Sad little subversive things you do at work

In My Humble Opinion
41

Oh…this is nice. Can you give us any examples?

Long ago, when I was working for McDonalds, a handwritten “motivational” screed was posted in the break room. I added a further comment, along the lines of, “Do you think any of us still believe this happy crap?” The manager who had posted it was livid. She added to the poster, “I know who did this, and if you don’t come apologize I’m going to fire you!” Naturally I went to her and begged her to tell me who did it, and she told me she had no idea.

Occasionally managers at McDonalds would get the idea that we should wear our nametags. I would either pin mine to my butt, or switch nametags with a male co-worker. “Your name is…Steve???”

42

Way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was in college, and the actual year was 1983, I was working at the local Hardee’s in the morning shift.

Standard procedure with the breakfast biscuits was should the biscuit have a meat item in it, the wrapper was plain; presence of an egg meant we put a smiley sticker on the outside, cheese was a second sticker of the same type.

The day before I quit, the stickers in the dispenser were replaced by a roll of ‘Mr. Yuck’.

43

When I worked in a video store our (mean bastard of a) boss told us we couldn’t ever rent the overnights (new releases) from the store for ourselves. Even if we payed for them. Like, payed as much as a regular customer. Even if we made sure and only chose our movies after the store closed so we weren’t taking anything that was wanted by ‘real’ customers.

Cue James Bigglesworth, fictional war hero and my alter ego.

It was too easy to create a membership complete with barcoded keyring (living on my keys alongside my genuine membership) and a mocked up registration form. He had a fake address and a phone number belonging to a really dodgy company that once tried to royally screw over the owner of a store I previously worked at. You know, in case old Biggles kept a dvd too long and someone needed to ring him.

I rented new releases on that membership 3-4 times a week and was never found out. And I still chose them after closing so as not to unecessarily disappoint customers. We were allowed to rent weekly-hire movies, so walking in and out with dvds under my arm was not a problem.

At other jobs I have charged my phone, laptop and iPod at work as well as replacing papers I needed to look like I was reading with my school/university study papers.

At my current job, I’m still kinda new - but I have plans. It’s not a terrible job - the worst thing that happens is I get bored and I’m currently researching the possibilities of small, hard to see earphones so I can listen to my iPod on the side of my head that faces away from everything.

Also, it irritates me that because the boss smokes, other smokers can take a number of short breaks each shift to go and have a smoke in a specific area. I have no problem with other people smoking, but I’m a bit irked that because I choose not to smoke, I don’t get any such breaks.

So, I frequently engineer something that winds up with me taking a short break during the day. Such as ‘Last One!’: Hiding the final box of some supply or other in some clever place and then volunteering to go and retrieve several fresh boxes (they love that I’m willing to perform this task!) from the other end of the building - It’s a long walk and I can not only dawdle, but have a nice sit down in the storage room for a while because everyone else seems to think that said supplies are poorly organized and hard to find - I don’t have any trouble. I find the box and then sit on it for 5 minutes - sometimes with a snack.

Then there’s ‘Milk Run!’: Deliberately drinking all the remaining milk in the fridge (I can drink a lot of milk). Whoever finishes the milk is required to walk to a local store and buy a new carton. I like the walk and the cost is roughly equal to what I make in the 10 minutes it takes to retrieve. Plus, in my zeal to take a break, I am often the one drinking the majority of the milk I pay for.

I’m working on more as obviously these cannot be used too frequently.

44

When I worked at the YMCA, I wrote an article for some minor publication they were going to hand out to new members or something. I formatted it so the left margin spelled out “YMCA SUCKS”.

At my current job, we have a database of customers all associated with different sales reps. For our Test file, I notated the sales rep as “Mike Oxlong”. I also do 90% of my Dope posting (including this one) from work.

45

Buckler, one easy addition to your repertoire can be just drinking a lot of water on the job, a and taking about five pee breaks (you can make them political pee breaks and go every time the smokers head out for a puff). And never forget the old office standby - as long as you’re walking around with a piece of paper in your hand, you look like you’re working.

46

:eek: Political pee breaks! Genius!

I feel I can learn from you.

takes notes

47

:confused:

Wilson?

48

Years ago I did some consulting work for a really horrible woman named Wanda. The woman was a complete bitch. The work I did was creating a Windows application for the company she worked for. On my last day I created an Easter egg in the app. If you entered a really unlikely combination of things, you’d get a popup screen that behaved like a certain Windows screen saver.

Flying Wandas.

49

Sadly, no.

Hexagram 62: Preponderance of the Small
(a time when the petty and small are in power)
Changing to Hexagram 32: Duration (calm, patient endurance)

Six in the second place means; (Wilhelm/Baynes Translation)

She passes by her ancestor
And meets her ancestress.
He passes by the Prince
And meets the official.
No blame.

In the first case, the woman is supposed to offer her sacrifice first to the ancestor, who then (theoretically) carries it to the ancestress. But as there is a closer connection between her and the ancestress, she bypasses it and goes directly to her.

In relation to a job, this would be like having a closer personal connection to our bosses boss and because we are not comfortable taking something to our boss (or the boss won’t listen) but are comfortable taking it to the other person, we bypass our boss. It is an exceptional circumstance, but there is no blame in it.

In the second, the man is supposed to report to the prince, but the prince will not see him. Therefore, undetered, he speaks to another official who also reports to the prince.

In relation to a job, if our boss is a dickhead who won’t listen to us, we carry our message to someone else, ideally with more authority than us, hoping that this person will then be able to get the bosses ear.

In short: If the boss won’t listen, you either speak to someone else they might listen to, or you go over their head to someone you feel comfortable dealing with.

Now of course, posting something like this on my locker in no way indicates an issue with my immediate management, does it? :wink:

50

I once wrote a Foreign Travel & Contact report to the tune of “Gilligan’s Island”. And I often write satirical “real English” translations of nonsensespeak corporate announcement e-mails. Sometimes I engage in a continuing stream of private critical commentary with select participants while sitting on pointless telecons. And I play chess with my co-workers, but only as a hobby; the cruel eviceration involved is entirely incidental.

I do take the real work and security aspects of my job pretty seriously; I’m only subversive about the bullshit stuff.

Stranger

51

I worked for an awful company, Career Education Corp which is a for profit education firm. I was in the AIU division, we served college students. If they asked me about leaving AIU I would tell them about similar programs at real universities in the area, and if possible I would give them the names and #’s of advisors who I knew that worked there.

That place made me feel a little dirty.

52

I really like that. It sounds like something I would have done at one time.

53

I only did that a few times, and it started at the assignment before that. I had worked ceaselessly at an investment company for about nine months. The assignment came to an end the day before I was leaving on a beach vacation. I spent my last day creating an Easter egg animation of me on a sailboat, waving goodbye and sailing away.

54

One word: Clipboard!

If you just randomly walk out of the office, you get questions and disapproval, but if you have a clipboard with some sort of list-y or spreadsheet-y thing on it, you can just wave it at your coworker and say “just gotta go check on this” with a prepared vaguely plausible elaboration that applies to your job.

55

HOWL!!! I must remember this for future use!

Bibby

56

I like that one too.

57

Remember, Bibby, you have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you, you get the chance to put the knife in. :wink:

58

You know those little stands with the pamphlets that say “Take One”?

I take two.

59

I was a paralegal a lifetime ago. One associate in particular used to torture us, and we would torture him right back.

We stole his mouseballs.

When the memo was circulated to stop stealing mouseballs, we glued the ball in position inside the mouse.

He had a fully assembled Voltron figurine on his desk. Despite his love of Voltron, he was still a douche. We disassembled Voltron, hid his constituent parts all over the office, and left the associate clues.

We removed the little music boxes out of irritating greeting cards and left them in extremely awkward places in his office. They were all but impossible to remove, so he had to tolerate listening to Hallmark music until the batteries died.

Although he was pretty young, he was technologically inept. We sabotaged his computer by pulling the plugs maybe halfway out of the sockets in the tower. When his computer failed to turn on, he would throw a fit and verbally abuse the tech he called to fix it. The tech checked the plugs, and humiliation ensued.

I know there is more, but I have drank enough since then to have blocked it out completely. We regularly worked until after midnight, so even though attorneys were always there that late, we never got caught.

60

Had a whiny-ass co-worker that none of us could stand. She came to me (as her crew leader) to complain that the people in another department were talking about her. (Who the hell cares? We’re not talking slander or anything, she just didn’t want them discussing her. Yeah, like I’m gonna go tell them not to talk about her. That’ll help. And of course it was OK for her to gossip about everyone else.) She also declined to participate in our frequent “munchie nights,” because why should she go to all the trouble of making something? (Nobody said she had to make anything; a bag of chips would have been fine. And if you don’t want to play, that’s A-OK. Just don’t keep whining at us while WE play.) And on and on.

When she finally quit, we held our usual good-bye party on her last night, which of course involved everyone bringing in food. Of course she didn’t want to bring anything, but we were very gracious and said that was fine, because it was in her honor anyway. But we planned our menu carefully:

Crab salad
Port whine cheese
. . . with crackers
Nuts

Would you believe she caught on, and complained to our boss on her way out, that we were making fun of her? He never said anything to us about it, but we were given to understand that he was pissed off. Hey, he hired her, but he didn’t have to work with her (different shift).