Office politics

[Muz]

My Jobs wank.

[Master Fox]

My Jobs wank.

Really? Getting paid to slap the old salami hey? You must get tired doing it to yourself all day?

[Thracian]

Talking about offices and office characters when I was training we had a guy at the Loughborough editorial office who told all the local car dealers that he was starting a motoring column and wanted to feature a full page spread on a different car every week.

Giving the impression that he was stockpiling articles ready for the launch he managed to get a brand new car to test drive week on week for months until he finally disappeared in shame without writing a single column as I remember.

Turned out he was a classic con artist. His last caper was to pinch a light aircraft from Birmingham Airport and fly it up to Glasgow for his father's funeral, at least so the story went and it was entirely believable because I'd travelled with him to the airport only a week or two earlier in a souped up Volvo 122S that he'd conned and he'd blagged us into the control tower as if we were lifelong members of staff.

I would like to say he was an unusually colourful colleague but these were the days when the incomparable Barbara Jones (she wrote a book about The Yorkshire Ripper's wife Sonia Sutcliffe), sat at the desk next to me and colleague's in the newspaper football team of that time comprised today's top name broadcasters Tony Francis and Tim Ewart (who could both play a bitl).

We also had an American ex-GI called Lewis Orde who built a purpose-made full-sized shove-halfpenny table for the office championships but was so volatile that after one particularly dire performance he used his not unimpressive martial arts techniques to smash the board into little pieces while editor and staff looked on speechless.

He then threw the pieces out of the upstairs window, ignoring pedestrians below, and carried on working as if nothing had happened. Happy days.

[Steven]

Another 4 years, at least, Steven.

Stick with it then.

[Steven]

Another 4 years, at least, Steven.

You have inspired me.

[Knighton Matt]

I thrive on office politics. It's about the only interesting thing about the job..Marking out which idiots you'd like to take down given the chance.

[Jon the Hat]

Now many of you may know that I am paranoid at the best of times, and a few might know that work has been getting me down of late. However, this afternoon I have just read an email from another departmental manager which basically states I have been ignoring one of that manager's subordinates.

To cut a long story, and all that jive, I am not able to complete a task as I have no information. Simple enough. However, I have been told this very afternoon that the information requested is in the "attached file", which has been supplied to me all along.

That's funny, because I FRIGGING WELL WROTE THE BLOODY SPREADSHEET ONLY LAST WEDNESDAY TRYING TO GET SOME CLARIFICATION!!!!!

Suffice to say I am not very happy about this.

So to cheer me up, please share your tales of office woe in this thread.

And that is why you have a manager. All you can do is explain the situation, get their support and rebuff the accusation. What I like to call a SLAP! Great fun once you get into it. When someone writes something stupid like this, simply email back and explain that you wrote the attached file and it has not been completed to your satisfaction by his or her team. Oh and copy everyone you possible can, including their boss. If you're lucky they will come back and make themselves look even more stupid earning themselves another SLAP!

Enjoy. Life's too short to let tossers at work piss you off.

[Guest]

I did, and they tried to respond in a way that made me look a tit, and failed again. Whilst in some respects I take great pleasure in this, in others I find it sad that people have to be like this.