I’m not even going to try to sugar coat this. I could dress it up all pretty and wrap it in a bow, and present it on a silver platter, or maybe explain my reasoning, or provide a cite, go off on some long diatribe or whatever. Some things just need saying in plain words, straight up and to the point.
I love you.
There, I said it.
fervour, is your former manager married? Because I think she’d make a really great match with a guy that I used to work for. Maybe they could get married and raise a bunch of young assholes.
We never did anything subversive there, we just called him on his shit and talked about what a moron loser he was. Behind his back, of course.
She married late and is now too old to have kids. Good on you for keeping your moron in check. I’m guessing that you had some competent managers in your chain. Mine were assholes all the way up to the top.
Ditzy called a CYA meeting about the imaging debacle. She invited the heads from other departments and invited her boss the Deputy Director (DD). Ditzy never called a meeting without bringing an entourage to try to cover for her. I mean she’d bring everyone from the lowest peon (let’s call him George) to the senior network administrator to each meeting. Halfway through the meeting in which Ditzy is blaming all of the other department heads and just rambling on and on, the Deputy Director motions for George to go into the hall with him. In the hall DD asks George, “What’s this all about?” DD doesn’t have the stones to call Ditzy on her bullshit tirade and doesn’t even have self-confidence to say “what are you saying. I’m not following you. . .” or to even trust his own judgement that it’s all BS. He has to call George into the hall to explain it. Sorry for the highjack.
If you didn’t care what happened to me,
and I didn’t care for you,
we would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain,
occasionally glancing up through the rain,
wondering which of the buggers to blame
and watching for pigs on the wing.
swoon
I posted this over the urinal in men’s room after getting tired of seeing…well, you can guess. The CEO saw it and loved it (before some fundie creationist got mad and took it down).
I routinely go crop-dusting (surreptitiously farting while walking through a cube farm) on my way across our techfloor, then circle back through from a different direction on my return vector, making sure to comment on the smell.
We also used to have one of those vending machines where you pay and then pull on the little sliding plastic door to remove the item you want from the wheel of death. I was infamous for taking personal items (i.e. framed photos) from people’s desk and inserting them after removing my food. These people would then have to wait until the following morning and ask the Vend-Ar man for their belongings back. (This wasn’t malicious, more of a mutual and running joke…)
I think I love you. I do believe that is the single funniest thing I have seen in ages.
It was pretty humorous for a few months until we switched machine types. As you’re spinning via the arrow keys >< it’s tuna salad croissant, wilted chef’s salad, hard-boiled eggs, framed photo of somebody’s gap-toothed first-grader pleading with their eyes for release!
Another favorite is when management leaves notes that are not addressed. Like a scribbled post-it “Please come see me when you get in. -Frank” on someone’s monitor. These get anonymously moved from monitor to monitor all day long (as each person realizes they have been pranked, they reciprocate by putting it on somebody else’s work area). Frank, meanwhile, gets visited by half-a-dozen incorrect “You wanted to see me?”'s while the person he actually needs is oblivious and conspicuously absent from his office.
The person putting people’s things in the vending machine, almost got beat up a few times after jamming the machine. It was funny seeing him against the wall feet dangling as the hungry men confronted him the last time it happened.
You worked at Dunder Mifflin, didn’t you?
Well, there was the incident with the remote-controlled fart machine fastened to the underside of the Finance Director’s chair.
My finest hour.
From now on, whenever I read this Onion article (one of my all-time favorites), I’ll think of you, msmith537.
I once changed the date-stamper to read “May 39, 2099.”
I fear I’ve misspoke. I meant to say that it was odd that you described your boss as “Asian”–although if your boss was meant to represent the pan-Asiatic MO of the organization in the OP, that actually makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. Mea culpa.
IMO/IME–and I may be off-base here, it’s certainly possible enough–“European” and “African” serve as useful placeholders for groups of countries with similar enough cultural milieux that the statement could apply to any of them (well, any Western European or Sub-Saharan African country, generally speaking). For example, “African time” or “European dance music” or “African corporation” or “European conglomerate”–but “German boss” rather than “European boss”. Generally. I mean, if someone talked about their “European boss”, I would wonder which European country they and their boss were from, and I would wonder I were missing some relevant info. If by “European boss” they mean “that guy who runs all the European operations in our business which spans three continents”, that would make sense. Otherwise, not really, IMO.
More importantly, “European” and “African” aren’t the exact words used to refer to specific racial/ethnic divides among American people. When you write about your “Asian boss” and then start talking about how you try to use Sun Tzu instead of Mark Twain in your quotes file, you leave yourself open to misinterpretation, especially on an MB based in America where the majority of users are American. I haven’t quite picked up on (or can’t remember) whether the OP is American, but I got the impression that he is. So it’s a little odd that that wouldn’t come to mind. Everyone has off days, though. I’m content to take him at his word at this point.
Thank you. That’s all I’m trying to say.
Whatever.
These stories are great, I hope to emulate some of y’all!
Wernham Hogg, actually.
No possible way anybody where you work is smart/ insane/ eclectic (pick one) enough to get these. I’m not entirely sure I understand, and I’ve been reading the I Ching for 30 years, and read your explanation. Twice.
I think you’re safe, and dead on the OP.
Actually, since leaving my last job, I’ve been spending a lot of time coercing former coworkers to hang out for long leasurely lunches, drinks and strip clubs during the work day.
I used to do the same thing at a job I had years ago. My boss was an anal neat-freak, and I’d go in his office when he wasn’t there and move various stacks of papers just a little bit. Sometimes I’d swap two piles, and it drove him nuts. He also kept everything lined up just so, and I’d rearrange it. I’d move his stapler or pen cup or card holder. They were still lined up neatly, just three or four inches from where he’d left them.
The kitchen was right off the conference room, which had a glass-topped table that he was anal about keeping clean. He had some special glass cleaner ( I think it was from Amway or one of those companies) and a special rag that only he could use. Every so often, I’d put lotion on my hands, walk through there and drag my hands all across the table and make smeary handprints on it. He’d see the handprints and freak out. Then he’d get his special cleaner and rag and spend 20 minutes polishing it.
The fax machine was in the kitchen (this was years ago, when fax machines were still fairly new, and the building was older, so the places in which we could hook it up were limited). Anyway, when he was in the conference room (right next to the kitchen, and in my direct line of sight) I’d call the fax line from desk and let it ring until the fax line picked up. I’d do it over and over, and he hated the phone ringing all the time, but with no faxes coming through.
Part of my duties included making coffee and making sure his precious Brita water filter pitcher was always filled. I was supposed to use the filtered water for making coffee.
It was one of the pitcher-style filters; you put water into the pitcher through a built-in filter on the top. He wanted it filled all the time, and stashed in the fridge so we’d always have filtered water at the ready. I’d take the filter off, add regular tap water and stick it in the fridge. I’d also use regular tap water for making coffee. (The tap water was just fine; it wasn’t well water and didn’t taste like chlorine or sulfur.) He’d walk around proclaiming the excellence of the water filter and how the coffee was so much better. He never knew it was made with plain old tap water.
Somebody (not me) did something similar to my old boss, who was similarly anal: swapped around all the caps on his colored Sharpies. Brilliant!
