Overheard at the Mediocre Office
19There are a lot things that constantly remind me how much I love my job and how lucky I am that I get to do what I do. One of my favorite things about our office is that people are constantly saying totally ridiculous stuff that is completely work related and appropriate.
For example:
@Moose: "Are there any horse masks that aren't hanging on the wall?"
And just this morning @hales asked: "Do you need help with that?", which isn't hilarious or weird unless you realize she was referring to my attempt at adjusting this:
That I get to have that hanging out in my workspace brings me great joy.
So what are some of your best overheard quotes or stories? They don't need to be from the office, just give me your best ones.
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"so I had this yellow discharge". overheard at a party. i quickly moved away.
Why is "Are there any horse masks that aren't hanging on the wall?" not in our super-secret log of mediocre quotes?
I've never worked in IT, but at my first job I somehow got a reputation as someone who knows more about computers than most people. NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. If someone mentions computers, say "Magic glow think box? Me not know." and shrug. Otherwise, people will ask you very very stupid questions regularly. Here's my favourite and although this happened years ago it's important to note that I'm not exaggerating or leaving anything out. This really was the entire conversation:
Co-worker: How can I print our reports from Excel?
Me: You go to File, then Print Preview. Then...
Co-worker: I meant a really easy way.
Me: Well, you could also...
Co-worker: I know, there's always a way. But I don't want to hear about that right now. [wanders away]
"I'd probably bang her!"
I laughed to myself because surely that was out of context. Nope. Not at all.
"It will fit! Just cram it in there so we can have a smoke!"
I never followed through to see what this one was about, but they were near the printer -- loading paper? Changing the toner? Cramming a boner? No one knows.
"OMG! Never Google donkey punch!"
@2many2no ... Too funny!!!
I'm sure there are many quotes to be remembered from my office. I'm not the one to remember them. The one I do know and fear is from a game we play called Surprise Dodgeball. It's exactly what it sounds like. You scream "surprise dodgeball" and throw a dodgeball at someone and run away. To clarify why this is so unique- I work for an engineering firm with cubicles and strict bosses and a(n?) HR rep from hell. This type of thing has become common. We get away with it because overall we're the most productive group in the company.
To add to this, we were drinking after work just last night. as we were hoping from one bar to the next we drove through the local college campus and threw dodgeballs (yes, multiple) at unsuspecting students. We spend stupid amounts of money on dodgeballs. We're all in our late 20's and early 30's so we should be adults. we're not. Best place I've worked, and so many people told me engineering would be boring. OTOH I'll be here minimum of 65 hours this week.
@RedHot We don't consider kids in their 20s and 30s to be full adults. In fact we count on y'all to do just this sort of childlike thing. Otherwise living vicariously through your hijinks wouldn't be a thing and therefore wouldn't be any fun. Carry on; we're counting on you.
@joelmw Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
@RedHot Maybe I should also add that 90% of us graduated from said university
@2many2no I'm pretty damned childish. If that's not obvious.
I work for local government. Our prime directive is to not show up in the news. So my coworkers and I make a point of not saying anything at work (or that could be easily attributed to us as government workers) that's at all interesting.
Therefore people are mostly annoying. I've mentioned before that I like to sit at my desk with sound-insulating earphones.
It's not really that bad.
By the way, I work as an obscure bureaucrat doing something you've never heard of and wouldn't understand for the municipality of Springfield in whatever state you don't happen to be living. And I never actually said any of this. In fact I'm a badly constructed AI. I didn't do it. Nobody saw me. You can't prove anything.
@joelmw Guess what: I work in TV news. :-D
@jqubed Like I said, you got nothing on me. But if you want an official statement, you'll have to talk to my director.
I "overheard" someone talk about acquiring a lot of 30,000 speaker docks the other day.......wonder what he'll do with them
@unoriginal26 *ducks, Speaker Ducks
@unoriginal26 Was it Friday?
@RedHot ... Speaker Ducks? I'll buy that for a dollar..!
@RedHot Right... Speaker Dock Ducks...
NVM just thought of one that's been around a while, one of my co-workers wrote it down so we can't ever forget it. "Super heavy loads are a problem for us. They'e difficult to control and sometimes take days to clean up." This was said by a top DOT leader visiting the office.
@RedHot You've got to hold back. Never blow the whole load.
Here are a few heard around my office:
"Chili's has great sushi!"
"They're like the unicorns of the industry, those CEO's."
@katylava
I'm going to pull an Assange here. Because information wants to be free, I present the formerly super-secret log of Mediocre quotes, all the best things ever said at Mediocre:
"Huh? No, I said I want you to buy the mesh.com domain, we're going to sell industrial meshes. What did you buy? Oh, well, I guess we'll just go with it."
"This troll puppet we ordered, was it supposed to be anatomically correct? Well, whatever, just hand me those scissors."
"Yes! Starblind supported our Kickstarter! I think we're gonna make it!"
"I know it's just the end of our first day, but Starblind is our best customer."
"Day two: speaker docks! Everyone needs one of these, what could possibly go wrong?"
"No, see, it says it's not rigged, but it IS rigged. We can do dozens of them, it will never get old."
"I put another picture of Starblind up at my desk. It's like awesomeness in stereo!"
"Marklog fingered his dog."
"We're a month in, and Starblind is totally the best customer. I'm commissioning a tasteful statue for the office."
"Yeah, you're entertained by that baby arm right now, but you'll get bored with it soon."
"I wish I could be more like Starblind. I found building that shrine by his statue very cathartic."
"I've run the numbers again after our 100th day, Starblind is definitely still our best customer. How much would it cost to gold-leaf a statue?"
"Amazon called about wanting to buy us again. I made farty noises into the phone until they hung up."
"I'm going as Starblind for Halloween this year, but if everyone else is also dressed as Starblind won't it be awkward?"
"What?! No, I said WHAT IF we sent the wrong headphones to ONE customer! As a joke! Did you really... oh, shit. Shiiit."
"I get that he's our best customer and such a cool guy, but isn't this company-mandated daily mantra we have to chant to Starblind a little creepy?"
"Are there any horse masks that aren't hanging on the wall?"
"Starblind just published our secret quote list! That fucker! He is SO banned from the forums."
@harrison that bug-detection device of yours doesn't work
@Starblind " @marklog fingered his dog" best one yet
@katylava Ugh, @hart must have broken it. I keep telling him not to fiddle with things on my desk and he won't listen.
@Starblind @katylava "I'm going to pull an Ass..."
@RedHot thanks for the @, i would have missed this.
@Starblind It annoys the fuck out of me that I like this as much as I do. I blame @cengland0.
@harrison Haven't you heard? I fuck up everything. It's like...my job here.
@hart On the upside, your performance review is going to be awesome.
@Starblind The funny thing is while you were writing this I actually was saying that I like you and that you make really good comments. CREEPY
@RedHot .. Damn! And here I thought he said he dogged his finger..
I have a lot of good quotes from my old job (where I also kept a [formerly] super-secret log of quotes). Here's more than you probably care to read, but the names have been changed to protect the ridiculous:
Haha just kidding... those are real names.
@katylava Randy is funny.
@katylava "You believe in submarines?" ROFL
I'm going to start questioning people's belief in submarines now, and no one's going to know why.
@katylava I like Sara. At least I like the idea of a Sara. It kinda depends on what pretentious thing she considers correct.
@joelmw i don't remember exactly, but something to do with grammar
@katylava Well that settles it. Even if she's wrong. :-)
This quote is from @RedHot on another thread, but I like it out of context: "@poppiart @Snapster is the CEO, no really, thats not a joke. Pan over that little octopus and you'll see he is a mediocre labs employee."
@DaveInSoCal haha, reading that all by itself seems to some up Meh nicely I think.
Just today at work, "I have a collection of photos of the random things you guys put on your heads." This is after a coworker tore a hole in a beach ball and was wearing it like a swim cap.
I love purple.
@Barney You had such an amazing streak going where you only commented after someone mentioned a color. But this? This is just a stand alone comment. What gives?
@MEHcus I know, I didn't even mention a color in my post that could explain it.
@Barney don't kidding us.
@MEHcus @hollboll @JonT Maybe @Barney was telling you that he heard someone at his workplace say, "I love purple."
@katblue No, no, that's far too logical.
@katblue I love purple.
@Barney Now that's an off color comment.. YYYEEEAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
@hollboll No, this is a breakthrough! We might be learning @Barney's origin story here! Maybe he heard someone say that at the office and now he can only communicate by declaring his love for purple! We should post a series of hypothetical questions as individual comments, and then if he replies that he loves purple to one we'll know we're on the right track. It'll be like communicating with a paralyzed person by having them blink.
From a previous life... I worked for a large ecommerce company that built/ran/fulfilled/etc. many websites for well known companies. In the beginning we only did sporting goods, with The Sports Authority as our largest client. The company had tried to land Dick's Sporting Goods for quite some time and after they failed at it themselves, they came to us. One of the gals in Customer Service decided to check out their existing website. We all suddenly heard a very loud declaration from the next room over... "OH MY GOD, WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT GO TO DICKS.COM!!!" Needless to say, at that time DSG did not own the rights to that site name. (They do now and it redirects to their site.)
@Cinoclav Just blew my drink through my now when I read this.
@Quantumcat Pretty much the same reaction the rest of us had when she said it. Lol
@Cinoclav I once got a call from a coworker asking how often the company reviewed internet browsing reports. I said I wasn't sure, why? He started by explaining he needed new work boots. The brand he preferred was 'Beaver'. He googled 'mean Beaver rubber boots' and clicked on the first link, which turned out to be a fetish site for men that like to look at men wearing rubber boots. Which made him laugh, so he invited coworkers over to look. And then realized maybe that wasn't the best decision.
@Mavyn Which totally just made me google 'beaver rubber boots'. To both my dismay and delight it only came up with actual boots.
This was years ago, so perhaps the fetish has become passe.
@Cinoclav At one point Dick's opened a store in Harrisburg, PA. For awhile before they opened there was a big vinyl banner up that said: "DICK'S COMING SOON"
@Cinoclav
At lunch yesterday, my husband asking me "Do you have an extra tampon I can have?"
@bluedog Why "extra"?
@gertiestn Presumably because sharing one is 2g1c-ish.
From my current life... and just this week! I now work in radiology (Nuclear Medicine) where we obviously have a front desk for patients to check in at. Our front desk clerk has been in a relationship with our head of maintenance for several years now. Problem being, the head of maintenance has been dating and living with the Administrative Assistant to the CEO for the last 14 years. Apparently this idiot was texting our clerk about a month ago while at a family event of his gf's. Not hearing his gf's sister walk up behind him, looking over his shoulder she read his text message exclaiming how much he missed our clerk and was looking forward to seeing her. Of course the sister made a comment to the gf, who in turn questioned the maintenance moron. This past weekend it all came to a head when he finally told her the truth. Monday morning the now dismayed (and I guess ex-gf) victim of all this stomped into our front desk area and punched our clerk while screaming at her. No one knows what the final punishment is at this point, but the entire hospital is certainly having a good time talking about the whole thing.
@Cinoclav Ooooh, juicy!
@Cinoclav Wow!
Back in the day, a group of us who were pretty spread out used IRC for our conversations. This one was a keeper...
(Heather) Any cat people here? I've got a problem with Nicky...
(Joe) I've been known to be handy with a wok
(Lore) Why, I'm a cat person.
(Heather) I took Morgan to the vet yesterday - he was gone for a total of 45 minutes, got two vaccs and a blood draw.
(Heather) Brought him home and Nicky went BALLISTIC.
(Heather) Spent the rest of the night yowling and hissing and attacking MOrgan.
(Bob) nicky smells the hospital smells on morgan
(Lore) Yeah, I've seen that happen.
(Heather) Is there anything I can do to get the hospital stink off him, then? Pack his carrier in coffe grounds or something?
(Chris) how about a bath
(Bob) just give it a day or so
(Lore) We tried catnip and butter, and neither worked.
(Greg) butter?
(Greg) you buttered your cat?
(Lore) Yes.
(Heather) it's the best way to butter the house.
(Heather) Cats are effective butter delivery units.
(Lore) We read somewhere to put butter on a cat's forehead.
(Greg) did the emolient facilitate insertion?
(Lore) And the other cat licks it off, and likes the first cat, because it tastes like butter.
(Lore) As I said, it didn't work.
(Greg) you read sopmewhere to put butter on the cats foreWHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING
(Chris) rub the two cats together vigorously until they smell like each other
(Greg) piss on them both at the same time
(Chris) KITTY TASTES LIKE BUTTER
(Heather) It's more fun to put tape on their feet.
(Greg) why not do both
(Greg) and then get out the handycam
(Lore) I believe what I was thinking was "Maybe it will work. And even if it doesn't, I get to butter the cat's forehead."
(Greg) AFHV would love some footage of sticky-pawed, freshly buttered cats trying in vain to avoid a stream of steaming miller lite
(Sam) You know what helps with feuding cats, Lore? Sending me lots of cash.
(Greg) now, see, I read somewhere --
(Greg) I think it was leviticus
(Greg) -- that what you should do is frost them
(Greg) betty crocker, right out of the can
(Heather) Chocolate or buttercream?
(Joe) Heather: go chocolate, buttercreme isn't pareve
(Bob) you're frosting meat?
(Greg) and then there's always Cat Wellington
(Greg) "What are you doing in the kitchen, dear?" "Just buttering the cat, pumpkin!"
(Greg) "Why don't you baste the chicken while you're at it, too, dear?" "Baste the ... light bulb ...Sure! Sure, I'll 'baste the chicken'!"
(Bob) a google images search for "buttered cat" returns a picture of isaac hayes
(Greg) chocolate salty cat balls
@editorkid what network did you IRC on?
@Alien88 We were on EFNet for a while until the splits got too annoying and then we switched to a private server that Greg ran from his house. We just use a closed Facebook group now.
@editorkid So help me, this is true: I read that & burst out laughing & frightened my cat.
@editorkid I'm an efnet kid, although I mostly idle nowadays. I admin irc.umich.edu
@Alien88 Are the netsplits still as bad? I remember days with lag of 20 minutes or so.
@editorkid naw. hasn't been that bad for a long time (also helps that no one really uses IRC anymore...)
@editorkid few years back, I had Just Rented a room from an old HS Friend. I'm looing through a kitchen cupboard, and find(with the cat treats, etc) a partial(missing one) 3 pack of Fleet's Enemas. me: B, why do you have a pack of enemas with the cat stuff?, B: a while ago he hadn't pooped for a few days, so i bought some enemas and gave him one. and it worked. me: OOOKAY.....
@earlyre He could have just used his finger. Do it the meh way.
I grew up on a fake tree.
You have to kill them before they breed.
I put the extra blood on it.
When she says ambulating, she means walking. Definitely. Definitely walking.
There's shark cartilage in the butt cream. Does that mean you shouldn't go swimming in the ocean if you have hemorrhoids?
Worker 1: Do you want bacon?
Me: Yes, you can never go wrong with bacon.
Worker 2: Unless you are lactose intolerant.
I've been working IT at my current job for about 4 to 5 years... so I've heard lots of wacky / weird stuff. Here's a good one:
The secretary in the office is an older lady (like the office grandmother). Anywho, she doesn't really understand computers / technology at all. Whilst traversing the office to get to my office (in a secluded part of the building), she stopped me to to say that someone was having an issue with something:
Secretary: Hey... sooo... Susan is stuck in her Blueberry.
ME: Ummm... what?
Secretary: Susan. She's stuck in her Blueberry.
ME: Okay....
Confused by this, I went to Susan's office...
ME: Hey there... office grandma says you're having problems with your....
Susan: Yeah, my BlackBerry is frozen... not responding.
ME: Ohhh, alright. (Now it makes sense)
So from then on, whenever office grandma said someone was having problems with their "Blueberry" I knew she meant BLACKBERRY.
And yes, I usually start with:
Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and then on again?
@sanitarium90910
@Starblind Very nice! Bravo!
@sanitarium90910 In like 2004 I had a blackberry. It was blue.
I love purple.
@Headly is THIS your BlackBerry?
@sanitarium90910
@pistol Sorry... I don't think (at the time) we had a BYOD policy... can't help you.
@pistol Hello, IT... have you tried turning off and then on again? Hehehe... ; )
@pistol I love purple!
@sanitarium90910 Yes. The phone sucked. The web browser sucked. Pretty much everything but email sucked.
@Headly The folks in our office were the "from our cold dead hands" with those BlackBerrys... until they laid eyes on an iPhone. And thus ended the reign of BlackBerrys as THE mobile phone in our office.
@Headly Oh and not to mention I don't miss using BlackBerry Desktop Manager to do backups.
@Headly @sanitarium90910 My company upgraded all non-BYOD people to BlackBerry 10 devices this year or late last year. They're actually fairly decent. If they'd come out with these phones 4 or 5 years ago they might still have a fighting chance.
At last week's team leads meeting: "I think we should name the runners up, but they all know that we only have one thumb."
Quotes from my first ship's "Hot Skinny Log":
Yetter says it tastes better. (Yetter knows who he is....)
Commander Lazer on watch.
Smitty woke John up by putting ice cubes on his chest after he was late for watch yet again. (he was on time from thenceforth. :) )
Yosemite. Nice.
I worked retail while going to college and this was a phone call I had:
Me- Hi this is soandso, how can I help you?
Them: Where are you located?
Me: We're on the corner of Blackstone and Nees across from REI.
Them: can you spell that?
Me:.....um, spell what?
Them: Spell REI?
Me: ....R. E. I. ...
@maderagirl it took me a few seconds of trying to pronounce "soandso" as a name before I realized it was "so and so"
@TaRDy Ha!
Catalog call support job when I lived in Wyoming:
"Are there still Indian attacks?"
"I'm vacationing in Wyoming this summer. Will I be able to find a hotel with indoor toilets?"
Some poor guy failed to hang up after placing his order, and I couldn't disconnect, so I was stuck listening to him regale his roommate with a detailed and very complimentary ( I think) description of me, based on my voice. Last thing I heard "Oh shit, I didn't hang up! Do you think she heard all that?"
@Mavyn Were the first two New Yorkers?
@duodec just based on statistics, since that was 15 + years ago, no. Hawaiians, New Jerseyians, or Canadians were the top orderers of western wear.
@Mavyn Too bad you weren't able to shout "yes!" back at him before he hung up.
@jqubed I was too busy being mortified that my normal phone voice apparently put phone-sex workers to shame.
@Mavyn I am realizing that I am really bad at guessing the person's gender from their screenname. I thought you were a dude.... sigh
@chellemonkey Nope, just a really tall chick. Sorry if that burst any bubbles. ;)
I work for a large corporation that has a custom phone # for the HR department, 1-888-HRx-xxxx. The problem is most people were dialing 1-800-HRx-xxxx which was a adult sex talk #. Many times you would hear from people, "Umm boss, when you get the phone bill, I can explain".
Not mine, but my wife’s so I'll steal it. Man in drag over heard on a cell phone in a department store. “ Sooo, are you going to tell your wife how you feel about me?”
"If it weren't for that horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."
@Mac454 aneurysm
@Mac454 I can't remember which comedian that was...
@TehMaliron Lewis Black
@TehMaliron Lewis Black. One of my favorite bits of all time. OF ALL TIME.
@darksaber99999 yes! Thank you. "These things, they get into your head and...."
"She'll break your finger in a heartbeat."
@Hollboll "Damn you, monkey-with-no-hands-wearing-a-thong..."
Sometimes at mediocre you can hear someone trying to say "cinnamon synonym" repeatedly as fast as they can without messing up.
@katylava annnnnd I just did that for a minute.
@katylava I was wandering around Lowes last night chanting 'tiny toggles' because it was fun and that's what I was looking for. Until my wife said "Huh, Mike Rowe has a new show." Then I started chanting "micro newshow." I really think the checker thought I was challenged.
I had a customer tell me once, "You know what they say, the early bird gets the grease..."
To which, without pause, I replied, "Because the squeaky wheel gets the worm." Then just walked off to let her think about what she'd done.
@TehMaliron
@chellemonkey You just made me laugh at an oil-spill duck. Good work?
@brhfl This one actually made me laugh more when looking for the previous one
@TehMaliron maybe she got confused because she feeds birds suet?
In a former life, "At night the rats run on the floors near the walls, foraging." My desk was at the intersection of Rodent Alley and Rat Highway; every single night a trap set nearby caught a rat. When they set two traps, they caught two rats. And that's just the ones dumb enough to get caught. We took a bagful of them into the XO's office and wouldn't leave until he'd authorized a massive extermination project.
@OldCatLady I love that you saved up a bagful
@OldCatLady Your cats weren't up to the task?
@OldCatLady My old office building had a really bad rat problem. They finally put out glue traps after one fell through a ceiling tile while one of the counselors was in session with a client
@Kleineleh hopefully they weren't there for musophobia
@nadroj If they didn't before, they probably did afterwards.
@nadroj Shortly after they put the glue traps in the ceiling I was in with one of my clients and we had gotten distracted listening to the rats scamper around above my office. One little guy sounded like he was having the time of his life up there until it just suddenly stopped. There was a thump, and then, nothing. We were both a little traumatized that day.
It was a Monday, and no one had collected the 'perimeter trapline' since Friday. I think it was seven total for the entire floor.
@OldCatLady That makes me feel a bit better
@chellemonkey XO didn't appreciate it. We didn't recycle the traps that time; 'one trap, one rat' was the rule.
@OldCatLady I have been to buy mouse traps recently and they have 1 use traps but they cost 5 times the reusable ones so even if you toss them it isn't so expensive. Not sure I would be willing to recycle rat traps at work though...not in my job description
@OldCatLady I'm not sure I could kill a rat. I'd be more likely to stick a GoPro camera on it and put the footage on Youtube sped up with "Yakety Sax" as the soundtrack.
@Starblind I'm with you, I had a total of 5 different pet rats while I was growing up and I loved those little guys. The worst part about them is that their life span is so short and their susceptible to a lot of illnesses :(
LOOK AT THE LITTLE GUY! :3 I think a lot of their bad rap comes from the hairless tail, which I never got - they feel awesome.
@JonT I agree, though I think their general bad reputation comes from the fact that through most of human history they were agricultural pest as well as disease carriers. Unlike dogs, horses, cats, etc, it's only the last century or so that they've been appreciated as pets. It takes awhile to undo thousands of years of dislike, but people are coming around, and tiny teddy bears help a lot. Also, I like how pet rats are technically knowns as "fancy rats", which is just one of those things that's incredibly fun to say. "Hey, check out my fancy rat!"
@JonT On the other hand, some of us agree with
@JonT Never get an octopus. Much cuter, way smarter, and sadly shorter lived.
@JonT The only thing I didn't like about the classroom rats our 6th grade science teacher kept was how often they would pee on you while you were holding them.
I'm surprised @smilingjack hasn't chimed in with stories and/or pictures of her rats.
@jqubed Can't find any on this computer. But.......rats are great. If they lived longer, everyone would know that!
@JonT Yep. Just like little dogs. It is the lifespan that makes it so hard to own them.
CW1: So how do you make coffee? Good coffee?
CW2: Half and half. I can't drink milk by itself.
At a company luncheon the table next to me: "If you could move like Magic Mike, we'd all be rich." The more I think about it, the less sense it makes.
@medz Have you seen Magic Mike move?
@Thumperchick yeah but how would that make them all rich and how did that get brought up at a work function?
@medz Tips! I don't know about how it came about, though.