Useless middle managers, desperate to stay busy and avoid layoffs, are coming up with ever dumber corporate responses to the recession. We will discover and mock them all, with your assistance.

Nobody is buying anything these days. Workers are idle, but they want to look productive. That leads to busywork. Great idea for a trend piece! Turns out busywork won't save you. You are doomed.

Cityfile today publishes a long post saying, essentially, that the ongoing rumor war between Anna Wintour and Conde Nast is the product of both sides using the media during tough contract negotiations. Let's look back:

Last year it looked like the baby Vogue editors outshined the top dog. Now it seems those stars are dimming, most recently with an absurd quote from atop Vogue Italia.

If one of your co-workers suddenly shows up to work dressed like a complete slut, there may be a good explanation for it: She may just be hoping to hang on to her job. In a poll involving 3,000 women, 27 percent of the respondents said they'd be willing to wear a "slightly risky outfit" to work if it meant they'd get a bonus or promotion. [Daily Mail]

Attention screen-addled young (or old, whatever) folk: Gawker Media is looking for a television-obsessed intern to watch TV a few days a week, in search of newsworthy clips for social commentary. There are two qualifications:

Yes, it's blindingly obvious, but if you're currently unemployed you can take comfort in the fact that researchers have condemned open-plan offices, where "noise, overcrowding and invasion of privacy... can lead to exhaustion, high blood pressure and even the flu." Squeezy balls, breathing techniques, and hanging a nice painting to look at are some of the measures suggested for warding off fantasies of murder-suicide, although coming to work lightly drunk, stoned, or otherwise tranquilized might help too.

Not all newspaper journalists are getting hammered by the simultaneous implosion of their industry and the economy: The embattled Times just raised Web staff salaries by an average 12 percent. Yay unions?

Anna Wintour has given filmmaker R.J. Cutler an extraordinary gift: Not only did she allow his cameras into the Vogue offices and her family, the editor also revealed her (remaining) human side.

The last media company still hiring: Vice. [Folio]

Tina Brown, author of a best-selling book on Princess Diana and editor-in-chief of a neat blogsite that is like HuffPo but without the faux-populism "anyone can blog" shtick, is really sweating this new media environment.

Chris Matthews told his Hardball staff he won't run for a Pennsylvania senate seat in 2010, which means he'll probably remain at MSNBC. But will he be a sad poor, anchorwise?

Media elites call Anna Wintour's Vogue editorship stale, but after 20 years some in the creative underclass have grown attached. Or maybe, like Wintour, they've learned celebrities sell clothing.

As the mobs of newly unemployed people tire of eating squirrel, they determine to do anything necessary to land that next job. Even if it means cheating on the world's easiest "personality test":

Entertainment Weekly lost a quarter of its staff to layoffs last year, but Time Inc. will continue publishing the magazine, even though it maybe considered axing its print edition. Risky.

Are a you laid off media person? Have you joined The American Society of Shitcanned Media Elites (ASSME)? You should, because they're a seriously legitimate organization now. They have T-shirts and everything!

Time's international editor Michael Elliott is an up-and-comer, second only to U.S. editor Rich Stengel at the magazine. But leading an iron-fisted gutting of global editions made him bitter enemies.

Aliona Doletskaya has been hailed as potential successor to Anna Wintour atop U.S. Vogue. But there's a side of the Russian editor's life you didn't read about in the Times.

One less thing to aspire to, journalists: The New York Times in cutting back on those nice overseas executive gigs at the Paris-based International Herald Tribune:

We heard Time's Washington Bureau chief Jay Carney was leaving the magazine, but now we hear the stunning reason: to be VP Joe Biden's communications director. Carney was in the tank all along!