By now you may be aware of the offensively Draconian nanny state mandate handed down this week to the fine employees of BHP Billiton.
The memo entitled, Mine Kampf: BHP’s Office Environment Standard And Glorious Five Year Plan, outlines a thousand and one workplace bugbears that the BHP politburo have declared no longer negotiable, punishable presumably, by pain of performance review.
It’s a grossly heavy-handed document, undermining the worth of the employees who deserve respect not only for making BHP the success story it is, but also just for being humble and honourable members of the human race. And it would be an indefensibly deplorable document of foolscap fascism, if it were not for one tiny problem: as a rule, you people are f#$king disgusting.
I’ve seen how you work. Matter of fact, I’m working with some of you right now. And your hate crimes against cleanliness make my skin not so much crawl, as yearn to evolve tiny little mouths just so it can vomit away the badness.
Have you people even been to the kitchen lately? Have you seen the way you treat the “communal space”? It’s not so much a fridge but a frigging Smithsonian exhibition, that scientists are currently examining so we can understand what Kraft Singles really were like in 1983.
And when some poor world weary soul posts a note saying, “Hey do you guys think you could not leave a f#$king Hazmat scene in the sink some of us would like to not pass on AIDS to our clients anymore”, suddenly that’s called being “passive aggressive” and the solitary dissenter is cast out as some sort of workplace pariah, never to be invited to Friday drinks ever again.
Then you’ve got the desk. The workstation. Grime zero. The little corner of the room that for some reason the entitlement generation think is their very own episode of The Renovators, to “personalise” as if they’re fifteen again where the single goal occupied by their single brain cell is to plaster every inch of their bedroom walls with pictures of that dude from Twilight, lest their very identity be dragged listlessly into the recycle bin and trashed for eternity.
Now I’m all for people expressing themselves, but at what point did you think this was your house? When did you think it was your coffee table to lump your dogshit-soaked loafers on, brush Cheezel remnants from the remote and stick your diseased hand down your pants just so you can “get comfy”? Make yourself at home at other people’s places much, asshole?
Do you think I’m going to call up Rupert Murdoch and say, “Listen Rupe, the logo on my business card, it’s just… it’s just not me. It’s way too, I dunno, newsy. If it’s ok with you I’m going to make it bright pink. And I’m changing the font to Comic Sans. You know, make it fun. Like me! Oh and “News Ltd”? Booooring. I’m going to tell everyone I work for “Hot Sauce Banana Party OMG Harry Potter rulezzz! Ltd”. I just need to express myself, you know?”
Are you shitting me? I would happily fire me forever and lock away the CV.
But it’s not just tactile terrorism. There’s also the matter of your incessant audio atrocities. No I’m not talking about Kevin from accounts payable and his annoying snorty laugh, or the I.T guy who breathes so loud I feel like I have to call a sex pest every time I have trouble logging in to my Mac.
I’m talking about you and your rubbish music pumping through your rubbish little iPod dock, or leaking like sonic puss from the gaping wound of your “noise cancelling headphones”. Noise cancelling my right testicle.
Oh, I’m sure it sounds just great FOR YOU in your dreamy utopian pop world where Christina Aguilera sings about how beautiful you are in every single way (but conveniently not how shit you are at Excel), but for the rest of us, all we can hear are the tinny bleatings of something that sounds like it’s about to die and hopefully will before you find a filing cabinet lodged in your spinal column.
Exactly when did you think you were attending your own personal rave party?
My favourite is when I need to ask a BUSINESS question of my WORKMATE about how we can help the company earn MONEY so we can all get PAID to LIVE, and I have to get up from my desk, walk across the entire office, put on a neon yellow chicken costume, stand on his desk, drop my pants and wiggle my junk right in his face just so he can do me the honour of removing the Marshall stack from his stupid little sound holes.
Sod all that. You crazed cubicle hippies have had a pretty good run over the decades with your collaborative office love-in, and quite frankly I’m glad BHP are manning up and putting you truculent little upstarts in your place.
I know you all want to sit around in a circle, hold hands, and get to the emotional crux as to why Debbie just couldn’t be f#$ked getting rid of the empty printer cartridges everyone keeps tripping over, but this isn’t a God damned citizen’s assembly.
It’s a job, and if you don’t like the fat wads of cash being bestowed upon you by your benevolent dictators, maybe it’s time you pissed off and worked for a not-for-profit. Or worse still, advertising.
I’m not here to win friends. I’m here to draw a line, lest we allow ourselves to fall helplessly down the slippery slope to complete office anarchy. Because one day you’re allowing people to put post-its wherever they please, the next you’re turning a blind eye to people getting raped at the photocopier.
It’s called “taking responsibility”, like how Penny Wong’s gay baby is indicative of the fatherless society which is directly responsible for causing the London riots. Cause and effect. Do I really have to spell this out to you?
Wake up to yourselves people. Open your eyes. Maybe if you did you’d be able to see the blood all over your hands, if there wasn’t so much ink on them from the dodgy fax machine that you couldn’t be arsed doing anything about.
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