Office Etiquette

There’s a memo doing the rounds today which is copping a bit of a bagging from the anti-PC police but which actually isn’t that offensive.

A regional health executive in northern NSW has asked his workers to avoid the use of words like ‘mate’, ‘darling’, ‘sweetheart’ and ‘honey’ in the workplace.

Some have rightly seized on the fact that the word ‘mate’ is not only inoffensive, but is a pretty helpful substitute word when you don’t actually know someone’s name. Fair enough. But let’s be real. The other words on the list are old hat at best and demeaning at worst.

Continue reading "“Maaaaaaate” and other unacceptable monikers" »

We men have been given short shrift by the fashionistas who dictate office fashion.

Why is it that women can wear skirts which barely conceal their buttocks while men who work indoors are forced to cover thighs, knees and shins? It is bare-legged hypocrisy.

The long and the short of this issue is that men should be allowed to wear shorts to work.

Continue reading "Men draw the shorts straw in acceptable office apparel" »

I recently started a new job and at my very first team meeting, I was informed that I would be included in my new team’s Kris Kringle for the impending enforced Christmas “celebrations”.

As you would expect, yay. Is it possible to yay in an even lower case? yay. There you go.

Now, I know that this groan-inducing ritual must happen in offices all around the world (well, except for maybe the Middle East, India and most of Asia but lets not get pedantic) at this time of year – the exchanging of unwanted, thoughtless gifts between team-members who haven’t gotten to know each other well enough over the course of the year to know what to get each other.

Continue reading "For Kryin’ out loud, Kris Kringle is a Kolossal Kringe" »

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.

Continue reading "A dangerously unhinged lesson in office etiquette" »