Working for a Living

Like many of you out there, I have to work for a living. I wasn't born into ridiculous wealth and I didn't marry dear hubby for his money (just for his looks ha ha. Hi honey!), so unfortunately I have to wake up every morning, get dressed, and haul my sleepy bones to work in order to pay the bills and buy dog food.

Not everyone works. I know some people who are work-averse and other friends who don't need to work, and other friends who are stay-at-home moms who work hard every day but are independent contractors, as it were. I know at least one person for whom work is a luxury, a personal decision, but that is not something that I like to think about. I know a person who claims not to be able to work and is on long-term disability, flying under the radar for years now, healthily enjoying life, milking the system, but that person is not considered a friend of mine.

My job is fairly easy overall. I don't save lives, I don't work in a factory, I'm not an aid worker in a ravaged war-torn country, I don't have to haul dead bodies out of rivers, and I'm not an astronaut. I have a largely administrative job and they pay me well to do it. I sit at a desk all day and type away on a computer that is so slow I want to throw it out the window, but that's a minor frustration really. I complain that my desk chair is uncomfortable or that my desk is messy (jam on the keyboard is lovely, and insidious), but I try to keep it all in check. My phone rings too much, and sometimes I feel like I should have a psychology degree under my belt before I can answer it, but truth be told I rarely pick it up so out of sight out of mind. All this to say, I have complaints, but they are relatively minor.

My colleagues are mostly great. But you don't get to hand-pick your colleagues, so there are some strange ones in the bunch. There are over 200 people working at my office, and it's impossible to expect to be in love with every single one of them. There are some who I avoid like the plague, some who I have never spoken to once in six years, some who I speak to but I don't know why (pleasantries in the bathroom, etc), and some who I am genuinely fond of. Herewith is a list of some types of colleagues in my office, and please, feel free to let me know if you have these types in your office as well:

1. Stinky Food Man. Every day he opens a can of salmon or tuna and does something to it that makes the entire floor smell like fish. My office is next to the kitchen, and this is unbearable. It's almost as bad as his cohort, Delicious Pastry Man. This is the person who insists on putting waffles or cinnamon buns in the toaster oven to warm them up. I can't decide who's worse. I can't blame either one because food is delicious, and essential, but every day? Really?
   

   
    

2. The Never-Worker. Where I sit, I see all of the traffic going in and out of the main doors to our floor. It's a constant parade of comings and goings, which is distracting as holy heck, but also kind of informative. I have learned that there are about 3 people on our floor who seem to perpetually be out for coffee or cigarettes. Seriously, over the past week I've been keeping track, and there's one guy who must have a condition wherein he is only be able to sit down for 10 minutes at a time because he's constantly walking to the elevators and back. Coincidentally, most of these folks are nearing retirement.
   

   
    

3. The VIP. The opposite of the never-worker. This person is always in more of a hurry than you, always busier than you are, always working late, always working weekends, never really friendly, and is always plowing around head-down clacking away on her blackberry. They generally eat lunch after 2 pm. I doubt this person. The days are long and if you're smart, you can organize your workday so that you don't have to come in on Sundays, but hey then you don't get paid time and a half so who's the dummy here? We do the same kind of work. I should practice looking busier. Maybe come in on the weekend to water my plants and surf the web or something.
   

   
    

4. The Over-Emoter. I'm sure everyone has these. They're generally female, unfortunately, which I feel gives us a bad name as a gender. These are the people who come into your office uninvited, close the door behind them and proceed to get upset about some perceived slight, ending up in tears, expecting your sympathy. Personally, I try to project an air of "you've come to the wrong office sister", but this doesn't always work with the Over-Emoter, who is generally lacking in self-awareness. The Over-Emoter is six times more irritating if they are also The VIP.
   

   
    

5. Gregarious IT guy. They come to your office to fix your computer and you end up getting into lengthy discussions about your cats, and then all of a sudden they're friending you on facebook.
   

   
    

6. The Athlete. They come into the office in their bike shorts, sweaty, helmets in hand, recounting tales of great feats performed over the weekend. They have boundless energy and are always planning something very exciting. They wear those little clickity clacky bike shoes (I even have one colleague who wore cross-country ski boots all day this past spring) and are sometimes carrying a wheel, or a snowboard, or some obscure clip for some sport that I have never tried. They generally make me feel bad about myself, without intending to of course.
   

   
    

7. The Compulsive Emailer. You probably have these in your office and in your family, or in your circle of friends. These are the people who forward you everything. How many times have I seen the same slideshow of baby animals, or animals doing funny things, or animals with inspirational slogans attributed to them? It's funny because I receive so many dirty jokes, yet my brain is a sieve when it comes to re-telling them. You'd think I'd have an encyclopedic repertoire of off-colour jokes by now but alas, they've all gone to waste on me.
   

   
    

8. The Medicine Cabinet. I know that when I have a headache, there are two people I can go to for relief. When they open up their overhead cabinets, it looks like a pharmacy threw up in it. They have everything from aspirin to allergy pills to pepto-bismol to hand cream to visine to antacids to strange teas to extra-strength prescription painkillers that you could try if you wanted to… I try to be this person, within reason. I keep Tums in my drawer but I end up eating them when things get desperate. I have a lint roller and a stain remover somewhere back there as well, because I have two sheddy pets, and a knack for squirting mustard or coffee all over every white shirt I wear. However, I am nothing compared to the medicine cabinet.
   

   
    

9. The Loudmouth. This is the person who unfailingly speaks up at meetings, like Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter. They cannot help themselves. You can hear them talking on the phone through the walls, and they often like to stand in the hallway right outside your office engaged in some lively debate about something or other, loudly. Their voice is a couple of decibels higher than anyone else's, causing you to wonder if they are ignorant, hard of hearing, or both. Sometimes they are discussing the hockey game, sometimes they are actually talking about work, but always you want to tell them to shut their trap, because the person on the other end of your phone call can hear every word.
   

   
    

10. The Compadre. It helps to have a Compadre at work. This is the person you rant to when something goes awry, the person who's usually up for a lunch date or some shopping adventure, the person with whom you share bug-eyes at meetings. The person with whom you can speculate on whether or not your other colleague might be in a cult, or is just losing their marbles. Some people have an opposite-sex Compadre which can also be termed the "work-husband" or "work-wife", but my current Compadre is a gay man. We both like to eat, a lot, and knit, and plan our gardens. The Compadre makes one's work more enjoyable, in general.
    

    
     

These are just some of the 10 types that I have encountered during my short career. I am being relatively diplomatic of course, because there are also the psychos, the jerks, the bullies and the incompetents, but we have those in every walk of life. I wish I could go into detail about the really harmlessly crazy ones at my office, but what if they read this blog one day? They'd definitely know who they are.

Being as it is now May, I will only enjoy the companionship of these folks for another three months. Minus three days. I won't miss them at all (except maybe my Compadres) but that's because I really look forward to stepping back and out of office life for a year. My brain totally checked out about a month ago, I'm sad to report, so I'm counting the days (62) until I say farewell to Stinky Food Man, the Neverworker, the VIP, the OverEmoter, my IT guy, my Medicine Cabinet, the E-mailer (though presumably this one could still get through to me), the Athlete, the Loudmouth and my Compadre, who doesn't have a car so won't be able to come and regale me in person with tales of crazy coworkers and injustices. No, I won't miss these people – I know they or someone like them will be there when I return. I probably won't visit either, as people sometimes do when they have a baby, parading them up and down the hallways. The office is no place for an infant. She'll have plenty of exposure to these wacky people in her own career, I'm sure.