Archive for the 'Office Stories' Category

I Don’t Know How to Use This Damn Thing

Published
by
Girl Friday
on January 25, 2008
in Office Stories and Rants
. 0 Comments

I feel like how my grandmother must have felt when cars were invented.  She was probably knew they would come in handy, but also probably sure she’d never learn how to use one.

I am using InDesign for work right now and I honestly don’t know how to use it.  Now I know that I’ve said similar things before (like when I had to learn how to use Dreamweaver), but this is different.  I have no actual interest or personal stake in learning this program.  I highly doubt I will ever need to make a personal newsletter or a brochure.  I would simply use this handy blog to keep my peeps informed.

Why oh why can’t I just blog about what’s going on the my department instead of having to put together an excessively wordy, very ugly, and time consuming NEWSLETTER!?

If the prospective readers are ANYTHING like me, they they will either chuck it in the bin or lose it under a stack of junk mail.  At this point I am so desperate to complete the project I’m actually considering sneaky, underhanded ways of convincing my boss that I already sent the newsletter and her copy must have gotten lost in the mail.

Of Hippos and Bathrooms

Published
by
Girl Friday
on November 6, 2007
in Announcements, Linkage and Office Stories
. 5 Comments

Announcing a new look for Girl Friday! It’s autumn, so I’m going with a darker color palette. Thanks to my graphics guru.

Also, I just wanted to say thanks for your encouragement and support as I endeavor to do Nanowrimo. Right now I’m at 9,124 words, and that’s not including today’s work that I’m still trying to bust out.

In the midst of writing today I had to get some stuff out of my head, so without further ado, an office story just for you…

There is an office in the ladies room on the fourth floor. I wonder what kind of business goes on in there.

I assume that it’s the only office inside a bathroom, but I’ve never checked the other five floors of the building. I suppose there could be a whole slew of workers stashed away in bathroom offices.

I wonder what the architect and planners were thinking when they did this. Was it an after thought? Was it a mistake?

When people find out they’re going to be working in a bathroom do they hesitate taking the job?

For months I’ve passed this door and didn’t give it a second glance. I thought it was a storage closet. I never noticed that it was labeled with a number plate. I never noticed the vents on the door and I never saw any light coming from the cracks. Yet the other day I heard voices when I was in the bathroom. Not the voices of a woman in the other stall, but voices that were muffled. My first thought was of ghosts. Ghosts in the wall. Seriously. I thought ghosts haunting the bathroom like Moaning Myrtle was more likely than an office in a bathroom.

Now I wonder how that worker feels. I wonder if I’ve met her…I assume it’s a woman since her office is in the ladies restroom. I really hope so anyway. Does she feel sad that her office is in a bathroom? Even if her job keeps her out and about most of the day, how does she feel knowing her desk and her personal things are in an office inside a bathroom?

I can only wonder…

And lastly, this hippo is nicer than my cat.

That is all.

Not It

Published
by
Girl Friday
on August 29, 2007
in Office Stories
. 1 Comment

Remember when you were a little kid and and you played the game of Not It?  Whoever could shout out first, “Not it,” was…well, not it.

But what was it, anyway?  Many times it meant you got out of doing something you disliked and the task fell on someone else’s shoulders.  Years later,  I’m still the kid who is it, who is too slow to proclaim Not It first, the responsible one who does not shirk duty or blame.

I worked with the web developer today.  We found the root of my problems with my department’s website.  He did the best he could and even admitted that the things that were wrong were the designers’ fault and not mine.

So for once, I’m vindicated, I didn’t ruin the layout, it was bad to begin with.  I am decidedly Not It.  But I won’t gloat or tell the truth to my bosses.  What would be the point?  The designers are gone now but they were beloved in my department.  They’re like Mary Poppins—practically perfect in every way—and I’m just the one who replaced them.  So their dirty little secret of badly written source code will remain between me, the web developer, and the great wide inter-web.