Top 10 Essentials of the Modern Home Office

I’ve designed the perfect man cave. It’s where I work and play. Can you identify all of the creature comforts as shown? I’ll break ‘em down after the jump.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Pish

Reblogged from Shouts from the Abyss:

• 
• 
• 
• 

It's official. I am out of The Shit Hole, Galactic Empire Designation Death Star One.

I have done punched that clock for the last time.

Yah, me!

To think I've been blogging about hating my job for well  over a  year now. I never imagined this day could actually come.

I don't really have a lot to say about it right now.

Read more… 714 more words

Déjà vu for the last time. The Decade of Despair is over. More details as they become available.

Busy Does a Bossy Good

The boss is a very, very busy man. We know this because he takes hours out of his day to tell us all about it.

Tom,

WIDGET-424242 Premium has the wrong color listed.

It should be “Brown”

Please correct both color attributes and the name.

thanks,

Marquis

Note the subtle capitalization and punctuation errors. Like a boss!

I should be used to this by now. But still I sat there, stunned, staring at his email on my screen. He could have sent a shorter email. “Widget 424242 wrong color. Thanks.” But he didn’t.

I thought about hitting “reply” and asking a simple question: “Will there ever come a day when you don’t feel the need to include that extraneous sentence at the end?” I heard it can be beneficial to dream. Well, I have my dreams, too.

He went ahead and listed the correct color, even though I could have figured that out on my own. Maybe we can give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just trying to be helpful. He saved me the bother of having to look it up in the catalog.

But WTF is up with that next sentence? He just told me the color was “wrong.” I know what that means. It has to be fixed. If I really strained my brain cells enough I might even be able to extrapolate, like an Eistein smartypants, what should happen next. We have to correct the wrong information on the website! Am I right, am I right, Alex Trebec? What do I win?

Luckily, though, the boss is ever vigilant and at the ready to provide more than enough information. Apparently he thinks we’re so damn stupid we won’t know to wipe our own asses unless he’s there to point out the obvious. “And use toilet paper next time!” That might also explain why he walks into occupied bathrooms without the courtesy of knocking first. It’s because he’s so damn smarter than us idiots. No doubt that’s why he hired us.

“You going to send that letter in the mail? You’ll have to put on a postage stamp. The post office won’t deliver it without one.” Are you fucking shitting me? (And, for the record, I’m not making this up. This is an actual verbatim from the boss to me.)

I can’t help but wonder. What if the boss was in charge of other stuff? What would that look like?

Staff Infection Meeting

I once quit a job over a staff meeting. True story. I’m sure it’s documented here on the blog somewhere, but long story short, they made us on the 6am crew stick around for a 5pm meeting. I asked, “Is it important?” Our managers assured us it was. “You have to be there,” they said.

The meeting started and the first item of business was rolling out birthday cake for our safety director. At 5-fucking-o-clock. It’s not like most of us would be consuming dinner any time soon.

Then, for the icing on the cake, the rest of the hour was consumed by our managers reading memos to us. Line-by-line. Word-by-word. Like we were in kindergarten or something. Memos that had previously been delivered to our inboxes. Memos I had already read on my very own. It was worse than an insult to our intelligence. It was calling us babies.

After the meeting I opted to go back to my desk rather than heading straight home. I sat there and wrote out a memorandum of my own. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s a classic piece of Americana called the letter of resignation. I plopped that puppy on my manager’s desk and then called it day.

Good times.

In another place and another time there was another staff meeting. This one involved the quintessential management tool known as the employee survey.

How Will You Quit?

Hello, 80-20, my old friend. You still remember me.

Unless you’re a freak, you’ve spent a good portion of time at your current job daydreaming about how you’ll quit.

Not if or when. But how.

It is inevitable. It is unavoidable. It is your destiny.

Quitting is the winning.
–Tom B. Taker

I’m not sure about the point of this exercise, though. It’s not like I’ve ever actually done any of the things I’ve imagined. And, trust me on this, I’ve imagined quite a bit.

Worse, when quittin’ time invariably does roll around, I get all squeamish and nervous and icky and mealymouthed. I don’t enjoy confrontation. Hey! I just had an idea. Is it possible to call in sick for quitting? Now that’s some truly officer thinking.

My wife has been thinking about quitting. (News flash.) This morning she floated the idea about bringing her drumming group in with her to provide accompaniment for the experience. I had to admit that was a fine idea. Beat those drums of war, baby.

Now the wheels in my head are turning. And I want to know:

What exciting plans have you made for how you’ll quit? Even if you’re like me and a big, big chicken, at least you can share here, in the safety of pure negativity, what you would do if you had the guts.

How would you do it? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

Nom-Nom Nom-de-Plume Nomenclature

Last night I thought about the boss and clutched my chest in pain. Other people, I guess, refer to this phenomenon as “the drive home.” To each their own!

Easy come, easy go. Another day another feeling like needles are stabbing your ventricles. It’s all in a day’s work. And required per the Employee Handbook.

Recently someone in a comment here on this very blog revealed that they refer to a coworker as The Manwich. (I’m too lazy to go back and look for the author of this absolutely brilliant comment. Speak up and take a bow.)

Giving pet names to coworkers behind their backs is a time-honored technique for workers dealing with the mind-numbing bullshit of their dreary existence in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

It’s a practice we honor here now on this Feckless Friday.

Today’s challenge is twofold: Tell us about pet names for cretins in your office and/or tell stories about times when someone stepped in it by using the term within earshot of the victim.

Good times!

He Tasks Me

I give the orders around here.

This post is dedicated to The Boss whoever it* may be. Ed.

It happened on a work day. (Holy fuck. Is that the scariest opening ever or what?)

It was the arrival of a package that prompted the fun. The boss stopped everything he was doing. Ooh, a package had arrived.

Must. Open. Now.

His fleshy, grubby and unwashed digits picked up the box and it rotated in his massive NFL-style steroid-induced mitts. A piece of gooey food substance jiggled in his beard as he moved.

“Oh look,” he said. “I got something for you.”

Inside? You guessed it. New business cards for my department, the department where he always claimed I was in charge and had autonomy.

The cards were emblazoned with his name. Not mine. And underneath, the business title was printed. “Manager.”

Indeed.

Some time later he indicated with an explosion of gas that he had a “task” for me.

All hail the task!