The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘office humor’

Weekly Wacko (52)

Bottle + Emotions = Manliness

Obviously guys aren’t alone in this trend, but they tend to represent it.

Today I was doing some work when one of my boss’s walked up. He stood in the middle of the cube hallway and looked left and right, between myself and another guy. Then he said, “I’m trying to decide who to tell this story to, who would find it funny.”

I turned to give him my attention, so he started telling it.

Apparently every Thursday he does the same order from a pizza place for his daughters. He’ll call up, tell them the order, pay the same price, and wha-la. Last week he ordered and the delivery was really late, which prompted him to call and complain. The pizza place apologized and took five dollars off his order. No biggie. Wellll, the ‘funny’ part of the story is that he called today and again it was five dollars off. My boss figured they entered the five dollars off in a computer and it wasn’t entered as a one-time thing, but accidentally as a permanent thing. He was laughing at, I guess, people’s dependence on computers (an ironic thing for a computer programmer to laugh at I would think).

Anyhow. He was tickled while telling this story and then joking about it with us. I recommended he call and complain a few times, and eventually the delivery guy will arrive with two pizzas and twenty bucks to give him.

The story didn’t do much for me, but I really liked my boss because he did something I (and probably many people) do. He was very excited about something but didn’t necessarily want to talk about it or share those feelings, so instead he was unnecessarily giddy/happy about something that really didn’t warrant it.

His wife was/is in the Philippines and there was a scare for a while because he hadn’t heard from her (for my/whoever’s future reference – there was a hurricane that hit there). Today he got some great news, she’ll be back home tomorrow. Big sigh of relief.

My boss heard this and just kind of wandered around smiling and cracking jokes, trying to find some way to deal with, I would imagine, how relieved and happy he was feeling. I suppose he could’ve bear-hugged random people walking by, but he’s a pretty strong-looking dude and that may have killed some of our older co-workers.

Anyhow – I really enjoy that. I think it’s a common trait and it’s great to see.

Now, here are two little wrinkles to this story.

One, my boss at one point said to someone, “I’m not excited about the pizza, I’m relieved because my wife is coming home.” This ruins my whole being manly and projecting emotions into another story angle.

The other way it was ruined a bit was this hysterical/lame quote from my boss. After saying how relieved and happy he was to get to see his wife again and know she’s safe and it’s good for their daughters and this and that … “Also I get to play golf Saturday!”

Emotions, huh? So complex and golf-oriented.

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Weekly Wacko (23)

Corporate Brad

I’m a software engineer and working for a company. I haven’t been working for very long, I’ve only graduated college about three years ago.

But, I can see that it’s happening.

I’m turning into Corporate Brad.

(I got into a program with my company which is quite nice for my “career” – you see, I’m still not SO corporate that I sincerely say career, I’m cool-non-corporate-guy enough to say “career.” What’s the over/under for the number of years til I say career?)

My sister has been working longer than I have, but in an environment that is quite different from your average corporate setting. She is a good reality check for when I bring home corporate humor. Though it can be harsh.

I’ll call her and tell her a funny little thing that happened, and she’ll say, without humor, but still trying to be nice, “that’s funny.” Or maybe I’ll disguise the story by saying ‘this is funny in a dorky corporate way’ and then I’ll say it – but she knows, she knows that I find it genuinely funny. For those stories she’ll usually listen attentively, and then say, “boooooooo!”

I don’t want to have corporate guy humor. I don’t want to crack the obvious joke, and then crack up the loudest at my own joke, while looking around the room. I complain about my jokes failing and being sometimes too bizarre, (everyone has those certain things that, for whatever reason, they find hysterical even though no one else does … I feel like I have a LOT of those things) but I still like my humor the way it is.

Lately I’ve noticed a recurring trend in corporate humor temptations.

People will email a group that I am on and say one or two things, and then close with, “thoughts?” Or, they’ll just send an attachment and the only word in the email is “thoughts?” When I got those the temptation is even stronger.

“No,” I want to write back, and include a picture of me chewing hay (the internal symbol for I’m not a fan of thinking).

I can see the change coming, going from Brad to Corporate Brad, I just hope I get a fat pay raise and Bob’s old office (Bob’s old office is bigger than MY office!).

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