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How Not To Piss Off Everyone You Work With
A Refresher Course On Intra-Office Etiquette

Although we can???t always shake the nasty habit of writing in the royal we, occasionally one of our editors decides to shake off the cloak of anonymity to write a short, pithy statement long, rambling diatribe about a topic of their choice. Today, Debbie Newman is that editor.

According to the career-oriented folks over at CNN, things you should never do at work include taking fake sick-days, gossiping and showing up hungover and/or with unkempt hair. Other no-no’s include “getting too comfortable” (i.e. telling the boss about that gross drunken hookup-slash-one night stand) hitting on the intern, reading useless crap on the web and sticking it to the man by stealing inexpensive—and easily missed—office supplies.

And while we don’t necessarily agree with all of the aforementioned rules (be honest, who among us hasn’t pilfered Post-Its and writing instruments from the office supplies closet and shoved them awkwardly into their oversized Betsey Johnson carry-all?) we’re happy to offer a few helpful hints of our own.

Now, before you even say it, we know what you’re thinking. You don’t need this refresher course on normal office discourse, these self-evident rules only apply to the socially inept and personality challenged and that, in your unbiased opinion, YOU are a fantastic space-sharer, cubicle dweller and all-around model coworker. Right? Not so fast.

Remember when we told you last week that every office environment has its requisite jerk, and if you can’t figure out who that person is, it might be you? Well, guess what—the same goes for the similarly undesirable titles of “Biggest Oversharer”, “Worst Dresser” and the always egregious “Most Annoying Cell Phone Ring.” So, for your sakes and ours, we’ve come up with a few more guidelines on office etiquette to help make everyone’s cubicle-dwelling (or internet cafe frequenting) lives infinitely more enjoyable tolerable.

• Afraid your commitment-phobic boyfriend is cheating on you again? So are we! In fact, we’ve got $20 right here that says he’s been two-timing you with that hot chick who guest-bartends at Fiddlesticks. Wait, what’s that? You don’t like us knowing every sordid little detail about your personal life? Well then, unless you work in construction, it might be best to try speaking in indoor voices from now on. Until then, good luck with the whole, you know, relationship thing. Oh, and FYI, we don’t take checks.

• Please suppress the urge to check your unusually high number of voicemail messages over speakerphone. This rule applies to everyone, but particularly to those of you who work in a cubicle environment. And especially to those of you whose clients are spastic up-talkers from Long Island (See the importance of volume control, above) and whose friends’ messages invariably conclude with awkward disclosures like, “We all missed you at the show yesterday. Sorry to hear about the painful UTI.”

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Nov 12, 2007 · Link · 1 Reponse

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Comments (1)

No. 1
internjoseph says:

Amazing

Posted: Nov 12, 2007 at 5:33 pm

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