The 20 Dumbest Things About Being an Office Drone
By Jordan Burchette
TruTV
This is your life. And it's ending one meeting at a time.
The corporate model made the business of doing business more efficient and profitable than ever before imaginable. It also made each cog in its machinery as expendable as a member of Guns N' Roses.
As a result, everything about the corporate climate is lame: the glib condescension of the Microsoft Office Assistant, elevators full of coffee breath co-workers babbling about their boring weekends. It's enough to make you want curl up into the fetal position and cry about all those big dreams you had, once upon a time.
If the following list of soul-trampling, will-snapping aspects of cubicle culture makes you laugh, you haven't worked in an office long enough.
English as Second Language, Buzzwords as the First
If another one of you wankers "pings" me, ties up any more of my personal "bandwidth," or concerns yourself at all with my "low-hanging fruit," I'm going to "fast track" these five "assets" right where the "rubber hits the road."
The Boss Who Wants to Be Your Friend
Like a parent of tweener kids, he craves the approval of his subordinates. This is the worst boss you can have, since he wants to be your best friend… who can fire you at any moment. He abuses his authority by taking no responsibility for anything and when he has to finally manage you, he obviously gets off on the power. Nice guy!
Coffee Like Bear Sweat
With Chock Full O' Nuts, Peet's, Flavia or any of a thousand other corporate coffee offerings that sound and taste like genitals, every day at GeneriCorp gets the bland, taste-bud-killing start it deserves. It's not coffee really, just hot caffeine water.
Fluorescent Overhead Bleaching Lamps
Those dull, glowing tubes soak up the will to live the way Brawny soaks up spills. You can't help but view the world through ketchup-smeared glasses because standard-issue office lighting has sapped your eyes of any other hue on the spectrum.
Backstabbing Politics
If Machiavelli could have envisioned that his principles would be applied to the struggle over who gets Bert’s chair when he leaves, he would have gone into farming.
The Office Loud-Talker
Inches are indistinguishable from miles to this meat-and-bone megaphone. She’s the reason why you’re involuntarily up to speed on Glee, despite working on a different floor.
Dreading Monday Morning on Friday Afternoon
The weekend starts on Wednesday, which means that the anxiety over the coming workweek begins before this one has a chance to end.
Meeting Madness
Crammed into an isobaric conference room like the cast of 12 Angry Men, not one of you is leaving until every last bad idea is explored in undeservingly thorough detail. Nine times a day.
Mr. Offensive Joke/Sexual Harassment
He’s gotten a load o’ every pair of fun bags on the floor. He’s made terrorist jokes at the expense of everyone in IT. And he’s always the first to die in the daily corporate Japanese horror movie that plays during your nap.
Idiots Who Put Toys on Their Desks
FAO Schwartz doesn’t showcase this much product. It’s an adult workplace, not a diorama.
Idiots Who Play With the Toys on Your Desk
At an insertion rate of one in 450 boxes, this extremely rare Bespin Luke Skywalker figure hardly qualifies as a “toy.” Philistines.
Post-Traumatic Sound Effects Stress
No matter how many footprints there are on your rung of the corporate ladder, you’re subject to the unending Pavlovian chorus of breaking e-mails, text messages and IMs that will form the soundtrack of your eventual breakdown.
Break Room Small Talk
You have one moment during the day that is legally your own and it gets hijacked in a pretend kitchen by the other mutants in your glorified corporate LAN party.
Birthdays
Signing cards, singing songs and chipping in on cake for people on whom you wouldn’t pee if the candle blowing turned tragic.
Messaging the Person Seated Right Next to You
Technology has so allowed us to indulge our disdain for our coworkers that they no longer have to see us stabbing them with our eyes when we answer their every insipid question. Sure there’s an emoji for that, though.
Team Building
It’s Accounts Receivable, not the Los Angeles Dodgers. You wanna foster goodwill within the workforce? Do something about the smell of runny death in the bathroom.
When Your Headphones Accidentally Dislodge From the Jack, Startling Everyone Through Computer Speakers With Your Love for the Music of Jennifer Lopez
This just me?
Layoffs
We truly valued your service to the company until we didn’t.
The Biohazard Delivery System That Is the Office/Plague Ward's Air Ducts
Virus productivity in America is doubling year over year, thanks to the germ networking facilitated by the office’s central disease server. Now workers can upload and download cold and flu spores to one another in real time, freely exchanging infections on the sickness superhighway.
Lame Injuries
Telling the other folks in the hospital waiting room that you’re being admitted for carpal tunnel syndrome or tired eyes is like telling your cellmate that you got thrown in jail for shoplifting bloody Mary mix.