I work in a downtown office like thousands of people. Sadly I’ve been in this environment for several years now, and soul-sucking as it may be, it pays the bills and indulges my many and varied interests. It also sucks away much time and energy to indulge those interests, but that’s a different rant altogether. Most of the time I’m a very laissez-faire person, pretty unflappable, and while others indulge in the exciting office drama of missing staplers and corporate take-over rumors, I just sit quietly and watch the action. But. There are some things that just escape my comprehension, and it’s just been a week where I feel the need to get it off my chest.
- People who lick their fingers before rifling through a stack of printouts: keep your mouth germs to yourselves please. I will go through the trouble of reprinting my work rather than touching the saliva tainted papers. Seriously, why?
- People who don’t wash their hands after bathroom breaks. I’ve read tons of blogs that point out that this is sadly rather prevalent in male bathrooms. Well, I’m here to shatter some illusions and tell you that it ain’t that different on the other side. Most people at least have the courtesy to limit that behavior to when they’re alone, but several times in recent months I’ve heard the telltale flush, exit… and the door opening. There isn’t enough Purell in the world to get rid of that feeling of contamination.
- Office cleaners that don’t clean. At all. I mean, it’s a pretty common complaint all over offices. The property mgmt company hires some huge company, that’s staffed exclusively by new arrivals with more problems on their minds than making sure they diligently wipe down that sink for five bucks an hour. I get it. But it has been my belief that they really don’t do anything other than remove garbage. They may push the vacuum down the middle of the hall, and lift up the toilet seats in the bathroom in an attempt to convince us of their cleanliness, but my office is certainly not graced with said vacuum very often, nor are the really gross bits ever touched, like doorknobs, faucets, and the bathroom floor.
- Stay home if you’re sick. No, contrary to your inflated sense of self-worth the world will not stop spinning if you’re not here to prop it up. But if you feel the need to drag your red-eyed self here and sit slumped in a cold drug coma, then have the decency to stay out of my office while you bond with your viruses.
Whew, it’s been a week. While often I marvel at the human diversity on this planet and ponder how people who share over ninety-nine percent of their DNA can be so vastly and uniquely different, there are many other times when all I can do is shake my head. Some unique snowflakes just have their own special place in their minds. And my patience for stupidity is getting weaker and weaker with age. God help me, I’m going to be worse than Maxine if I should live that long.