In this recessionary environment, adults and kids alike are sent packing off in the ere morning in hopes of scoring a little bread to feed the family, or themselves. This March, I have joined the ranks of these office folks and have been trudging off to work like a merry little soldier.
The company I’m working for deals with a myriad of geeky stuffs from softwares to computers to repairs.I’m not really sure about their core business, since most of the time I’m holed up in one corner of the office. Literally. Behind piles and piles of paperwork backlog. Oh yes kids, the everests of administrative documents are not just isolated in bad corporate sitcoms or terrible academic nightmare.
To past time, I spy from my sentry station and try to match colleagues to the typical office co-worker template:
The Boss: He is the boss. You stop spying and suddenly the Pick List numbers seem so much more interesting. Heigh Ho, I love work! I love my company!
The Veteran: He has been around here for long. Probably outstayed the junky printer just down the hallway and he shows it. Sashaying throughout the office, he is the self appointed watchdog, catching skiving people like myself. When he is not on guard duty, he’s the knowledgeable matriarch, marching around questioning and dictating your work. No one knows what his job description is.
The Traitor: The Traitor clears all the checklist in the treason graduation handbook. The second, or third, place he frequents the most (beside the toilet) is The Veteran’s or The Boss’s office, passing on little ground floor ‘updates’ . The Traitor is usually the best players at the game Werewolves. Higher leveled Traitors might pass off as The Gossip (read below) initially to build trusts and elicit scoops.
The Gossip: They are the amiable people who approach and break in the new guy. Very valuable allies, they provides information critical for your survival, mostly from boredom. They are also all over you, trying to figure you out, their only restrain being The Veteran. Common mistakes novices make is to engage in lunch time sessions with The Gossip, where they will fall victim to uninhibited interrogation. Take heed, little ones.
The OL: The Office Lady is the quintessential, well, office lady. She spends her time pimping up herself (but is hardly worth a glance) and has a delicious stash of goodies underneath her work desk. When she is done with herself, she would sometime engage in, sigh, office work.
The Pervert: He is the one with shifty eyes and spews an obscene amount of amoralities which covers an extensive breath (thankfully not depth). Apparently, some Perverts don’t care for age nor gender, making everyone a potential target. The Interns and The New Guy should take heed. Hopefully, he is not from the HR department.
The Interns: Most office have one, or a few. They are real cheap labor. Believe me, I know. Being as convenient as they are, they are the easiest to spot, usually hanging out by the mentioned junky printer down the hallway or weaving through the cubicle boundaries. They are good lunch partners, since they are the folks who skew the mean age of the office to the left.
The New Guy: That’s me.
In dealing with everyday stress as discussed above, I have a few bags of snacks handy (Take that, OL!), which I proceed to devour when the pressure escalates. This leads to me wonder if this is why office folks are so unfit. They blindly consume to deal with anxiety and believe that finger exercises alone can burn off the astronomical calories they stuff down their throats. To ensure that I don’t fall pry to such depraved mindset, I have my own set of preventive routines that I will (maybe) cover over the next few posts.
Meanwhile, I have enough of the computer screen for one day.
Time for some quality human interaction.
