Venture Technologies, a product development and design firm, was once asked to create an automated touch-free trash bucket that allows people to avoid physical contact with the germ-infested door.

It was supposed to revolutionize the world of hospital and restaurant hygiene, but the investors bailed out and refused to pay the engineers for $100,000 worth of labor.

So besides keeping the lunchroom clean, what do you do with a one-of-a-kind magic garbage can?

Find out in this week’s Working Stiff column.

The business card creativity stream keeps on flowing…. On the heels of the business card catapult and business card penny cannon — and not to mention the resignation letter cake — there’s now the locally baked business card cookie!

Danvers pastry chef Kelly Delaney, owner of the Cakes for Occasions bakery, prints business cards with food coloring ink and packages them with your traditional inedible calling cards.

The clever violin-munching cartoon cookies above were commissioned by Boston’s Reuning & Son Violins — a retail and repair shop for new and antique instruments — for last week’s American String Teachers Association trade show in California.

Business manager Maureen Wall says her 400 cookie cards were gobbled up in the first four hours of the three-day show. “Every company has some item to give away to bring potential clients to their booth and there are only so many tote bags and pens one can really take,” she says. “It was quite a conversation starter.”

Delaney, perhaps best known on the North Shore for her bakery’s wedding cakes, also just dove into unchartered territory with 8.5″ x 11″ sugar cookie resumes.

In today’s crazy job market, can you really influence potential employers by appealing to their sweet tooth?  In this week’s Working Stiff column, find out what one top resume expert says about the wisdom of frosting your career credentials.   

Most business cards I accumulate wind up in the trash after I enter a contact’s information into my computer. Some of them wind up as pocket lint after an unfortunate wash and dry.

But here are two business cards I would never throw away:

Do you remember The Brady Bunch episode when Bobby was jealous of all his siblings’ trophies? And his self-esteem plummeted to an all-time low when he couldn’t even win an ice cream eating contest?

At the end of that show, the Brady boys and girls gave Bobby a store-bought trophy out of sympathy and Bobby (the way I recall the show) realized that maybe winning trophies wasn’t the most important thing of all.

In this week’s “Working Stiff” column, I dive into the world of industry awards and the reality that many of them are shams for selling certificates and trophies. Take a look at this graphic design/video editing award called the “Fexy.”

The Fexies, which are named after the FX shorthand for special effects, charge big bucks for certificates and statuettes. And get this, you can win in 56 different categories AND are not competing against other entries. As long as the judges give you at least a 7 out of 10 — wasn’t a “C” grade considered mediocre in grade school? — you can “win” a gold Fexy.

Can you imagine bragging about your Fexy with a straight face?

I’m much prouder of my Ronald Reagan Presidential Academic Fitness Award.

In this week’s Working Stiff column, meet iconoclast Becky Ebenkamp, a frustrated job seeker who’s decided to make her own rules.  Instead of moping around about the real companies that don’t have job openings, she’s making up her own fictitious companies for her resume and creating make-believe job titles.

Sure, these pretend jobs come with pretend salaries, but Becky is banking on the fact that her irreverent creative style will appeal to the right employers.  And for those who are turned off?  Well, she says, they’re not a good match anyhow.

Perhaps most compelling is her confidence to mock the advertising and PR industries in her LinkedIn profile.  Is it a savvy move to ridicule the corporate culture of your prospective employers — or is it career suicide.

I guess the Becky Ebenkamp Experiment will answer that question.

(Full Disclosure: I am a LinkedIn “friend” of Becky’s, was a fan of her Brandweek blog posts, and admire her Partridge Family sense of fashion.  But we have never met.  My column is not some hare-brained scheme to help a college buddy get a job.)

I do think it takes guts to try to find a job that suits your personality — instead of caving into taking just anything in this horrific economic climate.  I also think any advertising or PR firm would be lucky to house Becky’s Advertising Icon Museum that she used to house in her Brandweek office.  The Velvet Ronald McDonald above was a thrift shop discovery in California — predating decades before the “SuperSize Me” villification.

And lastly, a prediction.  Satirical Resumes could just become the Job Resignation Cakes of 2010!