Thursday, July 07, 2005

Having Fun in the Workaday World

As I reported some months back, the location of my Government Job is about to move. Like all but the most senior staff, I'll be going from having my own office to having a cube the size of a handicapped toilet stall. That means we have to get rid of a ton of crap.

Instead of just having a plain old Get Rid of Crap Day, they've decided to try and make the process fun by having a contest to see who can get rid of the most crap. We've been divided into teams and everything.

My knee-jerk reaction to this can politely be described as bemused cynicism. I don't quite understand the need to make taking out the trash even more time-consuming by coming up with ways to pretend it's fun.

Nevertheless, I don't want to be the annoying asshat who takes the piss out of well-intentioned efforts to make the workplace more pleasant. That's no fun, either. In fact, I feel sort of guilty for even thinking this way. So I'll be cooperative and go along to get along because that's Just the Kind of Guy I Am.

Capitalizing words that don't need capitalization for artistic effect: now that's fun!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Call me an annoying asshat. I'm one of those guys who always takes the piss out of a company trying to be the wacky, friendly place to work, especially when it gets in the way of actually doing the work. I hate this kind of crap. Just let me do my job to the best of my ability and go the heck home.

Sorry to hear that you'll be moving into a cubicle, though. That's never fun.

Michael

Anonymous said...

"Get Rid of Crap Day" is just the sort of thing I might have come up with...but I never would have tried to make it a sanctioned office event. Sanctioned fun is not fun.

I stand solidly opposed to Office Picnics and Holiday Parties. When will businesses learn that the only reason we show up to work is because they pay us!

Georgina

Kat said...

Will there be a sheet cake when the winner is named?

Anonymous said...

The ratio of people to cake is too big!