Friday, January 20, 2006
The Eccentricities of an Office
Anyone working in the corporate world knows these facts:
- Every office has a photocopier or fax machine (or both) that frequently has paper jams or thinks they have paper jams, or just stop working for no good reason at all, other than you have a deadline to meet and said machine wants to make your life harder. (And you know we all want to take a baseball bat to these machines, a la "Office Space.")
- Every office has a coffee machine that also likes to act up and break down. Our fancy coffee machine at work is no exception. It also makes hot cocoa, although everyday it is a lottery whether one will get real hot cocoa, or hot brown water. Today I was lucky and got real hot cocoa. We should start an office pool around the coffee machine.
- The phones and computers also act up at the office, either crashing, networks shutting down and just plain not working for no reason other than the computer or the phone feels like a vacation. Hey, we need vacations after working weeks and weeks too. It's just our computer and phone's way of taking vacation days.
As frustrating as these eccentricities are, these are the day to day "problems" that amuse us more than annoy us. It is almost like the office has become a modern day archetype and the understanding among corporate employees that whatever office you may work in, there will always be the fax machine or coffee machine that makes you stop your fast paced day and slow down for a few minutes. We love these little problems, because they help us relate to our coworkers and friends.
Also, we all love to replay that scene from Office Space in our minds, where they beat the living daylights out of that fax machine.
Have a great weekend!
