Elevator Etiquette

Friday afternoon?

Must be bitch-about-dayjob o'clock.

I work in a beautiful office, 49 floors above the city with views out to the harbour. The views I enjoy are from the newly designed 'break room' which has its own coffee machine, fridge, chocolate machine, PLASMA TELEVISION SCREEN (He-Llo Jerry Springer at lunch) and microwave and dishwasher.

The catch is, that to enjoy this breathtaking vista, I have to travel 49 floors in a small box with other people at least four times a day.

Today, we talk elevator etiquette.

The opening of the elevator door to let you in is not your cue to make a call on your mobile and have a business meeting in a VERY LOUD VOICE on your way up to your office. Your office, by the way, is the BIG room with the HEAVY WOODEN DOOR that you insisted upon having because you didn't want people overhearing your business meetings in the first place.

The same goes for mindless conversation. If you have nothing else to comment on apart from the weather, keep your damn mouth shut.

DON'T fart silently just before you step out of the lift. We all know it was you.

Don't smugly flaunt your yoga mat while you travel to your lunchtime kundalini class. So you have a hobby. Big deal. I have one too and it doesn't involve dressing in a leotard and trying to touch my fanny with my forehead.

If you spawned recently and are bringing back the contents of your uterus in a big fuck-off pram for work colleague show-and-tell, don't expect me to make room for you in an already overcrowded lift and don't expect me to gurgle over your beady-eyed bawling offspring.

Personal Space. It's a legitimate term. Look it up.

If the lift doors open on the way down and there are wall-to-wall people, DON'T try to squeeze in. You may fit but some poor bastard at the back has just intimately become acquainted with the groin-level railing to accommodate your sizeable arse.

For the building owner: You have built an impressive monument to mindless work. You have given views to minions and bestowed a awe-inspiring piece of architecture worth millions of dollars to many people. So, after all that work, don't ruin it by piping what sounds like Enya on crack through the speakers of the lifts in your building. This is not the 80s and we are not on hold. Just. Don't.

Have a nice ride.

What manager are you?

To digress first: this morning I broke the photocopier. The good thing about working in such a huge place is that your accountablity is directly proportionate to who was around to see you do it. Not only did no one see me but I made a big deal out of being the one to report it to support services so it actually looked like I cared.

Manager types:

The 'but why aren't you psychic' manager:

When you lean around the corner of your desk and yell at my desk 'did you print out the email from Glen this morning?' you mean 'Did you print out the email that Glen sent me yesterday which I haven't yet emailed to you so you can print it out?'

This manager is related to the 'time speeds up when i get you to do something it could have taken me half the time to do myself' manager:

Part of my job description is to print out the emails that my boss flags to be printed in his inbox. This means that at regular intervals throughout the day I have to go into my boss's inbox and print out and sort emails and then place them on his desk in front of him so he can yell at me when he can't find them. It has never been brought to his attention that the time it takes to actually flag the email matches exactly the time it takes to press the 'print' icon on his screen.

The AC also has this problem although it is labelled 'I've never had a secretary before so i can't distinguish between work I should do myself and work I should get her to do' syndrome:

Dear AC: if you want me to replace a date throughout an entire document, you really don't need to sit down with me and go through the entire document changing the date by hand in front of me. I promise I won't forget the date every time I turn the page. This is one of the skills I have acquired through the years of working as a senior secretary at partner level. But if it makes you feel important, I will tolerate it. Especially as you are a cute man who is perched on my desk.

The '9 different types of urgent' manager:

As a grown woman who is able to walk and talk at the same time, I pride myself on the skills I have acquired through the years. However, I am still stumped when you come out of your office to tell me to print something urgently and then go back in your office and close the door to have a confidential meeting. Should I print it out and burst in and hand you the document? Is it that kind of urgent? Or is it more the urgent stylings of printing it out to have it waiting on the desk when you storm out of your office on your way to a meeting you haven't scheduled in your calendar so I can't tell people where you are when they ask? Or is the kind of urgent that I print out, you storm out of your office and disappear for two hours so I leave the document on your desk and then you return, mess up your desk and an hour later yell at me because I haven't yet printed out that urgent document?

How doth you urgent me? Let me count the ways.....

Pop Quiz

Question: You are a partner in a large and powerful law firm. You are working on a word document for a meeting in the afternoon. You accidentally close the document without saving changes. Do you:

a) calmly call Tech Support and try to solve the problem
b) fix it yourself with your in depth computer knowledge from years of working on a computer
c) stamp your foot, call your secretary in a whiny voice and petulantly say 'what do i dooooooo'

Question: When your secretary tries to help you with the above-mentioned problem by coming into your office and saying 'what's the matter', do you

a) rationally explain your actions and not touch the keyboard any more
b) say 'it's ok, i'm sorry for interrupting your personal phone call. I can fix this by myself
c) say 'i pressed the wrong button...look...all my work is lost' and then bang the keyboard with your hand in a vain attempt to express your frustration with the world.

Question: Once you bang your hand on the keyboard, the dialogue box pops up and says 'would you like to keep a local copy of the document'. You:

a) calmly and politely ask your secretary what this means
b) realise that all your work is actually recoverable
c) move your mouse around pointlessly and say to your secretary in a martyred fashion 'i'm going to have to do all this again. why is it doing this? stupid computer. it's a bloody pain. god i don't have the time for this shit'

Question: When your secretary suggests you call tech services because she knows that they can recover the amended document do you:

a) say 'good idea' and thank her
b) say 'ok' and calmly pick up the phone to call them
c) say 'oh god i don't have the time for this' and then lean over, BANG out the extentsion number, put it on speakerphone so EVERYONE can hear you and the minute the tech services guy answers say 'log in and help me'

If you answered a) then you aren't a real lawyer
If you answered b) then you are only an articled clerk
If you answered c) then congratulations, you are a partner.

Tico Tico

'Open plan office' means that management still get privacy but the lower corporate life forms are stuck in the middle of the carpeted tundra of the office under harsh overhead lights and with their desks and computer screens on display for all and sundry. For people who care, it is an intrusive work environment. Luckily I don't care. In fact, for most of today I have been enjoying the delights of Boys in Makeup aka Brian Molko on youtube. I have also listened to 60 different versions of 'Tico Tico No Fuba'. I am not exaggerating (http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/11/61_versions_of_.htm1) - like I have said earlier...ANYTHING to pass the time.
Anyway, I digress. The issue here is white noise versus loud phone conversations. I fight off the white noise usually with Tico Tico and tuning out in general (conversation last week: my colleague: did you hear that? me: what? my colleague: that beeping sounds me: no - it was the smoke alarm batteries dying and the alarm was located above my desk). My boss has an interesting approach to white noise versus phone noise - if he is in his office and not on the phone then instead of shutting his door to cut out the white noise of people legitmiately working, he asks everyone in the vicinity to please keep it down. If he is on the phone and doesn't want to be heard, he shuts the door. If he is on the phone and the conversation is a) unimportant, b) long and c) irritating to people outside his office, he leaves the door wide open. This clear broach of office etiquette used to frustrate me until today when I accidentally discovered another mechanism for silence I can impose on him. By talking loudly on my mobile phone on a personal call while standing up at my desk, he will shut the door to his office. Not ask me to keep it down or even finish the conversation, which he has every right to do - but he will shut the door.
I would be in a much worse position in this world if it weren't for all the anti-conflict personalities I come into conflict with so much of the time.