I returned to my desk this morning to find 5 emails in my in-box, 2 of which were junk (ads from Itunes and Yahoo DSL). The other three were general notices sent out to the entire company about a lost cell phone, a help desk issue, and today's lunch. No instant messages from any coworkers. No messages from the Boss Man.
I think it's a fair to conclude that I have developed some sort of built-in invisibility cloak. I am Sarah the friendly office ghost. Boo.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Professional Research
Today I will be conducting an experiment to determine the "occupational absence awareness" of my coworkers and supervisors.
The plan: I'm leaving at noon and I'm not coming back and I'm not telling anybody. Except for you, my faithful and few blog readers.
I've conducted a few variations of this experiment before (showed up for work 2-4 hours late, taken 2-3 hour lunches . . . repeatedly). Based upon these, I predict to return to the office on Friday morning with a total of 2 emails in my inbox (one of which will be unnecessarily CC'ed to me and the other will be some kind of ad asking me to buy something). No one will ask any questions.
I'll report the results tomorrow.
The plan: I'm leaving at noon and I'm not coming back and I'm not telling anybody. Except for you, my faithful and few blog readers.
I've conducted a few variations of this experiment before (showed up for work 2-4 hours late, taken 2-3 hour lunches . . . repeatedly). Based upon these, I predict to return to the office on Friday morning with a total of 2 emails in my inbox (one of which will be unnecessarily CC'ed to me and the other will be some kind of ad asking me to buy something). No one will ask any questions.
I'll report the results tomorrow.
Friday, March 16, 2007
The Early Bird Catches the Phrase
Because if you get to work at 8 am like I did, you're exhausted and fed up with doing work (or just existing in your cubicle as I do.) by the time 3:30 rolls around. Your brain is primed for spelling errors and misused sayings that are sure to bring a smile anyone's day. For example, here's the new phrase a friend and I came up with today during an IM chat:
****
Sarah: awesome
I'm so excited about my bike
having a bike that goes fast
my hybid has great shocks
but it suck a clunker
I mean such
Laurel: i like "it suck a clunker" better
Sarah: Maybe I should add that to my phrase book?
DUDE that sucked a clunker
Laurel: or you could just tell someone to "go suck a clunk"
****
Another such happy accident is the addition of LooL to my IM chats.
Who needs LOL when you can LOOL, just say the word LUUUUUULE. It makes you wanna lool.
There you have it. Creativity at its most careless.
Honestly, this is what gets me through the day.
****
Sarah: awesome
I'm so excited about my bike
having a bike that goes fast
my hybid has great shocks
but it suck a clunker
I mean such
Laurel: i like "it suck a clunker" better
Sarah: Maybe I should add that to my phrase book?
DUDE that sucked a clunker
Laurel: or you could just tell someone to "go suck a clunk"
****
Another such happy accident is the addition of LooL to my IM chats.
Who needs LOL when you can LOOL, just say the word LUUUUUULE. It makes you wanna lool.
There you have it. Creativity at its most careless.
Honestly, this is what gets me through the day.
Friday, March 02, 2007
There's a party in my post!
More like a celebration/congradulatory event hosted by me, honoring myself, and attended by yours truly (and perhaps the 3.5 people who read this thing).
Rarely do I feel like a valuable employee or a talented writer doing what I do. And doing so little, especially compared to people like my father, my boyfriend, many of my friends who have to work incredibly hard day in and day out, sometimes happily, and other times miserably. When I think of my job, my contributions, I feel very neutral, very lucky, and very small in comparison to everything thats going on. In short, I feel like Switzerland.
But today has been different. Today for one reason or another, through one project or another, I was reminded that what I do with words is valuable and can be really rewarding, and even fun. Nothing earth shattering took place. I didn't compose the greatest paragrpah to hit the world wide web or anything, I just felt for the first time in a while, the love I have for governing words, for dictating their reach and their boundaries, and seeing to it that words make people happy. I am a peacekeeper of language, and today I am very proud of that.
Rarely do I feel like a valuable employee or a talented writer doing what I do. And doing so little, especially compared to people like my father, my boyfriend, many of my friends who have to work incredibly hard day in and day out, sometimes happily, and other times miserably. When I think of my job, my contributions, I feel very neutral, very lucky, and very small in comparison to everything thats going on. In short, I feel like Switzerland.
But today has been different. Today for one reason or another, through one project or another, I was reminded that what I do with words is valuable and can be really rewarding, and even fun. Nothing earth shattering took place. I didn't compose the greatest paragrpah to hit the world wide web or anything, I just felt for the first time in a while, the love I have for governing words, for dictating their reach and their boundaries, and seeing to it that words make people happy. I am a peacekeeper of language, and today I am very proud of that.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
How do you do Mr.Not New But Yet Unintroduced Co-worker?
I still have not figured out a good method for dealing with this issue. Maybe someone else can shed light on this unexpectedly awkward problem . . .
You never get introduced to everyone in a large office. It's not exactly an issue when you have the type of boss who introduces you to everyone you will be working with and then rest of your massive company exits on some exterior corporate plain. It is an issue when you get introduced to, say, the 12 people you generally work with in an office where you're constantly coming into contact with people you don't know who also work in the same office. The breakroom, the bathroom, the printer and the like present high risk locations for running into these people. And going up to each and everyone and saying,"Hi, we haven't met. I'm Sarah. I work in the creative dept," had once seemed like the obvious choice for dealing with these situations and decreasing them (more introductions = fewer unknown coworkers). But sadly, I learned early on that my amicable instincts were wrong.
An office is just like a box of chocolates . . . I've learned many are filled with extremely unfriendly, super shy and perhaps socially inept "chocolates". When I first started my job here and being introduced to about 1/3 of my co-workers, I did my best to be friendly and say hello and ask people who they were and their positions. This went on for about 2 days, before I simply gave up. Usually I felt like I was interupting the peoples' regularly scheduled programming as they were rushing back to their desks. I started up a conversation with one coworker only to be barraged by other fully aquainted amongst themselves (yet still unknown to me)coworkers coming in and me, being unperepared for the onslaught, decided to quickly tidy up my introductory chat and scurry away instead of going up to 5 new coworkers at once and proclaiming my newness and my position and inquiring the same. Bad idea? Still not quite sure, but since I failed to introduce myself to everyone else in the break room, the one guy I did talk to felt I was coming onto him, and avoided all contact with me. Don't flatter yourself bub; I was just trying to be nice! Sheesh.
So I adopted the "I'll show you mine if you show me yours first" policy of inter-coworker mingling. If an unknown coworker seems talkative and friendly, then I can go ahead and reciprocate. This was a successful strategy about 25% of the time. The other 75% of the time, I think the everyone else adopted the same policy and so it was just a Mexican Standoff, or timing was just off. People don't seem mean, or anti-social, but just busy going about their days, leaving as I was entering, in conversation with someone they already knew, bobbing while I was weaving, and vice versa. I resolved to stop taking things into my own hands and let the forces of corporate culture (meetings, comittees, in office lunchs at big communal tables) do the work for me. This task was greater than myself.
Flash forward to now- our office merges with the Tech Dept downstairs. New office, new desk, new people to not know, and yet, no introductions for anyone! Since theoretically we've all been "working together" this whole time. So I find myself right back where I started.
What do you think? Name tags? :-)
You never get introduced to everyone in a large office. It's not exactly an issue when you have the type of boss who introduces you to everyone you will be working with and then rest of your massive company exits on some exterior corporate plain. It is an issue when you get introduced to, say, the 12 people you generally work with in an office where you're constantly coming into contact with people you don't know who also work in the same office. The breakroom, the bathroom, the printer and the like present high risk locations for running into these people. And going up to each and everyone and saying,"Hi, we haven't met. I'm Sarah. I work in the creative dept," had once seemed like the obvious choice for dealing with these situations and decreasing them (more introductions = fewer unknown coworkers). But sadly, I learned early on that my amicable instincts were wrong.
An office is just like a box of chocolates . . . I've learned many are filled with extremely unfriendly, super shy and perhaps socially inept "chocolates". When I first started my job here and being introduced to about 1/3 of my co-workers, I did my best to be friendly and say hello and ask people who they were and their positions. This went on for about 2 days, before I simply gave up. Usually I felt like I was interupting the peoples' regularly scheduled programming as they were rushing back to their desks. I started up a conversation with one coworker only to be barraged by other fully aquainted amongst themselves (yet still unknown to me)coworkers coming in and me, being unperepared for the onslaught, decided to quickly tidy up my introductory chat and scurry away instead of going up to 5 new coworkers at once and proclaiming my newness and my position and inquiring the same. Bad idea? Still not quite sure, but since I failed to introduce myself to everyone else in the break room, the one guy I did talk to felt I was coming onto him, and avoided all contact with me. Don't flatter yourself bub; I was just trying to be nice! Sheesh.
So I adopted the "I'll show you mine if you show me yours first" policy of inter-coworker mingling. If an unknown coworker seems talkative and friendly, then I can go ahead and reciprocate. This was a successful strategy about 25% of the time. The other 75% of the time, I think the everyone else adopted the same policy and so it was just a Mexican Standoff, or timing was just off. People don't seem mean, or anti-social, but just busy going about their days, leaving as I was entering, in conversation with someone they already knew, bobbing while I was weaving, and vice versa. I resolved to stop taking things into my own hands and let the forces of corporate culture (meetings, comittees, in office lunchs at big communal tables) do the work for me. This task was greater than myself.
Flash forward to now- our office merges with the Tech Dept downstairs. New office, new desk, new people to not know, and yet, no introductions for anyone! Since theoretically we've all been "working together" this whole time. So I find myself right back where I started.
What do you think? Name tags? :-)
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