A real life version of The Office

When I first entered the corporate world, I liked working on a campus and having a coffee shop and cafeteria one building over from mine. I liked being able to just grab the office supplies that I needed no questions asked. Let’s be honest, I especially liked the bump in salary that I got, compared to the peanuts we earned in newspapers.

There was a lot to like, but there were things too that made me shake my head. Some of those things still make me shake my head. Here’s a few things that I hate about the business world:

—Excel. My finance and project management friends love Excel. The writer in me pooh-poohs it. Yes, I know it’s great for organizing, formatting, and calculating data, but it’s one of those tools that everyone assumes that you know, but it’s like a foreign language to me. Oh, I try my hardest. I hunt and peck my through it. Most times I’m fine, I get what I need. Others, I stumble and an hour for something that should have taken minutes. Ugh, shoot me now.

—The jargon and abbreviations that mean nothing. The worst is reading an email or sitting in a meeting full of meaningless jargon and abbreviations. Let’s create a new abbreviation for 2024 and beyond: NMAA, No More Annoying Abbreviations, or AJSH, All Jargon Stops Here. What do you think?

—Useless meetings. For every ten meetings I’ve sat through in corporate life, I would conservatively guess that 60 to 70 percent of them could have been a simple email. Most have been used for status updates or passing along information. If there has been an expectation on the attendees, it’s been for feedback. In short, an email would have been suffice.

—Toxic coworkers and bosses. We’ve all had our share of horrible bosses who blur work-life boundaries; follow instead of lead; and fail to make quick, effective decisions.

—Office politics. I have little time for the “he said, she said,” who’s going up, who’s going down the corporate ladder.

—The lack of accountability. Leaders offering team members scary talk about Key Performance Indicators and their connection to pay and bonuses, but no real discussion or action on accountability.

—Cover your ass mentality. Are we all trying for the same goal? Are we a team or are we not?

—The Office. The large number of Dwight Schrutes and the much fewer Jim Halperts in the office. (On second thought, I’m not sure I want either, but I’ll take Jim over Dwight.)

—Exhausting worries over job security, long working hours, and high stress and anxiety. 

. . . . . . . . .

The worse of the worst. There are more than a few things I hate about work, but here’s a couple of good things about my current job. At least my bosses and coworkers have never forgotten me on a team morale-boosting outing or left me for dead at my cubicle. Check out these two stories.

And if I ever apply for a job at Wells Fargo? Just shoot me. Yikes.