I find it quite interesting that our ‘Dear Editor’ has started a new office job. It’s quite amusing thinking about Rohini in an office at all but last week she emailed me some witty office ‘faux pas’ she has been experiencing and asked me much like an agony aunt to tell her my similar trials (either that or she finds me some sort of comedy persona and wants me to make her feel better about herself – I’ll take the first one). So I thought about the many office cock ups I have tallied up and how I have learnt absolutely nothing along the way. Clearly I can give advice but I can’t take it myself.
Working in an office is a skill and mostly looked down upon by creative types ‘how can you work in those grey cubicles, ugh it would kill me’! I don’t work in a sodding cubicle. This isn’t 1970.
I have a desk it doesn’t have four walls or even three. My desk is an extension of me and you can get a good idea by looking at peoples desks what you are getting yourself in for if you decide to make friends. Avoid people with cuddly toys on their desks, they are likely to sob their hearts out to you about their cheating boyfriend later on. Likewise avoid people with too many pictures of their partner or children on their desk – this will be pretty much your sole topic of conversation for the next few years. If you can, try not to pick up any of these pictures and make comments about how nice/attractive/cute the person in the picture is. You will lose at least half an hour.
There is always an office clown, they kind of borderline most of the time on being an evil bully but they manage to make the joke so hilarious that no-one in HR notices. Try not to provoke them by sending emails to ‘reply all’ or telling any secrets when you are half cut in the pub. There will also envitably be someone who you would probably like to snog when drunk or maybe even date when sober. Try and hide this from the office especially the clown, they want ammo and as a newbie they don’t have any on you. Don’t get drunk and tell people how much you like them, this will also become ammo.
If you work in a high majority female office check the house before you leave for panty lines, camel toes, muffin tops, sticky up hair in the back, too much fake tan and something so fashionable that only Carrie Bradshaw can get away with it. Girls are like vultures and the round robin email will be bitching about you – you are new. If you work in a high majority male office just act as if every day they are scoring you out of 10 and sending it round on an email – because they probably are. Then like everything else in office life you’ll care about all this rubbish for all of two weeks and then some sh*t will hit the fan and you won’t give a toss. As soon as you don’t give a toss you aren’t new anymore – well done.
Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris is an absolute classic book about office life. In particular life in a Chicago advertising agency in the 1990’s which is falling apart at the seams. Amongst the tension of redundancies and losing clients the bitching and back stabbing reigns. Ferris writes in the first person for most of the book and enters the office world to look in depth at the characters that inhabit it.
The book is at first quite bizarre especially because you fall into being part of the everyday office life of what seems to be a bunch of neurotic self absorbed odd balls huddling around the water cooler talking about who is sh*gging who and Marcie’s new hair cut. As you dig deeper something much more shines through than the witty humour told by the office gossips. Work is scacre in the office and as they fight it out to look busy their super human all powerful boss Lynn terrifies and makes them fight for their jobs like nothing else. When Lynn develops breast cancer the book develops forward hugely moving between its comedic original setting and something much more meaningful.
My favourite part of the book is the climax, literally on the edge of my seat that something terrible and larger than life was going to happen to the whole office the twist at the end made me love this book even more. I won’t give it away – the suspense is the key in this book, it is the utter surprise and unawareness to know where the book is heading that makes it such a rare gem.
This book is a must if you work in an office and have been through the recession – and if you don’t, read it anyway to show that we are all much more than the cubicle that we sit in and much more than the job we work. – Lauren
Cyrano: The Life and Legend of Cyrano de Bergerac by Ishbel Addyman
Lessons from the land of Pork Scratchings, A Miserable Yank Finds Happiness in the UK by Greg Gutfeld
My Inside Life… Keep Calm Gallery
