THE boss is away. Do you: (a) run into her office, rifle through the desk drawers and spin around and around in the big comfy chair, or (b) recognise that this is an amazing opportunity to show what a responsible and capable individual you are. Yes, you guessed it, many people let the first whiff of power go to their head or simply pull out all the (wrong) stops in an attempt to impress. Here are some examples of what not to do when the boss isn’t watching:

Act in haste . . . and repent when the boss returns, as Murray Steele, a senior lecturer in strategic management at Cranfield School of Management, learnt the hard way. A long time ago as the young deputy manager at an engineering firm, Steele took over, took decisive action and his fellow workers took strike action in response. “Someone on the shop floor bent my ear on something; I wanted to impress and take quick action,” he says. “[But] I heard only one side of the argument.” After Steele took disciplinary action against someone, other workers downed tools in protest. “I was lucky to keep my job,” he says, but he did learn a few valuable lessons. “Never act hastily unless the circumstances call for it [and] always listen to both sides of the argument.”

Use your initiative. Common sense often deserts people when they are asked to take charge, says Dr Michael Anderson, a programmes manager at Coventry University Enterprises. He cites the example of an assistant manager who decided to take care of his boss’s exotic fish. “When the manager came back, they said that everything [at work] was fine but that the fish were asleep.” They were dead. Unable to tell the difference between potpourri and fish food, the well-meaning stand-in had posioned the poisson. “Be absolutely clear what the boss wants you to do . . . and what he doesn’t want you to do,” Anderson says. And don’t put too much pressure on yourself. “Don’t be afraid to ask for support as necessary.”

Be a cheeky youth. Inexperience is a common excuse for unwise or silly behaviour. A communications officer who wishes to remain anonymous decided to try to raise a smile from her po-faced superior when she was working as a waitress. “We decided that one of the chefs looked like Noddy; he wasn’t very impressed with that,” she says. “We got some red and yellow water-based paints and painted his car like the Noddy-mobile. Once we stopped giggling, we thought it was perhaps a joke too far.”

More naive than cheeky, Philip Lee, the business development executive at Daisy Communications, lost his job after being left in charge of a DIY store at 21. Lee paid up front to a new supplier offering power tools at a good price. “When the boss came back he was quite pleased with the deal. But it turned out after a visit from the police that we had bought stolen goods.”

Redesign the wheel. Don’t be tempted to make radical changes when left in charge, says Peninah Thomson, a partner at Praesta, an executive coaching firm. She cites the experience of a stand-in who launched a wholesale review of the purchasing system at a company when the boss was absent through illness. Instead of a triumph of change management, he managed to alienate his superior who returned before the new system was in place. Concentrate instead on doing the best job you can, she says. “It’s not sensible to make [the boss] feel threatened when [he or she] comes back.”

Slack off. “If your boss is away, act as if he or she is still there. Don’t change your behaviour,” says Jenny Ungless, a career coach at Monster, a recruitment website. Ungless was unimpressed when a team that she once led launched “Operation Absent Cat” when she went away. “When I came back there was a little bit of sniggering and a few guilty looks,” she says. “They had been taking it easy and going for long lunches. They regarded it as a bit of a holiday in the office; not very professional.”

Get involved. Things can get messy if the boss leaves a power vacuum in her absence, as Peter Watson, the service and support manager at Daisy Communications found when he worked at a furniture firm. Overworked and without direction from the top, those left in charge started to pick up temporary staff from the street. “One chap brought four cans of Special Brew for his breakfast,” Watson says. Eventually recruitment reverted to staffing agencies but not before furniture started going missing. “Different people were struggling to get the job done . . . people were pulling right and left about the best way to do things.” The result was chaos.