Officey Things

To start off with a Captain Obvious remark, working in an office is a lot different than working at home. You have to do officey things so that you can fit in. I never went to a new school as a kid, but I imagine that this is what it feels like. Today, for the first time in my life, I filled out an NCAA bracket. We are having an office pool--I kicked in my $10. Maybe I will win. I picked Duke, as my ultimate winner, if you were wondering. I picked Duke because they won last year and because I really hate Ohio State. (My final four are Ohio State, Duke, Kansas and Pittsburgh--the top 4 seeds in each of the 4 brackets, so you can see how creative I am.) I still don't have a lot to do at work; today I spent about 4 hours making copies and putting packets together for a bunch of dentists. I had many "is this my life" moments while doing that tasks. Since it was work that required absolutely no brain power, I was able to practice music in my head. (I will have to be careful that I don't start singing out loud.) Most of my head practicing was taken up with this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsepyAMxT0M (I had to listen to a lot of versions on YouTube to find the right arrangement.)

I thought that I would tell you some more about life in my triangle, particularly the office decor. The office is really decorated, to the point of being cheesy. (Another reason The Big Cheese is a good name.) On one wall of my triangle there is a GIANT picture of three white roses sitting on some parchment. It's not even a good picture and I wonder why people buy things like it. There are pictures of pears near the conference table and the kicker, to me, is a copy of the Serenity Prayer in the bathroom. Sometimes I would like to pray for God to grant me the serenity to not make fun of the serenity prayer and whomever hung it up. To increase the cheese factor, all around the work room with the copy machine and supplies and stuff there are words like "smile," "excellence" and "exceed expectations" stencled on the wall. I don't think that you could find two offices more different than my former office in Cincinnati and my current triangle world. At that former place with three letters, the President was on the board of the contemporary art museum and had some arrangements that pieces from the museum could be housed at the office, so this made for some pretty weird art. There was a suit of armor in an alcove in one hall, but my favorite piece were the Barbie arms in the shoebox lid by the Ladies Room. This was a piece of "art" that literally looked like someone had painted the lid of a shoebox with red tempera paint and then ripped the arms off a bunch of Barbies and stuck them through little holes in the shoe box lid. It was both fascinating and disturbing at the same time. I always wanted to ask the artist was it meant. I do not want to ask the person who painted the pears anything.

I am finding that I have more sympathy for my former assistant (from my first job when I had an assistant) now that I'm in my new position. She had MAJOR issues with me (and others in the office) being able to set our own schedules, to an extent, and would get really bent out of shape when someone would leave early. Yesterday morning Mr. X left the office to go to Starbucks to get some coffee because he didn't want to wait for the office coffee to brew. To Mr. X's credit, he did ask me if I wanted some coffee before he left, but the whole time he was gone I was just sitting there thinking about being able to do things like that in the past, but not any more. Part of me wants to Facebook my old assistant and tell her that I "get it" now. I was also thinking that Mr. X is kind of crazy because it took way more time to get in the car and drive to Starbucks than it would have to wait for the coffee. (Also, we have one of those little individual cup Keurig coffee makers (that's supposed to be used for clients only, but everyone uses it anyway) that would have made him a cup of coffee in about 30 seconds if her was going through some kind of major cafieen withdrawal.)

I think that everyone has their own kind of crazy. Mr. X's mom works at my triangle office. We'll call her Mama X. She works 2 days a week and does cleaning and ordering supplies and has pretty handwriting, so she addresses all the mail and stuff like that. She also has some major OCD. She cannot stand to have anything crocked or messed up. I can't count how many time times that she apologized to me on my first day that she hadn't found a fake plant of the right size to hide my computer cords. (Note that I did have a fake plant to hide my computer cords, just not one of the right size.) Every time she walks past my desk she straightens my lampshade--I seriously cannot tell that it's ever crooked. Last week I brought in a few pictures to personalize my triangle and there was a tiny amount of white price tag sticker on the back of one of them. She tried to get that off with her finger nail, water and then finally had to break out the Goo Be Gone to get it out. I have a new plastic floor mat to scoot around on and it also had a sticky white label, so today she was crawling around under my desk to get rid of the label. She didn't want to use the Goo Be Gone, though, because she thought that it might hurt the plastic. I hope that I am never invited to her house because I am scared that I will break or spill something.

I also had my first Most Embarrassing Work Moment today. (I'm thinking of starting a Most Embarrassing Work Moment Hall of Fame.) I was sitting at my desk doing work things (not moving around) and all of the sudden my chair literally gave out. Thankfully it was an old chair and I was told that it was on its last legs, but you never want to be the person sitting in the chair when it breaks. This is something that is much better to have happen when you are working from home.