Grumpy Coworker

Author: Grumpy108

  • Congrats on the Trillion, Bro – Hope It Buys You a New Personality

    Oh, for the love of—here we go again with Captain Planet over here getting another galactic jackpot while the rest of us are fighting over the last stale donut in the break room. Apparently the board looked at a guy who’s already got more money than every god combined and said, “You know what this dude needs? Another cool trillion. Yeah, let’s just yeet a trillion dollars at him like it’s a participation trophy for showing up and tweeting memes at 3 a.m.”

    Meanwhile, Susan in accounting hasn’t had a working space heater since 2019 and HR told her to “layer up.” LAYER UP. It’s negative four degrees in her cubicle, Karen, she’s not training for the Iditarod.

    And the excuses! Oh my god, the excuses are richer than the man himself. “He created so much shareholder value!” Yeah, cool, so did the guy who invented the McFlurry machine that actually works for once, where’s HIS trillion? “He’s a once-in-a-lifetime genius!” Buddy, I’ve seen this dude try to pronounce “worcestershire” sauce—there’s no lifetime genius there, just lifetime Wi-Fi money.

    The vote was basically a room full of yes-men in $5,000 sneakers nodding so hard their AirPods fell out. “All in favor of giving the guy who owns the company more money than the GDP of Europe?” Every hand shoots up like they’re trying to flag down a waiter at a crypto conference. Democracy in action, baby.

    But sure, tell me again how “no one works harder.” Bro, I’ve seen this man’s sleep schedule—it’s just Red Bull and spite. I work hard too; I once answered 47 Slack messages while on the toilet. Where’s my trillion? Exactly.

    So yeah, congrats on the trillion, champ. Hope it keeps you warm when the rest of us are burning our performance reviews for heat. Enjoy counting it—I hear it only takes about 31,700 years if you count one dollar per second. Don’t strain yourself.

  • Work Gathering Rules

    Cakes
    Image by gothick_matt via Flickr

    Different types of work gatherings have different rules.

    • Retirement/Departure/Birthday Lunch – Don’t be the last person to show up or the first person to leave. If you’re the one being honored, be sure to order from the reasonably-priced part of the menu.
    • Retirement Gathering at Work – Arrive early enough to be inside the room.  Sign the card memento. Laugh at the slide show. Say innocuous good luck greeting to soon-to-be retired. Eat cake.
    • Anniversary Gathering at Work – Arrive late enough to be stuck outside the room, unless you’ve worked with the person in the past. Gravitate to others in the room that you know. Get cake, but eat it while “engaging” fellow attendees, then leave while the honored guest is busy.
    • Baby Shower at Work – If you’re reading this, you must not be invited. Try to avoid stumbling into the middle of the baby shower that is inevitably going to be in a common space. Don’t touch any goodies that aren’t put out for scraps.
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  • Cubicle Maze

    If you search Google for “cubicle maze”, you’ll find about half a million results. Many people have made connection between cube walls and the the walls of a maze.

    Under normal circumstances, the wall angles are where the resemblance ends. However, after years of reworking office layouts and adding height to some walls for privacy, the plentiful aisles and virtual hallways begin to disappear. The contorting of sections of office has the same scrambling effect that turning random sides on a Rubik’s cube has.

    After hitting one too many dead ends trying to get to the elevator, I’m wondering if the fire marshall should be called. I mean, is there a clear evacuation path for everyone in the building? Are all the people in the office able get out of the area in which they’ve been walled in? Do they jump the walls to enter and exit their cubes?

    Maze, found on publicdomainpictures.net

  • Office Supply Micromanagement

    If there’s one cost-saving pursuit that seems tremendously disproportionate to its savings in terms of benefits, it’s micromanaging the use of and access to office supplies.

    Let’s say that, it terms of salary and benefits, your average office worker costs $100,000 per year. Assuming two weeks vacation, that employee spends about 2000 hours in the office. That’s $50 per hour.

    Now let’s say that an average employee uses 4 reams of paper per year (at about $12), an entire toner cartridge worth $31, and 5 fairly nice office supply cabinet pens worth $15. I’m making these numbers up, but I think they’re fairly reasonable upper limits for the average employee.

    If you have 1000 employees using this much in office supplies, is it really worth devoting a major portion of any worker’s time to more effective management of office supplies? Do you really need a gatekeeper? Are you afraid your employees having being stealing office supplies so that they can retire early?

  • Have You Been Soaking in Your Cologne?

    Cologne’s pretty expensive by volume.  It’s not exactly the kind of thing that I’d expect someone to fill his bathtub with. However, when a stiff breeze carries the smell of your cologne across the parking lot, I have no choice but to imagine that this is what you do.

    Part of me wonders how many showers it takes to clean the scent off, much like what happens with the smoke smell after a night at a smoky bar.

    The workplace, in general, has long been smoke-free. Do we have to start lobbying Congress or our local legislatures for the same protection from pervasive perfumed smells as we have from tobacco smoke?

    Maybe I should figure out what cologne is choking off my air supply and find out who makes it. Then, at least, I can  wait until I notice that you’ve stopped wearing this particular scent, and then bet against the company. Of course, there would probably be a good case for insider trading, at the levels at which you purchase their product.

     

     

     

  • Bathroom math

    Question #1: If there are 5 floors in my office building, and 1 set of men/women bathrooms on each floor, how many bathrooms are there on the 2nd floor where I work?

    Answer: Not nearly enough!

    Question #2: If the bathroom cleaning lady cleans the bathroom on my floor between 12:30pm and 12:57pm, how many minutes does it take her to clean the bathroom?

    Answer: That’s right at the end of our lunch break, lady! There are 150 cross-legged people who agree that you take WAY too long to clean this bathroom.

    Question #3: If the bathrooms on my floor are being remodeled and are closed for 6 weeks, how many enemies will I make for regularly occupying one of the 3 functional toilets on the next floor up or down?

    Answer: It takes SIX WEEKS to remodel a bathroom??? You have got to be kidding me and my bladder!

    Question #4: How many empty soda cans does it take to do the work of 1 toilet while my bathroom is being remodeled?

    Answer: I have absolutely no idea!  And I don’t care how many dirty looks I get from those first floor jerks, I am NOT going to find out!

    Question #5: If the first floor bathroom takes 50% as long to remodel as the one on my floor took, how many weeks will it be closed?

    Answer: Who cares – it’s payback time! “Sorry Mr. First Floor Jerk, this stall is going to be occupied until the cleaning lady comes back. Try the 5th floor, I think there is 1 functional toilet up there.”


  • Your supposed “80 hour week” this week says something to me.

    What it says to me is that you, perhaps, don’t know what you’re doing.

    As Jason Fried of 37Signals suggests, Fire the workaholics.

    I’m worried about the clean-up effort that will result from your hard work.

  • Bookmark: Get rid of bad business jargon with unsuck-it

    Is your language getting filled with business jargon and completely unnecessary business euphemisms?

    Go to Unsuck It.

    On the main page you can search for suitable replacement terms that are more direct and in plain english, or your can browse the word list if you want to create your own game of buzzword bingo.

    Just a warning: browsing the word list may have you shaking your head a lot or even smacking your forehead in disgust at how convoluted business language can be.

  • Sandals at work

    Last time I checked, the dress code didn’t include open-toed shoes for men.

    I really don’t want to see your toes, no matter how much you spent on a pedicure.