The Cubicle Adventures (Part III)

On special demand (yes, you crazy women, you owe me!) the  Cubicle Adventures make a comeback.


So it has been about a year (how the time flies) and I am still in the same job! There IS a God and miracles happen, I guess. And if I think back to a year ago when I started out, I cannot believe the kind of whirlwind changes, and all I have that passes for a reaction is "huh". Very eloquent.


But this is not about how I feel or what I do for a living or how the time has flown. This is about the what passes for an office crowd around me, everyday.I still sometimes feel like a school kid who mistakenly finds herself in a really bizarre place with funny people passing for adults, every morning! 


If you are one of those people who's reporting manager sits around where you do, and you hate it and think you have really sore luck, here's some news:  We have two Bosses. And if you think that's bad, BOTH of them sit BEHIND me.


Aha! Are those "oooh"s and "aah"s and "ouch!"s of sympathy?


The Hummer and The Screamer. The Hummer was the original boss. Hummer is not a reference to his Hummer-like huge hulking personality. It is because I have it from a very reliable source that he apparently hums un-decipherable songs while he pounds on the laptop maniacally. The Hummer has a fan club AND a stalker. Which is very, very bad for ME. Because the stalker keeps dropping by and pretending to be friendly with ME just so she can stalk Hummer. The Fan Club seems stable and does not give me any trouble though, thank God for small mercies. But last I heard a Facebook page was in the works. 


The Screamer was brought in because the work was pouring in and multiplying like the germs they show in those toothpaste ads. Not the cute germs. The really gross ones that make you want to throw up. We were told that this was the reason. But we have reasons to believe that The Hummer couldn't take the Giggling Madness (more on that later) any more and was slowly but surely heading to insanity. We could see the signs. He just kept running around like a loose cannon on the floor, laptop in hand. Anyway. We look at The Screamer like she's a grenade. For now, she is this nice, plump, sweet lady who talks like a kindergarten teacher. But it's a known fact that kindergarten teachers are monsters in disguise (Goosebumps are all true stories) so we are waiting for that giant explosion. Any day now.


I need to meet people from one of those those fly-in-the-wall documentaries. How are they DOING it? I feel like there are cameras focused on the back of my head, watching my every move. It can be very, very unsettling. Bosses are a bad idea, bosses sitting behind you? Now that can compel you to contemplate a career change.


And just when I started contemplating that, enter Giggling Girls.


I am never one to cut a long story short. To start right at the beginning, know how they say you should learn from your mistakes? So i decided to put that to practice. I decided I would not make the same mistakes I made at my last job. (And I don't mean work-wise, I dint really work at my last job. I used to work shifts, and only remember walking around bleary-eyed at odd times, sometimes stopping to wonder where I was and what I was doing there.) So I decided this time round, I was going make a fresh start, and not be the shrill annoying over-friendly person that I tend to turn into without warning. I was going to be (drum roll) the Ice Queen. Ha! 


So the Ice Queen thing lasted about 6 months, I plugged in to music, did my job, came home. I did not speak unless spoken to. I discovered that I could, indeed, converse in monosyllables (a monumental discovery. I also discovered listening to music continously for a few hours gives you a serious case of vertigo, leading to misconceptions that you have a secret stash of booze hidden in the office somewhere ).


UNTIL.


Until the 2 girls decided to ruin everything. They're like drama meets comedy insanity meets shrill giggles all rolled and packed into two cubicles. Hard to contain. Which is why giggles keep bursting out of those two cubicles at two-minute intervals. 


Work could be a threateningly growing mini-mountain, mails could be whizzing around yelling threats, there could be a thousand mind-numbing-ly boring training sessions and maybe even the false ceiling in office could fall on our heads. But the Giggling Girls WILL giggle. I kid you not, if the ceiling did happen to fall on our unsuspecting heads, there will be some shrill giggles emanating from underneath the rubble.


And they are also the single most important reason I like going in to work and are the prettiest girls on the floor. (It is morally and ethically wrong to publish untrue facts like this in return for Snickers, Mars bars & Gems. Just saying.)


There are also some other regular features that roam "the floor".


The "Pole". The Pole is a veritable "chick-magnet". And no "The Pole" is NOT slang for a Polish immigrant,this blog does not believe in racism. "The Pole" is an unbelievably tall individual, and wherever The Pole goes there is a buzz and a gaggle of girls around him.It's quite funny to watch sometimes- The Pole moves, the gaggle of girls moves in synchrony. The Pole stands, the gaggle stands around him adoringly. Oh and the Pole seems to revel in it! I sometimes wonder if I will see him at work the next day, most of the guys throw him these very vengeful glares every time they see him (along with his gaggle) pass by. And if looks could kill The Pole would be dead a thousand times over.


Megalomaniac. Made an appearance in Cubicle Adventures I & Cubicle Adventures II. Still going strong with the megalomania. He also keeps a hawk eye (oh those beady eyes are the stuff of nightmares) on the Giggling Girls and ME. His pretexts are so brilliantly creative. They range from "what did you girls eat for breakfast today.." to "the reason why I'm bald is...". And all this to see what we are up to when we are standing there giggling for no apparent reason. Well we definitely aren't planning a suicide mission or scheming for an embezzlement, we are also pretty incapable of helping him with any Ponzi scheme he might have, so he usually walks away bored.


Mr Bean, débutante in the Cubicle Adventures, and we think soon to be successor of Megalomaniac. He has all the markings of a fledgling megalomaniac. That crazy glint in the eye, that bordering-on-arrogance strut when he walks, and the "hey could you please talk a little softly because my very important very secret mission to earn billions for my company is being hindered by your noise levels" lecture. I was once the recipient of his meant-to-intimidate-you cold glares. Definitely Megalomaniac Junior. 


The Newbie. He is definitely another "chick-magnet". And since he sits right next to me, I am subjected to listening to a lot of "coo-ing" from the girls who find excuses to come talk to him. But the upside is that The Newbie is actually quite, quite funny! And gets along with the Giggling Girls like a house on fire! It has been decided - Judgement reserved, Newbie will be observed for a further (undisclosed) period of time and any increase in funniness will be made note of and considered favorable for a good Cubicle Adventures review.


The College gang. For almost a month there was a huge buzz at work! There was so much excitement and the guys were all "oh the college girls will be here soon!" And honestly it was a little insulting. The rest of us might not be recent pass-outs, but we weren't exactly crazy women with warts everywhere and smelling of cats, were we? But anyway, the College gang arrived. With a bang. And did splendidly and lived up to expectations. It has been a few months and the buzz is still going strong! The floor is noisier. The men seem more enthusiastic. Even the conversation in the restrooms has changed from "my mother in law, my domestic help, oh my mid life crisis, my husband" to "oh yes lets go drinking Friday! where did you buy your blah blah! yes I'm so excited about that new thingammajig we learnt today!". I shudder to think what kind of conversation change this has brought on in the restrooms of the opposite sex.


All in all, it's a little easier walking in to work knowing that the craziness could lead to good things. Like providing fodder for a sorely neglected blog. 

Ok, so, my phone is reverse-psychic.

In the general craziness that is a regular work day, my phone seems to be poking me and nudging me and trying to say "look! THIS is how you see the funny side of things!"

It's not my phone per-se, maybe just my service provider. But picture this, there is a massive issue and so-called discussions with a person i would love to empty my entire knowledge of cuss words on, (let's call him "B" shall we?) and I'm actually considering putting B on a permanent hate list, when my phone beeps and the text says "Will your friendship turn to love?" followed by "to know sms blah blah bleh". Bad sense of timing?

But it was not just the one time!

Weight jokes are a daily occurance. And not fat jokes, i am the butt of all "thin" jokes. (And believe you me I am NOT thin, just regular weighing average individual). If you think people got creative with fat jokes, you should hear some of the Thin jokes. I envy the fat-joke bearing guys, they at least have the sympathy of the world!
Anyways, there was this regular coffee thing going on when a not-so-regular guy decided to join and take the jokes to an insulting level.
So there I am seething and fuming and wondering where all those bars of chocolates and the cheese and junk have disappeared, and beep goes the phone, "Reduce so-many kgs in so-many days! Guaranteed results! Try the Slimming Sauna Belt"

And there was this other day, a Monday, and by some crazy, inexplicable miracle, it's a happy day at work! All laughter and jokes and no crazy emails and no people trying to snap my poor brain in two. I'm thinking, "well, it's not so bad after all! I do think I like my job!" and it pretty much went on some more in the same vein (I can get VERY talkative, even when I'm only talking to myself.) and beep. "Stuck in the wrong job? Find the right one! Sms blah blah bleh bleh".

Phone in bin. *wipes hands*

So after what seems like an eternity, I am finally at home with nothing to do except the fierce determination to churn out a post on my barely read almost dying blog. I do not want to bore anybody with details about how I am dreaming about work. Oh, wait. That would be a nightmare!

There are about 5 drafts of the Cubicle Adventures III. But they come across as a frustrating rant of a really pissed off person (which sadly was my state of mind when I wrote it) so I decided never to publish them. Because I had one of those brilliant flashes at work one day (the ones where are supposed to be hard at work but suddenly an unrelated but brilliant idea flashes in your brain) and I decided my blog should have a point to it - to not have a point. To be only about non-serious observations. That will obviously, help nobody in any way and will not spread knowledge of any kind, or be intellectually stimulating. I should do what I do best. Be nonsensical to a degree and make as little sense as possible and add a little confusion for good measure. Yes, that works best.

So apart from work, I have been spending my weekends trying to master a foreign language. The aim is to speak like a native. So far I'd say I have been so successful that the only native I spoke to looked a little stunned at the funny sounds I was spewing out confidently, and got out of that cafeteria as fast as he could.

When you register you are put in a class of 25 people. The first time around I was thrown together with a motley crowd - a 65 year old translator learning his 5th foreign language, an exotic Iranian woman (who stopped turning up, to the despair of quite a few people) an Afghan journalist who was very passionate about Indian movies and music, the usual bunch of techies, couples emigrating to other distant lands and a few students. Since I am neither exotic nor a techie, and nor did I have a show-offy art-y job, I didn't fit in anywhere.

After what seemed like an eternity but what was in fact only three months the batch got done. And by some miracle I even managed to pass, and for the next level, I got thrown into a new batch with new people and a teacher just a couple of years older than I was. After a round of introductions I realised that most of the class was comprised of students, and not even graduate students.Some of these were kids in the XIth & XIIth. I prepared myself for three months of quiet boredom. What could possibly be interesting with a bunch of kids I had nothing in common with? I even came home and ranted a good bit about how everybody in my class was a kid and how old I felt.. (I don't think it made a difference in any case, I think my mother has now developed the ability to "hmmm" "haa" "ok" "oh really" at all the right places without actually listening to anything I say.)

And then I had to eat my words.

I basically spend almost my entire weekend (It's a six-hour session) with a myriad bunch of kids, their age ranging from 16 to 21. They are all mostly still in college, and use a vocabulary that I have had to consciously suppress the minute I set foot on "the floor" first day of my first job. But the minute i entered class and heard "daaaa"at the end of every phrase and sentence ... oh, music to my ears. The lingo came flooding back like it was never, ever forgotten to be replaced by polite-deathly-prim-sounding corporate dialogue that passes for actual talking.

We would finish class, hang about aimlessly and then, go have dessert on a whim. Or just muck about right there because the food is cheaper and everybody is broke. (They don't even pass judgement when I say I'm broke. I usually receive the "what-an-irresponsible-adult" look when it slips out that I am hard up a particular month and can't make it to dinner at that overly-expensive new restaurant). Remind you of something? Oh yeah! College. Back in the days when we made plans that were executed the next minute. Unlike now when I have to intimate people a couple of weeks in advance to have a measly cup of coffee at a strange sounding new fangled place, and all we would ever do is complain about how hectic work is and how "career pathing" is important and how bad our bosses are (I have GOT to meet some people who love their jobs).

It's a refreshing change to hear things like "so you're in e-commerce retail? I dunno what that means, but I think it's cool bro!" and even "hey you have a job?? cool bro!" and "bro I am just going to be this kick-ass musician in a few years and you can take care of all my public relations stuff, you know?" And yes. I'm now a "bro". Ha! (And just to clarify, gender does not matter. You are a "bro" irrespective of your gender when you are a part of "the gang").

There have been some other interesting additions to my vocabulary too. Like "Haw" for instance. "Haw" is a word that can be used as an adjective, pronoun, verb, as a question, as a response to a question, as a word to cover up a swear word, etc etc. Why say a sentence when all it takes is a word? Haw! Also "shahbash". And a bunch of other words that cannot be repeated here for decency's sake.It was also an equal exchange of knowledge. I passed on some defunct words from back in the days, you know, knowledge transfer, from one generation to the next?

We even made an attempt to study this one time. It went amazingly well. We gobbled down dessert like food-deprived 5 year olds, cracked jokes that were not remotely funny, guffawed at the silliest things. Discussed music, twenty minutes where I sat cringing, feeling like I belonged to the age when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And oh maybe picked up a phrase or two from the books lying in front of us.

So finally my weekends are normal again and I am finally in a state of mind where I can at least write without every second sentence being a rant about murdering my cubicle-neighbour or wishing the boss's boss's boss a painful stomach ache induced by "all that spicy eeendyan foood, ya know".

Some people turn to meditation, some to alcohol, some to kickboxing, most turn to this popular support group at all work places - the smoke group. What can I say, I prefer living in denial two days a week, pretending to be 16 again with not a care in the world. To each their own. Haw!