Posts tagged "inappropriate"
Humpday
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | No Comments
I know, I know. The work week’s a damned chore.
And, let’s face it, you really expected that by now you’d have made your millions and be lounging on a yacht eating grapes from the delicate hands of nubile young debutantes.
Whereas, in actual fact, the highlight of your day is the exchange of meaningless gossip about last night’s American Idol while you wait for some godawful coffee to finish brewing in the world’s most broken coffee machine.
Sucks to be you.
But please, please, don’t refer to the middle day of the week as “humpday”. You’re my co-worker for God’s sake.
You might be the nicest person in the world; I might have a great, professionally-based friendship with you… but when you say “hump”, I think of the basest meaning of the word, the one that’s number 4 in the dictionary definition.
And the last thing I want to think about when we’re trying to agree on what we’re actually trying to bloody leverage is you, humping.
Sorry.
Thing is, “Wednesday” is a really awesome name for a day. It comes from “Wōdnesdæg” (Woden’s Day) or, in more familiar terms, “Odin’s day”.
Yes! The middle of the week is named after the fricking Chief God. And not just any fricking Chief God – the fricking Chief God of the fricking Vikings! Mad bastards with big boats, horny hats and a fanatical devotion to pillaging!
And if they heard you saying “humpday”, they’d burn down your village and kidnap your wife. Sometimes I wonder if I’m letting you off too lightly.
Deliverables
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | No Comments
…uh, yeah. Can you wait just a second? I just need to check…
…no, I’m just checking the sign on the office door. And it still doesn’t say “FedEx” or “UPS”… so why the fuck are we talking about “deliverables”?
I get deliverables at the office, sure. Every once in a while I receive the exciting email from the nice girl in reception; “A package has arrived for you”. And down there I tear like a kid on Christmas morning to take receipt of my latest bundle of consumer crap from Amazon.
But we’re not talking about my parcel-fetish[1], are we?
You say “your deliverables” and for some reason I start thinking about the uncomfortably large lunch I ate, and the fact that I’ve avoided taking a shit at work ever since I found the office pervert’s hand lotion, inadvertantly left on the toilet cistern in some kind of post-wank daze[2].
Um… yeah. Sorry. Anyway, “deliverables”?
Why not just call them “tasks”? Or “work”?
“What work still needs to be done to complete this project?”
There’s a question I can answer right away, without having to think of the urgency of my bowel movements… or the foot-induced disruption of yours.
[1] – I was going to shove a picture of a UPS uniform into this post. And then I saw the Google Image Search results for “UPS Uniform”, realised that yes, everything in the world has a parallel porn-universe version, and gave up in despair.
[2] – True story which happened to someone I know, not actually me. And no, it wasn’t my fucking hand lotion.
Touching Base
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 | Filed under: Douchewords | No Comments
Most people I know who work in the corporate world have, at some point, attended some kind of “Sexual Harassment Training“. Contrary to its poorly-chosen name[1], the function of such training is usually to instill in the drones that, for example, asking for a blowjob in exchange for a raise is morally wrong…
…because nothing increases workplace harmony like stating the fucking obvious.
I always thought that the goal of this training would be better achieved by giving everyone a quick multiple-choice questionnaire, with simple questions like…
Is it wrong to squeeze a co-worker’s tits? YES / NO
Instantly, you have the means to simultaneously lower the risk of harassment and raise productivity, simply by firing anyone who scored less than 100%. After all, with employees that stupid, who needs competitors?
Now, I’m not saying that I’m against enforcing such codes of conduct, rather the opposite. But all this leaves me a little confused. In such a caring, harassment-averse environment, how is it that you manage to get away with offering to “touch base” with me?
I mean, come on, “let’s touch base” is only slightly less cheesy than “if I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?”. Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but as soon as someone says “touch base” I can hear the 70s “wah-wah” porn-guitar starting up in the background.
It’s not that I don’t want to have a meeting (well, it depends on the meeting and its likely quotient of the word “synergy“), but… could you just ask me to “have a meeting”, or maybe even “chat for five minutes”?
That way, you don’t come across like a creepy dude who’s packing an industrial-sized tub of Rohypnol, and I don’t have to feel a fraction of my soul wither each time you open your mouth to speak.
It’s what you might call a “win-win” situation… if you still insist on talking like an idiot.
[1] – I mean, really… I go searching for examples of “sexual harassment training”, and the first result I get back is hosted at sexualharass.com. It’s like they’re trying to look stupid.