How You Know You're the Office Noob

I'm getting worse at blogging regularly, but this month I have an excuse.  The validity of my excuse is debatable, but I'm going to use it anyway.  So there.  

I've been crap lately because I started a new job a few weeks ago.  I've moved on from a full time career in listening to people shout at me about car tax while I do colouring in (disclaimer:  wasn't all bad - got to work with some lovely people, and I will hold the fragmented memories of nights out I've had with said people for a long time.  And they let me do colouring in) to a more rewarding one where I have to use my brain in different ways.

My brain is not used to this.  Until I get accustomed to it, I think I'll continue coming home every weeknight with the I.Q of a baked bean, attempting to put my dishes in the washing machine and staring into empty mugs which held tea that I have no memory of drinking.  Or making, come to think of it.  It's challenging and absorbing, and so far the days are flying by more quickly than I can blink (I have very dry eyes.  Shut up, it's a thing). Also, I've discovered that I actually enjoy commuting with a flask of coffee and a load of podcasts to burn through at the ass crack of dawn.  I found out that I don't really mind occasionally having to get up at 5am to pootle to the office for an early shift either.  What's wrong with me?

My new work folk have made being a noob a nice experience for me, and I'm trying to return the favour by fucking as little shit up as possible.  So, far, so good.  I think.  I mean, nothing's caught fire under my watch and no one has sustained minor injuries as a result of my work.  Even if I am working in an office and the biggest injury I could probably inflict is a paper cut.  It's been a good couple of years since I've been the office fresh(ish) meat.  Here's what I've been reminded it's like to be the new guy in town:

How You Know You're the Office Noob

1.  You're so "helpful" that it's annoying.

Yes, you're eager to show willing and so grateful to have been given your new role that you offer to do EVERYTHING.   You then need to ask those same people you've ever-so-kindly taken those jobs from (because you're a bloody saint, you are) to show you very... slowly... what to do from scratch, ultimately resulting in them doing all the work anyway but in half the speed they normally do it so that your blank little mind can keep up.

"Wait, wait.  Can you show me that again?  I missed that part."  Look how helpful I'm being!

2.  Offering to make tea for the first time = stress sweats.

Okay.  So there are about 20 people in the room with me, and every one of them has made me a cup of tea or coffee at least once this week.  I need to offer to make one for them soon, or they'll assume I'm a terrible, selfish person.  But what if they all say yes at the same time?  How will I remember who wants tea? Coffee? One sugar?  Two sugar?  None? Strong? Weak?  What if I give them someone else's mug by accident and then they all tell me I'm wrong?  *Gasp* what if no one tells me I'm wrong and I keep making them the wrong thing in the wrong mug forever and they secretly resent me more and more for the rest of my career until they want to stab me in the leg with a teaspoon?  THIS IS SO STRESSFUL!!  

Reality (realit-tea...haw haw)

Noob: "Who wants a drink?"

All of office bar the two people who drink only black coffee: "No, I'm good, thanks."

3.   Novelty makes every nice thing about the job seem AMAZING!

We don't have to work weekends?  Hells yes!  There's a kettle within a few feet of my desk?  Omg! I can eat food at my desk?  Outside of my lunch break? Wow! And I get paid money to come here?  My new colleagues aren't fascist, violent, fire breathing lizards from space? Shit, this job is THE BEST!!  

4.  You spend a good 50% of your brain power trying to rein in the clumsy.

These people don't know that you have a penchant for spilling tea up walls while you're stood still and for tripping over wires that aren't actually there.  For all they know, you're a tight rope walking ballerina in your free time.  Enjoy that while it lasts, and try not to chew on the wrong side of your biro again 'kay?  We don't want another blue moustache.

5.  You feel a sweet, sweet sense of relief that your new place of employment appreciates cake just as much as your previous job.  Thank God.  Thank God for cake. Cake is the best, isn't it? Mmm, cake.  What was I writing about again?  I don't care.  I'm going to find some cake.

Morning Demons

It's the weekend!! Sun is shining.  Six Nations rugby is on, and excitement hangs in the crisp, chilly air all throughout Wales.  It's time to crack out the Welsh cakes and have a shandy or six!

And I'm in work.

Don't worry, I'm on my lunch break.  So no need to tell on me, slacker Nazis! *glare*

Surprisingly, I don't feel too gloomy about having to be in an office while everyone else out there in The Big Wide World is having fun and readying themselves for a day at the pub.  I have one of the more relentlessly chipper members of staff working with me today, so it's hard to keep the frown smeared on my chops.

Wasn't feeling quite so tolerant this morning though.  I am categorically, 100% NOT a morning person.  Morning me can only stand 3 things in the wee hours of the day.  These are:

* Coffee
* Hugging
* The snooze button

If whatever is being offered to me isn't one of the above, I am not interested, thanksverymuch.  While Morning Me tries to be fair and hate everything equally, there are a few things that make her feel more murder-y than others.  Inexplicably, these are things that don't generally even register on Daytime Me's radar, let alone bug her.  But to Morning Me, the below are things that I'm convinced exist solely to crawl under my skin to make my brain go into short fits of blind rage expressed as  "fuckingbastardsmphmphmorningfuckertwatmphmumblemumble" because I'm too foggy-brained to vent my overblown anger better:


- Waking up even a nanosecond before the alarm goes off.
-  That strangled crunching noise my car makes when I try to clonk it into third gear. "SQUEEECRUNCHEEEEKTHUD!"
- Morning People. Those freaks of the dawn hours who bounce out of bed, fully suited and booted with stupid grins on their stupid faces.
- Rifling through the floor-drobe (wardrobe alternative to the young and hip like myself) for clothing that doesn't smell and isn't creased, hating myself with a passion for not hanging shit up like grown-ups are supposed to.
- Battling the straw nest situation atop my head with heated tongs only for it to form into devil horns the second I leave the house.

I'm aware of how petty these things are, but in the morning, before I give myself a chance to come around, they are world-ending, red-eye-turning, possessed-scream inducing banes of my life.  For this reason, I would like to call upon other sufferers of morning demonic-ness to band together as one in spreading word of our plight.  Awareness must be raised, and I feel that it would be charitable of the Morning People I hate and envy so much to form a morning army of sorts.  If this were to become a working idea, it would be the morning army's responsibility to:

- Wake us up gently with coffee and hugs, but not, I repeat NOT before the alarm goes off.
- Drive our semi-lifeless bodies with quiet patience to work, in cars that don't make crunchy noises.
- Continue not to talk to us unless absolutely necessary until it is at least 10am and the light has turned back on in our eyes and we can function as humans again.

Not too much to ask, is it?  In return, us Non-morning People will gift you with snacks and beverages in thanks throughout the day, and promise not to bug you too much when our energy levels explode just as you're winding down at the end of the day.  The world as a whole, I truly believe, will be a much happier place.

Becky's Guide To Life: Employment Enjoyment

Part 1: How To Suck All Potential Fun Out Of Your Work Day

1. Look at the clock every twelve seconds and complain about how it seems to be moving backwards.

2. Think and talk incessantly about food from the second bum is planted on seat.

3. Over think everything you say to your colleagues. They obviously all think you're a massive tool.

4. Complain about being bored whilst staring wistfully into space. Pick at nails.

5. Sigh.

6. Bury every bit of criticism management give you in brain for use during future meltdowns and "oh fuck, I'm getting fired!!!" Crises.

7. Avoid conversation with colleagues where possible.

8. Look at the clock some more.

9. Decide you hate any and all customers before you speak with them.

10. Fantasise about other, better jobs you could be doing right now because you're, like, so under appreciated in this one....pick nails and look at clock.




Part 2: Holy Beeps, Bruce, This Is Fun!! AKA How To Enjoy Your Job (even if you're not a cake tester or super hero.... Yet)

1. Take full advantage of spinny chairs. Wheeeeee!!

2. Doodle whenever the opportunity arises.

3. Laugh along at all the brilliant, ridiculous things your peers tell you. Feel inwardly chuffed when they laugh with (*cough*at*cough*) you.

4. Get stuck the fuck in. Whatever you're doing. Enthusiasm = faster hours (not too much enthusiasm, though. I once smacked myself in the face with a phone before I could bellow any "hello"s down it).

5. Smile. But only if you feel like it.

6. Build something out of paperclips/stationary... E.g binder clip robot

7. Make effort to recall weird customers, and later regale others with tales of their screwiness for mid afternoon giggles. Unless you're a psychiatrist. Confidentiality and that...

8. If someone brings in cake, love them forever, eat the cake, and spend the following week reminding everyone how good the cake was, so that people feel obliged to bring in more cake.

.......CAAAAAKE!!!

9. Drink so much coffee that you leave the office in spirit and enter a new dimension where everything takes on a buzzy, cartoonish quality (when in reality, you're freaking your co workers out by giggling and shivering at them).

10. Realise that, despite the ghoulish mass moaning about the pay, the hours, the boredom etc etc, you probably never would have had the luck to meet any of the people you get to spend at least 8hours a day with, faffing,laughing and eating, five days a week if you hadn't worked there. And you know for a fact, that wherever your life takes you next, you know you'll remember the good WAY more than the bad, and part of you might even miss it a little.


Aww.


Retch.