HEY LADIES, SIT DOWN
62
No personal calls in open - plan offices
In this unfortunate, modern world of open-plan offices, it surprises me that I have to articulate this as a rule. I assumed everyone was like me and got really self-conscious making personal phone calls when other people were within earshot. Turns out, some people aren’t the slightest bit embarrassed about others overhearing their personal calls, in fact they seem to revel in it. I witnessed one woman FaceTiming her young children from her open-plan office desk every day at around five o’clock. Perhaps it was her way of justifying staying late at the office. I say, if you miss your kids so much that you have to FaceTime them, just go home.
63
One proper greeting per day is ample, after that a nod will suffice
Working in an office can be stressful. Not only do you have to get your work done, you must also make an effort to socialise with your fellow employees, especially when you find yourself trapped together in the claustrophobic staff kitchen. At times it can feel as though your whole day is taken up both asking and answering bland questions like ‘How was your weekend?’ or ‘Got anything on this weekend?’ or ‘Hungover much? Heh heh’.
The point is that between regular trips to the kitchen, the bathroom and even the printer (to pick up those personal documents you’ve been printing out at work) you will cross paths with your co-workers multiple times a day. This means multiple greetings per day, and it’s not surprising that these become less enthusiastic as the day wears on. That’s why it’s okay to simply nod at your co-workers, or even just raise an eyebrow of acknowledgement from the second interaction onwards. It’s too exhausting to have to come up with new small talk for each passing, and if you’re not careful you can end up falling into the ‘say what you see’ trap (I am one of the worst offenders of this) passing someone in the corridor and saying something like ‘Ooh, having a cup of tea’ or ‘Mm, chips. Good stuff’.
Others try to cover their awkwardness by attempting humour, failing, then laughing at their ‘joke’ anyway: ‘Heyyy, nice green top, Ellen … did you see Sophie’s wearing a green top today too? Sorry guys, I didn’t get the memo! Ha ha ha.’
Remember if you have nothing of substance to say, it’s perfectly okay to go full Ronan Keating and say nothing at all.
64
No hot - desking
Hot-desking is a form of employee abuse. In years to come, I hope there will be a class action where all the people who have been forced to hot-desk will take their employers to court and sue them for damages. I am fortunate that I have never had to endure such torment. However, the poor staff in the ABC newsroom were long-suffering victims of hot-desking. I know they were suffering because I did an informal survey of the newsroom which revealed that no one enjoyed it. No one. Not one person said, ‘Yes, I quite like not having anywhere permanent to put my things. It’s also great not being able to personalise a space that I spend at least eight hours a day in. But most of all, I really like never knowing where to find anyone. It adds an element of discovery to my day.’
Incidentally, among people who are forced to hot-desk, it is much more commonly referred to as ‘shit-desking’. Only management still insist on using the term ‘hot-desking’. It’s been proven in numerous studies, far more formal and official than mine (I just went around asking, ‘On a scale of one to ten how much do you hate hot-desking?’) that hot-desking does not improve employee productivity. Quite the contrary, in fact, because, while you might save money buying less furniture and office space, you lose money by having unhappy, less-efficient employees. I call Time’s Up on hot-desking.
65
Comedy dancing is not dancing—just don’t dance
This is a rule for all the office wags at the office Christmas party.
FOOD IN THE OFFICE
66
Don’t eat at your desk
This is controversial I know, but my reason is twofold. Firstly, everyone is entitled to a lunch break. This should be an hour (or half hour) where you break and go for lunch. It’s not at all cryptic. A lunch hour should not mean an hour spent at your desk with lunch in one hand, still working with the other, dropping bits of food into your keyboard and using your pants as a napkin.
Secondly, it’s incredibly unhygienic to eat at your desk and it’s unpleasant for your fellow workers to witness, especially if you’re eating something stinky like a hard-boiled egg or something noisy like a chip sandwich. No judgement for eating a chip sandwich, by the way, that’s an excellent carb on carb choice, just do it in a designated food-eating area.
67
No stinky foods in the office
Respect those around you and don’t bring your leftover fish curry to work and then heat it up in the office microwave. No one wants to spend the afternoon working in the noxious fishy miasma you’ve just created. And while I understand that many people love tuna for its healthful and nourishing properties, I think we can all agree that it really does stink so, if you must eat it, I suggest going outside to enjoy your lunch in the open air. Don’t chow down in the confines of the office where the windows only open a few inches, if at all. As for bringing hot chips into the office, that is not just smelly, it’s also mean. Because for the first thirty seconds, hot chips smell delicious and now you’ve made everyone in the office want hot chips. However, pretty soon those hot chips will turn cold and the office will smell like every teenage McDonald’s employee when they come home from a shift reeking of cold grease and congealed fat.
68
No food in meetings
We’re all busy. But if you’re so busy that you’re bringing soup to a meeting and slurping it during proceedings, then you need to organise your day better. Either reschedule the meeting or reschedule your soup slurping.
69
Pick one day a month to do birthday cake
Office birthday cake is a minefield. Yes, cake is great but not everyone is in the mood to drop everything and suddenly gather in the conference room at some random time of day whenever it’s someone’s birthday. There’s never a set time for birthday cake, quite often it’s a case of ‘Hurry up everyone, we’re doing cake now because Jo is leaving early to go to a conference!’ It’s even less appealing when you know your only reward will be ten minutes of awkward forced togetherness and a piece of wet supermarket mud cake that you end up pushing around a paper plate with a plastic fork. I am, however, not against birthdays or cakes. My solution is to pick a day—one day a month, for argument’s sake, let’s say the last Friday of every month. Then on that Friday at 11 am everyone gathers in the boardroom and someone reads out a list of all the people who have celebrated a birthday that month. Cake is presented, ‘Happy Birthday’ is sung (in accordance with the following rule) and everyone enjoys a bit of cake for morning tea.
This allows cake to remain special, it also means everyone in the office knows when birthday cake day is approaching. You can schedule it into your workday, you can set your palate for cake, you can even stop work at 10.55 to make a cup of tea to go with your pending piece of cake. The other great advantage of this system is that it provides enough lead time for someone to actually make a decent cake. Surely that is preferable to the office junior being dispatched to Coles to procure some hideous-looking cake encased in a plastic dome every