Kitty Flanagan - 488 Rules for Life - The Thankless Art of Being Correct

Incidentally, among people who are forced to hot-desk, it is much more commonly referred to as ‘shit-desking’. Only management still insist on using the term ‘hot-desking’. It’s been proven in numerous studies, far more formal and official than mine (I just went around asking, ‘On a scale of one to ten how much do you hate hot-desking?’) that hot-desking does not improve employee productivity. Quite the contrary, in fact, because, while you might save money buying less furniture and office space, you lose money by having unhappy, less-efficient employees. I call Time’s Up on hot-desking.

65

Comedy dancing is not dancing— just don’ t dance

This is a rule for all the office wags at the office Christmas party.

66

Don’t eat at your desk

This is controversial I know, but my reason is twofold. Firstly, everyone is entitled to a lunch break. This should be an hour (or half hour) where you break and go for lunch. It’s not at all cryptic. A lunch hour should not mean an hour spent at your desk with lunch in one hand, still working with the other, dropping bits of food into your keyboard and using your pants as a napkin.

Secondly, it’s incredibly unhygienic to eat at your desk and it’s unpleasant for your fellow workers to witness, especially if you’re eating something stinky like a hard-boiled egg or something noisy like a chip sandwich. No judgement for eating a chip sandwich, by the way, that’s an excellent carb on carb choice, just do it in a designated food-eating area.

67

No stinky foods in the office

Respect those around you and don’t bring your leftover fish curry to work and then heat it up in the office microwave. No one wants to spend the afternoon working in the noxious fishy miasma you’ve just created. And while I understand that many people love tuna for its healthful and nourishing properties, I think we can all agree that it really does stink so, if you must eat it, I suggest going outside to enjoy your lunch in the open air. Don’t chow down in the confines of the office where the windows only open a few inches, if at all. As for bringing hot chips into the office, that is not just smelly, it’s also mean. Because for the first thirty seconds, hot chips smell delicious and now you’ve made everyone in the office want hot chips. However, pretty soon those hot chips will turn cold and the office will smell like every teenage McDonald’s employee when they come home from a shift reeking of cold grease and congealed fat.

68

No food in meetings

We’re all busy. But if you’re so busy that you’re bringing soup to a meeting and slurping it during proceedings, then you need to organise your day better. Either reschedule the meeting or reschedule your soup slurping.

69

Pick one day a month to do birthday cake

Office birthday cake is a minefield. Yes, cake is great but not everyone is in the mood to drop everything and suddenly gather in the conference room at some random time of day whenever it’s someone’s birthday. There’s never a set time for birthday cake, quite often it’s a case of ‘Hurry up everyone, we’re doing cake now because Jo is leaving early to go to a conference!’ It’s even less appealing when you know your only reward will be ten minutes of awkward forced togetherness and a piece of wet supermarket mud cake that you end up pushing around a paper plate with a plastic fork. I am, however, not against birthdays or cakes. My solution is to pick a day—one day a month, for argument’s sake, let’s say the last Friday of every month. Then on that Friday at 11 am everyone gathers in the boardroom and someone reads out a list of all the people who have celebrated a birthday that month. Cake is presented, ‘Happy Birthday’ is sung (in accordance with the following rule) and everyone enjoys a bit of cake for morning tea.

This allows cake to remain special, it also means everyone in the office knows when birthday cake day is approaching. You can schedule it into your workday, you can set your palate for cake, you can even stop work at 10.55 to make a cup of tea to go with your pending piece of cake. The other great advantage of this system is that it provides enough lead time for someone to actually make a decent cake. Surely that is preferable to the office junior being dispatched to Coles to procure some hideous-looking cake encased in a plastic dome every time someone reveals it’s their birthday.

70

Stop singing after the final ‘Happy Birthday to you’

No one wants to hear the ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ extended mix featuring MC Daryl the office good-time guy on ‘hip hip hoorays’. It’s awkward. People have work to do. And cake to eat. Hopefully a delicious homemade one if you’ve adhered to the previous rule.

71

Once you hear a word used in an ad, it’s time to stop using it

A good example of this would be ‘hangry’, which was used in a flavoured-milk ad. You don’t want to use that word anymore, because if it’s appeared in an ad it’s officially past its use-by date. Advertising people are notorious for being one step behind and stealing ideas from other art forms, such as films, TV and comedy. I know because I used to be in advertising.

72

Never tell someone you have a GSOH

It’s unnecessary. If you have a good sense of humour, it will become apparent the minute you say something funny or laugh appreciatively at something funny that someone else has said.

Similarly, you should never use the terms ‘dark’ or ‘unique’ to describe your own sense of humour. People who genuinely have a dark sense of humour don’t think of it as dark, they just think of it as regular. Whereas people who say they have a dark or unique sense of humour are often trying to make themselves seem interesting, or justify the fact that no one laughed at something they said: ‘Oh, you don’t get it? Must be because I have a very dark sense of humour.’

73

Don’t ever ‘wonder what the poor people are doing’

It’s no big mystery. They’re probably thinking about where their next meal is coming from or how they’re going to pay their rent.

74

Stop saying ‘First World problems’

If you live in the First World, this phrase is an oxymoron. All of our problems are First World problems. So you can safely just say ‘problems’. Unless, of course, you are suddenly hit with a Third World problem, then you might want to flag it as such: ‘Hey?! This bowl of sorghum is tasteless and I think it’s been made with polluted water, talk about Third World problems!’

Or if someone says to you: ‘I can’t come in to work today, I’ve got cholera.’

Then you can respond: ‘Wow! Third World problem or what?!’

75

Clown is not a verb