Office fridge thief pushed me to the edge of violence
Iwent to a meeting at work the other day and the woman running it spoke words I have always found chilling, ‘right, before we begin let’s do a quick icebreaker’. This, as anyone who has worked in an office environment knows, will involve some sort of corny juvenile exercise designed to get everyone in the room talking to each other.
This particular ice-breaker involved us lining up in alphabetical order of where we were born.
As usual I sat aloof in a corner, refusing to get involved until the last possible moment.
What I found astonishing was the 15 other adults in the room bounding about, joking and laughing hysterically, looking as though this was as much fun as they’d had in years. Which it probably was.
Things threatened to get interesting when a woman from Stafford got very irate with a young lad from Stoke in an Iron Maiden T-shirt who kept trying to stand in front of her.
The meeting that followed was incredibly dull – something about Excel spreadsheets – and it made me realise how cheesed off I am that I’ve ended up working in an office.
My dream as a youngster was to be an outdoor ranger in the Lake District.
I would spend my days repairing paths and building dry stone walls, dressed in a tweed flat cap and wellies, with a faithful border collie by my side.
The most stressful my day could possibly get, I imagined, would be if a sheep got its head stuck in a stile. Alas, life turned out a little differently and for the past two decades, since leaving university with a 2:1, severe debt, and a muchweakened liver, I have spent my days blankly staring at computers, and not rescuing sheep from the top of Scafell.
Sometimes working in an office is great, as you get to sit down all day and are allowed to put your mug on the desk without using a coaster. But it can also make you ratty, for the monotony of working with the same people in the same environment day after day means that, over time, the smallest annoyances become magnified.
There is, for example, at the place I work, a man who will always greet you with the words ‘how are we today?’ as opposed to ‘how are you?’
Given we live in a world where terrorists plant bombs, giant corporations fiddle taxes, and malnourished children starve to death, it really isn’t something to get riled by.
But the fact this lad says it every single day drives me insane.
Another chap at work constantly says ‘hmm, that’s interesting’ in a voice just loud enough for you to hear.
Of course you have to ask ‘what’s interesting?’ at which point he will, without fail, tell you a lengthy story about something the very opposite
I have never been closer to kicking a man in the testicles
of interesting.
In every office there is the food thief.
I became a victim the other month when I couldn’t find my lasagne.
After 10 minutes frantic searching, I walked furiously back to my desk and noticed a colleague on a nearby table eating it.
‘Excuse me’, I said, voice quivering with rage, ‘I think you’re eating my lasagne?’
He paused, fork-full of mincemeat halfway to his mouth, and said without any hint of concern or embarrassment: ‘That makes sense now, I knew it was spaghetti Bolognese my wife did for me. But not to worry, the spag bol will be in the fridge so have that’. I have never been closer to kicking a man in the testicles.
There are a million other annoyances – the lad who doesn’t wash his hands after going to the toilet, meaning you have to open the door to the gents with one finger for fear you will get his muck on your hands; the woman with a phobia of bananas, who has to leave the room if anyone whips one out (though it is a handy tool if you want to talk about her behind her back).
I could go on but it’s too depressing.
Oh to be at the top of Helvellyn with a stuck sheep instead…