Christmas Party Aftermath

If you look closely at section 7.1.4.5.6.a.iii of your Workplace agreement, you will see that you are duty bound to embarrass yourself at one or more office Christmas parties during your employment. Making a fool of yourself is not hard, and you do not need anyone's tips on how to do that. However, turning up to work the following Monday can be difficult. Here is some advice to help you get through that harrowing work day.

Walk into the office; ostensibly proud of who you are (even if you are not). You are, after all, no different to who you were last week. Then (and this is the cunning part) pull each individual in the company aside, and apologise personally for spilling that drink on them, trying to remove their trousers or swearing loudly in front of their children . If you don't remember what you did, use generic apologies such as "Sorry about what I did there", "I hope you're not upset with me" or "I move that today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land...".

This way everyone in the office will shift from harbouring a mild disdain for you to feeling a modicum of respect for admitting your faults privately while maintaining your dignity publicly. With any luck you will get an extra present at Kris Kringle time.

Sick Leave

Being sick is a pain, but it’s often best to just push through and keep going to work. That way when everyone else around you falls sick as well you won’t feel so bad. Misery does love company after all.

But if you do decide to stay home, there is nothing worse than being sick, and not having a “sick voice” when you phone in. People won’t believe you if you don’t sound sick, and they will really think you are lying if you use a fake sick voice. If you really are ill, and don’t want to be thought of as a malingerer then rather than phoning in with a chirpy voice, simply send an email instead. Try adding a sad “smiley” for sympathy and effect:

I won’t be in today, I am not feeling well :-(

Hearts, and possibly flowers, will go out to you.

Carbon Neutral

In this time of great environmental upheaval we are all doing our best to become Carbon Neutral. (I myself am also trying to become tax-neutral, and am hoping that my many past years on various forms of Social Security combined with a big pension will help me achieve that.) But to truly become Carbon Neutral not only must we offset the power that we do use, but we should actually try to use less power.

It’s all very well for the people who work close to the office to ride or walk in to work, but the small environmental benefit of that is more than offset by the detrimental effect of smug people walking around the office in lycra.

So, how can you help? Most employees have a wide array of portable electronic devices which consume a great deal of power. Mobile Phones, MP3 players, PDAs, Hello Kitty shoulder massagers etc.

When you charge these devices at home they consume a great deal of power which would not otherwise be consumed. Why not take them in to work and charge them there? After all, they always leave the power on at work so it is really only using the power that is already being generated.

Remember if ITS didn't want us charging 17 different USB devices simultaneously they wouldn't have given us 17 available USB ports.

Aromatic Dining

After you finish eating a particularly aromatic food, you do not want your bin to waft constant reminders of your wonderful meal for the rest of the day.

To combat this, make sure you dispose of any particularly pungent refuse in the bin under someone else's desk. This will keep your work area nice and fresh and at the same time open someone's mind to olfactory experiences they might otherwise shun.

Water Wise

A Water wise tip. If you drink coffee or tea regularly then there’s really no need to wash your cup every single time you have a drink. Statistics have shown that even a quick rinse can waste a whole cup of water over a day. Over 240 working days in a year, this adds up to 60 litres. That’s a whole petrol tank!

But think about it, do you really need to rinse at all? You’re drinking the same drink, all the time. No one else is using your cup. Just refill it! After all, when you’re at McDonalds and you get a refill you don’t spend hours meticulously cleaning it, do you? No, you just pick up the pot and pour! Well the same principal applies. And think how much water you waste putting your cup in dishwasher each night. After all you know that no one has touched your cup overnight, so just use it the next day. And that “weird” taste is simply the taste of the environment thanking you.

Cubicle Walls

Contrary to popular belief, partition walls are not there to separate employees. They are installed to add dimensions to the already complex arena of inter-office communications. Don’t be afraid to “break the 4th wall”, pop your head up and communicate with your cube mates.

With this in mind, if your neighbour is having a particularly loud conversation, either on the phone, or with a cubicle visitor, it should be treated as a subtle invitation for you to show an interest and ultimately join in. Don’t let ignorance of the subject matter, or the fact that you have missed half the conversation, deter you. People are usually more than happy to fill in the gaps of any private conversation to someone who has joined late.

If your neighbour is, on the other hand, not particularly loud, then it is still an invitation, just a more subtle one.

Gibberish

Did you know that when people say “how are you” in the morning, not only do they not care about the answer; they often don’t even listen for a response. You can test this by replying in gibberish, and see how, or if, they respond. This is particularly effective in a corridor exchange where there is limited face-to-face time.

“Hey how’s it going?”

“Blannemble.”

If you become skilled at this, you can take it to the next level:

“Hey how’s it going?”

“Blannemble. Merr findun bem?”

“Yeah, pretty good thanks.”