this camera rules. it’s a perfect blast from the past.

we fold clothes and talk about how much we hate folding clothes…

Being raised by parents that were jacks of all trades and constantly remodeling, rebuilding, and reinventing everything in the house, my home environment has always been full of an assortment of crazy but useful supplies. I never really thought much about it, until I started doing work from home and needed to create an office space. What I thought was just childhood obsessive curiosty with paints, markers, labelers, pens, stickers, and all of the oddest little tools i could find in my mothers big oak desk, I guess isn’t something you grow out of, and thus you require more fantastical expensive toys to entertain yourself with, like electric staplers.

My “office” is really a high school art room and my students, who love lomo and all things photography, would think I was ever so current, if I had one of these to pass out for them to try. On a teacher’s salary, winning one would make could make that a reality. I’d really love to be thought of as with it. How about it?

For my ex-colleague’s birthday we built a dummy version of him using pillows, his grubby tee shirt, balloons and a huge watermelon. One colleague kidnapped the prized stuffed giraffe that always sits on his desk and stuck it to the notice board in the pantry.

We ate the watermelon the very next day. The dummy is still sitting at his workspace looking very deflated but no less happy than that eventful day.

Well, I don’t work, so I don’t really have any office ancedotes. Sorry! and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Over the summer, I interned in a city office where one of my duties was to literally research falcons. Because I had taken a Shakespeare course just the quarter before, this led to strange dreams about being a medieval falconer. Fun times.

About 6 years ago I was a temp for Disney at one of their millions of Burbank, California offices. I worked in the particular block of offices that monitored all of the mentions of Disney or Disney properties in the media; magazines, internet, T.V. etc. Well I was a filer which as I’m sure you can guess was tedious. I was filling in for this woman named “Suz” who was out ill. I did my job pretty well and I guess they liked me because about a week later they called me back and asked me to work for Suz again. I came in and it was business as usual. I would continually get up to go to the cabinets and put things away. It wasn’t until my third or fourth trip to the cabinets that I realized that Suz’s stapler was missing and then again her pencil carrier with her scissors (that I needed for my work) I got up again to see what the hell was going on. I pretended to go the cabinets but then doubled back and caught a guy with her ruler under his arms and her gel wrist support for her typewriter. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “There just going to throw most of it out and I wanted something to remember her by anyway”. I asked him what the hell he was talking about and he said that Suz had passed away last night and that I was just there finishing up what was left in her in-box because they weren’t going to replace her. Needless to say I was really creeped out. I had to work in the dead ladies cubicle for another two days while fending off thieves who where making it harder and harder to do my job with my dwindling supplies.

Happy Holidays

once i came in to open up in the morning and found the owner of the store passed out on the floor next to an overturned chair. he had apparently had a little alone-party. i got a raise for not telling on him.

I’ve been thinking about this for days and I simply don’t have an office anecdote. I got married really young and so I’ve been a SAHM and don’t have a whole lot of work experience yet. I don’t have tales to tell. :(

My co-worker insisted that he’s the only one who could log on to his laptop using his fingerprint, I proved him wrong when I logged in using my thumb.

Once upon a time, in a job interview, a candidate for an internship and the interviewer. The interviewer asked the candidate about his salary expectations, to what he answered: well, my salary expectations are about US$10.000,00. And with very little wisdom, the candidate pompously asked about the benefits, to what the interviewer promptly answered: oh, our company provides the interns with two hours and a half for lunch, life insurance, six weeks for vacation, work journey of four daily hours, you will gain a brand new car every year, car insurance, house insurance…
Listening to that in awe, the candidate, from the top of his naivity, said: you’ re kidding!
So the interviewer answered, jiggling: well, of course I am, but you started it!!!

An office anecdote, hm? Well I worked in an office before I was laid off, and there my boss insisted upon white desk accessories to compliment his Mac products. I’m talking white tape dispenser, white (or silver, if white was not available) mechanical pencils, white desk, white chairs, white walls, white floor, white storage drawers…it was like working in a sterile environment, sponsored by Apple

Starting at a new job, where the cubes have low to no walls, nothing can be more pathetic then eating your lunch at your desk. While other co-workers gather together and move to the caf or out to eat there I was plopped down where I had been all day, now eating my PB and Fluff. With a combination of light work and mowing down I finished my sandwich, then got up to use the bathroom. In route to the loo I passed some co-workers who said hi and stopped by a special attractive co-worker to ask her a question. We chatted and laughed a bit. Nothing seemed amiss until I finally got to the bathroom and did a double take passing the mirror. The Fluff sandwich had did what everyone fears when you eat that mess, it left some behind for later. Now this wasn’t a little spot of fluff, this was a gigantic dollop right there nesting below my cheek. Couldn’t have been more mortified. I scrubbed furiously and my mind raced. Why didn’t anyone tell me; did SHE notice it; of course she noticed it; shit what do I do?

Almost a year has passed since that tragic event. That attractive co-worker is the person I eat lunch with everyday and call my girlfriend. She thought my funny attempt to get her to laugh by PUTTING Fluff on my face was cute. I’ll just let her keep on thinking that.

It’s gonna give me lloootss of ideas and looooottttss of new original artworks for my designs!!! LOVE IT!

oo mechanics.

I consider my office as a luxury internet cafe rather than place to work.
I have a 20” brand new iMac -bought for me when I joined in- and free broadband connection (fast enough according to this country’s standard)
It’s in the heart of the city, part of the most prestigious shopping centre where everything money can buy is there and guess what? a good club is just a walk away.
All I have to do in back just make them plenty of layouts, involve in brainstorm and a bit art directing. The other time? Me just browsing online and fill something like this…perhaps can experience with a Lomo then.

i work in an architectural office.
for a very famous renegade architect.
1 climb 138 steps every morning to go to this office.
i am a very busy man.
i meet people.
1 eat noodles for lunch.
i draw.
i am one of the 5 oldest people in this 30+ staff firm.
i check drawings.
i write specifications.
i get scolded by clients everytime.
i don’t collect anything.
i do collect fonts. f**k.
i go back home 2 hours before i sleep.
i’m 34.
and single.
i have no life.

can you just award me the fisheye please?

I have the most absurd boss in the entire world. I could tell you a lot about him but all of the terrible can be summed up in this — his middle name is anus. Legitimately. I don’t think I need to explain much more.

this stapler totally beats Milton’s fire engine red Swingline stapler

Over the summer I moved to New york to intern for a very large, corporate clothing company that had the best supply closet ever. I went through the summer being mistreated and harassed by essentially disgruntled designers that hated their lives. So the last day, I treated myself to a supply closet raid to feel better about the way I spent my summer. I am obsessed with school supplies and some how I forgot to get myself a stapler in my raid. And even if I had, it would have been a boring, black stapler so this is even better. It was a classic first internship and on my next one over the summer I need this stapler so I don’t feel compelled to raid another supply closet.

Look! I work in a call center and a colleague had the most hilarious phone call. He was explaining the delivery timing of the reports we send out over the weekend of the time change. She didn’t quite understand and exclaimed “but my timezone hasn’t started yet!” It was a classic moment and my colleague struggled to not laugh out loud!

Goodness.
This must be fate.
I’m known as staple girl in my office.
Ironically because I never have had a staple with me, and my papers are stapled because of the kindness of colleagues (who are also impossibly forgetful that they swore not to ever lend me their staple time after time).

Can it be time to make good their vows for them?

The Lomo Fisheye would capture that priceless moment on their faces when they see that I have a staple on my desk. Ta Dah!

I once managed a young lady named Heather who told me in the break room one day, “My husbands family went to the state fair and were struck by lightning standing next to the beer truck. Searching for the right words, I asked, “His entire family? Are they all right?” She said, “His Mother, Father, two teenage brothers and little sister. The next day, in the local newspaper, the headline read, ‘Local Family, Struck By Lightning At State Fair (… standing next to beer truck …)’ They’re all such a bunch of hypochondriachs. They just ate it up!”

In my office I share a space with another co-worker. Two desks, two phones, one office. As it turns out are fit for each other. Our days are filled with games involving office supplies such as paper clips, rubber bands, & eh hem- staplers. We make up haiku’s and email one another from across the room. Some days we call each other on our phones which proves to be most difficult when you can hear the conversation both over the phone & out your other ear. All that is missing is two things, 1. a cool stapler & 2. a fisheye camera to document our adventures, then all will be complete.

Hows about this? I take the stapler and staple my boxers (while wearing them) to the collar of my shirt and then take a picture of it and send it back to you guys if I win?

You guys get a good laugh, I get some free stuff and a fun story to explain to my girlfriend…

At my last job, I sat between two guys whose last name were Holmes and Moriarty. What are the odds that two people with same last names as the popular fictional characters of detective (Sherlock Holmes) and archnemesis (Professor James Moriarty) would be in the same group working together?! As ironic as that sounds, I was always having to tear these two guys apart in heated arguments and constant bickering. These two guys were at it all the time and if there was a Reichehbach Falls here, I am sure they would have had it out and someone would have come to his “end.”

I work in a call center and a colleague had the most hilarious phone call. He was explaining the delivery timing of the reports we send out over the weekend of the time change. She didn’t quite understand and exclaimed “but my timezone hasn’t started yet!” It was a classic moment and my colleague struggled to not laugh out loud!

One of the attorneys I work with always leave the door to her office open and every so often she will give really loud extended burps, about seven in a row. And right when you think she’s done she’ll do another one. We also have lights with motion sensors and sometimes especially when she’s on the phone with her headset, the lights will go off because she’s not moving, so it looks like she’s talking to herself in the dark.

Hmm, my last office fun/anecdote… Back in the dark ages I worked in a large call-center. Some avenues of release, during late shifts when most Management were gone, were to have chair races down the halls or have foam-football games across the floor. Just put the customer on mute, unplug your headset and fire the ball.

Our last full staff meeting was the day after the election.

The night before, our (McCain supporting) CEO sent an e-mail to the staff basically telling us “celebrate in private” if our candidate won.

How does she open the meeting the next morning? In an effort to acknowledge the historical meaning of a black man winning the presidency, she rambled on for about 40 minutes about how she thinks the 60s are “over rated” and anyone who was there didn’t think it was so great, because “a lot of people were dying.” The only people who enjoyed the 60s “were high on drugs.” “A lot of people fought very hard for racial equality but [she] wasn’t one of them,” she didn’t even know if there was “even one black person where [she] went to school.” Somehow this segued into a story about how she never “burned her bra” because she didn’t need one, if she did, it would have had to be labeled “front and back.”

This really happened. In front of 22 people.

a friend of mine once worked in an office that was huge open plan designed with fish bowl offices around the outside. the fishbowl offices had floor to ceiling windows but were covered up with blinds. his boss and team leader used to have long meetings and were always talking about how busy they were and how stressed they were and that the info they were talking about was so important that they really couldn’t afford to be disturbed. they met nearly every day and there meetings were longer than normal.

one day my friend was walking past the boss’ office carrying a heavy archive box. he slipped and fell into the windowed wall and accidentally fell through it. the glass wall shattered and the blinds fell down. not only did he break his boss’ wall, but he revealed the ‘important meeting’ happening behind the former closed doors. his boss with his pant down around his legs and his team leader positioned on top of him. my friend ended up on the floor gazing up at the two bosses going at it!

they whole office came running at the sound of the shattering glass. busted!!

as a designer i try to have as much as free time as possible. one time the other collegues and me were too lazy for working on a sunny spring day. we ran out of the office buiding into the next park but kept the speakerphone on in the meeting room. we recorded about a minute of effective brainstorming then we played over and over again it thru one of our cellphones right thru the speaker in the meeting room so the boss could think we were busy working… keep your space and time as well!!!

On April Fools Day, someone found the most gullible employee and told them they had to fill the drinking fountain! They were given a bucket and told to fill it up as many times as necessary and pour it into the drinking fountain so there would be water to drink the rest of the day!

This year i met the love of my life! He’s the best guy on the planet with an equally amazing spirit. The point of ramblings is that he has a divemaster certificate but does not have the pleasure of an underwater camera. I would be so happy to be able to surprise him this awesome prize!…

nice

I work in a design studio that’s in the same building as an independent film company. One afternoon, our photographer took some things down to the dumpster. When he returned a few minutes later, he was wearing a giant Keebler elf head he’d found in the dumpster room.

You have to love working in an office where the popular response to something like that isn’t “what the hell is that??”, but rather “ooh, I get to wear it next.” Five years later, the elf head still peers over the desks in the production department. Occasionally, it gets worn during a bike ride around the studio.

Y’know what’d make the experience even better? Being able to take a fisheye lomo photo of it all. Yep, that’d be wonderful.

So no interesting incidents involving a camera or a stapler
….But I would love the camera so I can buy the waterproof casing
and take it out surfing and snap awesome pics of beautiful New Zealand to send in to you!

I work in an office, but it is by no means typical. We are in the music business, you see. We drink beer at our desks in coffee cups and swear more than you would on your own time. We tease each other as if we were all siblings. We get upset if someone orders in food but doesn’t check with others first to see if they want anything. Every year we go bowling for our xmas party and take bets on who will pass out first from drinking too much. I think I’m kept around solely because I am incredibly patient and tolerant and can deal with the multitude of different personalities and quirks, and this is probably why I stick around myself too.

A high school internship.
I’m shredding files.
I look behind me to see a boardroom full of older women who had all rolled their chairs to the door, leaning forward and staring at me as though they were terrified of me.
In that moment, the fact that I did not have a camera on hand was something that absolutely killed me.

So… this marks day 6 of being a public auditor. Yes indeed I am sexy, outgoing, extraverted, not-boring, lovely, and amazing. I will live a life marked by no stereotypes, and everyone will think I am truly amusing and interesting and creative because I am an accountant.
So today I was working on the quarterly review of a fortune 500 company. Here I am this 22 year old fresh out of university young man, who by the way looks like he is about 17, asking the controller countless questions. It’s quite awkward having to ask a very well versed business man questions, and interrogating them on accounting policies. However, I think if I had that stapler to carry around with me, they might give me more respect. I mean honestly how could you not respect an accountant with that stapler. Then I could take distorted photographs to depict the awkward interactions that is my daily job.

So I was a design school drop out, only to find my real passion in life; accounting. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. The reason being, accounting is the most fascinating subject in the world.

One of the first jobs I had was working for a guy who was really cheap. He used to heat up a can of beanie weanies on the radiator of his office. UGH.

we scan everything at my office and so one of our admin’s has to remove staples from everything….i used to be an admin and do this and had a pretty nice staple mountain which i had built over several months. my boss threw it away though :(

I don’t work in an office, but I remember visiting my dad’s office when I was a little girl. The best part was going to the vending machine and picking out a snack! It was the only time I used a vending machine as a child, haha.

fun in a basket - make a girl smile everyday/

No matter how much you do, you never do enough. So you’d may as well photograph it instead.

I have been fired from every office job I’ve ever held. Not because of poor performance or a bad attitude, but because I enjoy making inappropriate sculptures out of office supplies.

With my current job I live close enough to my office that I can run home for lunch when necessary. One day last summer I went home for lunch to find that my home had been broken into! The place was TRASHED. It was THE worst lunch EVER! I discovered that one of the many items taken was my first 35mm film camera that I purchased my own in my youth. While the Insurance company was able to replace other items, they were not able to replace my film camera (not in this digital-everything-age). I do not own a digital camera nor do I want to. The little bit of money they gave me went towards getting a new alarm system. I still hope to replace my camera one day.

days off

This one happened to my girlfriend. She’s a supervisor in an office and some of her employees are a little disturbing. She tried to explain how to add a line in microsoft excel to a girl for about 30 minutes. Then, the girl kinda understands, so my girlfriend goes away. Five minutes later the girl calls her back: she needs to add a column. My girlfriend gives up, goes in the hallway to kick and hit the air, just trying to get out the anger. Then her boss passes behind her.

I come to my office everyday and want to punch myself in the face. I sit and listen as the gentle office whisper-secret keeper to everyone’s antics with each other, meanwhile I never get any action. I sit and work and attack my brain - but nothing is there- and have to work with the man I adore, whom is now particularly cold to me. I wear black everyday, because everyday I am going to the funeral for another piece of my soul. I am the only mourner. My black cloud even muddles the terrible flourescent lighting, and everyone appreciates the delicate shade, and looks wistfully at the ceiling at a sky of dreams and ambitions i have none of. I am the black cloud of the office. And Im glad you appreciate my misery.

best times in the office?
totally sitting around talking about our favorite karaoke choices. bet things could be even better with that camera!

I work at a furniture design firm and we usually need to do a lot or research and exchange ideas between the crew, but if we talk too much, we get warnings and the internet is blocked, so, we can only really do some research at lunch time, now thats a joke.

No, really, it really is like that.

I got locked out 3 times on the first 2 months of my current job (I’m in the office I’m writing this post) I thought someone play a not funny joke on me. Later I found out that my door knob is “Push-button” type that every time I open my door it would slammed into the wall and locked itself.

the best is winning the radio war.

In my brief tenure as a facilities assistant I was deeply chuffed to be told I’d have my own office. I was less chuffed to discover both square foot of it was being used as a dumping ground for anything ‘that doesn’t belong somewhere’ and that the awful smell was a dead rat at the bottom of the pile. God bless London’s infestation. Now I have a lovely creative job (which needs the camera) and a big shiny desk (which just needs that stapler).

NNNICE!

I am a manager of engineers, need I say more about antics? From people falling asleep and us changing their clocks while napping to taking pictures of peoples dangling legs under the bathroom stalls. I recently put up a picture of a vacuum in my office. Why? so when someone asks me how something is? I can point to it and say….. “Do you know what that does?” “It sucks!”

Well, I’m not out of school yet but…here’s a school story!

I had just sat down, ready for my last class. I was getting out all my books when one of my best friends leans over and says “Hey, Ali, I like your blue stripes.” I had no idea what he was talking about, until I realized that my double-layered white skirt was see-through and I was wearing blue striped underwear. Worst part, I had been wearing it ALL day.

If only I had that stapler to distract them with its prettiness!

I work as a janitor at a doctor’s office. Among other things, it is my job to empty the garbage cans. One night as I was emptying garbage I cam to a can that had a drug sample box on it. These boxes are common and because it was perched so carefully on a garbage can, I carefully smashed it into my 40 gallon garbage sack.

The next day I was asked if I had seen a box of drug samples. I said yes and that I had made sure to dispose of it with the same care someone had put to perch it on top of the garbage can. Of course, I had somehow been the one to make the mistake of throwing away a several hundred dollar box of drug samples. “I placed it so carefully on the garbage so you would know that it was not garbage.” To make a long story short, I was not the one to go scuba diving in the dumpster that day, and I still have my job.

so i worked in your typical office setting, a bunch of cubes and a mix of people and everyone talks to each other with that annoying cheesy, “alright - see ya later there guy!” talk. and just the same was when it was someones birthday and desks were decorated with streamers and theres always a cake and people wanting to pull in 5 bucks for a gift - that kind of stuff. Well one person in my department didn’t celebrate birthdays - or any holidays - and wouldn’t get involved with the cake and streamers or pot lucks - none of it. I always thought that was weird … but whatever, more food for me really. Anyway, for whatever reason I was feeling bitter about something and with half of the department gone doing whatever I was going to say aloud something along the lines of, “Jesus Christ I don’t understand these religious freaks!” but before saying THAT I turned to the new girl and asked, “You aren’t religious are you?” and of course she answers, “Yeah I’m [same religion as the other person in the department who doesnt do the holidays/birthdays]” … good thing I held my tongue (a little) on that one.

When I first started out, my supervisor would call at all hours of the night asking to borrow $$ because she would be stuck in Atlantic City, having gambled away all of it. Later, she was arrested for identity theft of one of my co-workers, having stolen a driver’s license to borrow $$ for gambling.

I skipped work on a Friday to enjoy an extended weekend on the beach. I called in sick. I got caught on facebook! One of my friends posted our photos as soon as we got home and was considerate enough to tag me in all the pictures?!? Lesson learned? Cover your tracks and lets yours friends in on the plan. Everyone should play hooky once in a while!

I have a work voice. It doesn’t get used anywhere but at work. And, though I’ve tried harrowingly, I have yet to be able to recreate it outside of my office.

It’s a mix of Barry White impersonation and 900-number operator mixed with a healthy dose of Foghorn Leghorn.

It’s odd i haven’t been sued for undue aural harassment. Well, yet.

My first office job was in a cell phone repair centre doing data entry. I worked there for 4 months and I would make mistakes everyday(I’m serious…), I still can’t figure out why I would make mistakes, everything is on paper all I had to do was enter the data into the computer…a monkey can do that…
But at the same time I would always fall asleep after lunch so I had to make a barrier between myself and my manager so she wouldn’t see me falling asleep…I wonder if that is when i make the mistakes…and sometimes i would just go to the washroom and lean against the wall to sleep:P

I used to work part-time for my mother selling stuff, and I hated it so much because I knew the current girl of my ex (who cheated on me with her, mind you) would always come prancing in to “look at the latest stock”. They’d also ask to use our private bathroom because the mall bathrooms were super gross, and my mom would oblige because they bought a lot of things from us. I actually thought about things I could do to make her suffer, but I couldn’t because I’d really feel guilty. The other co-workers disliked her too because they sympathized with my situation, and it sucked because we all couldn’t do anything to her. Basically, the customer is always right. So yeah, worst few months of my life right there. Sometimes, she even brought my ex with her and canoodled with him in front of me just to hurt me. Luckily I ended up really happy with my current guy, and she’s suffering with my ex. Karma’s a huge bi*ch.

I love this and could take incredible office AND underwater photos!

I could take such a cool picture of that stapler with that camera.

I was put in charge of the new clerk, a guy who musta been in his late 40’s. He was a former middle manager at Denny’s it turns out, and a little bitter. What irked him the most was not the layoff, but the fact that Denny’s ‘took’ his idea. He said was THE GUY who first put together 2 bacon strips, 2 slices of toast, and two eggs AND put a sign up in the front of the Denny’s promoting the GRAND SLAM 2.99 breakfast.

I could fish eye the shit out of my underwater office if I had these items in my possession, Then finally could I truly and utterly tell all of my experience with a mermaid and how….. wait the submarine housing isn’t included! STAPLE ALL TO HELL

I work at a large campus that houses severely abused and neglected children of all ages. There is never a “normal” day at the office as crazy things happen at every turn of the bend but the most random, bad timing thing that has happened recently was when i was giving a tour to new donors and their families and telling everyone how all of our children are good kids and that all they need is a little love and patience and while I was saying all of this, a kid, right in front of us, punches the window out of one of our school buses for no reason what so ever. Good timing!There was no amount of fancy talking that could relieve how uncomfortable of a moment that was for everyone. People don’t deal with crazy very well.

i’m in a one-year residency program in philly. in our office, we celebrate birthdays once a month. at our first celebration, as we were getting ready to cut the cake, we realized that we had to look for a knife. all the sudden, one of the receptionist said “ask Sandy, she has a knife.” the next thing i know was Sandy, the secretary of our chairman, walked in with a cleaver in her hand. now we all know not to mess with Sandy, because she’s got a self defense weapon to protect herself in this ghetto neighborhood!

i have a coworker that cuts his finger nails at work. (yes, a highly NO NO for cubicle life right?!?!) so the annoying *clip* *clip* sound is matched by me with the *clip* *clip* of my stapler. how much more fun would that be with this stapler???

I was fired because my coworker threw the stereo remote at me. My boss had zero tolerance for weakness.

BEST GIVEAWAY YET!

My colleagues communicate online a lot, sometimes through facebook, oddly enough. Many of them know about how much I already love my Diana+ camera because they ask about the square format pictures on my profile. This second lomography camera is already on my wish list (and now the underwater housing will be added!)

I work in a secret government lab. If I were to post an anecdote, well, let’s just say the zombie apocalypse doesn’t even measure in suckiness to my Ikea days.

I once had a co-worker who left the office one morning to pick a fight with someone from a neighboring office. I didn’t find out until later after she was arrested.

Her name is Maeve.

Hmm.. I don’t work in an office, I work with people in home-settings, providing support to people with intellectual disabilities. One individual I work with, has had delusions in the past about her milk being sour and has subsequently poured it down the sink even though it might only be a couple days old. Recently, she complained again about her milk being sour but no one believed her. I smelled the milk and almost threw up; her refrigerator wasn’t working right and her milk was indeed sour! It’s like the boy who cried “Wolf!”

dear santa-
i’m pretty sure…that i will finally graduate college with these items if they ended up in my stocking this year…….pretty PLEASE!!!!!!! i’ve been good this year…no coal for me :)

-whitney h.

I am slowly dressing up the wolverine Mighty Mugg that sits on my desk. With a top-hat, monocle, bow tie and cane, he’s looking pretty classy

I use to work in the graphics department and while I was there I could of sworn that each character on the show “The Office” was written after each of my coworkers…guess who I was. HA! You will never know!

well..my old office job was working as a call centre rep for pensions. no cold calling just courtesy calling. any way… as me and the team worked after hours (5pm-8pm) we would be pretty much the only ones in the building, and there were only about 12 of us. Now, half way through the shift we would get rather peckish. The only two vending machines in whole place were rather useless; 99% of the time, ones order would not fall to the bottom for one to retrieve and scoff contentedly. the machine would, however, give you a refund, and that particular selection would become out of order. So, when it came to around 6:30ish, we (me and one other) would put our break time code into the phone and head down to the vending machines. Our eyes were met with loads of chocolate bars and crisp packets hanging from the metal coil, stuck, from when people had been trying to use the machine during the day. Easy pickings when we shook the machine; loads of stuff came out every night, and we went back up to the office with our arms full of sugary snacks. We did share with the rest of the office of course.

Well, this is the best giveaway so far!
I never got anything from giveaways or anything like that. I am starting to believe the I am cursed. I don’t even know anyone that won any kind of prize (too bad for my friends). Would notcot help me break through this curse? I hope so! please!

I work at home, because I like it, and now also because I have a 6 m.o. baby, and I’m breastfeeding. There aren’t many anecdotes to tell you, but I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

If you’re down about no bonus this year:
Put on some Queen Latifah - U.N.I.T.Y - And buy your colleagues $5 scratch cards - The one’s where you win 250k a week for the rest of your life.
No one will win, but at least it will distract them from the fact that you’re bumping Queen Latifa in the office on a Monday morning, getting your groove on.

Oh my, please please please pick me. If I had that lomo fisheye, I would be in heaven.

The only funny thing in my office is that staplers keep disappearing. And not just mine, from everyones desks, the photocopy room, the supply closet. I have no idea where they go because we have a high security office, but staplers constantly get taken, almost every other day! Now everyone has become extremely protective of their staplers, hiding them in their bags, playing for them in bets, trying to sneak and borrow a colleagues when needed… it’s a little bizarre!

1. sleeping in the closet and the boss asking for me.
2. being late and I just say, I’m sorry I was sleeping.
3. are you finished with the design for KIDS?
4. first day of intership and I dressed really serious and everyone at the office were crazy hippie people (just like me, but someone told me that i needed to dress really serious)
I’m tired I’m going to sleep …. zzz
pd. I’m still at the office xD

when i worked in a veterinary i used to eat the cat candys that were just for cats.

real good flavor by the way.

Most of my co-workers at my design internship usually work towards last minute deadlines. They try to “work at home” so everyone leaves early, nothing ever gets done. An exhibit for the museum opened up and they left me with tons of posters to make, tickets to cut, and etc. I just packed my bags and went to New York for 3 days. At the last day, I got a nasty e-mail from my boss. I felt guilty, but I had fun. Work sucks, just escape!

don’t work in an office. still a student. but i suppose if/when i do i’d be the girl that can’t walk and drink her coffee at the same time and end up spilling it all over myself at the office. in front of everyone..

So one day my boss decided to come over to my desk and dump a large box of gummys shaped into deli foodstuffs and I looked at him…

Stared…

… and I threw the pieces of packaged gummy deli foodstuffs at him until it became a studio versus boss gummy battle.

Some of them are still around the office, I love doing on the spot things like food fights.

This is a funny coincidence, as I work at an office that manages the importing and exporting of actual fish eyes. The fish eye business is full of fantastic photo opportunities that this camera would be perfect for.

oh man that’s not fair everyone knows nothing exciting happens at the office that’s where i go to work…or maybe i’m just in the wrong office? i really don’t want to go to work tomorrow now..wow you really have a lot of these anecdotes to read through..good luck with that..hmms i think i got funny office anecdote mixed up with wordy ramble..nuts

worked data entry for over a year, was the youngest/least socially awkward/strange. took literally over 2 months to decide arrangements for the office christmas lunch because of the 10 employees i was the only one without any food allergy/sensitivity/preference. decided to hand in my 2 weeks notice the, i thought i was handing it in the day before the office manager went on vacation for a week. so i went into work to hand in my 2 weeks realized my boss was already gone on holidays…. for 2 weeks not one—oops:)

my actual boss, when he comes and seats near my place (as well as for the other co-workers), loses his hair on my desk and pc-keyboard, if he is eating something he will spread all around crumbs and then will keep burping near your ear for like half an hour after finishing. i guess it’s the most disgusting thing that happened to me while working. O___O

I accidentally stapled my finger once. Ouch.

The camera would be perfect for capturing the softer side of my co-workers (Attorneys and Legal Secretarys) we could start a wall of photos from all the office functions (Drunk attorneys and paralegals crossed eyed and sloppy) which would be a great laugh for all us Law Clerks :o)

Bob (not the real name ofcourse) is our self-annointed IT specialist and is known for being always present but hardLY-working.

(during the orientation of the newbies)

Bob: ..i don’t mind helping with all your computer problems and all but don’t take it personally if i tell you i’m busy..

(oldies trying to hold it in)

Bob: because i’m.. busy working.

(outburst of laughter from the oldies)

quite unprofessional but hey, that’s what the newbies need to get used to :p

No office, just second year arch grad school. We’re in studio every waking hour and some of the sleeping ones. Our most recent diversion is making “weapons” to throw at the corkboard. Javelin, throwing stars (xacto blades and hot glue), and blow darts. It’s not especially safe, but neither is going crazy.

ooohhhhh……. a lomo fisheye camera……-drool-

One time at work someone was talking in Chinese to someone on their blue tooth headset and I though he was yelling at me but just mumbling. So I got up yelled at him left. Then later found out through email that he wasn’t even talking to me. That was a great next day.

When I used to work in SF our floor had no windows. The big joke was we had to call someone upstairs to find out what the weather was like. And if you’re wondering why not check online? Well, our company was to cheap to grant us access to that.

I worked at Ontario place over the summer and I have to say, it was the best time of my life, daily chores involving dumping dirty water into the lake, disguising dead mosquitos in the ice cream, nabbing a drink from the office and eating expired chips that we can’t sell. My last day of work I spent eating sausages and fries, watching 18+ movies with the managers, good times.

once a dog got into our office. a small jack russell type dog. the place went nuts, everyone lost the plot. all of us from the second floor ran down to see it. it could not be caught. had to be chased towards the open door in the end. after several attempts it finally ran out the door into the lobby.

then the security guard jumped on it and shocked it with his stun-gun. that last bit didnt actually happen

i have a collection of playmobil characters at work. today when i came into work someone had moved them around and had a little monkey with a spear attaching a tiny pig. ahh, the holiday season.

I worked at an office once.
One time, my identical twin sister stopped by, and one of my not-so-bright co-workers was amazed:

Co-Worker: “Wow, are you guys twins?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Co-Worker: “How do you tell each other apart?”

He was not joking.

That stapler is amazing! We tried to pull the “Jim Halpert” on a friend and the Jello didn’t set all the way and it filled his drawer with lemon lime goo. Besides feeling terrible for ruining all his business cards, I had to spend about 2 hrs with 409 and paper towel to get it cleaned up… while he was working. Oops. :)

SWEET JESUS THAT CAMERA IS AWESOME. I’ve always wanted a lomographic camera, I just… didn’t want to spend the money on one. :(

My little brother would love that stapler… he’s 11 and cute! Do it for the children!

Where I work (a design agency located in the corporate building of their biggest client), things seem to go from strange to stranger every day. Just when it can’t get any weirder or unbelievable, something totally unreal happens that tops it. We had a very extensive discussion one day on how maybe we’re on a hidden camera show and don’t know it. We figured that the weird little locked office that we don’t have a key to may be where the camera crew and videos are located, that most of the building is in on it, and when things seem to be working smoothly, the producers punch up the drama a notch for ratings. One week, the weirdness and stupidity got sooo bad, we figured it must be sweeps week on “our show.” Lots of laughs and giggles … but still we wonder.

I don’t have a window in my office. When I asked my boss if I could move to an area with a window to keep from becoming overly stressed at work, he took a picture of the employee parking lot on a sunny day, printed out the picture, and taped it to my wall. It really doesn’t compare.

I would totally love a fisheye cam!! I work at MySpace and the first time I came to the office I was a bit surprised at how corporate it looked from the outside.. but when you work in.. everyones little cubicles are like their own personal profiles. my little world has unicorn cartoons (charlie and friends) on one wall, power puffs on another, and little japanese vinyl toys along the wall :)not cot is always on my desktop! :)

Fish eye awesomness!

I work in an office where everyone (except for me) gets free things in the mail —like Dyson vaccums, Buddha machines, candy, DVDs, cameras, alcohol, In-N-Out Burger coupons. I’d be happy with just a stapler! My desk is sad.

It would be my pleasure to take the homeless Lomo fisheye camera off your hands! Really, it would.

I will give it a good home with plenty of love, food and water….errr….wait, wrong ad. Really though, I would give it lotsa love and a killer workout, that’s for sure. Always wanted one of those cameras. And DANG is the white one FANCCCYYY!

the fisheye camera would be a nice modern replacement for my now-obsolete SX-70

The camera proves that office life is its own weird reality. It is actually how things appear first thing in the morning before my computer is warmed up and before the bad office coffee hits my veins. We need each other to keep sane.

i hate toby.

Fisheye! I’ve been totally looking to buy one. Would be great if I could win!

Manger: Can you send this letter to The Netherlands?
Receptionist: Where’s Neverland?

I work at a small graphic design studio and urban toy vinyl boutique. We frequently have art openings and such, and as a result end up with leftover stray beers. We hold onto those beers, and every year at christmas we put them in a huge paper bag and write “Make a Wish” on it and stick it outside in the snow. Not long after that, one of the countless bums in our neighborhood gets all of his christmas prayers answered. Yea we feel pretty good about making some homeless guy’s holidays just a little bit more drunken.

working at a preschool its easy to get lost in all the fun stuff for the kids but i think these things would be great for the kids and I both.

One time, a few years back, my boss confiscated my red swingline stapler, just before making me move my desk to the basement. Long story short, that place burned down. Now I need a new stapler and a new office. Wait, that wasn’t me.

From the corner of my cube protrudes a tiny piece of wood that splintered from my desk years before i got here. It is situated such that when anyone turns the corner past my cubicle, they are subjected to this piece of wood poking at them as they walk by. Over time many layers of colorful threads (and colorful words) have accummulated on the barb of this splinter.

My co-workers tried to make me wear a “modified” girl scout uniform to work with our company’s logo all over it. I’m their “go-fer” so they pick on me a lot. It’s fun none-the-less.

I work from home, but I have a fish that’s missing an eye… the camera would be a cool thing to sit next to the tank. I may just get myself one!

Person 1: Hi! How are you doing?
Person 2: Just for e-mail, please.
Person 3: …

He’s making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty or nice…

When it comes to being a worker I’m a pretty shy character so it took me by surprise when my co-worker wouldn’t stop giving me a hard time. Jim, x-marine Nascar t-shirt tucked into his jeans with a cell phone always strapped by his side kind of guy, worked down in the shipping department. Every day he would walk into my cube and comment about my appearance; being the youngest in a company where the majority of workers are 40+ I guess I might have stood out in my skinny jeans and crazy patterned tops. During one cube visit he told me he gets other employees to try and stare at me during our daily morning meeting just to see if my face will turn red. Finally having enough of this man and his attempts to get a rise out of me, I decided to retaliate. The next day before our meeting I got some sticky notes ready and had them tucked into my schedule. Once Jim began making his faces at me one by one I pulled out stick-it notes and placed them on me. By the end of the meeting everyone was now staring at Jim while my shirt read STOP STARING AT ME JIM. YOURE A CREEP. LOOK WHOS FACE IS RED NOW.

haha all i ever did at my desk was clean it, although my boss used it a lot. One day he told me to clean the shelf next to my desk ‘cause it was to disorganized. Now my desk was always decorated with a bunch of fun, I had guys climbing up the side of the cabinets things hanging off it was totally fun. While cleaning the book shelf, one of the clips that hold up the shelf gave out and it fell on top of all the others, making a domino effect of paper & envelopes and clips and folders all over, it was like office confetti. Never have I laughed so hard, everything was destroyed, a mess everywhere. BUT TRUTH be told… My desk accessories were still climbing up my desk and hanging on for dear life. After seeing that I laughed for another 4 minutes till my boss came in and raised hell. Good Ol’ Office =)

I work alone in my office. The soft whir of computers & fax machines is just about the only sound i hear, aside from the din of the keyboard.

Occasionally the whir & clicks harmonize and make beautiful music.

but trust me, it’s a weird weird situation to get busted dancing alone in your office to no music, waiting for the fax machine.

Spent my summer working in an office. Brand new EMO center with satellite tv hooked up so they could stay in touch with the world when the storms hit.

Big boss was relatively displeased when I pointed out that satellite tv really sucks during a rain/snowstorm.

Mwah hah haaaaah

I worked in a land surveying office one summer and while I was filing papers one day, this guy came in to ask about some land being surveyed. He brought with him a 2 year old female spider monkey wearing a dress. It stole my cell phone and crawled on my bosses head. Best day of work ever…until…the monkey stuck a paper clip into an electrical socket and shocked itself. Then it was just the best day ever, period. It proceeded to freak out and run around the office with its hair standing on end until the owner finally corralled it. The monkey was ok, so it’s kosher for me to say it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I wish I could have captured all of the hilarity with my Fisheye 2 camera…

My first job out of school was with an ad agency. The easiset way I could find to adjust the HUGE drawing table height to my liking was to sit under it and move the top up and down with my head, leaving my hands free to tighten the leg knobs. This got tiring pretty quickly, so I rested my arms in my lap, as I sat cross-legged under the table. Just then, the company president (a media buyer) walked by my cube. He did a double take, and looked at me under the table, and said, “Creatives!” as he walked off shaking his head. I was also shoeless, as the concrete floors were giving me shin splints, and I needed to give my feet a stretch.

anecdote: leave the boxcutter ALONE. just don’t even START to fidget with it.

Haha, the electronic stapler would go well with my Kiddie Themed collection in Animal Crossing!

I want one…..PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me win :)

I was the toy guy at my last job. I had a whole shelf in my cube set up with various toys I had gotten through the years. From Star Wars Mr. Potato Heads to a tin Bender to Playmobile pirates, and a bunch more. Always got comments from anyone who came to see me.

I’ve worked a lot of temp jobs, but for a bit of time I was doing web design for a friend of my dad’s. He was a kooky guy and the atmosphere in the office was pretty laid back… I guess when he was younger he had done a lot of roller disco, so I assumed he had seen the movie Xanadu. As I was explaining the campy ridiculousness of the film my boss proceeded to go get a suitcase under a desk, put on funk and a pair of roller skates and start skating around the office… I miss that job.
I also need a stapler I think my mom stole mine

Once, I was entering this online contest and my boss caught me screwing around on company time, so he fired me right in the middle of my sente

I carry my camera everywhere and take pictures of everything, and I have always wanted a fisheye!

there was this 1000 square mile office i was working in. i do not seem to remember any people being around, or if they were there, they sure did not seem to much, at least not enough that i’d remember. or so it seems to me. all i do remember was lots of paper…and staplers. i remember taking to attacking all this paper with all the ugly staplers i’d always find lying magically to hand, except for one day when i really needed one. well, i hunted high and low. in one dark corner, i finally did find one stapler. looked like no stapler i’d seen, till i used it to stable a lot of papers that seemed to deal with the meltdown of the global economy and such pointless stuff. well, blow me if the damn thing did not open up my perceptions to an entirely different dimension, the moment it punctured through the papers, the tiny pinpricks seemed to open some hidden gateway to a different existence. my mind boggled, and my eyes tried to wrap themselves around my head, and my brain went into some sort of a warp. all to comprehend the magic of this new space i seemed to be peeping into. and all i was thinking was, o boy! for a fisheye camera!

I’m Self employed. But my boss is too stingy to get me a cool stapler! … Something about the economy.

WOW! WAY too many comments. I think this could be one of your best products ever. I’m not even going to try to write something. I’ll just have to buy it online! :-S

totally awesome! The staplers in my old office never worked properly.

my coworker is my work spouse. we have little post-it notes all over the office with cartoons of each other frolicking in a field of daisies (no joke).

I want it!

that lomo camera would be the perfect gift for my sister!

every single day, without fail, someone comes by my desk and says … wow, your desk is so clean. are you like … a minimalist? you’re like that temp guy in the office when he says he could clear out his desk in five minutes and everyone would forget him.

Oh my goodness…

I have been wanting such a beautiful Lomography camera for sooooo long!… I dont know what I could do! It would definitely take my mind off of the guy that chews his lunch sooooooo loud that I can’t concentrate!!!

I’m an archaeologist, so for at least part of the year, my office is outside, slinging a shovel. But we have to do something with all of the things we find, so for the rest of the year you’ll find me typing away or in the lab, sorting artifacts. Back in 2003, I was working in the Texas Archaeological Research Lab, re-labeling artifacts that were excavated in the 1970s and 80s. The lab was located in a WWII Munitions factory that was half-condemned. There was the side that was fine to wander around in, and then the dark, cordoned off area that was off-limits. Some of the paleontology labs were in the same place, so there was a big mammoth skull in a crate sitting in the hallway. Also stashed away was one of the first X-ray machines, giant and gleaming in the dark. Probably my favorite thing was the cabinet full of non-artifacts. That is, things that people brought in that were fakes, like big-foot castings and rocks with monkey faces chiseled on the front. There was also a small mound outside filled with radioactive monkey remains, but that’s a whole other story.

Anyway, so one day I was finishing off a sack of rusty nails. I hated labeling the nails because it was completely pointless, as the white nailpolish that we used as a background for tiny little black accession numbers would just flake off and leave the things as blank and useless as before. At that point I had ceased to complain, as it would just get me another sack of rusty nails to label. I reached into the archival box for the next bag and pulled out…something strange. It looked like slightly fuzzy, black, glassy fluff at the bottom of the bag. I opened it up and tried to see what it was, but couldn’t figure it out. Finally, I fished out the white paper label that someone had provided. It read:

25 Horseflies

So, I’m guessing that some archaeologist was on a terrible project in south Texas, getting bitten up, and finally just started bagging the damned things out of sheer frustration and perversity. Then it was archived in a state facility and came to me, 30 years later. Horseflies. Good times.

i had a really funny office job once. only for a week mind you. it involved me connecting a wire to a cell phone, two clicks of a mouse, disconnecting the wire. then repeating the process with the next phone. oh, it was hilarious. HAHAHAHhahahaaa…

At my previous job, an older gentleman named Peter made coffee for us every morning. He had a highly precise method of brewing, and would never tell anyone exactly what he did. It involved grinding the beans for what seemed like an eternity and catching the first bit that brewed in his thermos so he could make more than the pot was designed to. Whenever Peter was on vacation, we were basically screwed, because we all sucked at making coffee.

To spruce up our office space, we bought a beta fish. Within the week, it ate a rock and died. :( Our office hasn’t been the same since.

I was just waiting for someone to ask about an office anecdote: I know alot of people SAY that their office is just like The Office, but I’m pretty sure none of them have a “flag system”. We have weekly meetings about the status of projects, who’s managing them etc.. They are kind of the boring and long, so in order to “liven” them up, (I think that was the goal here), my boss said he had a surprise for all of us. He came to the meeting with a large brown box, and sat tapping on the box excitedly till the end of the meeting. He unveiled the box’s contents with much fanfare. What was inside? Remember Model UN back in high school-and how they had those tiny little flags on a stand? Well inside the box there were red little Model UN flags for all us, and a pirate one for him…the “flag master”. No, I’m not kidding. It gets better though, because these flags were to be our way of communicating with one another. If someone did something to delay your project, you were to put your flag on their desk. They then had to make a formal request for you to explain how you were impeding their project. By the way, there are five of us, and we sit within four feet of one another…there aren’t even any cubicle walls.
So that’s why I need some toys to distract me from reality.

I’m afraid I have no office anecdote that isn’t just depressing.

Before we got the new kitchen, there was a tiny dorm fridge shared by 20 some people that had never once been cleaned out. I had lunch leftovers, so I stuck the container on the window ledge in my office (it was early winter in Chicago, so it was probably colder outside than in the fridge). Of course, I forgot them when I went home and in the morning, there was a raven on the ledge, helping himself.

I see him all the time time now.

I love Lomography. They’ve made take photographs more fun. The stapler looks really cool. I’d make all my friends jealous if I had one.

so there I was in the office, as usual, thinking “Where’s my stapler, that’s my stapler. I told them it was my stapler.” I wandered around for like 3 hours, just muttering to myself and looking for my specific stapler, threatening to burn the building down and the like. (You know, standard work day exploits.) Then what to my surprise, BOOM! it shows up on your web site. It’s a good thing too, because I was going to have to burn the building down if I hadn’t found it :-p

BOOYAH!

BOOYAH!

every single day, the “president” of our company comes out of his office and rinses his hands using the water cooler. without fail, while doing this he says “(name of our company) sink.” like it is some sort of hilarious joke.

while it wasn’t funny the first few months that he did it, it is gaining hilarity.

i did The Office’s Jim’s jello prank on one of my co-workers - her staple. Since then it’s been a running gag, & we usually jello an office item on the birthday of our coworkers.

One day I bipped down the hall and swung around the door of my boss’s office to ask a question. There she is, her finger up to the knuckle in her nose.

So.

Umm.

I decided the best thing to do is pretend I didn’t see a DAMN thing, and she must have agreed with me, because it was NEVER mentioned.

The end.

My colleage decided to take a nap after lunch inside his parked car- he had been to a party the night before. But when he was falling asleep, he heard a *THUMP!*. A HUGE tree branch fell off from a tree just on the top of his car!

The car and the guy are OK, but you can take a big lesson from it:

- Never park under a tree!!! It might ruin your nap!

my boss makes fun of me because i have just about EVERYTHING on or in my desk (if not there, certainly in my car). once though he stopped and said to me, ‘a rose, it would be nice if you had a treasure chest to put those coins in’, thinking full well he had stumped me. well out from behind my ed grimley doll i pulled out a winnie the pooh tiny treasure chest!

so there!

Sweet!!

I love the fisheye cameras they are just so fun!

This summer at an internship I learned NEVER to piss off the secretary. I was interning at a doctor’s office, and the internship was tied to a class/seminar at school. First week we had to write an essay about what we do in our internship, and I said I mostly observe because, well, it’s a doctor’s office. Not really trained to do anything else. My teacher thought that was inappropriate and called up the SECRETARY (?) complaining about their not giving their interns enough to do. Secretary got upset for some reason, and the rest of the summer I would get called in: “Jeremy, I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind photocopying this 300 page book for me. In triplicate. I know how much you love having things to do..”

My boss showed up for work one morning totally sauced. Drank a bottle of wine for breakfast. The fisheye camera would have been perfect to document the debacle.

I’m sure there have been plenty of Office Space references here, so I’ll avoid that. Unfortunately for me, I managed the office of my family’s company for 7 years, so most of the stories there are related to the morons who worked for us, and they were out in the field and not in the office. So my lack of a story will have to be my story. Damn it.

typical convos in my office:

why is pandora playing christopher cross on my elton john station?

debbie gibson is so much better than that mall rat, tiffany.

i still never got my obama bumper sticker from my campaign donation, dammit.

if you get me kicked out of [local pub] i will never forgive you.

I guess you didnt like my office story…

Oh I wish I had the camera. Took an experimental photography class last semester and got introduced to holgas, could only watch as my friends took fancy pictures with theirs. Lucky I got a chance to play with cross-processing 35mm slide film and it turned out swell! Still, wish I had some fun cameras to shoot with, and the lomography fisheye 2 would be such a cool thing to snap with! Check out my photos at http://fotologue.jp/ifx .Thanks! - LC

Our office mascot died last year in a freak stapling accident. someone must have thought it was funny to shoot the staple gun at the fish. :(

I have a concave face and one arm.

These gifts would change my life!!

I have never worked in an office. Once I went to a funeral, though.

Nice I won !

I teach. Two girls came in for help one day when the network administrator had taken control of my computer remotely. I told the girls, who were a few numbers short of rational, that it was a new program where the mouse followed my eyes. “no way…” They were in awe. The administrator then started typing and I said it was a program that could follow my thoughts: “like a tape recorder with no talking?” Correct. By the end of the day, 16 kids had come in to see this cool new computer program and all them wanted to buy a copy. I thought about selling CD copies with a single document that read: Gotcha suckers! I like my job.

My office anecdote involves spending too much time on notcot instead of working, being an expert at alt+tabbing and posting comments to win uneccesary stuff.

I would sure like to win this. I like taking pictures and the fisheye cam would give VERY interesting pics to put on websites of mine and stuff.

i got my friend one of these for his birthday since i thot he would get creative and use it. But he still hasnt opened it yet. Should show him how its done if I had one of my own, wink wink. hehe

At a laboratory session today, I had a group of students learning to take blood samples. However, one student’d put on a glove a size or two too big and was struggling to work with the pippettes and all. I made the comment, “Do you know what they say about boys that have small hands?” And you can imagine the looks on all the boys’ faces. “They need small gloves!” I declared into their bewildered faces.

I’ve never worked in an office. Here’s to keeping it that way!

That camera is amazing; I’d carry it with me everywhere.

Not much work gets done whenever I’m in an office, but I’ll never forget the day I wasted 3 Fed-Ex packages by incorrectly placing the stamp.

Sooo preeetty.

During my internship at a design company in Mexico, my boss’s father often came into the design studio. He would always offer his wisdom and words or encouragement, instructing us to smoke weed in order to be more creative. On one occasion, this respectable engineer and business man attempted to purchase some marijuana. He arrived at work with a pack of “super strong” cigarettes, telling us he was suspected of being police and this was all he could get. It was never on in the job description to use such inspiration, however we didn’t object.

i hate working in offices. i do it, but i hate it. i’m working to change that.

When I first started my job, the financial administrator had just recently left, so I got to have their über-comfortable office, complete with wide-screen LCD monitor and oodles of desk space. Then, they hired another financial administrator and I was shunted off into a tiny rectangular desk in the corner, where my head is always at risk of being pummeled by the office door. Upon inspecting my new workspace, my boss exclaimed at the hulking beast that is my new (old) computer, complete with teeny tiny 12 inch monitor that leaves my eyes tired, and my head swollen and nauseated. And, as if things could not get any better, my office mate (the new financial administrator) is an old sour puss, too stingy to share any office supplies with me, much less politely converse. It would be nice not having to walk to the copy room to staple something. Help a sister out.

The worst part about working in my office is that the door to the bathroom is directly behind my row of cubes. When I leave my desk and walk towards the bathroom, I either return quickly… or not so quickly. Occasionally, after the 3pm deuce, I exit the bathroom through the door that leads to the elevator hall instead of back into the office and re-enter the office through the side door. This way, when I reappear at my desk everyone sitting beside me has to wonder if I actually took a deuce or if I went for a brief walk after taking a whiz. I find peace in their uncertainty.

I once held a job as a political intern for the seedy Mayor of the city next to the one where I currently live. I worked in his office three days a week from 9 to 5 basically filing papers, inputting data and answering phones. Often times, I would have to take messages for him on a slip of paper in order to elude the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). However, it seemed that every time I needed to jot something down on a sheet of paper, all the pens in the office would be nowhere in sight. I would resort to frantically scramble around the office desperately seeking one out like an antidote to a fast acting poison or I would simply attempt to memorize it without writing it down. Sometimes I would pretend that if I simply wrote out the message with my fingertip, it would help me remember the message. Needless to say, the Mayor didn’t receive a lot of his messages accurately. Every night before I left the office, I would stock my desk with pens and the next day they would disappear. To this day, I still don’t know where the pens go. Damn pen fairies.

Working for a nonprofit meant long hours and lots of office projects that profit sector equivalent positions might have considered “below them”, but it also meant occasional dance parties in the gallery, pranks, and singing along with Jes’s phone: “Streetlight People in the Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!”

At my office once, a co-worker was working late by himself and forgot to enter in the security alarm code when entering our office. There’s two minutes for you to enter the code before the cops are called (and typically are there within another minute - literally. It’s quite impressive how efficient they are). Anyway, my co-worker forgot the code and did haven’t his cell phone number to call the boss for the code. So he ran down to the nearest corner coffee shop, just two stores up the street since that’s where our boss frequented… however, no dice. He wasn’t there. So my co-worker ran back to the office to give it another go with the code. Maybe 5 seconds after he arrived back the office the cops showed up so see my co-worker mid-run through the office, sweating, out of breath and trying to convince them that he worked there and didn’t just break in, rob the place and try to high-tail it out of the before the cops arrived. It’s a funny mental picture. Especially cause he looked caught red-handed.

One day, Doy the Boss told me I might be laid off because of the economic recession. I asked him why me? He told me i had too many other priorities. I asked him, why not the other writer who couldn’t write. He told me she was always available 24/7. Availability trumps quality in the real world, hunny. So I resigned the next day because of my Hurt Pride. And now I am with the Jobless with a capital J, wondering: If I had been available 24/7, like McDonalds, would I have still been in the Lovely Lay-off List? I doubt it. I’m not some damned fastfood store on call day and night. The end.

underwater electronic stapling

I would use the electric stapler to attach papers out of order and take a fisheye of their faces. that is all I want and need in my life.

I work from home now, but my last office job was in a newspaper. My boss was a crazy man. really. when he had a good day, got a scoop or something, he would walk around the office and bark like a dog. on bad days - you dont want to know. Anyways, the newspaper was loosing money faster than NASDAQ, so we had to bring everything from home - coffee, milk, toilet paper and all.he wouldnt let us go to lunch breaks. it was horrible. when i resigned, I felt i have to have a little payback. so i took with me the only stapler the office had. a green one, that was moved from hand to hand all day long. My friends told me he didnt buy a new one until a week past, and spent most of the week looking for it…

The automatic stapler at work is plugged into the same outlet as all of our other small office equipment. We’re probably asking for a short, but it’s always funny when the stapler goes off when you are using the automatic pencil sharpener. That’s how you know your pencil is sharp!

While working for a financial research firm… I’d get so bored I would print these 500+ page documents just to see how far I could get different staples into it. YEAH… I was a dork… but I did recycle it all for what its worth

Whilst studying to never become an Architect. I worked at an ice-creamery between odd design jobs. This wasn’t just your average ice cream shop. This was one of those cold rock, build your own heart blockage deals. I had began to make quite the living off my design work and decided it was no longer the job for me. I took the challenge of not making an ice for an entire shift, I then decided that I would see how long it would take before someone noticed. 2 weeks and a promotion later I quit, still not having made a single ice cream.

I have only had ONE office job in my life, and that was working for a jewelery store here in Portland. They needed a salesperson with experience with databases…I had minimal experience with databases, but very quickly became their database bitch, building their Filemaker Pro database, re-organizing, and doing a whole lot of data entry. It was such a relief when customers would come through the door—I was up and out of my chair in no time. The best part of that job was definitely working with customers, learning the insides of a jewelry retail store business, and learning about stones. The worst parts? Sitting in a little dungeon all day, entering addresses and prices, with the occasional scare from a really loud air compressor turning on and off.

Well, the closest i’ve been to an office job would be my current one. One woman is a fat, gross, slighty smelly cow of a human and has a habit of repeating everything she says several times, as though you didnt catch it the first time.
So one day I’m talking about gay marriage, because I’m reading the paper, and she says”Now we all adults here…Now I gots me a pussy, but i couldn’t see me layin up next to another woman all naked like that…” Meanwhile, in Matts bile duct, a stirring occurs…So i let her babble on and make me sick cause i have no excuse to leave the office.
A few weeks later me and another guy i work with are down in the office and the topic is mentioned again from the newspaper, and she says “Now we all adults here…” And I immediately make a break for the door. Later the other guy comes up and says “Dudue why did you ditch me in there with that?!?! That was just aweful!”

A good friend of mine work in an office for about three years together. Being University students we work part time during the year and full time in the summer. Most of the staff have never really liked us but we stick with it. We tend to waver from our tasks and our desks opting to making silly collages with the fax machines and photocopiers (faxing multiple acetate print out at the same time makes for a great time as well as photocopy ones face and other office supplies always changes them and makes your walls more interesting). For a while we would share our lunch together in the lunch room and often be accosted by our fellow employees to get back to work. One day we had rearranged the staff furniture (tables on top of tables and lockers face to face) and someone got quite angry at us. So what did we do? The only thing logical to do when faced with an angry large man who is angry he cannot get his food in the fridge. I got on my friends shoulders making us as big as we could and we started to yell at him and stamp our feet. This is the normal way to act if confronted by a bear in the wilderness and so we thought it would work in the office. It did, after a while our shouting and unwavering nerves tired the large bear out and he left the lunch room. Needless to say we are not allowed to take our lunch breaks together anymore. We are left to sending faxes from 10 feet away from each other. sigh.

At my office I sit right in the next desk over from my boss (small office). We have fun sometimes trying to communicate all day by using office space soundboards and crank calling pizza hut. I know he would get a kick out of my new stapler and camera!

That’s ridiculous.

Where I work there is this teenage boy. This teenage boy likes to steal my stapler and hide it everywhere. Usually it’s under bookshelves or in the coffee pot but today he walked in extra mischievous and took it and hid it on top of the lights. Too bad I’m 4’ 11” and can’t really reach that high.

when something weirder than life happens at work my coworker always say: i swear you cant make this sh@#$t up!!!

i work alone in an old closet with the walls painted black. upside, i get to look at the art im digitally retouching and listen to this american life. (who doesn’t have a crush on ira glass!) downside, i sometimes think how scary it would be if i fell asleep and was forgotten about and therefore locked in the black room for the night. and now that i’ve vocalized that fear, its bound to happen. well, after finally getting my first fisheye camera a few years back, the come out with these baller versions that probably don’t break every two seconds! please can i have a new one?

i basically live in the office, this stuff will make my experience so much better.

i was a horrible office worker. i worked in an oil refinery office the summer after i graduated high school and between fixing the jammed copiers and setting off the automatic stapler just to hear the sound, my coworker and i would go to a keypad encoded file room and sleep all day. sometimes i feel bad about the money they paid us that we didn’t work for, but in the end, they were basically just helping us save for college so i kind of consider it an investment in the future.

Damn…I am a student, I don’t have an office anecdote. How about ‘people watching The Office all day are lame’?

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE !

love it

So I was interning at an ad agency, and over the intercom I heard “Mr. [Soandso] has a very large… Phone-call on line one.” It was hilarious.

I used to work in an office in a middle school and I had my own desk, which was cool. By my second week working there, they took the desk away and my boss would get angry at me because I would work on the counter. By the end of the school year, everyone got electric staplers except me. However, I seemed to be the only one who knew how to use it. People would ooo and aaah whenever I would finish my jobs 10 times faster. This may not be funny, but I really enjoyed being a magician for them haha.

Very first week of work at a new office job. I meet my manager and boss for the night shift, we are sitting off in the cube farm near the back when all the corporate suits come in back from their dinner break. Corporate had been in the office all week apparently. Everyone was upset because with corporate around, work has to be done. Out of the blue my new manager slides a piece of scrap paper over towards me. Looks at me very quickly and taps twice on the paper. I slide it over to me and peer quickly at it. “Corporate Sucks!” written boldly on the scrap. I let the situation go, and sort of ignored it. Only until about 3 months later. Randomly one night during a dinner break I leaned over and asked my manager if she remembered that time she passed me the note. She recalled how foolish and ridiculous it all was and began to laugh so hard I had to push her rolling office chair to the ladies room because she was afraid if she stood she’d pee her pants.

I had an office job where we inputted a lot of personal user info, which of course leads to very hilarious names. The most memorable of them was Kittiporn. Like, that was his first name. Kittiporn. I wish I had saved the entire list. Those were good times.

Oh the fisheye camera is so much fun. Give’s a playful look to any picture.

HOW TO SURVIVE THE OFFICE aka WHAT I DID THIS MORNING:

1. Waste time by trying to repair those sliders on crappy ziplock bags that holds your documents. This should take off 30mins from your mundane working hours.

2. Look busy when the boss walks past by tapping your fingers on your chin with a puzzled frown, while staring at the computer. It helps when you’re actually thinking how to score that awesome giveaway on an online contest.

3. Pray that your boss will not know your pseudo name while checking out the awesome website that you’ve told him about a few weeks ago and realise you were really wasting time when repairing the ziplock bags.

If I win I promise to make underwater fish eye porn.

Maybe.

At the emergency room where I volunteer, a patient was wheeled in who was clearly out of it. I asked him if he knew the date; he didn’t. So I asked, “Do you know what season it is?” He thought for a moment. “Baseball?”

A colleague at the nursing home was excited about the English lit class he was taking at night school.

“We’re reading Shakespeare,” he said.

“Great,” I replied. “Which one?”

“William.”

When I used to work at an exotic pet shop, I was in charge of grabbing the doomed rats and mice and crickets for the customers pet beast back at home. My boss would holler at me from the cashier to the back, he would merely tell the customer “Aleks will get you the 5 jumbo rats you’re looking for, for your pet boa” The customer would patiently wait by the cashier, while I would finish handling whatever pest in the storage room. Finally, I would walk all nonchalant to the customer and ask for what they needed; “You’re Aleks?” they would always say, sometimes taken off guard. They never expected a 4’11, slim little 15 year old, who wore her hair straightened neatly down would dare put her hand in an abyss pit of rats, grab them (2 or more at a time) and stuff them into a cardboard box. I can tell you, it never got old helping the customers—I loved surprising them. I can tell they were expecting something different than the Aleks they got.

So the new girl seems to be getting complete and total favour over me, despite my working there two years longer than she has. All because she’s one of the secretary’s good friends.

I have a habit of talking to myself (but I make sure to do it only when no one else is around). I was at work and my coworkers who worked in the same room were not there that day, so I began talking to myself as usual. in the afternoon, I got called away because they were giving out free samples of the puzzles on exhibit (did I mention I worked at an art gallery/museum?). I walked back into the room examining the puzzle and singing “puzzle time! puzzle time! it’s puzzle time!” luckily for me, my co-workers had just returned. yes, they all stared at me.

need it.

So I work for company where one of our values is Be Genuine (including your quirktastic self) and you can believe that we embrace it. My cube-neighbor practically turned his cube into a dorm room and I have home-made giant chopsticks and a fisherprice basketball goal in mine. These two additions would be perfect!

In the summer, my office is the forest.

For the time being, I’m working at the university where the age of lab equpiment reveals the researcher’s length of employment - it’s always the shiny and new when they start out. My supervisor’s computers are about 15 years past their prime, and we have boxes 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 inch disks collecting dust. Naturally, our stapler is at least as old, needs much coaxing to stab through stacks of paper.

In the summer, I breathe blackflies at the office.

The office pours and hails and we carry our food and water (all 12L of it) to the office. I bend over for a dime: I plant trees for tuition. Let me share my office with you through a fisheyed lens - let me share the experience of planting through raspberry bushes, the days of trudging through swamps, the working through snow and sun.

I used to drop coffee off at my mom’s office every other day for her. There was a receptionist that absolutely knew my name but would refer to me as a new name every time I arrived. I have no idea why.

I’ve been in the lab for 5.5 hours working on a photo project…
Browsing notcot while the stupid slow scanner scans.
I feel like a robot and have wanted a fisheye camera since I heard Bruce Gilden speak a couple days ago.

Lomo Fisheye Lens OOH OOH OOH!!!!! Everyday action on the desk and the office! Visualize!!!! The camera in front of my face looking out at others!

Oh, man, I HAD one of those staples and it broke, years ago! I actually bought FOUR of them from a discount bin at ToysRus, and gave all but one away. I’ve been looking for another one ever since — so glad you posted this link!

i used to be a optometrist technician. I would have to create new files for new patients. one day, a dude named Brian came in, and he and I were so busy chatting, that I unknowingly wrote Brain on all of his tags!!!! i was so embarrassed and made new tags when he was done with his exam. Sorry to all of the Brians out there, as I’m sure this is an annoyance to you. :P

Sing-a-long request:
I once had a camera it could take photos.
I would carry it everywhere with me.
I could happily snap along to any sing-a-long until i dropped in the toilet peeing.

I stapled my ear to my cork board. Nuff said. I think i need the electric stapler more than anyone

Well, I work for the fed. gov’t, so there’s not alot of fun anecdote-y type stuff that goes on there. But I would love both of these giveaways!!

Guess the best office anecdote I’ve been around is from the time when I moved into my office. A guy who had been there for 35 years was retiring, and left all of his stuff when he was gone. He was the IT guy, but knew nothing about computers or servers or IT. He relied on computer books and PC magazine, of which his whole collection I was tasked with cleaning out. The majority of them were from the 80s, and some were published before I was born (‘79)! No wonder no one’s computers worked and the server crashed monthly.

I thought the comments would be about the camera but since we’re telling office stories…. I don’t have any.

I’m working at a design studio currently redesigning a multitude of packaging for a office supply company. And with all the samples, so far we’ve had numerous rubber band wars (thanks to the deadly giant rubber bands), a rubber band slingshot made between 2 desk legs, and have begun covering everything in sticky notes. Who said office supplies were boring?

Well, at work, the temperature is always rising. We work at retail, so the thermostat can’t be controlled by us lowly minions.

So it’s freezing outside (everyone is wearing parkas, mittens, hats, scarves) and we are doddling inside the store in T-shirts. Its hilarious. It’s still going on til this day. 70F and we just approached 80F. New record! Soon it will be summer inside the store while its snowing outside. What a store. :D

That is the coolest stapler I have ever seen. Too bad that wasn’t around when Office Space came out.

I work in a cliche office environment, where we actually have things like “clean up after yourself” signs on the microwaves, diversity training, and sensitivity training. As a result, The Office is less entertaining and has become a pesky reminder of my life. To make time pass by quicker, my coworker and I send outlook emails to explore all of outlook’s features. One time, we exchanged entitled, “THIS MESSAGE WILL SELF-DESTRUCT,” using Outlook’s expiration feature. It did not self-destruct. Way to disappoint, Outlook, Microsoft, *world*.

I work at a desk in the dorms of my school. So it’s less of an office job and more of a “security” job. I could use these tools for endless entertainment to keep me awake during those long grave shifts. Lots of pictures with bags under my eyes, and stapling all the package slips together from the recycling bin would be great fun.

i liked when i used to NOT work in an office. I worked at a golf course and and we could just drive a golf cart off into the woods and take a nap or race them at night. Now that’s a good kind of “office” the good ol outdoors.

the stapler would be pretty sweet in my studio now though, and the fisheye needs to live with his lomo friends, the holga, and diana that are already here.

office anecdote?

one time i impulsively lashed out at a rival employee for the slightest whiff of irresponsibility, and they responded by reporting me to our boss. only, the boss agreed with me and my competitor got reprimanded and looked twice as wrong for trying to implicate me in misbehavior.

just goes to show, a little bit of crazy correctly applied can be a boon.

Working in an office with 98% women is starting to wear me down.

Yes. I’m a chick. I should maybe not be so affected by this, but there it is. The level of estrogen here is killing me. Since we’ve gotten rid of almost all the tabloids - there’s a few contraban ones that the overnight staff has squirreled away - they’ve turned to making their own drama with their co-workers. I do not care who gave who a dirty look or who doesn’t like so-and-so. I care if you do your job or not. The end.

Also, if another one asks me if I’ve read “Twilight”, why I haven’t, when I will be, I’m going to projectile vomit. The Harry Potter cult didn’t seem as bad as this. Maybe it’s the romance angle of it.

Here’s a good one. At my office, I am sure like most, people are always trying to “surprise” people for their birthdays by setting up a fake meeting and the SURPRISE! Oh it’s a cake and not a real meeting. Well one of my co-workers birthdays happens to be on April 1st [april fools day]. So the idea was that we were going to pretend it was someone else’s birthday, and not the actual birthday person. We filled up the fake bday-ers cubicle with balloons, hung streamers, and told everyone in the office about what was going on. At our usual meeting, the actual birthday celebrater knew that people were going to burst in sooner or later and start singing to him in an attempt to “surprise” him for his birthday. But when they burst in, they went straight for the fake birthday go-er and it was amazing. The look on the real birthday boy’s face was priceless, he had no idea what was going on. The cake even said the other persons name!
So in conclusion, I think that these awesome and fun gadgets would really compliment our work environment of taking every day things and making them seem not so every day. Plus we could have had fish eye photos to document this all!

Hi I stapled my shirt to a stack of papers the other day. It was really funny to everyone but me. This has happened before. If I have a really cool stapler I wouldn’t mind being stapled to things.

That camera, “it will be mine … oh yes, it will be mine!”

“you can’t affoard it! LIVE IN THE NNOOW!”

Mundane office furniture has the capacity to look awsome depending on the way you look at it. You know those hinged stapler removal thingies? They kind of look like a snake head with huge fangs close up. If you want an eraser and you come to the States from the UK (as I have), you’ll ask for a ‘rubber’ as it’s called across the pond, getting many weird looks from female co-workers. Automatic pencil sharpeners are also awsome…but for the wrong reasons. What about a sqidgy, stress-relieving keyboard? Stress relief with every tap…

I took over a computer from a coworker and the dictionary had thousands of words added to it by the former owner. Most of them were made-up swears or combinations of other swears, but there were a lot of just misspelled words. It made it really hard to write anything when mistakes like ‘definetly’ would go through.

i once worked a 9 to 5 job that included many exciting duties such as collating, counting booklets into groups of 10, filing old receipts, data entry and stapling. i was the office gopher. i would be sent all over the building to do the trivial tasks of whatever department needed me. stapling took up most of my time, however. it was the bane of my existence! i did this job for over 3 years. ive stapled over 10,000 documents. this adorable colorful stapler would be an exciting gift for the young paduwan who took over my position. :D especially because its automatic! hello, 10,000 documents ago the office couldnt have invested in one of these to ward off my premature carpel tunnel?! i shake my fist at that office job!

and that sweet camera would definitely work perfectly with my new job.. cakes never looked so good when photographed through a fisheye! so all in all everyone gets something out of this one! paduwan less the carpel tunnel and me with a snappy new camera.
:D

I would only take pictures of my cats and bf with this, my art is weird.

People in my office seem to love to print out and waste an obscene amount of paper. Even after putting up a sign begging people to not waste paper (literally waste about a full ream every two weeks), the wasting did not end.

They print out driving directions, personal emails, bank statements, IM’s, love letters, etc…and instead of at least throwing these things away in the recycling bin directly below the printer table, they leave it next to the printer.

So what i do is, i take them and find the good ones (personal emails, IM’s, Pictures, driving directions) and start posting them around the office while blocking off the personal information. I also like to edit them with sharpies to make them more juicy.

Thank god we have a really cool and laid back atmosphere.

this has caused some laughs, and some shudders of fear. More importantly, I have noticed a smaller waste of paper.

it was a long time back, in my mother’s office, where i would get back from school and do my homework there. usually i would ditch homework and play around with whatever my imagination could find, usually stationary. until one day i got my finger jammed in a circular hole underneath a regular stapler. it turned purple and i still didn’t want to say anything until she heard me cry and my finger was swollen like a whale. i wish i had a camera back then to show how it was, a fisheye would’ve been a plus to the effect my finger had (i’m still typing with it). bottom line, no manual staplers for me anymore..

NO OFFICE ANECDOTE HERE….but a short and amusing or interesting story about a real person or incident in college::: we JUST LAST WEEK did pinhole cameras which give a fisheye effect on light sensitive paper inside the camera! It would be a twinkly story to tell later in life if I won a Lomography Fisheye 2! esp. the white edition! Plus Photography’s my major!!! It’s the truth! And I love free stuff. Pick Me Purdy Please!!

They took my stapler…

As my army buddies and I stand around a water cooler we chat about, among other things, that we feel like we should be in an army commercial. FLASH! A bunch of business types standing around a water cooler joking and then a screen swipe to the same people standing in the freezing cold drinking from canteens and a water jug off the back of a Humvee. I think it is funnier in my head.

I used to work for Student Accounts at my university. On the first day, my boss had me filing papers and doing data entry. Half way through the data entry, I stopped and walked over to his office.

Me: Hey, Mark?

My Boss: Yeah?

Me: You got any heavy boxes that need to be moved?

My Boss: What’s the matter?

Me: I just realized I can’t stand filing papers or data entry.

My Boss: Well, this is an office.

Me: You don’t have any garbage that needs dumping? I’ll even shovel fertilizer.

My Boss: … I’ll see what I can do.

I spent the rest of the semester hauling boxes across campus for archiving. :D

I used to work with someone who refused to stand up. Instead he scuttled around on his chair, no matter how far he had to go—and we worked in a building that took up an entire city block. Later, I saw this behavior parodied on an episode of the Office, and I knew I had truly made it.

So this one time, I was in my office, sipping my coffee, when-

Oh shit, I don’t have an office. Well damn.

err… over the summer I decided to smoke during my lunch break with a co-worker. I came into the office singing “china king! china kiiing” because we had just gotten some chinese food. luckily it was a pretty layed-back office and somehow no one noticed. (Y)

At my last job I was sexually harrassed by a creepy IT guy. When I brought it up with HR, it was suggested that I confront said IT guy. I was already uncomfortable near him and didn’t really feel like confronting him. On the other hand, if I had this stapler at the time perhaps I would have felt compelled to take matters into my own hands! No one messes with a girl with a stapler!

in the main computer lab at my university, there are these really hilariously aggressive automatic staplers. almost every time i go up to use them, there is someone struggling to figure out how exactly they work, only to have their papers mauled in the process.
maybe the transparency would help?? maybe the university should invest in some of these?

In the military I learned the art of tactical acquirement- it’s a skill I’ve brought to my corporate america Job. Just because I’m at the low end of the corporate ladder doesn’t mean I can’t have the sweetest office gadgets. You’re then envy of your boss when your the one with the Aeron Chair, the flash stapler, hip tape dispenser, and dual monitors to surf Notcot on the company time.

In the office where I work, my desk is situated opposite an older gentleman who has a propensity for grunting, wheezing and making an assortment of other noises. It makes work interesting at times, and I’m thankful for my ear buds and Pandora. He is good for a laugh, though, because he’ll often nod off in his cube, and when I’m talking to one of my other co-workers, we’ll notice him snoozing. It makes an otherwise listless day a little more amusing. Now just think about the great fisheye photos I could take of the old dude sleeping in his cube. Good stuff.

So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life…

Haha. I couldn’t resist.

I once worked in a high profile pricey hotel. Jon Bon Jovi was staying there when he was on tour. He had an alias so no one was able to figure out what room he was staying in. I had these groupies (who looked like they mus have been groupies from ‘84) book a night in the hotel and come down and bug me for his room number which I always replied with ” Jon who? he is not a guest here, sorry.” The morning he left, he and his band mates checked out at 6am. The lobby was full of people and you could have heard a pin drop as everyone stopped, was silent and stunned when the same groupies came down at 9 am in acid washed denim skirts, white beer stained wife beaters, blond teased hair, blue eye shadow, black mascara running down their cheeks covered by the open white robes and slippers provided in the bathroom by the hotel asking if he had check out.

This is my first job at a big office, and who would have know there actually is water cooler chat!

Awesome. My desk could use both of those. I already have a Snowball mic running 24*7 at my desk to record random conversations. These would be a great addition. I recently captured one of our founders saying that his first recorded sentence as a child was something like, “I want what I want, and that’s what I want…”

It’s weird that you asked for an office anecdote today, as I have recently been missing office life. I mostly work from home or in a one room office with only two other people, and I’ve really been missing the late nights at a busy newspaper office. One particular thing I miss is this random golf club we kept in the office. Every time someone became frustrated, they would take the golf club and hit the couch with it, and these huge dust clouds would emerge from the old couch.

I think I’ve seen the fisheye camera in Urban Outfitter before (I think…). Very cute toy~!! LOVE IT

At my work I am known as the “quirky” girl. This is based soley on the fact that I have fun little vinyl trinkets that adorn my desk while everyone else is strictly business. Pardon me for expressing my personality! Anyways, before one of my co-workers switched departments (he trained me) he gave me what appeared to be two sheets of head-shots for a guy only know by the image names “william_123.” Next to each of the images, all either very different or subtly so, was an emotion or feeling. And so I have a very unique mood indicator as a gift from my co-worker who “got me.” The difference between ecstacy and hate is a slight smirk away.

When I worked at my old job, I worked in the back-room of a library, so basically I did all the boring mundane tasks: stamping date due cards, going through library card applications, shelf reading and all that jazz. Whenever I would need a stapler, I couldn’t find it because it was the stand beige and it camouflaged with all the office furniture. If I had a crazy stapler like that imagine how easy it would have been to locate. As for camera… I just really really really want it badly. Again, me being a starving first year design student, I can’t afford crazy and cool toys like this (YET! I’m remaining optimistic!)