Disgrace in the workplace

Let’s face it. If you fall within the demographic of this Lifestyle section, it is highly unlikely that you are currently working your dream job. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re just like me, slowly and desperately crawling your way up to what our superiors like to call “the middle.”

Most, if not all, of us aren’t working the job we want. Our current occupations are the means to an end, tiny pebbles of stepping stones to that elusive bigger picture. We are interns and entry-level rank and filers working for The Man or mid-level moneymakers stuck on a career path we’re just not that into.

Dominic, a close friend and fellow journalist, was, in my opinion, one of the most promising feature writers in our program. When we spoke online a few months back, he had been working the children’s shoe section of a major retail company to pay the bills.

“I f***ing touch kids’ feet all day and act like I care about these customers who have more money than I do,” he said. “While I’d like to find a journalism gig in Los Angeles, they are few and far between and the ones in Boondocks, U.S.A. are to report on beehives, butter eating contests and corn cob robberies. I take a deep breath, then put on a fake front like I am happy to sell your annoying ass daughter a pair of Uggs ballet flats. Sad days, but that’s life.”

When you’re confined to a cubicle, constantly watching the clock and questioning if all these “responsibilities” are taking a giant dump on the career you envisioned for yourself back when you were a bright young thing, the urge to tear the joint up is inevitable. After a while, it seems pretty pointless to fight it.

I’m not talking about setting your boss’s wastebasket on fire or photocopying your butt cheeks and plastering them all over the idea board. That shit will get you fired. I’m talking about the cheeky fun we have to help us get over the fact that we’ve compromised our ideals to act like starving hookers clawing for singles in a cash grab machine. For our sanity and sense of self-worth, it’s nice to take an occasional breather from the daily grind to be ridiculous, make mischief and see what you can get away with.

Office (Un) Dress Code

I cut things a bit too close when I came into work two weeks ago. On the days I am not producing panty-dropping literary masterpieces, I moonlight as a marketing liaison/substitute receptionist/office bitch for an internationally recognized beauty services company. Does it sound fancy? It isn’t. My responsibilities include pimping our services to social groups and student unions that eventually stop returning my phone calls. My “office” is in the brand new salon in Central, which would be awesome if I weren’t the only person in it due to a major staff shortage.

So I had slightly overslept two weeks ago and in anticipation of some miserable Hong Kong weather, threw on leggings, leather boots, a men’s white button-down shirt, a chunky belt and just about every necklace I owned, then ran to catch the train to work. To my surprise and utter disdain, I emerged from the subway into 73-degree weather. I muttered curses under my breath like a crazy homeless person as I trudged uphill towards my building. By the time I got there, my shirt was drenched and stuck to my back and the makeup I had smeared onto my face was melting into my cleavage.

Since the new office was unoccupied, I decided to blast the air-conditioning and strip all the way down to my leggings and black undershirt. I had also purchased some chocolate donuts from my favorite bakery that morning, which I proceeded to scarf down since I had my white shirt off anyway. It was during that mid-munch moment that I realized I looked like a deranged jazz dancer who was emotionally overeating on her break. That or a reject from the Black Swan casting call for extras. “If your boss walks in right now, your ass is so fired,” I thought to myself. “Thank God you’re all alone here.”

I was feeling pretty damn pleased with myself until I looked up and saw the building’s CCTV camera looking me right in the chocolate powder-covered face. I’ve since been informed that CCTV footage is only checked if something drastic happens. Let’s hope I never start a fire in here by accident.

Married To Her Job (Not!)

While I may have been a tad underdressed for my day job, my best friend from grad school, Irma, once overdressed for hers. In the summer of 2009, a group of my grad school friends and I interned for different companies in Hong Kong. Irma, my roommate, was placed in an internship with an entertainment magazine run by the worst boss a person could ever ask for. Mr. McSketchy, as I’ll refer to him, was an employee’s worst nightmare with his volcanic mood swings, inappropriate comments and unreliable nature. Since the magazine had been around for over a decade, Mr. McSketchy was notorious in the publishing industry for bullying his interns and not paying his employees on time.

“He sometimes didn’t show up ‘til mid-afternoon,” Irma’s former co-worker told me. “So our one-hour lunch breaks often turned into two-hour gossip and bitch sessions.”

“We did so much random stuff in that office (because he was never there),” said Irma.

Once, she found a random wedding dress hanging in the corner of their office. None of the other staff could explain how it got there and what it was still doing there. Irma decided to take advantage of Mr. McSketchy’s absence and decided to try it on. Her impromptu fashion show led to an on-the-spot photo shoot, the photos from which still grace her Facebook page as fond memories while working for the worst boss ever.

Crime of Boredom

Before his last year of university, my British friend Steve took a job as an office temp to make some extra cash.

“(The company) basically does loads of things that everyone would assume the government did,” he said. “My stuff was all about coordinating people to go out and fix council houses and answer phone calls from angry people wanting to know why their dustbin hadn’t been picked up.”

Steve’s job turned out to be so riveting and intellectually challenging that he ended up walking away with much more than a paycheck and a sense of accomplishment.

“I stole things,” he said. “Basically because I was bored and because I could.”

Actually, it was because he didn’t like working there and felt that eight quid an hour simply was enough to compensate his boredom.

During his stint as an office temp, Steve stole a keyboard, a mouse, a landline, two pairs of headphones, around three staplers and a crap-ton of pens and stationery. This was fairly easy for him because the office enforced a “desk hopping” policy that rotated employees around the office under the impression it would improve efficiency.

“I also stole a packet of chocolate biscuits from the fridge,” he said. “Because they belonged to a co-worker who was an arsehole.”

Steve now works for Mr. McSketchy, who has since lost his office.

Don’t Care Where the Boss is, Baby

The moral of the mischief is that all work and no play turns you into a hatchet-swinging psychopath who will die alone, half-buried in snow and looking super creepy. Sure, none of us are really where we want to be, career-wise. We’re still on the way there. Some of us have suckier jobs than others, but there’s still a ways to go before we can finally give the finger to that guidance counselor who told us we’d end up serving cheeseburgers and soggy fries on rollerskates. It’s all part of the journey, no?

So if you must, be a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. But don’t be afraid to be a rule breaker.

Live a little. It’ll make being trapped in that cubicle way more worth it for now.

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E-mail the author at Francesca.ayala@gmail.com. She likes meeting people she can share donuts with.