Office Life

[aggienaut]

   It occurs to me, that life in an office is as unfamiliar a setting to me as some sort of improbable science fiction. My normal workday consists of working in the forest surrounded by kangaroos, as the kookaburra laughs overhead.

   And I haven't posted a poll in a long time anyway, so here's a poll with some office life stereotypes that come to mind.

[Poll #2079896]

   I'm sure there's other office cliches I'm forgetting at this moment. Please feel free to brainstorm them in comments!

Comments

[meowmensteen]

I didn't do any of those things, but I did roll my eyes at a co-worker. Of course I don't, and have never, worked in an office.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha (:

[nattalie-m.livejournal.com]

I roll my eyes to everybody!!!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

ahaha ;D

[lifeinroseland.livejournal.com]

*attended a soul-crushing meeting
*scowl in disgust at the fridge/microwave
*gotten a papercut
*despaired at a typo

But I don’t work in an office either! We do have one though & I flee it like a cat does with a bath.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I actually did work in a law office years ago and I marveled that everyone else took their lunch at their desks, becuase I was not spending another minute there if I didn't have to! Not the break room either, it was a sad depressing place. I always always would run outside for my lunch or my fifteen minute breaks

[wantedonvoyage.livejournal.com]

Recently forced back into hive life after almost 20 glorious years of telecommuting. I can add:

1. Lost an entire day of productivity because co-workers, faced with the novelty of being in the same building, must come talk about it, right outside your cubicle.
   
2. Watched two co-workers have a vicious slapfight in email with the rest of the team on copy, and one of them randomly puts our director on copy like he's our mom.
   
3. Watched supervisor tell a big fat lie to the entire team and then later have the director repeat it, and then later the same day their lie is completely debunked and no explanation is given
   
4. Can't talk round the water cooler because it was taken away. Company policy states that if the municipality has not said the tap water is unfit to drink, they do not need to pay for bottled water. The day the water cooler was taken away, someone thumb-tacked a Ziploc bag full of water to the label-scarred wall where it once stood, with a Post-It saying "Make it last!"

And they wonder why I'm bitter.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lol that's hilarious!

[yesididit2.livejournal.com]

had the micromanaging boss stop by the cubicle to order you to work on the specific thing - that you happen to be working on right that minute, and the boss is too stupid to tell.

steal postit notes for personal use. or staples. or sharpies.

do filing and realize you dont know the alphabet as well as you thought because you have to sing the alphabet song to figure out if g comes before h.

passed an obnoxious phone call to your coworker when they demanded a manager/played manager for a phone call your coworker passes you.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

ahahaha have definitely done the alphabet thing ;D

[thismaz.livejournal.com]

*laughs at that picture*

I can't remember the last time I saw a memo *g* It's all email now. But whether they are all sensible is a different matter.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh but I think I'd still call a dumb "to everyone" email "a memo"

[cactus_rs]

I don't work in an office but I still fight with my copier printer on the regular. :C

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

When I did work in an office I remember getting into fights with the copier on a very regular basis!

[amethyst-witch.livejournal.com]

LOL! Love the diversity on the box. No one escapes the hell of adulthood!!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Indeed!!

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

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[meisje-viktoria.livejournal.com]

One of the WORST TOYS EVER! lol

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

:D

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm one of the bosses. lol
Love the playlet.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lol ;D

[jaiden-s.livejournal.com]

If you'd had "sat through a never-ending conference call" I'd have been golden, because I've had four of those in the past week. Ugh.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha oh no that sounds horrifying!

[richaarde.livejournal.com]

Pretending that the water cooler is a vodka dispenser is always a classic office gag.

At one office I used to work at, one of our clients insisted on having these marathon full-day meetings where little of anything got done. My boss would hang out for the first hour and then hand over the rest of the meeting to me and another guy for the rest of the day. Gee, thanks. (At least I always got a good meal out of it. The client and the contractor were both Orthodox Jewish, and got lunch for everyone from a very nice Kosher deli).

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah well delicious free food can make up for a lot in my book!!

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

I didn't do any of those (not that kind of office environment), but we do have little chatter sessions about work, my coworkers and I.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Like after work?

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

No, during, lol! Our schedules are staggered and I have a family and they are young people who do not, so no real chance to hang out after work. But ours isn't a normal office, either

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah, well that sounds fun then (:

[tellshannon815.livejournal.com]

I think every office I have ever worked in has been like a bad sitcom. There was the place with the Handwash Wars, the constant badly spelled emails about the state of the kitchen n the building we vacated three years earlier, the guy who blocked up all our email by sending baby photos of himself, there have been a few pranks, (someone once got her stapler in a jelly)....I could write a sitcom myself!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha funny! Sending baby pictures of himself to everyone sounds a bit weird

[tellshannon815.livejournal.com]

I have a better one: the office flirtation! I used to have to sit right next to a one sided version of this until the guy got moved to another desk (for unrelated reasons). The girl then used to use the copier nearer him for an excuse to talk to him until she found out the whole office had picked up on it. Now she uses every fire alarm as an excuse to talk to him and is always taking her phone to the bathroom to message him on Messe. I am not kidding.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha too funny. I guess he must know and if he hasn't made a move to encourage her he's not into her hey?

[tellshannon815.livejournal.com]

He knows, the whole office probably knows, but he's married (so is she actually, to a guy who sounds like a major idiot). If anything I would say he likes the attention up to a point but there do come times when he gets fed up with it (he's supposed to have said that he wishes he never accepted her friend request on Facebook because she won't leave him alone).

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lol funny!

[drcuriosity]

I think I avoid most of the standard office cliches, but walk into some of the progressive IT office cliches.

My office is: above a pub, has its own plumbed-in espresso machine, has a table tennis table, has a kitchen with a snack cupboard and fruit bowl, breaks at 4pm on a Friday for craft beer from downstairs, offers heavily discounted yoga classes above the local wholefoods store, has a cupboard labelled "not booze" for special occasions.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ahaha sounds good! (:

[nemophilist.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh, you work with kangaroos? :D

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Well I don't work WITH them per se but they're always around in the forest. The other day one was not thirty feet from where I was working. Silly chap didn't wake up until I'd already been there a moment, he stood up and watched me suspiciously and eventually lay down again right there.

[rosexchocolat.livejournal.com]

None of the above because from an early age I made the decision to do everything within my power to never, ever, work in an office!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Excellent! What has your winning strategy been?

And are you telling me it's possible to self actualize as a human through means other than fighting with a copy machine?

[rosexchocolat.livejournal.com]

I’ll let you know when I self-actualise as a human!

I decided on a career in medicine where another poor soul has the unfortunate job of keeping order of the paperwork I produce... I did once have a 4am fight with the tv remote control in the break room, and had to be rescued by a student, though..

[tassie-gal.livejournal.com]

Working in a catholic institution we get the "if you want to learn more etc" emails. We also get the "Mass is on at x time at y place, with adoration from z."
There are generally only 2 of us at this site, so I either moan TO the other person, or moan via email about her to someone else.
We dont have a water cooler.
We are near a hospital....

[meringues.livejournal.com]

I'd much rather take the kangaroos over most of the human beings I've had the 'pleasure' of working in an office together with. That said, or perhaps in liaison to it, the only thing on that list that I ever did during my time as an office worker was this: Rolled your eyes at the boss when they weren't looking. Except instead of my boss it was my team members that I was rolling my eyes at on a daily basis.

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

Apart from the fact that I have a great boss, my workplace is also pretty good about avoiding most of those stereotypes.

Nevertheless, I've encountered a few from time to time, and I fear they're much more frequent for a lot of people.

That toy is genius. :D

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

LOL

ha-hah! training new ceo's.. to be just like mom and dad, debt slaves, like sesame street, fisher price must have a team think tank to make this stuff up!

as for the poll, 'none of the above', i'm self-employed and well, i don't talk much to myself lately...
; )

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Living the dream!

I realized I sort of had a chat by the water cooler analog today. I have a coworker who feeds the birds (chickens, geese, peacocks, guinea fowl, pheasants and turkeys), though I don't always catch her. Today I was tehre at the same time as her and water had been magically restored to one of the spigots (there's some kind of magical gnomes that work behind the scenes here I believe), so we had a catch up chat by the newly working water spigot!