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10 Gripes of a Corporate Editor

December 9, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

To pay my bills and generally not be homeless, I work for a corporation. It’s big, with lots of people and computers and printers that never seem to work. While the environment is a bit drab, it has its merits, like job security and a never ending supply of humor based on the petty squabbles of my coworkers.

My role in this little subsection of the corporation is to make sure everything looks and sounds nice. You could call me a technical writer, a QA analyst, any number of fancy names. But really, at the end of the day, I’m just an editor.

And as an editor, I come across many documents that need my help. Proposals, status reports, presentations, white papers; even sometimes training material. I try to remain objective, as any good editor should, but I’ve encountered the following errors or practices all too often, from people who – based on their pay grades – should definitely know better. I don’t see a lot of the major grammar foibles (their/they’re/there, then/than, it’s/its) that seems to get discussed frequently, but I do see an odd assortment of other bizarre, lazy, or downright wrong behavior.

1. One (1) space after a period

This is a difficult one for a lot of people as their entire formal schooling reinforced the idea that we, for reasons unknown, need two spaces after a period. The history of this practice dates back to a time when pre-humans banged out letter on mechanical “type-writers” and needed two spaces to clearly identify where a new sentence started. Now that we’ve evolved, and our fancy word processors can automagically set the correct character spacing, we no longer have a need for dated practices like double spaces. I see this so often at work that I’ve actually written a macro in Word to find all double spaces and replace them with singles. Do all of us editors a favor and break yourself of the habit. And don’t try to argue this point; I’ve got typographers on my side, and everyone knows you don’t mess with them.

2. View -> Show/Hide -> Ruler

I get a lot of requests to fix spacing issues for content that is all out of whack. It often looks like someone just left it for dead in the middle of the document, and couldn’t figure out how or where to put it. Instead of using the basic, built-in functionality to align their words, they instead chose to hit the space bar 900,000 times, hoping that they could slowly push it to the right position. This is bad. Please don’t do this. You can set indentations using the ruler, and even make sure it’s all perfectly lined up. If you can draw lines, you can align your text correctly, and save me the hassle of removing all of your “hard work.”

3. Qualify acronyms once then leave them the hell alone

The world of government contracting involves millions and millions of acronyms. Billions even. It’s so ridiculous that many projects have acronym cheat-sheets to help differentiate their particular acronyms from other acronyms. I get why they exist and why they’re used; it’s the nature of the beast when trying to describe large, complicated systems. It is important to qualify your acronyms, but you only need to do this once, this first time it is introduced. After that, you are free to just use the acronym, as the reader knows what it stands for. The only time you’d have to re-qualify it is if you use another, different acronym that uses the exact same letters, in which case, you should step away from the keyboard and re-evaluate what the hell you’re doing.

4. A .pdf is not a .doc is not .txt. is not a .zip

It’s not hard to learn what these file extensions are used for:

.pdf = Portable Document Format. It was created by Adobe in 1993, and basically creates a “snapshot” of your document that looks snazzy and can’t be easily changed. Use this for final documents. Do not send me a draft in PDF and expect me to edit it. Do not send me a final in .doc format and expect me to submit it.

.doc = Short for “document”. This is the MS Word proprietary format. It includes all of your crazy markup and formatting and pictures. These files can get very big, very quickly. Use this to work on the document, nothing else.

.txt = This is a plain text document. Unlike its .doc counterpart, it doesn’t keep any of your spiffy formatting. This is good for moving large chunks of content around without worrying about fonts or spacing. I’m not sure why you’d ever need to use this format (unless you’re technical, in which case you know how to use it), so don’t.

.zip = A ZIP file is a compressed file that may contain more than one file. It’s nice to zip a file to reduce it for sending via email, but it’s not bullet proof. Don’t be upset if your 8GB file won’t zip down to 550KB. I’ll add: zipping a zipped file doesn’t make it any smaller. And be careful, I heard that a zipped, zipped, zipped, zipped, zipped, zipped, zip file can explode the internet.

5. Complete sentences good

Status reports and meeting minutes always fall victim to the “unfinished sentence” plague. Somehow, a lot of people think it is OK to write weird, abstract fragments. It’s not OK, and I wish you’d stop. Chances are the people who will ultimately read your report didn’t attend the meeting, and won’t understand what, “Team said progress on DITE go forward” means.

6. I will reject your hot, underdeveloped, inarticulate mess

My role in the company is to polish your carbon into diamonds, not crawl down into the mine and harvest the raw ore myself. If you send me a pile of words that has 4 different fonts, 2 sizes, uses first, third, and somehow second person voice, you better be ready to get it right back. We’re all busy, I get it. That’s no excuse for sending me something that should be immediately deleted to save us all the trauma of reading it. Don’t take the rejection personally; I’m rejecting your crappy, poor-excuse for work, not you personally.

7. In the office, articles, like clothes, are not optional

There are only three on these, and if you don’t know them by now, then I don’t even know what kind of weapon I’d like to hurt you with:

1. The
2. a/an
3. some

Always use these before a noun, or your writing sounds like that of a very sleepy three year old.

“IRS has requirement to fix network problem that OCC described.”

What?

8. Sending emails and calling while I’m editing doesn’t help

Give me my assignment then leave me alone. Your constant barrage of phone calls, emails, OCS messages, and carrier pigeons does nothing but distract me from editing your document. Editing is extremely focused activity, so go away and let me focus. Otherwise I might not catch one of your mistakes. Or I might add a new one of my own.

9. I’m technical, but that doesn’t mean I understand everything about every proprietary system that your project works on

You have to remember that eventually what you’re writing will find an audience. That audience will probably be a group of crotchety old people who think computers are possessed by the devil. If I, as a young, techy person, can’t understand the incredibly dense description of some data migration policy, chances are the management won’t either. Try asking yourself, “would a really smart monkey understand this if I used sign language to explain it to him?” If so, you’re good. If not, you might want to consider making it a little more “stupid friendly.”

10. Don’t expect miracles

I’m just an editor. I can smush, mix, blend, fix, and tweak your writing as much as humanly possible. That being said; don’t expect filet mignon when you gave me dog food. I can’t build a to-scale model of the Eiffel tower out of bendy straws. If you expect your content to be good, make it good. It’s my job to make it great.

Rock the Corporate

January 14, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

Today I wore a mohawk to work. I got out of the shower and my hair was already half-hawked, so I decided to just run with it. It’s not the most massive plume to ever wave atop someone’s skull, but I’m pretty proud of it. I may be taking too many liberties with the concept of “casual friday”, but if women in the office can wear hats that make them look like train conductors, I didn’t think a little spike would be too offensive.

While a simple adjustment of the hair might seem tame to those who are aggressively independent and edgy, the office I slave away in is particularly sensitive to youthful frivolity. We play host to a rather…international…cast, many of who are obviously not quite settled with the idea of free-thought and non-traditionalism. They often complain when people wear sneakers but simultaneously dress themselves like extras from the original 1984 Miami Vice.

The reaction I got was hilariously expected. Upper management obviously did not love the look, and offered nervous glances; maybe this outward show of stereotypical rebellion made them worry that I might throw a chair through a window or incite a riot at any minute. I’m not exactly known as a bad boy in this office; my typical jab at the dress code is not shaving for 3-4 days at a time. For kicks, I also wore my leather jacket, an olive green union jack t-shirt, a trendy scarf, paint-stained jeans, and to top off the look, my mirrored aviators.

There is something liberating and satisfying about a mohawk. It’s like wearing an out stretched middle finger on your head, all day, that you can point at anyone to subtly say, “Hey, yea, I don’t give a shit.” I don’t actively hide the fact that I dislike the atmosphere and people in this office (here, here, and here), so it is a nice feeling to somehow get away with being a dick, without people knowing I’m being a dick, without actually being a dick. I don’t really want to be mean spirited, but it is rather vindicating to intentionally make people uncomfortable after they have made the hours of my life from 8:30 AM -5:30 PM so miserable for so long.

I think I actually scared our program director; she can’t seem to make direct eye contact with me today. I never realized a palm full of product could make me into such an imposing, 5 foot 7 inch, bad ass. Maybe if I put on some Sex Pistols and do air guitar while standing on my desk, people will leave me alone for the day. A boy can dream.

Anarchy in the UK, and such.

...And people say I don't have any style.

Fiction from Fact

November 16, 2010 · by Oliver Gray

I wrote this a few months ago, but never did anything with it. Instead of just letting it rot in my Google Docs, I thought I’d just dump it here. In case the title didn’t make it clear, the following is fictional and should be digested accordingly.

A long bow seemed ideal. You read about their historical military prowess, their unmatched ability to rain death upon hundreds of enemy soldiers, but in practice they are awkward and inaccurate. Even more so in the close confines of a corporate office. I wish someone had told me this yesterday; I probably would have opted for the more traditional bullet and gunpowder combination. Now I’m stuck here with a quiver of razor sharp arrows and a 6 foot tall bow that barely clears the ceiling of this hell hole. This is the last time I let a video game influence my method of genocide.

I sighed deeply as I drifted back into reality, silently chastising myself for chastising myself in a day dream. A long bow would be an excellent weapon with which to stealthily murder my coworkers, if I worked on a farm. Two nineteen. What time did I get here this morning? Does it even matter? I checked my email, the usual stream of malformed sentences was noticeably slow today. A few more hours and I could upgrade from bored to frustrated as I sit through mile after mile of purposeless traffic. My life is sweet.

In America, the constant driving idea from birth to pre-college is that we are special. We are unique. We are glorious aberrations of the norm, capable of curing world hunger after we score the game winning touchdown. But we are not. We are for the most part completely average piles of wet cells, only made slightly identifiable by whatever act we manage to put on daily. The only thing that distinguishes one from the bunch, is the acknowledgment and acceptance of this idea. Where they go from there, no one really knows.

I always wanted to be a dragon. They did say we could be whatever we wanted; no exceptions. They also failed to mention the fact that this idea is complete bunk, and we are relegated to a select number of roles in life, heavily influenced by our socio-economic standing and emotional stability. Isn’t it odd that no one ever dreams of being a technical writer as a kid, yet there are tens of thousands of them trudging into their poorly lit cubicles daily? And what of the poor garbage men, who aspired to be pirates and lion-tamers? All the childhood lies; no wonder everyone in this country is so self-destructive.

Three twenty eight. I opened an attachment, pretending I had something interesting to do. A shadow passed behind me, likely a coworker stomping noisily to a meeting. I returned to my casual web browsing, occasionally bringing up a random word document if I felt someone coming to spy on me. Three fifty six. I sent an email to my supervisor, explaining for the 12th time the situation with our web server; it was still down, as was to be expected with no one trying to fix it. I had previously offered to repair it myself, but felt the swift hand of politically driven bureaucracy slap me for having an independent thought. God forbid anyone use any applicable skills in this office.

Four forty eight; close enough. I shut my computer down hurriedly, wanting nothing more than to avoid the almost inevitable confrontation with one or more of my coworkers. The sign out pen was missing, again.

I entered my normal commuting trance; something that flirts with both danger and necessity. Forty minutes had passed before I was startled back into full cognition by steadily approaching brake lights. After gathering myself, I realized I was still a solid thirty minutes from home. In what properly functioning world does it take roughly 110 minutes to travel 30 miles by car? My mood began to sour, and with it my opinion of every other driver on the road. I took to another ritual, creating correlations between car types or accessories, and their subsequent driving skills. A rear mounted Jesus fish normally meant oblivious and erratic, where as a cardboard spoiler and giant muffler normally meant aggressive and arrogant. After a few minutes all of my stereotypical assumptions were confirmed and I sat once again mindlessly bored in a sea of red lights.

I remembered I had one pale ale left in my fridge. My mood lightened significantly. I managed to clumsily locate an audio book I had stashed for just such traffic emergencies, and fumbled to insert it into the CD player while shifting into 2nd gear. I zoned back out as Doug Bradley began a whimsically archaic reading of HP Lovecraft’s “The Tomb”. Before Jervas Dudley had even began his true descent into prophesied madness, I was pulling into my driveway. Another day, another dollar.

Sixty twenty. The same ritual every morning; get up and turn off the alarm so that I can argue with myself for another 40 minutes if I am going to work that day. The sleep deprived, real me, argues a brief respite; the pragmatic, robotic me, argues necessity and duty. The robot normally wins. I shake back to life in an overly hot shower, hoping nonsensically that a stream of water will somehow wash away my perpetual apathy. I neglect shaving for the 5th day in a row; I often take for granted that I am blessed with generally non offensive facial hair, and can get away with a trendy “scruff”. A button on my shirt is missing. My pants are wrinkled. I don’t care.

Another 50 minutes of concentrated hell, predominantly filled with brakes and honks and caffeine crazed maniacs. The behemoths of the road bellow their polluting roars, deafening those unfortunate enough to be alongside them. Ribbons of black smoke drift into the sky, and I can’t help but lament the futility of my yearly emissions check. I noticed a woman who was actually asleep while driving about 40 miles an hour; I didn’t know whether to be terrified or impressed. I honked out of sheer curiosity. Her head flung forward as to say, “Yes! I am here!”, as she looked around confusedly. She seemed shocked to be in a car, never mind driving said car. She looked my way; I smiled. She frowned.

I took my usual parking spot, close enough to the entrance that I could avoid a chance meeting the little angry woman who runs the deli in our building. I had stopped frequenting the store after I discovered a packet of ranch dressing predating 9/11, and she had actively noticed my absence. It all came to culmination when she cornered me near the elevators, berating me with malformed interrogations like, “Why no you come no mo?”, and “We need customa; how we make money with no customa?”. I tend to just avoid eye-contact with her now.

Back to my cube. I must confess that I am one of the aforementioned tens of thousands of technical writers who trudge into their poorly lit cubes each day. The irony is that I do not technically write, in terms of the workload and the pun. I get assorted odd tasks that sometimes border on something I’m actually qualified to do, but mostly fill my day with menial tasks that I could have done at 13 years old. I find myself trying to draw parallels to my work throughout the day, comparing levels of difficulty to other things I do in life. Burning CDs because no one else seems to know how is about as difficult as making pasta. Updating the website rates near Left4Dead on Normal difficulty. The cognitive attention needed to complete these tasks is probably a better comparison, but the absurd analyst inside me loves to create ridiculous mental associations.

The drudgery and florescent lighting make me drift off from time to time, mainly to realms of reminiscence and fantasy. Day dreams of the latter are normally uninspired recreations of movie scenes or video game levels where I have somehow become the protagonist. The prior is much more interesting, as I find myself reliving what I dub “The Salad Days” of my youth. My “youth” seems like a silly term as I am barely a quarter century old, but I do long for the time of loose responsibility and emotional freedom. My spreadsheets blur into memories of bad but fun decisions and first beers. I look fondly upon my days of reckless abandon, when I relished every second of life. Sixteen year old me would kick my ass if he saw me sitting here, wasting away, taking orders from cretins in power suits and ties.

My supervisor came to my cube. Nine thirty two. He was interested in the web server. I explained to him, for the 13th time now, that the server was down, and would not come back up until someone restarted the IIS service. He nodded. I assumed he had no idea what I was talking about. I had to bite my tongue to withhold a passive-aggressive remark. He told me to submit at IT ticket, as if I hadn’t thought of that myself. I let him think he had the situation under control; I had already requested the IP address for the server, and was going to fix it as soon as the IT overlords granted me access to their precious out of date hardware. To hell with “proper procedure”. Nine thirty nine; another worthless 7 minutes.

Surreptitiously fixing the server proved harder than envisioned. It took me a solid hour to locate the root issue, but once I did, all was well in the kingdom. I reported to my supervisor that the IT team must have finally fixed the issue, and closed my outstanding ticket. Selfless fixes seemed to be my modus operanus, so I shrugged off another accomplishment that someone else would now get credit for. The IT team could use the good news, either way. I went back to my duties, sloshing through HTML and thrown together documents, doing what I could to edit them into something better than, “crap”.

How do people do this for 40+ years?

The Latent Evil of Fundraising

May 26, 2010 · by Oliver Gray

My fortress of cynical introversion is constantly under siege by coworkers who want me to do “good things”. As a non-Christian, non-conforming, non-proselytizing young man, I am clearly only committing hate crimes in my free time and sewing my seeds of hate at every opportunity. Due to my rampant bad behavior, many of those I work with daily feel I should repent in some form or another, whether I actually want to or not. I am unswayed by mindless spiritual zeal and their persuasive logic is far inferior to mine, so they are forced to fall back on the tried and true way to win someone over: cookies.

Everyone loves cookies, even diabolical people like me.

Enter the fundraiser. We’ve all been witness to these poor attempts at entrepreneurship; whether for a church, a school, a youth sports club or some other sickeningly wholesome, suburban cause. They flout brand-name candy and cookies, overtly labeled with some contact information about the so-called charity you are supporting. The illusion of helping out a “good cause” allows a buyer to ignore the heinous inflation that is imposed onto otherwise cheap goods. People fall all over themselves to buy assorted crap from these cardboard boxes of deceit, in hopes that their indirect, incredibly minor contribution will somehow lead to salvation.

Despite this seemingly benign reasoning, there is a clear hypocrisy in the snack distribution world. If a box of random goods is put out for sale in an office on the honor system, there will be at least a 30% loss of inventory. I know this first hand from stocking the snack box at my office for 6 months. If the exact same box is put out with a fund-raising label, the pilfering all but completely stops. It is not that people want to feel good, it is that they don’t want to feel bad. Stealing from some guy who supplies snacks at no profit is no big deal, but stealing from kids or a church is just flat out wrong. I love double standards, especially where my own money is involved.

Using psychological tricks is not the only underhanded tactic these “good causes” employ to peddle their overpriced junk. They also pull the strings on more innate, primal responses, like hunger and sympathy.

Hunger and greed is the obvious one; have you ever seen a generic fundraiser that sells fresh fruit? Salads? Anything remotely healthy? No. Because people don’t want healthy. They want to justify their disgusting face-stuffing habits by misdirecting their gluttony onto their now inflated sense of charity. It’s OK if I eat this entire sleeve of Oreos™, the money I paid for them is going to help a youth basketball team from the derelict inner city. I’m such a good person, even though I think I can literally hear my heart and circulatory system crying out in tortured anguish. People in this country have horrendous diets anyway, but at least when they buy the overly processed sugar that they don’t need from a fundraiser, they can say they did it to support a good cause.

The one I really loathe, as I cannot personally control it like I can hunger, is sympathy. There is a niche group who has literally cornered their respective market with this tactic: the goddamn Girl Scouts. These little girls don’t even need to try to sell you their product, in fact most can be found twirling mindlessly in circles while their mothers try their hardest to collect the money that people are literally throwing at them. It does help that the cookies are very tasty, but the fundamental truth cannot be denied. Girl Scouts line up in the best of public places, showing off cute little girls whose innocence will be destroyed if you don’t financially fund their futures by purchasing an absurd number of boxes of cookies. The bottom line is it works; a Google result for “girl scouts of the usa” returns 322,000 results, which is impressive until you compare it to a search for “girl scout cookies” which yields a staggering 833,000 results. A well-played, sympathetic cause will have people “awwwing” as they open their wallets faster than you can say “Thin Mints”.

And even with these two powerful emotional strategies, some fundraisers are not satisfied. The main tool, especially of office related fundraisers is the ever present idea of guilt. If you don’t buy some expensive yet disgusting candy from us, the church might go under, and then all of the poor parishioners will have no one to guide their sheepish spirits. If that happens, my kids will grow up in a heathen world, never know god, and eventually writhe in the pits of hellish damnation. Is that what you want? You want my kids to go to hell? What kind of person are you? Never mind the scary irrationality, this is basically the main idea people put forth when presenting you with random goods to buy. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want them, can’t afford them, don’t actually support whatever cause it is, or any combination. You must buy something, otherwise you are just a bad person.

Seriously, buy something. There are kids out there with diseases (deadly diseases) who desperately need the 13 cents profit we will make from you buying this candy bar. The same candy bar that will eventually put you into the hospital with advanced symptoms of diabetes. But rest easy, some one can have a fundraiser to raise the money to pay your medical bills.

Turning the “P” in “Please” into a little, concerned looking man does not sway me, candy demons.

Quirking Out

May 21, 2010 · by Oliver Gray

Everyone has some odd habits that help define their personality, whether it be a nervous tick or an inability to filter thoughts in a public situation. Most of these things are boiled down to “quirks” of some sort; some endearing, some pitiful, some annoying and some arguably dangerous. I am no exception, and some who have met me may even argue that I have more quirks than the average reclusive, borderline misanthropic nerd.

Most of my eccentricities come from being a creature of habit. My morning routine is almost tragically perfunctory. As I am normally battling The Grump, it is impossible for me to get anything done if I do not stick to a set order of tasks. Upon gaining consciousness, I stumble to the bathroom, find a towel, turn on the shower (hot water first) test the water, find it to be too hot, turn on the cold water, test the temperature again by splashing the water on my legs, turn on the shower, brush my teeth with my eyes closed, shampoo my hair, blow my nose (one nostril at a time), rinse the shampoo out of my hair, condition my hair, turn in circles under the water in an attempt to wake up, rinse the conditioner out of my hair, turn in a few more circles, gargle, and then turn the shower off. I then receive a towel from Tiffany, step out of the shower, pick up my hair brush, brush all my hair back (50s Greaser style), dry myself off with the aforementioned towel, dry my hair halfway with the same towel, brush my hair again, dry it the rest of the way, brush it again, then stagger into the bedroom to find whatever clothes I am going to wear that day.

This happens every weekday, exactly as listed above, without fail. Occasionally, if The Grump is beaten early, I will sing in the shower. A poorly sung rendition of Don McLean’s American Pie is my go-to (I know like, all the lyrics). I have also been known to bust out a soulful recreation of an 80s classic with my own lyrics inserted. On especially groggy mornings, I have conditioned my hair before I shampooed. Short of these few rare anomalies, my mornings define banality.

As the day progresses, my routine slowly loses cohesion. My commute by its very nature is repetitive, but I do find myself playing, “Cut off the School Bus” or “Shout obscenities at Captain Slow and the Slow-mobile” as I zoom along to work. Upon arriving, I drop my keys on the left side of my desk, unpack my laptop, plug in my mouse, plug in my keyboard, plug in my headphones, plug and unplug my Cat-5 cable until I actually get a network connection, attempt to open Microsoft™ Outlook, open Mozilla™ Firefox, visit my favorite web-comics, look back at my work email once Outlook has finally opened, and lastly open Gmail™ to see what I’ve missed during the hours that I, and everyone I know, was asleep. I then use the bathroom, get a cup of coffee or tea and fill my water bottle. From time to time I will chat with a coworker about something completely random and often nonsensical, just because I am not yet awake enough to do any real work.

My day-time hours have little routine, as my job has little specific definition. The card I was given after several months of working here says, “Business Writer” but I do very little actual writing. I jump from assorted IT tasks, to quality control, to file management or web design. It keeps me on my toes, and starts to tear at the fibers of my structured schedule. By lunch time, my meticulous schedule has been completely demolished. Think “Undone” by Weezer, but having nothing to do with a sweater or being naked.

I make up for a lack of structure by doing repetitive little things throughout the day. Every time I walk out of my office to use the bathroom/get lunch/free myself from the soul-killing monotony, I have to jump up and touch the second Exit sign in the little hallway that leads to my office door. I have to touch the sign. If I cannot, for fear of landing on a coworker or looking “unprofessional”, it eats away at me until I can get back to the sign to touch it. On casual friday, when my attire is less constrictive, I will sometimes do a full olympic style run-and-jump to touch the sign. Even when I am completely encumbered with laptop bag, lunch box (I wish) or sometimes a musical instrument, I will try to feebly hop to touch the sign. One of these days I am going to hit it too hard, break it and be very sad. I probably need some kind of mental help, but instead of seeking it, I will just consider touching the sign “good luck”. Here is a good shot of my approach angle:

I also have to keep everything on my desk very organized and if possible, perpendicular. A book or pile of papers slightly askew will keep me from performing any other task throughout the day. I will even start to straighten things on other people’s desks, without their asking. I feel I deserve a “cleanest desk award” since we have a “clean desk policy” but no one seems to listen when I start talking about it.

By the time I make my way home, my formerly obsessive habits have degraded into complete chaos. I struggle to be organized, unless I have some very specific tasks that have a very specific deadline. I am like a ball of string: tightly and perfectly wound in glorious sphere in the morning; thrown all about with random knots as if an imaginary cat has played with me all day by the evening.

My most relevant major quirk has been with me since the latter days of high school. I cannot, in any possible situation, write anything of any substance if the things around me are not very organized and clean. This probably connects with my desire for things to be perpendicular, but I don’t like to draw conclusions too hastily. In college I would spend hours cleaning my apartment before writing anything, as I knew my papers or projects would be complete drivel if there were any dirty dishes in the sink. I do not feel comfortable committing my mind to something I am passionate about if there are things like dust and bacteria to distract me.

As my brain is unraveling and beginning “weekend mode” early, I do not know how to end this post. In a move of desperation, I will refer to one of my other quirks that appears when I want to stop a conversation that has gone on too long: referencing something completely arbitrary that few can relate to in an attempt to kill the dialogue.

This is a picture of a 80s PBS painter and marijuana enthusiast, Bob Ross:

You’re Welcome – 2.0

May 18, 2010 · by Oliver Gray

One of the papers I wrote in college highlighted the awkward social implications of holding doors for strangers. The full text can be found here. Since writing that paper, the art of the door-hold for me has expanded beyond college campus level and entered the hyper-politically correct realm of Corporate America. Not wanting to cause an HR issue, I will attempt to present the following analysis of Corporate doorholdsmanship in the most unoffensive manner possible:

In college, few doors are locked. In fact, most are so open, you really don’t even have to turn a knob or handle; a slight nudge in the right direction leaves most doors wide open. But in the Corporate life, most doors are locked; with keypads or intercoms or card-swipe things. No longer are mysterious rooms in cafeterias, dormitories, lecture halls, faculty offices and bathrooms left unprotected from my inappropriate and clandestine searches. Nay, now all doors are securely locked, despite how hard I kick the door, or jam a credit card in the narrow light emitting crack on one side of the door. Where I once could unravel any mystery, now lays before me more uncertainty than Frodo faced setting out from the Shire.

Ultimately, this lack of open entries leads to one main problem: holding doors. When a door cannot be opened it is difficult to hold for other people. Chivalry is appreciated (in some cases even expected) in Corporate life, but with no chairs to pull out (as it leads to awkward meeting situations), no umbrellas to hold (as it rarely rains inside your cube) and no maidens to save (I’ll leave this one alone), we’re left with a few unsatisfying ways to be Knightly. I have broken it down into the following:

Holding bathroom doors:

Level of awkward: MEGA AWKWARD
Level of necessity: Minor

There is no hiding the fact that I am male. Men tend to be solitary bathroom goers; I have seen more than one man turned away from a bathroom by “overcrowding” caused by one extra occupant. Many do not even begin to appreciate a door being held for them upon entering a bathroom. It probably reminds them of that fancy strip club they went to that one time their wife was out of town that they really don’t want to remember for obvious reasons. Either that or they feel their privacy is being infringed upon and another man is basically advertising that they are walking into the bathroom with them. As it stands, the Corporate Men’s Bathroom door hold may be the most awkward and difficult to pull off door hold in the entire known universe. The timing must be uncanny; not only do you have to match your walking pace with the other soon to be peer to reach to door at the correct time, you also have to be headed that way anyway without seeming like some creepster who follows dudes into the bathroom. This is incredibly difficult, as you feel like a creep even when the meeting is entirely accidental.

Conclusion:
The only time you can really get away with this one is upon exiting the bathroom. You can tactfully hold a door for someone who has just finished washing their hands, with little worry of social pariah status being projected upon you via questioning glares. It is highly recommended that you simply avoid joint bathroom visits whenever humanly possible; taking 4 flights of stairs to find an unoccupied bathroom to achieve this is completely acceptable. I cannot speak for thefemale side of things; I feel if I stand around waiting to hold the Women’s bathroom door, I’ll have much more to worry about than social awkwardness.

Holding the Front Door to the Office:

Level of awkward: Somewhat Awkward
Level of necessity: Medium/High

Unlike its bathroom based cousin, this door-hold is more common and more expected. It is also completely based upon the time you arrive at work in relation to all your coworkers. If you find yourself to be a sniveling, pathetic shell of a person, get in early or come in late to avoid having to share your entry with any of your coworkers. If you are the bold, daring sort, arrive at the office during peak entrance times to guarantee the maximum number of doors holds possible (my personal record is 6 at once!)

Even though this door hold is easy to plan, it is very important to get right. As covered in my above essay, timing is key with all correct door holds. Since most Corporate office doors are on the heavy side, you might consider holding the door far ahead of time, to prevent the all too common, “Oops, the door was heavier than anticipated, so I dropped it and it may have smacked you in an undesirable body part” problem. Every time you let a door slam into someone’s torso/leg/arm/child, you run the risk of that person claiming you are “incompetent” or “dangerously clumsy”. This must be avoided at all costs. Be sure to hold the door completely, with both hands, while simultaneously moving your body out of the way of incoming traffic. This may be painful, but trust me, it’s worth it. That next bonus you get will have nothing to do with your performance, it will really be because everyone admires how deftly you handle the front door every morning.

Conclusion:

Don’t suck! This is the easy door hold in Corporate. You can screw up every other hold all day everyday, but still be redeemed if you get this one right. The only thing that may make it difficult is a secured entry (keypad or card swipey doo-dad), so be sure to arrive at the door in time to swipe, swing and stay. The three S’s. I just made that up, but it seems to make sense I think.

Holding the Door to the Building:

Level of awkward: Not Awkward to MEGA AWKWARD
Level of necessity: Low to OMG DO IT

This one is a no-brainer. Hold the door for anyone; coworker, security guard, UPS guy, random vagrant, murderous looking guy wearing camouflage or maintenance person. You cannot discriminate here, if someone is coming in or going out with you, you have to hold the door, otherwise your principles could be called into question by a complete stranger. As long as you don’t let random people into your specific office, you’re golden. You will be completely absolved of all possible guilt in any subsequent situation if you follow the above advice.

If you decide to get picky, and not hold for some people, you may run into the classic, “I let the door limply swing shut so you had to reopen it, even though you are the CEO of a company 40 times the size of my own” syndrome. This is why you must never make an assumption about an entering individual, despite his attire or demeanor. Remember, everyone looks some kind of homeless on casual Friday.

Conclusion:

The outside door to the building is unlocked all day anyway, so it’s not really your problem if some crazy maniac gets into the building. Open all doors at all times without even thinking about the consequences. Just claim you’re, “thinking outside the box” and I promise you won’t get in trouble.

There is no Office, only Zool

May 17, 2010 · by Oliver Gray

Food does not last long in my office. Not because it spoils; there are more potent forces at work here than wussy mold and puny bacteria. It is consumed by the office en-mass; the cubes a black hole, the kitchen its event horizon. Anything edible, left in a remotely public area, disappears before most people even knew it was there. I am not saying this in disgust of my coworkers, but instead out of sheer amazement and obscure admiration. It takes a force of will (and stomach of iron) that I am not blessed with to pull off this voracious feat.

During the 2009 holiday season, one of our graphic designers brought in a fruitcake, as a joke. This “cake” was truly an abomination upon baking and there was little about it that even seemed edible, never mind palatable. The batter was some strange hybrid of pumpkin, spices and Devil’s Food Cake, while the haphazardly drizzled icing was of the burned cream cheese variety. I’m pretty sure she said she got it from Ross. This thing had green candied cherries. Green cherries. Even Sam I Am wouldn’t have touched this thing.

I have a rule that I will try almost anything once, so I managed to force down a very tiny sliver of this cake, much to the chagrin of my onlooking coworkers. The next hour could only be described as a fruitcake delirium, with my poor brain and stomach playing host to the nightmare. After recovering, I decided to place the cake as far from me as possible, which happened to be in our public kitchen. I left it there in hopes that someone would destroy it (if it even could be destroyed by conventional means) and went on my way.

I came back not an hour later to get some water (having been severely dehydrated from eating the cake) and noticed that the cake had not been destroyed, instead someone had actually eaten a slice. A slice much, much bigger than the one that ruined my morning. I couldn’t help but shudder at the idea of someone actually enjoying this monstrosity. I went back to the designer who had brought the cake and informed her of the development. She was amazed and said she felt a bit guilty, as she never expected anyone to actually eat it.

2 hours later, the cake was gone. Completely. Not thrown in the trash, not forcibly stuffed down the garbage disposal, not melted to oblivion in the microwave; just gone. It had been eaten. By my Office. I cannot pinpoint which individuals ate it, so I assume the shadowy entity that is the Office simply engulfed the cake in a Poltergeist style manner. I did not notice anyone convulsing in their cubicle, or otherwise acting as if they’d ingested something their body would reject, so it is impossible to discern the ultimate fate of the cake. It has given the Office sustenance, that is all I know.

This morning, around 9:30 AM, someone left a container of “Chocolate Cheesecake Fudge” in the kitchen. A small section of this (about the size of my fingernail) damn near put me into a diabetic coma. As of this post, the fudge is gone. While I have no empirical proof, I believe it has gone the way of the fruitcake.

Update:

Becca has informed me that “4 boxes of yellow creme filled, fudge covered, nasty cookies” disappeared from her office in a record 22 minutes. Perhaps this beast is larger than I initially guessed.

In an attempt to understand/study my workplace, I have created a flow-chart of how to handle food in and around the Office: