforms. They show belonging to a group. Same thing in the office. If you outdress coworkers by a league, they will perceive you as "too good for the rest of us." If you underdress by a mile, guess what? "Clueless D-U-D." Look around and check out the message that others are sending with their clothes -- groovy/hip, status-conscious, classic, authoritative, trendy, powerful -- and align your working wardrobe accordingly.

* Dress Uppity. Check out what the respected execs are wearing and follow suit. Never conform in a way that makes you look bad, though. If all the women have bowl haircuts and you think that cut will make you look like one of the Three Stooges, skip it. Pay close attention to when Uppity Uppers tell you they like an outfit, and wear it regularly, but no overkill. Pull together other outfits that give a similar look and feel.

* Icon eye candy. Within the context of your office culture's uniform, create a Visual Signature -- an item of clothing or style that people identify with you. M has white hair and always wears an antique cameo ring; J never fails to turn out in fabulous shoes. Ladies, the world is our oyster when it comes to creating memorable Visual Signatures: all most guys have to work with are their ties and wherever their hairline happens to fall.

Is It a Workstation or a PlayStation?

Everyone knows about the corner office -- the bigger the office, the more powerful the person. The better the view, generally the more influential the inhabitant. No news there. It's just a big ol' corner office cliché.

But we want you to look beyond square footage. You can learn a ton about your company's culture just by checking out coworkers' desks.

When M started with Food Arts, it was a small, chaotic start-up environment. Pretty much anything went -- everyone's desk looked like the aftermath of a hurricane. M's desk was always piled precariously high with all manner of manuscripts, folders, and month-old newspapers. Then, when the magazine was purchased by M. Shanken Communications, a more established publishing firm, and moved to far posher quarters, M brought her start-up mentality with her. Her desk was always a disaster area -- that's how we show people we're busy, right?

Once M bothered to look around, though, she realized that all the coworkers in the cubicles around her pretty much kept their stuff in nice neat productive-looking piles, and you could land a plane on the clear surfaces of the executives' desks. M realized she looked not only out of place but also out of control by comparison. She cleaned up her act.

* Take the desk litmus. Are the desks orderly? It might indicate a highly structured by-the-book environment. Are there lots of kitschy paraphernalia strewn around -- rubber nuns and Barbie dolls in various states of undress? You are probably in a creative culture. Keep the state of your desk in a manner that meshes with that established pattern. If there is a wide culture gulf between subculture styles in different divisions, then subtly follow the lead of the company execs.

* Cultish or clannish? Do people display lots of family photos, or none at all? This can tell you how much or how little to talk about your personal life. Hint: no photos can mean that employees don't want to let the Most Uppity Uppers know that they might have other obligations and priorities beyond their loyalty to the company. In this company cult culture a fifteen-hour day is likely to be an expectation rather than an exception.

* Status cues. If all the Uppities have Palm Pilot docks on their desks, don't be dragging your gigantic day planner to meetings with all those Post-it notes bursting out of it like New Year's confetti. Pick up the cues, follow the clues.

* Tell no tales. Don't let your stress show on your desk. Put the bottle of Rolaids in the drawer, okaaaaayyyy?

* Desk destination. Be strategic about what you are communicating with your workspace. Rotate in objects that fit the culture and generate interest and discussion on their own. For example, in the creative culture, keep your paper clips in some handmade pottery. In the techno culture, display the latest prototype gadget. One of The Girls Who Call Us, Natasha, a graphic designer, displays classic toys like Slinkys. Natasha's coworkers come over to visit just to fiddle with the latest toy and play a while. Hummmm. Conversely, stacks of black binders are good for the boring android corporate camper look.

Space: The Vinyl Frontier? Take a look at the decor. What are its pretensions? Is there expensive framed Belle Epoque artwork on the walls? Then you are probably in a place where a "cultured" image counts, and you can be sure the Uppity Uppers never miss the Sunday New York Times Magazine and always know what's on the best-seller list. Are there illustrated posters on how to be a good corporate camper plastered through the hallways, like there are at AOL headquarters? Then you'll be wanting to use the words upgrade and proactive a lot. Is there an implied emphasis on innovation? Renew that subscription to Wired. Is it grunge youthful? Then perhaps you can keep your nose ring in and use your purple marker after all.

Check out the parking lot: what kind of cars do the execs drive? If it's a bunch of Lexuses, Porsches, or Aston Martins, you know that luxury status items count in this office culture big time. If there are SUVs, you are dealing with a whole other status mentality -- the active life-style wannabe culture -- so you probably want to let it be known that you own a snowboard. And if the parking lot is full of rusty trucks and nasty old Volvos, then you know that these people probably care more about good value and faithfulness -- or, quite possibly, just driving everything into the ground.

See where we're headed here? Map out what you think is the underlying cultural system and message as expressed by the physical office spaces and align your head space with it. Whatever the culture seems to esteem (is it outsider art? vintage tools? brainy Mensa-esque quarterlies?), educate yourself. It's not tough, since there's a website for everything (europuppy.com -- need we say more?). To succeed, you need to understand the culture and clearly fit into it, but not conform to the point that you lose your individuality and become invisible.

When M. Shanken, which publishes Wine Spectator, purchased Food Arts, M didn't know a claret from a clarinet, her entire exposure to wine up to that point having been provided by swill with screw tops and fruit-sopped sangria. Even though M didn't work on Wine Spectator herself, wine was clearly the epicenter of the company's culture -- the huge glass wine cellar in the lobby was a pretty good tip-off. M made it her business to first teach herself a little bit through reading and classes and then asked some Wine Spectator editors to mentor her further.

From The Big Sister's Guide To The World of Work by Marcelle DiFalco & Jocelyn Greenky Herz. Copyright (c) 2005 by Marcelle DiFalco & Jocelyn Greenky Herz. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Fireside Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.