Friday, December 16, 2011

A Crappy Little Story

Wow. My apologies to whoever reads this thing.  I hadn’t realized how long it had been since my last post.  Been pretty busy I guess.  Don’t think I had a change of heart and started “feelings” for my job.  No sir.  My opinions of the average workplace have not changed and are filled with just as much boredom and loathing as ever.  So I will reaffirm my position with a story too good to keep to myself.  It’s completely true and even comes with an illustration as all great stories do.  Let’s begin…
It was a late Tuesday evening and I had just trudged back to my work room after a particularly loquacious staff meeting.  To help shed some of the vocational misery, I went to my whiteboard and started to draw a quick sketch.  The illustration ended up being a simple caricature of me holding a plunger.   A dialog bubble presented the phrase “I’m tired of cleaning this shit up.”  This was just a simple, metaphorical statement regarding my tasks of having to fix mistakes made by others.  It was not meant as anything else.
The very next day I needed to use the office restroom.  When I entered the territory I had noticed that the fan had been turned on (a clear sign that something terrible had just occurred).  I approached the chair with caution and found that not only had the toilet been clogged and backed up with sluggish liquid to the brim, but the floor had small, off-colored pools surrounding the bowl like disgusting, fluid land mines protecting Hitler’s bunker.  The plunger stood next to it like the step child no one pays attention to, cold and sadly unused.  I went back into the main office, having not been able to use the facilities, and walked the halls to see who was responsible for the act and what, if anything, they were doing to remediate it.  To my disgust (but not surprise) I found everyone working at their desks, typing away at emails and talking to nobody in particular on the phones.  No one was running for paper towels.  No one was searching for disinfectant that was surely never purchased.  No one was doing a damn thing to clean up the disaster in the men’s room!  I knew who the culprit was of course, through process of elimination but I did not call them out.  I honestly wasn’t sure what I would have said.  “Clean up your shit!” would have been appropriate but for some reason it sounded foolish in my head.  So, having worked in maintenance during previous employment, I found a pair of gloves, fixed the clog, and cleaned up the mistake left by someone else.  Just like my drawing had predicted. 
The following day the individual responsible came in my office to discuss something and noticed my cartoon on the board.  “Oh, was that you who fixed the toilet?” they asked.  As if they had thought that Santa Claus had come in early with a brigade of janitorial elves to magically clean the place up.  The person went on to tell me how they tried, oh how they tried, to unclog the porcelain beast.  I wanted to ask how they tried since the plunger seemed to be void of any kind of moisture and that no form of material was laid down in attempt to absorb the yellowish debris. I wanted to, but more than that I wanted this man out of my office.  After the apology was made and the slightly embarrassed (but not embarrassed enough in my opinion) man left my room, some fellow employees, having heard the story, came in and drew brown gobs to my picture for added effect resulting in the final picture you see here. 
I guess I should be careful with what I decide to draw on this apparently cursed whiteboard.  But then, I was going to draw a pineapple in full Luche Libre ensemble, so whatever.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Meeting Minute Mad Libs

Here's a little game you can play while you're sitting waiting for the meeting to end and hoping that no one else decides to bring up an issue that will keep everyone there another half hour.  If your meeting has minutes or notes printed out for everyone, try picking out certain words to create a funny sentence.  You can highlight, underline or circle the words (I suggest you do it lightly so no one else catches on to what you're doing). 

Here's one that I did during a meeting.  I later went back over all the other text with a marker so you could see the specific words I chose.  The sentence now reads "Charlie recommended A hard set of caulk be installed up Ben".



  A childish choice, I know, but it kept me entertained during the two hour snoozer.  I also drew a monkey.  Remember to keep a serious face while you're going through and picking out the words.  Make it look like you're really studying the notes.  Then later you can write them all down on sticky notes and post them around the office for more fun.

Friday, June 10, 2011

My sentiments...exactly.

If you're like me, you probably don't care too much for the job you're in right now.  But, with the economy being in the shape it's in currently, you don't really have the opportunity to just drop everything and say...oh, I dunno...become a undersea explorer or bounty hunter.  You probably have a family or pets that like to eat.  So you go to work, do your job, get your cash money, and hope you still have your boring job tomorrow.

Well this is a tribute to what really goes on in my head while I'm sitting in the typical meetings that most people call "bored meetings".  Here I'll post my doodles and thoughts and hopefully provide some ideas on how you can help pass the time away silently in your meetings without letting anyone else in the room know that you haven't been paying any attention.

Here's a few of my sketches I did during a late night staff meeting.