TATTOPITW
there are two types of people in the world – sometimes updated weekdaily

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  • Its rediculous when you’re spelling get’s in the way
  • Have you ever been stall-ked?
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Where emails go to die

People who use flagging or another system to keep track of emails that need a response

People who trust their own memory and instincts to get them through the week

Here is one of the big office truths: we are all morons incapable of remembering the simplest things.  Seriously.  All of us forget no less than 27 things we’re supposed to do every day.  9,742 a day if you’re a big idiot.

Microsoft, in an uncharacteristic moment of brilliance, invented “flags” for emails. Granted, in a more characteristic moment of dumbassery, they decided to let you use 5 different colors of flags (and concluded that one color is best again in 2007), but the flag is a wonderful, wonderful, underutilized thing.

Flags say, “Hey dumbass, don’t forget about me,” without the nagging boldness of an unread email.  While several people use the “Mark Unread” technique, it is clearly inferior: I know you’ve read that email 132 times and had to mark it unread every time saying, “Oh yeah, that’s important, but not right now.  Let me hide it in a population of other emails that will look the same when I come back and try to find this one.”  The problem is that you can’t tell the difference between these unread emails and your legit unread emails, so you’re just playing pop-a-mole with your emails until you get over your laziness and actually do one of these things you’re being asked to do.

But there is another whole population of people who uses no method of flagging emails whatsoever.  They will read an email, intend to follow up on it, and will forget about it for the rest of their lives.  Like an ad for a charity.  Not using a system is a guarantee that 65% of the people you work with think you’re a forgetful moron.  The other 35% are just as checked out as you are.

Start using your email flags and set up a filter that shows you just flagged emails.  Not only will you thank me, but everyone else will too.  And you’ll probably get a promotion out of it because you’ll finally be doing something other than panning for email gold every time you open Outlook.

Its rediculous when you’re spelling get’s in the way

People who can spell

People who can’t spell

Question: Do you know what word is always spelled incorrectly?  Read on for the answer.

Something you might find surprising is the lack of a tight correlation between intelligence and spelling.  There are plenty of smart people that just can’t spell, and unfortunately it dulls their ability to look smart.  That’s okay, because it makes me look that much better.  Boo ya.

Anyhow, I thought I would let you in on a private exercise I go through when I see common spelling mistakes.  It’s fun for me, and I hope it will be fun for you, too.  Let’s look at an example…

So, let’s say I see the following in an email:

Its rediculous that their going to France again this year.

In my head, I say:

The repeated diculous that is owned by it that again they possess a “going to France” this year.

In essence, I’m translating what they’ve said into a literal format, taking into account the spelling mistakes. Yay! Fun for the whole family.

The three points of Poseidon’s trident of spelling have to be it’s/its, your/you’re, and their/they’re/there.  Not other words are used in the wrong places more often than these three, and no misuse of words can make a person look dumber.  We also have whose/who’s, let’s/lets, and the slew of acronyms that people think possess something untold.  You do not own a bunch of CD’s.  You own CDs.  Actually, you hopefully own an iPod at this point. Way to skirt that one.

If you want to get ahead in this life, take some time to work on your spelling and make sure that you never go without fixing your spelling and grammar.  If the content is gold, it won’t matter if you don’t get these basics right.  Trust me.  I’m judging you.

TATTOPITW gives back.

Oh yeah, the answer: “incorrectly.”  You had to know that was coming.

Have you ever been stall-ked?

People who go back to their desks when the bathroom stalls are all taken

People who hang out in the bathroom – “stall-kers”

There are few places in the world that are less comfortable for all involved than the bathroom.  I can’t speak for the women’s room, where it seems a live taping of Oprah is always taking place, but in the men’s room, protocol is to avoid talking, eye contact, friendliness, etc.  Of course, there is always that one guy who talks from inside the stall, but he’s an outlier.

Given this general level of discomfort in the men’s room, I’m always a little unnerved to see someone waiting in the bathroom when all of the stalls are taken.  Most people choose to turn back around and come back later, or even try another floor of the office building, but the few who stallk are definitely a different breed.  They’re either having a minor emergency, or they’re just strangely okay with hanging out in the bathroom and facing the inevitable event of walking right into the fresh aftermath of someone’s dietary mistakes.

The worst thing is when you’re the one being stallked.  That’s pretty embarrassing and I used to just say, “excuse me,” or something to that effect when passing the stallker, but I’ve figured lately that if these people are that awkward, I might as well keep it that way and say something to make them uncomfortable.  Lately, I’ve been testing the reactions to the following rendezvous statements:

• “Enjoy…”
• “You might want to give it a second.”
• I might make gagging sounds or a few coughs on the way out.
• “Beat that.”

Try one of these out this week and tell me what happened.

Dress for the job you hate

People who dress for the job they want

People who dress to express disdain for the job they have

Ever heard the one about how you should dress for the job you want, not the one you have?  I don’t believe it happens this way.  I think there are those people who dress for the jobs they want, and the rest of the people dress to express total apathy.  If there is a range of footware that goes from leather lace-ups to flip-flops in your office, you know what I’m talking about.

There’s a reason that people ask you if you’re a glass half-full or a glass half-empty kind of person.  Nobody says, “I’m a glass at 50%.”  You either look up or you look down, and the way that people dress at work is a key expression of this.

If I work really hard, I can become Vice President some day!

If I work really hard, maybe they’ll let me plug in the yellow cables!  F, I hate this job.  If that bitch who’s sleeping her way to VP calls me about her Blackberry not working in the subway one more time, I’ll kill her.

Huge print job people

People who send huge print jobs to the only printer in the office (or near your desk) during the middle of the workday

People who have a shred of consideration for their fellow worker

So this is one of those things I’ve been meaning to bring up for a while and it just refreshed its relevance the other day when I was trying to print out a quick 1-pager.  I walked over to the printer, and here was this girl printing out 5 copies of a presentation that itself was probably 50 slides long.

“It might be a while,” she says. “Big print job.”

“What is that for?” I ask, pulling up my calendar on my phone, ready to change my status to Tentative for whatever meeting is going to subject me to a 50-slide presentation where I’m told that one thing went up and another thing went down.

“It’s a budget meeting.  Tomorrow, with Bill.  I think you’re in it, right?”

Tentative set.  “I’m not sure. I might have a conflict.”

Sorry dude, I’m printing War & Peace real quick. It’ll be a minute.

I’ve come up with a few names for this behavior, just now:

• Hewlett-Packing – “Dave is Hewlett-Packing again today.  You might want to use the Bizhub if you need your print this year.”
• Canon Blasting – “Is that you Canon blasting the multifunction?  I’m just trying to make a copy, bro, and  you’ve got that thing busier than the free condom bowl at the Tri-Delt house.”
• Mi-nolta gonna get your print today
• Being an asshole

I do realize it says a lot about how nerdy I am that I can come up with such pun-tastic explosions of hilarity on the spot…about office printers.  I’m okay with that.

On applause

People who are “safe” clappers

People who are bold clappers

I just got out of a conference today that was about as fun as when the school bully would stab your soccer ball.  The conference was held at the Georgia Aquarium, so here you are thinking you’re going to be able to watch whales swim around while you eat free food and learn about something new, when you walk in the room and see the truth of the situation.  By, “at the aquarium,” they meant, “in a conference room in the parking garage of the aquarium.”  Soccer ball stabbed.

So, here we are in a typical meeting room with those vinyl chairs that make you sound like you’re farting every time you move, no whales, no fish, nothing.  Fortunately, the topic was somewhat interesting, but the speaker went on talking past that point where it doesn’t matter how interesting things are, you have no attention left to give. If a neon orange monkey flew in the room and killed the lecturer, I literally might not have noticed.

Finally, the speaker wraps things up and then comes that magical moment when people ask themselves, “Was that good enough to clap for? I’ll wait and see what everyone else does.”  Then, the pioneer (bold) clapper, whoever they are, gets the round of applause going.  The middle (safe) clappers join in, sensing the time where the clap is running out of gas, and then quit.  Then, the wrap-up (bold) clappers finish it off like those last few kernels of popcorn in the microwave.

I bet the girl in red is a first-clapper.  Most people hate first-clappers.

Now, that’s a standard case, and more or less the way it went today.  But my favorites are when the bold clappers get slapped down.  You know, those times when one person gives about 2 and a half claps and then realizes they are alone.  That’s priceless, as it’s humiliating for both the clapper and the speaker.  Sadly, that did not happen today.

Bold clappers come in a critical third variety (beyond beginning clappers and popcorn clappers): the loud/distinct clapper.  These are the people who cup their hands like they’re trying to crush an ostrich egg or the ones who are capable of making small nuclear explosions in their palms.  The loud clap is not a talent, it is just an ability encoded in the DNA of assholes.  I petition you now: please stop clapping like an idiot.  The beginning/ending clappers have their place in this world: they fill a necessary role.  You bring nothing to the table, just like your father told you when you were 7.

Repeat elevator button pushers = humankind

People who hit the elevator button additional times

People who have no arms, no legs, no nose, or any other suitable protrusion, and are in a coma

So this idea has been sent to me from a number of people and stated in a number of different ways, but the gist of it is that people are pissed off when people either hit the elevator button more than once or when they come up and hit the button after someone else has already hit it.

But here’s the problem, folks: you’re all hypocrites.

There is not a single human being on earth who has been exposed to an elevator and not hit the elevator button after it’s already lit up.  Nobody.  You could go pick up a newborn aboriginal, and if there was a way to reach it, he would sit there rapping on the button with his baby boomerang, saying, “how long is this piece of junk going to take?”.  And then crap his loincloth.

This happens because human beings are not inately capable of trust or patience.  If someone else has pushed the button, we cannot trust that person to be as highly intelligent as us: they must not be capable of a proper button press.  This complicated procedure should only be carried out by trained and experienced professionals.  Second, we lack the patience to wait 4 seconds for an elevator to respond.  We are man, this is machine.  We are the superior race, therefore we demand service.

When I took the elevator up to the 6th floor at work (the top floor) this morning, the elevator interacted with 7 people.  First floor, 5 people get on.  The first three people push 3, 5, and 6.  The next two re-push 3 and then 6.  The first person, standing closest to the left bank of buttons, begins jamming “door close”.

Nobody talks.

Ding!  We’re on 3.  Two people exit.  The right-bank button operator begins hitting “door close”, but a hand shoots into the opening, opening the doors.  In a socially-awkward recovery, the man starts now hitting “door open” (the doors are already opening, but thanks for the help).  5 is hit…again…by the new passenger.

Ding! We’re on 5.  Two more exit.  One more person gets on.  My fellow passenger says “this one’s going up”, which is actually two statements in one: 1) “If you’re meaning to go down, this elevator is not for you”, and 2) “If you’re riding the elevator up one floor, fuck you.”

New passenger: “Oh, no.  I’m going up, but thanks.”  6 pushed, then door close pushed.  A double.

We get up to 6, everyone disembarks, and it’s over.

So thanks for the idea, but try to give me two types of people next time.  What’s next, “Guys who look at porn and guys who don’t?”

You can do better.

Let’s meet to plan our planning meeting

People who have meetings to accomplish something

People who have meetings where they meet to plan a meeting where there will be planning to meet to devise a planning strategy for strategic meeting plans.

This morning, I woke up very early for a meeting.  At the conclusion of the meeting, we decided that the “next steps” were to have another meeting.  It is likely that this new meeting’s “next steps” will be to have yet another meeting.  ’Round she goes.

“As you see in this chart, the more meetings we have, the more money we spend paying the people in this room to listen to themselves speak.  I propose that we have breakout meetings to plan a discussion where we’ll bring more people in to understand this issue.  Then we’ll all come back and meet to discuss a plan for meetings.”

“AYE!!!”

It’s not that the meeting this morning didn’t have a purpose.  Actually, the meeting was to discuss how to produce some educational collateral.  All of the people that were needed to produce this were in the room.  But that didn’t mean that anything got done.

We kicked the meeting off with some highly-paid people carefully explaining a mix of half-truths and illogical concepts that accurately reflected their complete lack of understanding of what they do every day at work.  People like this, who spend every waking moment in meetings, only have brief collisions with reality throughout the day and therefore know very little about what’s going on.  That’s okay.  It happens.  Just shut the hell up.

Then one highly-paid person asks the group a question.  As an aside, every time an executive asks a group a question, I picture that executive promptly putting their fingers in their ears and screaming “LA LA LA LA LA…..I DON’T HEAR YOU…..LA LA LA LA!”, like kids did in 4th grade.  Anyhow, the question was asked, and right as the subject matter expert started explaining, another highly-paid jumps in and says “what so-and-so is trying to say is that the earth is more of a square than a circle and this table is made of grilled cheese sandwiches.”

The subject expert, now emasculated by the executive, has to figure out how to explain that the earth is, in fact, round and the table is made of wood, but he’s now in the dragon’s den: the highly-paid is watching and you’d better not directly contradict him.  It’s a delicate and highly-entertaining balance act to witness.  And now that everyone’s confused, we decide that another meeting is the right thing to do.

Gotta go.  You know why…

“2″ is code for “make everyone hate me”

People who take the elevator to go 1 floor

People who take the stairs

The other people on the elevator were NOT happy when I was taking this picture.

America has a major obesity problem.  What a person weighs is related to two things, and two things only: how much crap you stuff in your face, and how much you use your body.  So I think it’s safe to say that taking the elevator 1 floor is one of the top two direct causes of obesity in America.  You can’t fight facts.

Americans have invented countless things to help them avoid expelling any effort throughout the day.  Chairs have wheels on them.  Email and phone allow you to talk to people without leaving your chair.  People drive their cars 1 block to get coffee at Starbucks.  And don’t even get me started on the Segway – the two-wheeled douche roller that will make us yearn for the days when knees and elbows were still visible and not covered by fat rolls.

I work on the second floor of a building and thus face this temptation every day.  When I was in college, taking an elevator one floor could get you killed.  Actually, if you took the elevator 2 or 3 floors, that was even considered a criminal act that would earn you some very bold stares, and very occasionally someone would speak up. The speaking was either passive: “unbelievable…”, or active: “are you kidding me?”.  But most of the time, the communication of disgust was nonverbal; especially when a particularly overweight individual would join you on the lobby level – you just knew they were going to hit 2.

These days, however, it’s not socially acceptable to confront this laziness with words.  The nonverbal element is there, but mostly reserved for when the perp has exited the elevator and the doors are just about closed.  It’s much more passive aggressive, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t think you’re a complete moron for taking the elevator one floor.  Rest assured, you’ve been labeled and we all hate you.

I’d like to get a little more raw on this topic, but I can’t start profiling these single-floor riders without looking like an asshole.  I suppose the anonymity of the comments might be a good forum: what type of person is a single-floor rider?  Talk amongst yourselves.

Your Loyalty Costs Less than $2

People who get excited about high-end office supplies

People whose love cannot be bought for $1.24

Another thing I don’t think I’ll understand, in addition to free lunch people at the office, is people who get all excited about killer office supplies, a la, “wow, my last office only had the Bic rollerball, but we’re rollin’ with Pilot V5’s up in here! Check out the glide!”

Every office I’ve ever worked in has these people, and they’re not always the Miltons of the world, either. Oftentimes, I’ll walk into a meeting with some VPs or executives and they’ll be having their chit-chat before the beginning of the meeting with the obligatory, “Did you see the game?”, “How much longer until your bride gets her green card?”, and, “Have you seen the pens they’ve got on the third floor?” People will literally leave their Mont Blanc on the table and seek out these pens upon hearing this. Unfathomable.

There’s one person I work with who illustrates this perfectly. On all other accounts, this guy is perfectly normal: someone you’d hang out with on the weekend, even. But when it comes to office supplies, he isn’t playing.

A few weeks ago, he was telling me about how he had just thrown his “like, 14th pen away this month,” and was just pissed. Then he noticed the pen I had on my desk.

“Where did you get that?” he asks.

“In the supply closet…” I say. He immediately gets up and walks away, presumably to check the closet. He returns with a fistful of crappy pens.

“All they have in there is this bullshit pen I’m using already. Let me just save them the time,” and he throws away no less than 35 pens in one motion of his arm. “I’ll be right back,” he says, leaving again.

About 10 minutes later, he returns, this time with about 6 types of pens, “Ok. These are the pens from every floor. 6 fucking types! Who is the idiot buying this stuff?” He tests each pen to see which ones perform and which don’t. “OK, these two are good. These four suck,” throwing 4 more pens into his quickly-rising pen graveyard. Then he pulls out his camera phone and takes pictures of the two good pens.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Sending these pictures to the dumb bitches who buy this stuff so they know how to do their fucking job. Hey, what are you doing this weekend?”

“umm….I have plans.”

Yeah, true story.

Now I will admit, I do wonder a little bit when I’m working in an office that goes the cheapo route on everything, like when you get fake stick-its and some tape that’s straight out of a Chinese prison sweatshop, called something like “Happy Happy Tape”. From this front, I can understand why companies try to project an image with their office supplies, or at least avoid a bad image. Nobody wants to work in that sad little office with the knock-off supplies, disgusting fabric cubicle walls from the 80’s, and big computer monitors that hum under the stress of their age. Frankly, it’s embarrassing.

I guess companies will just have to find a happy balance here. With the economy in its current state, we might have to pull back on office supply spending, but businesses have to do it responsibly. My brother in law just got an email announcing that the coffee creamer will no longer be supplied by the company. That pissed a lot of people off, but it’s all worth it, because it’ll save the company $352.38 over the next 6 years.

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