to move up and down
Extremely Bad Advice: Supplies in Demand
My work colleague, whom I pretend to like in much the same way I pretend to like all my colleagues, has announced she is leaving to join a paramour in another city. Said work colleague has amassed an interesting collection of work supplies, more properly belonging to our employer than herself. They rightly belong on my desk where they can continue to serve our employer’s cause. How long must one wait before tactfully raiding her desk to procure said office supplies?
Extremely Bad Advice: In The Sick Of It
Hi Steve, There has been a recent outbreak of sick people coming in to work at the offce. I’ve tried subtly (and not-so-subtly) asking them to stay home, but they refuse. How can I get these overachievers and their germs out of here?
STEP ONE Ugh, people like that make me sick. Literally, they make me sick, with their germs and their cooties. Most folks have a sickness breaking point where they’ll finally go home. For some, it’s a sore throat; for others, it’s vomiting on their keyboard, rendering it useless. The trick here is to push your stoic plague-carriers to their personal point-of-no-return-to-work, where they realize that they’d be better off at home, on a couch watching Dr. Oz. You’ll need to get other office workers in on this, but there are a few ways to achieve your goal. You can crank the heat in the office and insist that it’s fine, you can get everyone to talk in a deliberately slow cadence, you can add weights in their phone and mouse, etc. Basically, anything to make the workplace a surreal sweatbox.
Extremely Bad Advice: People Clipping Their Nails In Public Are Absolutely Disgusting And Need To Be Told This Forever And Ever
I work in an office environment with low cubicle walls. It bothers me when people start clipping their fingernails while I am trying to work. I can’t see them doing it but I can hear the plick-plick-plick sounds all around me, and it grosses me out. What if one of those clippings flies over the wall and hits me in the eye, or god forbid, lands in my coffee? Am I crazy for being so hung up on such a thing? Is there a firm, yet politically correct way I can get my colleagues to stop?
STEP ONE If you’re crazy then I’m the Joker. Clipping your nails in the office, on the bus, in the park, in Parliament, anywhere that isn’t your washroom, really, is flat out disgusting. Frankly, removing anything attached to your body in public is wrong. I don’t shave in a movie theatre or peel sunburnt skin while grocery shopping and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. Now, could one of your co-worker’s clippings fly into your WORLD’S MOST APPROPRIATE EMPLOYEE mug? According to my math there’s a .0002% chance of that. But, also according to my math, there’s a 100% chance that .0002% is still too high of a probability when it comes to filthy bits of germ-covered, dead, flattened cells being chopped off of co-workers in your vicinity. You are very, very right in this instance.
Lunch wars in the National Post newsroom: The culprit is revealed!
