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.
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.
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