How to Get Ahead in Business: Take a Survey

So your CPA keeps bumping into your administrative assistant at the vending machine, and she claims he's causing her to spill her Snapple? A new self-help for business guide, The Book That's Sweeping America! Or Why I Love Business, by the esteemed expert Stephen Michael Peter Thomas (Wiley; $17.95), provides recommendations for companies dealing with the touchy issue of sexual harassment. The management should oversee an Employee Survey of Touching Habits and Attitudes. Among the typical questions:

• "When is a slap on the butt appropriate?"
• "How long should a handshake last?"…
• "Should European men be allowed to kiss American men?"

The results of the survey help define Touch Zones appropriate for women and men, as well as ways of touching (the poke, the tweak, the bite, the kick and the squeeze, for example). Using this invaluable information, the team can create for each employee a Personal Touch Preferences Profile, an innovation that will be invaluable to touchers and touchees.