Top Eleven Things I Won’t Miss About Work

 

We were recently told our office will be closing sometime between now and 2019, and I will inevitably be unemployed. After 16 years of employment in one place, most people would make a list of things they would miss about the place.

I am not most people.

Here are my top eleven things I won’t miss about Satan’s Butthole.

Cubicles

Why do they call them cubicles? A cube implies something is a geometric shape with six faces. The “cube” I spend my days in only has three flimsy walls that are supported by years of bitterness and resentment.

The Office Grapevine

The office gossip travels fast, but it’s like a game of telephone. By the time it gets to the end of the line it resembles the truth as much as gas station sushi resembles Japanese cuisine.

Someone’s Lunch Always Smells Like Ass

This one probably doesn’t need much explanation. There’s fourteen seconds left on the microwave, but your entrée smells like it died six days ago. Seriously. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EATING?

Having People Sneak Up on You Unexpectedly

For example, the guy that would stand there and stare at me like Michael Myers behind the hedge until I looked up, noticed him, and screamed at the top of my lungs.

Then, he would ask for help.

Or the supervisors who like to sneak up on you when you’re browsing Amazon for new coffee flavors taking a brief break from your work. Fortunately, I used to have a coworker with a mirror on his monitor and when our supervisor would come walking down the aisle, he would shout “Five-O! Five-O”.

The Refrigerator

How bad can the fridge smell? Let me count the ways. Having worked on clean-out duty, I can safely answer this question. Mold, old broccoli, rotting meat juice in the bottom drawer. The leftovers of that person’s lunch that smelled like ass in the microwave BEFORE it started decomposing.

I’m pretty sure the penicillin we’ve grown in our office ice box could cure cancer or turn you into a mutant superhero. The stench alone could cripple a small country, and the U.N. would prosecute us for war crimes.

Petty Larceny

Sometimes the office more closely resembles the Hunger Games than a civilized collection of people working closely together. Stuff goes missing all the time, from phone chargers to spare change to large amounts of money directly from people’s purses. Don’t even get me started about the food going missing from the refrigerator.

I had food and drinks stolen from the refrigerator when I was pregnant. Stealing food from a HANGRY pregnant woman results in justifiable homicide.

 Security Guards with a Hero Complex

I had an upper respiratory infection that resulted in a bad coughing fit at my desk. Someone called the nurse and the next thing I knew, a security guard showed up at my desk with a damned defibrillator.

Sir, all I needed was some hot tea and a Halls Mentholyptus but thanks for being proactive by bringing literal heart-zapping medical equipment to a phlegm fight.

Workplace Violence Training

Speaking of security…about ten years ago, they moved our receptionist desk from the center of our lobby to a room enclosed by bullet proof glass. They also put high security doors and alarms on our executive offices along with cameras and all kinds of bells and whistles.

Meanwhile, I’m in a cubicle with three, four-foot-high walls that shake every time someone slams a drawer shut.

I’m not worried, though, because I was forced given the opportunity to watch a workplace violence training video with very useful information. I learned that should I become trapped in a room where an active shooter is about to enter, I should throw anything I can get my hands on at the attacker. This was very accurately demonstrated by a woman in a conference room throwing a fake plant in a wicker basket.

I believe they call this “Stand your ground with a silk hydrangea” law.

Meetings

Oh God, yes…more meetings please! Let’s have a meeting to further discuss the 20 emails leadership just sent us that could’ve been summarized in one memo. Explain it in painstaking detail, with pie charts, illegible graphs, and a shadow puppet re-enactment, then make sure someone takes notes so we can get a follow-up email later.

Don’t forget just as we’re getting up to leave to ask ONE MORE GODDAMNED QUESTION because who doesn’t love an extra thirty minutes of discussion?

Which brings me to Meeting’s ugly stepsister:

Conference Calls

Is there anything better than being stuck on a call with 20 mouth-breathers? How many times does the facilitator have to ask you people to fucking mute your phone unless you are actually asking a question?!?

As much as I LOVE listening to you eat lunch/chew gum/giggle at your coworkers in the background or snort snot back up into your nose, you’re distracting me from the game of Solitaire I’m playing while I ignore the speaker.

Have some courtesy, will ya?

And finally…

Performance Evaluations

Judgement Day. Also known as quarterly/mid-year/annual review.

I’ve been selling front row seats to my workplace accomplishments like a corporate ticket scalper since 2001.

Why, yes, Bob…I’ve had a VERY productive year. I jammed single handedly every copier on this floor, cleaned all the Nutella out of my keyboard with a Q-tip, and indexed all the sticky notes on the wall of my cubicle alphabetically by subject and color.  I completed all my online Christmas shopping by October 1 while simultaneously increasing my restroom break time by 15%.

May I have a raise?

The Actual Things I’ll Miss:

And finally…the customer interactions that start with sentences like, “I bought me one of them skeeter candles” and end with me asking, “Are the goats okay?”

My lunch buddies, whose lunches DO NOT smell like ass.

The teammates who do things like yell “Five-Oh, Five-Oh!”

The cleaning ladies and cafeteria workers who have ACCURATE gossip.

Pushing our chairs in the middle of the aisle and laughing for fifteen minutes about something completely stupid.

Comedy relief by THAT coworker after a serious training video. “Don’t you think they were overreacting just a little…?” followed by a thesis that could have been written by the creators of South Park.

Supervisors that say things in performance evaluations like “I know your Give-a-Shit-Meter is on low right now but let’s just pull it up a little and fly under the radar, M’kay?”