Co-worker complaints

Sometimes when I tell people I work at home by myself, they say, “Oh, I would go crazy without anyone to talk to.”

Well, I may go crazy but it’s not because I don’t have anyone to talk to. First of all, I do have people to talk to. I talk to people on the phone. I talk to people over email. But the great thing is I can’t see them and they can’t see me. So it doesn’t matter if I’m wearing pants or not. (I am always wearing pants, by the way, but it’s nice to know they can be pajama bottoms or P.E. teacher track pants.)

It’s been about two-and-a-half years since I had in-the-flesh co-workers and I have to say, I don’t miss them. I mean, I miss some of the actual people. But I miss them in an after-work happy hour sort of way, not in a drop-by-my-cubicle sort of way. (I DO miss after-work happy hours. We never do that at Writinggal.)

But here are just a few things that I don’t miss about having co-workers:

“Oh, you must have gotten the memo!” Co-workers love to say this whenever two people slightly match. I mean, even if I’m wearing black pants (which I think I wore every day when I worked in an office), they would say, “Oh, you must have gotten the memo! We’re both wearing black pants!” That’s such a wild coincidence. You’re totally giving me chills.

Numerous references to the days of the week and their proximity to Friday. Many know how I feel about the over-hyping of Friday so I won’t ramble on about it. All I’ll say is that here at Writinggal, the first person to say “hump day” gets fired.

Cubicle curiosities: I never hung up anything personal in my cube for two reasons: 1). In advertising you had to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. You never knew when they were going to show up with a pink slip and a security guard. 2). But more importantly, I didn’t like it when co-workers would come up and ask me questions like, “Oh, did you go to Disneyland? How did you like it?” or “Your hair looks funny in that picture.” Basically, I just didn’t like people I didn’t really like talking to me and I didn’t want to give them any openings.

“What’s that? That looks gross.” Co-workers love to know what you’re eating for lunch. I hate it when people talk about my food. Bad combination.

Co-workers at meetings. This is what I hear when co-workers speak at meetings: “Okay, so I don’t really have anything important to say but I’m going to ramble on because then I’ll be in the spotlight and maybe someone will actually believe what I’m saying is important. Hey, I like the way I sound when I talk. I’m going to keep talking. Maybe this meeting will last for hours.” At Writinggal all meetings are forbidden.

The “I’m too busy to talk to you alert signal.” At this one place I worked I was convinced that there was an imaginary clothes line that went from my desk to the desk of this guy who worked on the other side of the building. Sometimes I would be at my desk, staring at my to-do list and I would think, “Okay. This is a lot of crap that I have to do. I only have one hour before the next meeting (which we know will go on for hours because of said co-worker above). If I work really fast and don’t stop to even go the bathroom, I can get it done. Okay, go.” At that moment some sort of signal (maybe an alarm, maybe a light, maybe a siren) would go off at this guy’s desk. He would immediately come over and say, “Hey, Elsa. How’s it going? Um…can you believe all this rain we’re having? And what’s up with that picture hanging on your cube? Did you have a big pimple on your face or is that a Halloween costume?”

Just thinking about all those annoying co-workers makes me stressed. Anyone want to meet up for happy hour?

See what I mean? They're always looking at my food.