This page ©2001
Chip Brown.

Wordperfect

I always wanted an office job. Problem is, I can't stand to be couped up in an office. When we built our house, I had an office built into it. It's my little space where everything is arranged just the way I like it...until my wife cleans it up.

Still, there's just something missing...Coworkers. I find something on the Internet that's funny and print it, I don't have anyone to pass it around to. I tried giving them to the cat, but he just chews up the paper, and I don't think he get's the joke. Therefore, tonight when my wife gets home from her office, I'm asking her if I can buy a coworker!

I buy all my office electronics from Office Depot, surely they have coworkers too! I don't need the best of the bunch or even the most up to date. Last time I was down there they had a closeout table, I should have looked for a coworker instead of reading the 1999 Dilbert calendar.

I hang around my wife's office a lot, pestering her workers. Eventually, she runs me off, but I get in a lot of pestering before she looses her temper. She has this girl that works for her named Jennifer, I haven't been able to anger her yet, but I'm working on it. Mainly, I just sit there and watch and think, "boy, I'd like to have a Whopper about now."

But I do observe behavior that makes me think about things other than fast food. In fact, I sat there the other day and made up words for office behavior. Won't my wife be surprised when she uses her dictionary and finds I added some new words? Here are a few examples:

Blamestorming (n)
To sit in a group of workers in your department and collectively come up with ways to blame the latest foul up on another department.

CEM (initials)
Stands for "career ending move". It's that thing you do that you're pretty sure is a bad idea, but you give it a whirl anyway. (Example: Talking about the boss while thinking, "I'll bet he's standing right behind me," may be a CEM.)

Onosecond (n)
In school our physics teacher taught us about nanoseconds (which I still don't understand). An onosecond is that very instant at which you realize you just pushed the button to format the hard drive.

Glazing (v)
That look in someone's eyes when you realize they don't have the foggiest idea what you're trying to show them. (Example: Showing some illiterate how to copy files onto a floppy, you look ... their face says..."Ooh what pretty fishies.")

Statustare (n)
The mental condition that causes office workers to sit at their computer and stare at a program's status line even though it says 3hrs 15min left.

Brainfart (n)
The condition that causes normally intelligent people to make imbeciles of themselves in front of the boss.

Alpha-idiot (n)
From the wildlife reference where the dominant dog is called the alpha-male of his pack. This term refers to the fact that while an office may be staffed with complete idiots, there is always one that stands out.

So there you have it, a sample of the words I added to my wife's desk dictionary at work. Took me about thirty minutes to think this up. In that time sitting in my wife's office, the three other people (ones that actually work there) spent the whole time trying to copy files from one floppy to another.

Fortunately, the copy machine guy will be out tomorrow to remove the blank disk from the copy machine's "In" tray.

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