Us And Them

Office work­ers have always fas­ci­nated me. I used to see them in pub­lic trans­porta­tion, early in the morn­ing : guys drink­ing their daily shot of black java in some kind of fancy spill proof cup; women awk­wardly apply­ing another layer of make-up on their face. They looked busy. They looked like they had a goal and shared a com­mon cul­ture of which other were excluded.

At least, this was what I thought before I joined them.

After a few years of flex­i­ble part-time jobs, I got a nice posi­tion. I wasn’t to work in an office per se but I was going to work with office peo­ple. Here I was, choos­ing my clothes in the morn­ing, get­ting there on time to start the day with a can of Diet Coke in my bag full of col­or­ful fold­ers. I was in, part of a work­place for the first time of my life, enjoy­ing evry sin­gle gos­sip that landed in my ears and make full use of my morn­ing, noon and after­noon breaks.

But office life also has its draw­backs that I’m now clearly see­ing. My sta­ble job is slowly turn­ing into a golden jail where change is scary and bore­dom praised.

One thing I’m now real­iz­ing is office cul­ture is based on recur­ring events and sta­ble peo­ple. Event of the day ? Three.

• Morn­ing cig­a­rette break with cof­fee (don’t for­get to men­tion cig­a­rettes’ high prices and coffee’s poor quality).
• Lunch break (com­par­ing lunches, read­ing the paper, com­plain­ing about the fact time goes by quick at noon but is slow dur­ing the afternoon).
• After­noon break (plans about the night where so-called life actu­ally begins).

Don’t try to change any­thing to the rou­tine or peo­ple are lost. Oth­er­wise you might hear things like :

- Hey, we have a new microwave !
– Are you sure ? I think it’s the one they had on the 7^th floor, they must have switched.
– Yes, ours didn’t have the scratch on the left side, by the door.
– But why would they have switched ? The one we had on the 3^rd floor worked fine.
– Well, it did tend to over­cook lunches…
– No way, my cof­fee was always per­fect with it.
– If you like burn­ing hot cof­fee, that’s your prob­lem…
– At least, they could have cleaned it.

Etc.

Note that the same is true for peo­ple. Change one lit­tle thing (wear a skirt for the first time of the year, get an hair­cut etc.) and it will be com­mented by 500 of your co-workers. Then, of course, they will say what they actu­ally think of it behind your back at lunch time.

Office life is also strongly based on hier­ar­chy and priv­i­leges attached to it. Note to self :

• The clos­est park­ing spot is basi­cally reserved for the old woman who has been there since WW2. Even we she doesn’t drive to work.
• Man­agers get to warm up their lunch first in the microwave. Even if it included leav­ing the meal in for 25 min­utes “because it’s not quite warm enough”.
• You just don’t do the daily cross­words in the paper. Or you do it men­tally, cause there has to be a cross­words lady in the office who loves her cross­words at lunch time. Same goes with Sudoku.
• If the man­ager jams up the copy machine, you’ll get to fix it. Also note that peo­ple pass­ing by will think you’re the idiot who tried to make 20 copies of the big book with thick glossy pages.

Enthu­si­as­tic at first, I also real­ized that 50% of office work­ers hate their job and were dream­ing of any­thing but end­ing up in cubi­cle 719D. The other half is the peo­ple who have no life out­side their job and brought fam­ily pic­tures in order to say a vir­tual “hi” to their kids once in a while. Work­ing in an office is a vicious cir­cle. With a job suck­ing up all your energy, you don’t feel like doing any­thing else on the side. Since you already have no life, you take your job even more seri­ously. That’s how you end up with a “25 years loyal ser­vice gift” from your directorate.

I just wanna go traveling…

Related arti­cles:

1. The Teacher And The Test Dilemna
2. The Office
3. From Laowai To Canadian
4. It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night
5. How Long Does The Immi­gra­tion Process Take? (6÷10)