Office For One Please
Every once in awhile something happens at work that suddenly reminds me that I work with a bunch of pre-metapausal soccer moms. While that normally has no baring on our easy friendships, these sudden reminders leave me reeling. For example:
The only male on our shift, we shall call him Crazy Bob, has a tendency to be a little obsessive compulsive while at the same time clinically deranged. When Michael Jackson was acquitted of his latest pervey charges, Crazy Bob designated it MJ Day and would randomly moonwalk past my cubicle or grab his crouch and squeal. That’s just Crazy Bob. You either accept that that’s the way he rolls or trade to another shift. Anyway, like I said Crazy Bob is anal retentive about certain things, but mostly he’s obsessed with the shredder.
One day, a few of the ladies decided to unplug the shredder while he was in the bathroom and watch the impending explosion. They waited patiently until he found some document that needed immediate shredding and peered around the corners of their cubicles as he fiddled with the buttons and cursed dramatically under his breath. After a few moments of muffled snickering, my boss jumped out from behind her larger, more important, cubicle wall and shouted, "You got punked!" The whole office burst out laughing as Crazy Bob tried to appear unruffled.
As I sat there watching the whole scene unfold, my eyes got wide and I felt the color drain from my face. I turned to the only other employee under 35 and found her starring desperately back at me with the same horrified expression. Apparently we had unwittingly crossed over into Dilbert-Land. When had my 20-something life become some crappy office cartoon? And what Ashton knock-off would ever incorporate a shredder into their Punked episode? It was at that moment that I decided I would not be working in a cubicle for the rest of my life. And by the look on my friend’s face, she had made the same promise to herself.
The only male on our shift, we shall call him Crazy Bob, has a tendency to be a little obsessive compulsive while at the same time clinically deranged. When Michael Jackson was acquitted of his latest pervey charges, Crazy Bob designated it MJ Day and would randomly moonwalk past my cubicle or grab his crouch and squeal. That’s just Crazy Bob. You either accept that that’s the way he rolls or trade to another shift. Anyway, like I said Crazy Bob is anal retentive about certain things, but mostly he’s obsessed with the shredder.
One day, a few of the ladies decided to unplug the shredder while he was in the bathroom and watch the impending explosion. They waited patiently until he found some document that needed immediate shredding and peered around the corners of their cubicles as he fiddled with the buttons and cursed dramatically under his breath. After a few moments of muffled snickering, my boss jumped out from behind her larger, more important, cubicle wall and shouted, "You got punked!" The whole office burst out laughing as Crazy Bob tried to appear unruffled.
As I sat there watching the whole scene unfold, my eyes got wide and I felt the color drain from my face. I turned to the only other employee under 35 and found her starring desperately back at me with the same horrified expression. Apparently we had unwittingly crossed over into Dilbert-Land. When had my 20-something life become some crappy office cartoon? And what Ashton knock-off would ever incorporate a shredder into their Punked episode? It was at that moment that I decided I would not be working in a cubicle for the rest of my life. And by the look on my friend’s face, she had made the same promise to herself.
Labels: Completely Unrelated Rantings, Workin' Hard or Hardly Workin'?
This entry was posted
on 24.5.06 at 6:44 PM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
» Post a Comment