I recently came across these hilarious office kitchen notes. And it seems that the modern office has become more and more like a polite university residence. Some colleagues even spit in each other’s food (okay, a polite UFS residence then).
It’s not surprising really. You didn’t choose to be in a confined space with these people everyday. It’s like an involuntary group marriage, except people are having more sex.
“I love the way you do Powerpoint”
Now I’m all for forbidden nookie, but indulging in an office ‘romance’ is the height of hormonal stupidity. Even the term is a complete misnomer. What’s so romantic about having sex in a cubicle?
Oh sure, fluttering eyelashes over the watercooler and making excuses to be in meetings together is all well and fine. Until the IT guy sees you fondling each other in the boardroom. It’s so… tacky.
And then the inevitable break-up happens. Assets are split (“I get the red stapler!”), territory is divided (“You take the stairs!”), and your cubicle becomes an unpleasant reminder of happier times. As the saying goes, “Don’t shit where you eat.”
“Who ate my cheese?”
Even if you do manage to keep your hands off the interns, they might not keep their hands off your food.
Office fridge theft is the ultimate co-worker betrayal. Suspicion reigns. Elaborate revenge fantasies are formulated featuring cyanide and vanilla yoghurt. Outraged emails are dispatched with ominous warnings (“I know who you are and I’ll be watching you”).
Whatever happened to the humble sandwich?
Then there’s the person who cooks broccoli or tuna bake leftovers in the communal microwave. It wafts down the corridors until the entire office is gagging, except the offending party.
Another person’s food is like another person’s farts – the smell might seem fine to them but it doesn’t to anybody else.
Sustenance and procreation rules
Those basic human motivators, food and sex, take on new dimensions in the office. They elicit the most visceral of responses in us, twisted by the forced civility of our working environment. It all reeks (ha) of some bizarre 1950s social experiment. But I just want to know who’s cooking that damn broccoli.
Funny stuff.
My favourite pet peeve must be the emails about washing the dishes. I think we once had an actual meeting (!) about people leaving their dishes in the sink. I don’t even dare to go into the kitchen anymore for the fear of being accused of not washing a fork.
We have a girl who cooks boerewors from raw in the microwave. We are forming an intervention in the parking lot.
Boerewors? For real? Nuts.
Oh my how we have gnashed our teeth in rage at dirty dishes in this office! Will you believe that management actually *removed* all our dishes to teach us a lesson? As far as I remember, I was hired to do a desk job. Washing dishes somehow never entered that contract…
Yet, here we are, jealously guarding our clean bowl/plate/cup in case someone should swipe it and (god forbid) leave it smothered in spagh bol sauce in the sink.
We have the opposite problem here, besides milk, most things people put in the fridge go there to die. An email gets sent once in a while before a big clear out telling people to claim there plastic containers before they chucked. That’s why I usually keep my lunch in a little cooler bag.
Okay, washing the dishes is just cost-cutting taken too far.