Maybe it’s the leftover Brit in us, but every professional job I’ve worked in Canada since graduating university has involved drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Almost anything is an excuse to get loaded. The guy who worked there for a month is leaving? Well, we simply must go to the pub to say a proper goodbye.
At my current job, the girls have a regular stock of wine in the office fridge, and break it out at 4 every day.
Drink up kids!
Well masturbating homeless man is one of the least offensive people who hang arround there.
The TA are in fact the UK equivalent of the Reserves. Until Iraq they’d seen so little actual service that they were regarded as a joke, and Gareth is definitely talking up his experiences.
Not “beyond the pale” so much as tacky: such a thing would likely be tolerated in an adult workplace, but these things in the plot are meant to illustrate a “juvenile and unprofessional” attitude in the characters.
I drive past it often. It really is that bad. It’s a hideous place.
Slough is just grey. Horrible and grey. And when you drive past it on the motorway (the M4, for those taking notes), it smells like shit because the sewage works are right there.
I’d pity Slough. But it’s just such a shit-hole I can’t bring myself to. And I live in Reading.
Ah but sometimes it smells like chocolate, because Cadbury’s is there.
::Throws out dairy milk bars::
Do we ever know for sure that he’s actually in the TA at all?
That’s a point; I don’t know. His colleagues seem to think so. Do any of his mates ever mention it?
Another question I want to know the answer to is will a boy ever be born who can swim faster than a shark?
One good thing about Slough is that it isn’t Basingstoke.
I’ve been to Slough! I studied abroad for a summer at Reading University back in 1996, and we used to go through Slough all the time on the train route to London. I always wondered what was wrong with the town council that named it Slough (even though it wasn’t exactly a glamourous place). Doesn’t it mean “mud hole”? The only one that made less sense to me was Maidenhead. Now **there’s ** a name for a town!
:dubious: I suspect that ianzin is very much trying to make out personal views as the accepted general opinion.
We do have such laws about fostering a work climate of sexual harrassment, and yes, many people would find it offensive and would complain about it, without being “religious freaks” or “uptight”. And management wouldn’t be happy about it either. You see cases all the time in the news where companies get taken to court by ex-employees for permitting such behaviour in their work. The point of it being funny in “The Office” is that it’s unprofessional and you wouldn’t be allowed to do it in any other office.
:dubious: Ditto. Plenty of work events, particularily those organised within the work place, are non-alcoholic and no gets regarded as weirdos for it. For a start, Health & Safety regulations make the company responsible for events in their workplace, so if people are falling over drunk it’s their look out.
I don’t know what sort of offices ianzin’s worked in, or how oppressive they must be for anyone who doesn’t wish to share their sex life or drink, but they aren’t the exactly norm. You also wonder how funny “The Office” must be if it’s exactly like everyday working life in some places.
Yes, it refers to the mud - but predates the local council by almost a millenniun
And I’ve always thought Braintree should rank high on the bad-but-not-funny placename scale.
I never want to work where futile gesture works.
I have yet to go to an office function where alcohol has not been flowing freely, and people have got very dunk and scuttled off to the stationary cupboard together, or photocopied their arses.
Mind you I work in the city and it’s still the norm to stick titty-bars on expenses.
Also the dildo/novelty cock made out of chocolate is depressingly common too, as are ribald cards etc. It’s almost always the women who buy them. (is there no American equivalent of Ann Summers? (which is a shop that sells this stuff by the ton)
The only thing that is frowned in most places is smutty/offensive emails, whcih is why it is funny that Brent is the subject of one and has to carry out an investigation.
I’ll just add that you don’t want to be around our office on Beaujolais Nouveau day. Unless you like getting shit-faced drunk that is. 
I pity you.
Risque presents are the norm in most offices.
Not a big fan of them myself but don’t see the harm.
Every work event that I’ve been to has alcohol. No-one would go otherwise.
Why would an office that allowed such things be “oppressive” to anyone.
You sound like the kind of person that frowns upon others having fun and feels oppressed because you’ve got a stick up your arse and no-one else has. 
Stale hula hoops washed down with warm white wine served out of boxes in plastic cups or coffee mugs. Memories!
I think that’s the point, exactly. The Office is funny because it is like a real office.
Count me in as another who’s never heard of a work function where drink wasn’t flowing freely. I’ve worked in four London city offices this year and at each the booze has flowed freely–at functions, at lunches and in the evenings. Way of life.
Hmmm–we had wine at office parties (state government of MA) until about 1990, then it was banned. So, subsequent larger parties went to bars around Fanueil Hall.
Risque stuff, though, was always banned, just as a matter of taste. Sex toys do not belong in the workplace, period.
You got a cite with that sweeping statement?
You give risque presents to your friends who you know would not be offended. Your workplace is full of your collegues. They are not necessarily your friends and may not share your sexual mores or humour. Some of your collegues may find this behaviour makes them uncomfortable and amounts to sexual harrassment. And the law agrees. That is why bringing it to work is not acceptable or professional behaviour and whether you or I can see the harm isn’t the point.
I was talking about the kind of workplace where people who don’t want to share in their collegues sex lives and don’t necessarily wish to drink at every opportunity get called “weirdo throwbacks” and “religious freaks”.
:rolleyes: And you sound like the kind of person who can’t imagine anyone not being personally and emotionally involved in their argument, and so thinks an ad hominem reply will help you.
:dubious: So people watch TV of an evening to see exactly what they’ve seen all day? They’d have to film years of average office life to even fill an single episode of The Office. It is, of course, a caricature and exaggeration and what makes it funny is that the behaviour of the staff there goes beyond what is usual.
Oops, sorry. The last quote in my above post was from Jervoise, not Arch Trout.
Every office I’ve worked in and every office of everyone I know, at some point a risque present will have been bought, obviously I’ve not done a study of it but on the evidence that I’ve seen it seems to be a normal thing.
People do generally give these presents to those that they know would not be offended, these same people are usually considered friends. Doesn’t stop it being a ‘normal’ thing.
I personally don’t give such presents as I find it a little crass.
What other people give to their friends at work is none of my business.
I think anyone that thinks this is sexual harrassment of them personally has serious problems.
Can people cry religious intolerance if an Orthodox Jew sees someone getting a bacon roll as a present from someone? I would hope not.
(Not sure if the analogy holds but it seems similar to me)
I don’t really see it as sharing your sex life, it’s a joke not sex.
I don’t think people should share their religions at work.
Depends what you find more offensive.
No, I don’t think people should be emotionally involved in arguments.
I also don’t think being a smart arse and using Latin helps either.
It seems that I can’t imagine why anyone would be offended by a joke present, while you can’t imagine why anyone would want to give someone a present that might offend the sensibilities of the more fragile members of the office.
Wonder who’s office is more ‘fun’.
By fun, I mean a relaxed atmosphere to work in, free from worrying that the slightest little thing you do may cause offensive and get you sacked.