Etiquette

I have been working in offices since I was 20.
It was a bit of a shock after working at markets  and then in a shop for the seven years before that and took some getting used to.
The problem with working in an office is that you can’t get away from annoyances.
In another environment, you can move yourself to another area of the building and busy yourself with another activity, far away from whoever is annoying you.
Lately, a number of friends have been complaining about their office environments and the annoying habits of their co-workers, which has prompted me to create the following list:

Office Etiquette
compiled by Hermia and her office-working friends:

1. A bar of soap and some deodorant won’t break the bank. Invest in them.
Similarly, I don’t care how much YOU like that perfume that you BATHED in this morning, stop abusing it because I don’t want to spend the day choking on it. Remember, less is more.

2. If you eat at your desk, keep in mind that no one else wants to smell your latest frozen delight of fish and sewage. It can be forgiven if it only happens now and again, but not on a regular basis.

3. If someone is popping down to the shop for a snack and asks you if you want anything, they mean it along the lines of “Do you want me to grab you a bar/crisps/banana?”. This is not an invitation for you to dump your complicated sandwich order on them, forcing them to queue forever at the deli counter.

4. Just because a co-worker comes into your office to say something to whoever shares the room with you, it doesn’t mean you’re allowed to sit there listening in on everything that’s being said. It mightn’t be super private, but it’s not being addressed to you. It’s also not socially acceptable to reference said conversation at a later time.

5. If someone is taking a phone call with a client, don’t make as much noise as you can in the background because it will be impossible for them to figure out what the client is trying to ask/tell them (working in a call centre was fun). Also, don’t listen in on the phone call, because it’s none of your business and if it is, you will be told…take your nosiness elsewhere.

6. Stealing food is not ok. It is NEVER ok. It’s even less ok in this beautiful recession where people now have to budget and plan out their week’s lunches. To you, it might just be a yoghurt, but to the person it belongs to, it’s leaving them short of food and possible costing them more money. Don’t be an asshole.

7. Don’t give people nicknames…actually that one applies to every job. As does ‘don’t leave poo floating in the work toilets for the next person to find’.

8. Don’t be a knuckle-cracker. The noise makes a lot of people want to vomit. If you really need to do it, take it outside

9. Don’t force the person you share a room to talk to you if they obviously don’t want to. Take the damn hint! (this was particularly bad in the call centre, because you didn’t have a designated seat and sometimes ended up sitting beside people you didn’t like or who were just too weird)..this one also applies to bus stops.

10. Don’t mess with another person’s desk. It’s just wrong to adjust the height of their chair or mess with their screens or move their papers and pens around, while you’re arsing around on their computers. A side-note to this rule is also not to root around on another person’s Facebook/Personal Email/etc if they’ve left themselves signed in on THEIR computer that YOU are violating.
Frape is hilarious if it’s your best mate, but messing around with a co-worker’s private sites is just unacceptable. Don’t be a dick.

To summarise, just don’t be a self-obsessed, rude, social-retarded jerk and you’ll be a lovely office person.

What do your co-workers do to annoy you…?

EDIT: I’d forgotten about this one:
11: Do not – I repeat, DO NOT – stare at your co-workers when they are eating!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me tell you about the time I….fell asleep on a deli floor

I should start this by saying…
Hello Future/Potential/Current Employers,
This is not a habit of mine.
Don’t hold it against me.

Yay, I’m on Glass Number 2 of Wine.
And as the blog is like a fun easy-going job, I started thinking about other times I was drunk while working.
There are two.
They were both accidental.
This one is about the time I was drunk while working in Lentra.

So I was in college.
It was a Saturday night and someone was celebrating their 21st.
The plan was to go out for food and then on to a bar.
I had work at 8am the next morning so I decided I’d go to the meal and then head home.

I’d only started drinking about two months beforehand, so I was still underestimating the power of alcohol.
And also underestimating the power of ice-cream-based cocktails.
After two of those babies, I was easily convinced to come out for one drink.
Which turned into three.
And a broken pint glass.

Not surprisingly, I was then convinced it would be a great idea to go back to a friend’s apartment where the party was continuing.
Sure it’d be NO problem just popping over the work from her place the next morning.
Her place that was on the other side of Dublin.
And took a bus and a tram ride taking 90mins to get to work the next morning.

The Boy (who was still only Boy at this stage) was the only one working with me the next morning.
He was already sorting out the newspapers when I got there.

“HEEELLLLLLLOOOOOOOO” I shouted at him when I got in there, ruffling his then-gelled hair and proceeded into the staff room where I unsuccessfully attempted to hang my bag and coat up.
Turned out my 2 hours of sleep wasn’t even nearly enough to rid my body of the alcohol I’d consumed.
It took an hour to put the papers together with their magazines as I thought it was hilariously good fun to lie on top of the newspapers, throw the magazines Boy was trying to work with across the shop and continue to stand up and half-fall over.
I think I may have also sorta dismantled a shelf at one point.
Thankfully we never got many customers at that hour on a Sunday morning.

Bless Boy, though; he was so patient.
Although mainly amused, because I was famous for my sobriety and refusal to drink up until this point.

When I retired to the deli to make up mass quantities of sandwich mixes – Chicken and Bacon with Mayo, Chicken with Tikka Mayo, Egg and Mayo and Tuna and Sweetcorn with Mayo – the tiredness was beginning to set in.

When Boy came to check on me a couple of hours later, he found me in a crouched position behind a free-standing storage thingy.
Half an hour later, he had to pull me off the deli floor and tell me it wasn’t the best place to sleep.
I like to think that was the moment he fell in love with me.

Once I’d sobered up, instead of feeling mildly horrified, I was actually just really proud of myself.
Still not sure why.
Maybe it’s because I broke out of my Good Girl persona and became Good Girl Who Can’t Handle Her Drink.
I felt it made me cooler.
College turns people into idiots.

Let me tell you about the time I….encountered Poo Milk

This is the post you’ve been waiting: the Infamous Poo Milk story.

Myself, The Boy (who at that time was just Boy) and Orla (see above story) were working our usual Saturday morning shift in Lentra.
Orla and I were camped out in the deli and Boy was on the shop floor (probably doing nothing). Following her usual pattern of pulling one of the three of us away from important, stressful jobs to perform stupid tasks that the rest of the staff could do, Weeble asked Orla to put that morning’s milk delivery out on the shelves and she disappeared inside her office.
Orla went about the task, heading in to the back room where the milk was kept, and while I was making a sandwich for a customer a few minutes later, I saw her emerge looking a little perplexed.
As I watched her out of the corner of my eye, she waved over Boy and after a bit of whispering they both went into the back room.
Now after the time we set the frying pan on fire, I knew myself and Orla weren’t the most accomplished shop people, but she could handle putting out the milk stock on her own….right?

When the queue of customers ended, she came out of the back room and over to me.
“Is everything ok?” I asked.
“Eh….” she said, “Can you come into the back for a second?”

When we reached the back room, I saw Boy standing over a package of milk looking puzzled.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“That milk smells funny,” said Orla.
“Is it from this morning’s batch?” I asked.
“Yup!”
“Well if it’s gone off, just let Weeble know,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“No, it’s not gone off,” said Boy mysteriously.
“Look at that,” said Orla, pointing at a brown smudge on the plastic wrapper holding the ten milk containers together.
I looked closer.
“Is that…?”
“It’s shit,” said Boy.
“GROSS!!!! And you put it up on the counter!!!”
“I know!” said Orla. “I can’t put that batch out! It’s not just on the wrapper -it’s touching some of the containers.”
“You’re going to have to tell Weeble,” I told Orla.
“I can’t!” she wailed. “What if I’m wrong and she thinks I’m stupid!”
I leaned closer to the brown stain and sniffed.
“I’m pretty sure it’s poo,” I said.
“I can’t tell her,” said Orla. “She already thinks I’m an idiot!”
“Boy?” I asked.
“I’m not telling her,” he said.
“Hermia, you do it,” said Orla prodding me.
“You were supposed to be doing the milk!!”
“But I can’t tell her!”
“How am I supposed to tell our 70+ boss that there’s shit on the milk!?” I said. “I can’t say ‘shit’ to her! And poo makes me sound retarded!”

After much debate, I was emotionally blackmailed into telling Weeble.
Spotting her on the shop floor, I made my way up to her.
“Uhm Weeble,” I said.
“Yes?”
*awkward pause*
“Uhm, can you come take a look at something in the back?” I said eventually.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Well, there’s a bit of a problem with the milk,” I said, vaguely.
“What is it?” she asked again, refusing to move.
Oh God…she was going to make me say it.
“Uhm….there’s something on one of the batches.”
She blinked at me.
“It’s, em, we think it’s….well it’s…poo.”
She blinked again.
“Poo…there’s poo on the milk….eh, yeah, poo,” I continued.
Stop saying ‘poo’, I told myself.
“Okkkk…” she said looking at me as if I was a bit simple and walking into the back.

In the end, it was poo and she returned the order, lashing into milkmen, who as usual looked terrified when they were face to face with her, but then acted like hard men and called her a bitch whenever she was tucked safely away in the back office.
And that was how I ended up saying the word ‘poo’ to my elderly boss several time.

Let me tell you about the time I….witnessed a horribly awkward situation

Considering the amount of time I spend talking about myself on this blog, it strikes me as strange that I’ve never really spoken about what is to date my favourite job.
It may sound a little sad, but the best place I’ve ever worked – with the exception of some week-stints at summer camps - was Londis.
Which changed to a Centra after I’d been there for two years.
Which we then fondly called “Lentra”.
(Londis and Centra are convenience store chains if anyone is confused…they also usually have a deli down the back)

The work wasn’t very stimulating and I hated most of the customers and despised wearing hairnets, but the people were what made it great. It was there that I met The Boy and also some amazing characters, such as the girl that brought you This Story.

I have hundreds of stories about this shop but the one will share with you today is the time Orla (see above story) was felt up by our elderly boss.
One of the shop’s owners was a 70-something-year-old woman.
Who referred to me as “That Girl” and “Caitriona” a few weeks before I quit.
I’d been working there for more than three years at that stage.
Let’s call her …Weeble.

Weeble was an interesting character.
Herself and her husband had been in business for a b’zillion years and this venture was with two of their sons.
She had a tendency to give use all mental whiplash: ridiculously chatty one minute, tyrant the next.
She also had an annoying habit of thinking her way of doing things was better than everyone elses.
Cue numerous stand-offs between me and her over how to cook a fried egg.
I was the Queen of the fried egg.
She thought it was Ok to serve someone a shrivelled brown blob.
And then there were the weekly demonstrations in Lettuce Spinning, which she insisted we did and which resulted in limp, old-and-torn-looking lettuce

But that’s not what this iss about.
In fairness, she had a good heart and as annoying as this habit was, we put up with it and then did it our own well-practised ways once she wasn’t around.

One of her pet criticisms were of the way we dressed.
There were no uniforms for staff, so we wore our own clothes in.
The shop was usually cold – even in the deli – so during the winter I’d have a wool jumper under my apron, which she’d lecture me about, informing me that it looked unprofessional.
Well Weeble, either give me money to go shopping for better clothes or give us a feckin’ uniform!
During my last few months, she bought cheap black polo shirts (all in either large or medium mens sizes) and gave them to all the staff.
I artfully avoided wearing them.
They were hideously big.

Her biggest beef was with Orla who hadn’t mastered the “Your top must go comfortable past the band of your jeans” rule (altho, sometimes she didn’t have a choice as her sisters constantly steal her clothes) and so every time she bent down, we all got an eyeful of back-and-crack (sorry Orla!).
Weeble used to say it to her nearly every day and Orla would grin, apologise and continue to wear what she wanted.

One day, myself and Orla were working in the deli.
I was making an roll for a customer and she was crouched down, sweeping up some dirt from the floor.
Weeble spotted the bare back and swooped in.
However, instead of saying something to her, she reached for Orla’s back: we still don’t know if it was to pull her top down or pull her jeans up.
As she was about to touch her, Orla stood up, oblivious to the fact that Weeble was there.
As she did, Weeble’s hand slid down the back of her jeans.

*cringe*
*cringe*
*CRINGE*

Weeble snapped her hand back, Orla grabbed her jeans and swung around looking horrifed.
Cue awkward faces and some mutterings from Weeble.
Orla tried to adapt a “Oh it’s grand, total accident, no worries” face, but instead just looked violated.

They avoid each other for the next week, smiling awkwardly and running away whenever they saw each other.
And Weeble never gave out to her over her clothes again.

Stay tuned for the tale of the Poo Milk…..