29-8-2002

Office Space

A crap office job is a crap office job. Aside from my co-workers' accents, the place where I put in my 40 hours a week in Sydney could be an office anywhere in the States, and probably in any other Western country.

When there's a birthday or a going away, we get cake and possibly pizza. In the kitchen there's a sign reminding people to clean up their dishes, and to take any old food out of the refrigerator.

The personality types are so generic that MTV could have cast everyone in the office to fit a mold. The Real Civil Service. There's the well-meaning boss, a jovial guy who treats everyone fairly and tries to avoid conflict. He probably could have gone farther in his career, but he's got the wife and kids to support and can't afford to take risks.

Next is the mom of the office, but not in a loving, nurturing way. More in the "don't tell her the fax is out of toner or she'll get mad and yell at us" way. I call this woman Picky McFrumpy. That really says it all. She's been here 25 years, is still nothing more than a glorified file clerk, and is insanely bitter about the hand life has dealt her. She makes these grating noises out of her nose when she's really fed up with someone, sort of like a "duh" sound, but more like, "nyahnnnn," and she goes into a snit over minor things like an out of place closet key, because her life is just that small.

Every single time she answers the phone I cringe, because I know when she hangs up she'll slam the receiver down and then lash out at the caller with a round of disjointed insults and name-calling. How dare someone call and ask her a question she doesn't know the answer to! They should have guessed before dialling that they would be wasting her time! I've never been a spitter, but if I were, I think I would enjoy spitting on her.

There's one psycho lady who points out when you've gained weight or if your hair looks horrible, and asks you what you're having for dinner every single day as though she's keeping a spreadsheet on the subject. Everyone tries to avoid her.

There's another guy who should be the curmudgeonly old geezer, but he's not that old yet, and he's rather pleasant. It's just that he looks like Keith Richards, all wrinkly and splotchy and used up. He must have led a very full life.

And of course there are my people, Oliver and Fleur, the temps. We're the young ones who deliver all the good punchlines and are just in it to make a little money before doing something else with our lives. We feel bad for the full-timers because they're stuck in the black void of government bureaucracy with no possible chance of upward mobility.

Oliver the Brit has a very sexy Naked Chef-esque accent, which I think I've mentioned before. He lives in a house in Bondi with another guy and something like 17 girls. He seems to think Fleur and I are insane, and she pretty much is, but mostly he just likes to poke fun at us in a sort of flirty, wink-wink-nudge-nudge way. I enjoy Oliver.

Fleur is completely out of her mind, but that's what I love about her. She's a tiny little thing who's hungry 25 hours a day, even though she's constantly eating, she sings along with the radio after the song has finished, and she comes up with the strangest questions ever.

One day during lunch Fleur asked Oliver if he preferred cats or dogs. He insisted that dogs are better because they're just out to have a laugh (or hov a loff), and Fleur followed that up with, "Do you miss your mum?" There's no explaining it.

In between the drama of office politics, there's a human-interest element to registering complaint letters that makes it more intriguing than the other temps' jobs of processing time sheets and scheduling conferences.

I'll give you some excerpts from those next week, but here's a sample (unedited) from someone who believes they have been unjustly fined:

"It would be a fatal situation for our lives if mistakenly this department overlooks our future and the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the needs of our request for impartial investigation to provide us justice. Now is the time to lift up our thought by being secured by preventing surroundings of wrongdoing(s) by your Inspector without any ignorance against solid rock of brotherhood... Let us not seek to satisfy the wrongdoer(s) for their freedom of rebels by taking unlawful advantage from the cup of bitterness and hatred."