As I sit here typing, the guy in the office on my left & the guy in the office on my right are having a conversation via spearkerphone. They are less than 30 feet from one another. It is, apparently, not a joke.
How’s your Monday going?
I work for a State environmental agency… that was inadvertently built on an underground toxic waste plume. [sub] (Idiot bosses. You’d think that **one ** of them would have said "Hey! I’m an Engineer! Shouldn’t we test the land before we buy it?)[/sub] So, looking out my office window, I see a very large drill rig being set up to drill a monitoring well. I love Mondays.
I always feel a little funny e-mailing my colleague across the hall, but I do it anyway, so she and I don’t forget whatever the item is. I haven’t called her yet, but my boss down the hall has called me.
I’m working for a company that makes educational toys and games for young children. The other day, during our weekly meeting, reference was made to the special training people were sent to if they were working on a particular project (of which I’m not a part). The training focused on what to do if the prototype of the toy we’re working on had an “event.” One of my co-workers, who is also not on the project, asked her what was meant by an “event.”
Her: Well, there’s a problem with the lithium battery we’re using right now.
Him: What sort of a problem?
Her: Sometimes - very, very rarely - it catches fire. Now, we’ve been assured that the chances of this happening here are…
Him: Wait, you mean it just starts smoking, or does it burst into flames?
Her: Well, uh… it kind of… catches fire very quickly…
Him: Are you saying it explodes?
Her: Only very rarely, and under circumstances that we’re very unlikely to encounter in our office…
Him: How big an explosion?
Her: They… uh… I saw a demonstration where it blew up a filing cabinet.
Him: It blew up a filing cabinet? Wow!
Her: Again, that was a controlled test where they deliberatly triggered an expl… er, event. They’ve had engineers from the hardware lab examine our procedures here, and they say there’s almost no chance of this happening here.
Him: Is shrapnel a concern?
And on and on it went. He just would. Not. Let the topic go. We must have spent twenty minutes with him continually teasing out more precise definitions of what she meant by an “event.” The issue of poisonous gasses was raised. Requests for office HazMat suits were politely declined. At one point, the term “rapid disassembly” was offered. During a recitation of what could cause an “event,” I was unable to refrain from suggest that one not “taunt the Happy Fun Ball,” but I don’t think anyone got the reference. Finally, the meeting on what appears to be a fully functional hand grenade that we’re marketing to young children ended, and we went back to our desks.
The next Monday, we were informed that Question Guy was no longer employed at the company.
(In fairness to my employer, Question Guy really, really deserved to be fired for other reasons than that meeting. And the toy in question is a very early prototype, and is not going to be sold to children in its current, occasionally incendiary state. I’m not working for Mainway toys, here. It really is a very good company, very popular with educators, and with several award-winning toy lines.)
My office is open plan - that is, if your ears are open you’ll hear every plan going. The guy next to me and the guy down the hall cannot conduct a conversation at fewer than 80 decibels, even when standing next to each other. The guy next to me is phoned by his wife, oh, 10 times a day, most often to get driving instructions while actually driving the car. I offered to buy her a street directory but he thought I was joking. I wasn’t, I just can’t stand to hear one side of this ridiculous conversation again: “turn by the - no - listen to me - you know the - where we - no, not that one, the other one - left! left! NO, LEFT! - you can park - love you”.
I’m an engineer. My work day is basically one Dilbert moment after another all day long. Any engineer will tell you that Dilbert isn’t a comic strip, it’s a documentary.
There’s one guy at work who always sends me an e-mail, then sends a voice mail which repeats what he said in the e-mail, and then still ends up walking over to my office to tell me what was in the e-mail and the voice mail.
People at my company are convinced that Scott Adams works for us. No matter how stupid something appears, it shows up in the strip a few days later.
I thought it was just us. Although our PHB was actually a wig-wearing Frenchman.
Does the guy with the wife calling have a cell phone with a cutesy ring tone? I did check your location to be sure were weren’t sitting down the ailse from me.
Happens all the time here. I make sure to mock the offenders whenever it happens.
On Monday, two of my co-workers came in (on time) drunk. It was a very amusing morning.
Another of my co-workers kept insisting that, since we have a 4-day weekend beginning on Thursday, Monday is the equivalent of Wednesday (i.e., two more days until the weekend). I told her I didn’t like that, because it means last Sunday was the equivalent of Tuesday, and Saturday was the equivalent of Monday, and I don’t like working on weekends.
Not today, but earlier this month:
Incubus: You know how you guys suddenly decided you WERENT going to give us a week off like you normally do every year up until now?
Manager: Yes?
Incubus: Well I had already planned a vacation that week, about a month before you told us anything. I’m having problems with finding people to cover for me. I was wondering if you could help find someone to take my place (I work 6 days/week) or if you guys could simply consolodate the workload so my absence isn’t a burden.
Manager: Ah, I understand. Don’t worry. We really value your dedication here. You need some time off every once in a while. I’ll take care of it.
Incubus: So you’ll help me? Great!
Manager: Well, not me, I’ll be on vacation that week. Who wants to work the week of Christmas, right? But I’m sure you’ll find someone to cover for you.
Incubus: :dubious: I thought you just said you’ll help me…
Manager: Oh, look at the time! Gotta run
Incubus: :mad:
No, but every other fucker does. And none of them appear to know the meaning of the adjective in the phrase “mobile phone” as they invariably leave them at their desks when they wander off around the office. So you get the old ring-around: the desk phone rings and rings and rings, then the mobile rings and rings and rings, then (you can start the count 1-2-3-4-5-6-7) beepbeepbeep of the message being left on the mobile.
The guy two cubes up has a not-very-good lead guitar break as his ring tone, I can’t begin to tell you how annoying that is.
So, answer it and say “Joe left with the Spanish girl in the red corvette” or “Joe can’t come to the phone now. He has my…” the thing from Ruthless People. Whatever. Be creative.
Nah. Hide their phone to give them an incentive to carry the damn thing. Best place is to stand on their desk, raise a ceiling tile, and put in in the ceiling space. Particularly good if they are short.
Alternatively drop it into a cold cup of coffee.
There is one technological advance that has occurred during my haitus from cubicle hell for which I am thankful: voicemail. Now, the adjacent desk phones only ring three times, and I don’t feel obligated to answer it. In the bad old days, the damned phone would ring forever and if you answered it after the 10-12th ring, you had a hard time convincing someone’s wife that they really weren’t at their desk.
When the cell phone jukeboxes sound off, I remember the scene from WKRP where Hoyt Axton rings the doorbell at Jennifer’s apartment and gets the 10 second chime and says, loudly, “What the hell was that?”
This was a few years ago and I had a collegue who wasn’t promoted to a boss, but got a role which he interpreted as such (since it had him talk with bosses more frequently), and started to boss around. This led to almost daily conversations like this one:
**
Him:** “I talked to the manager, and we agreed that you could take Project So-and-so by week 10.”
Me: [A moment ago focused; now confused.] “Week 10? I have these-and-those Projects that need to be done by Week 11. There’s no chance I can finish yet another project by week 10.”
**Him: **“Yes, well, but I checked you calendar and saw that you have one day in Week 9 and two days free in Week 10.”
Me: “What are you talking about? I need those days for this-and-that Project, I got more than I can handle by Week 12. The manager knows that.”
**Him: **“Yes, but I you could work on two projects at the same time…”
Me: [Waiting.]
**Him: **“For instance, you could work on Projekt A during the days and Project B during the nights.”
Me: “Right.” [Continues working.]
Him: [Pausing. Thinking.] “But… don’t worry, Wakinyan, I told manager we can’t allow that.”
Me: “Good. Good.”
Him: [Hesitating… and then leaving; only to come back later the same day with another Very Important Matter.]
I haven’t read much Dilbert but I suspect he would fit. He would have been perfect in The Office, thats for sure.
I had a conversation like this just yesterday. The Dilbert factor in the conversation was that we were discussing tasks that won’t occur until 2009-2010.