Today I am proud to present the first in a series of workshops presented by Blogatron Labs. My team of robot scientists* has been hard at work, refining the experiments that follow for clarity and ease of use by workers of any level. Stay tuned for future, more advanced installments.
"How many things can you hate about the co-worker who sits to your immediate left?"
In order to control costs, we recommend that you establish a time parameter for this experiment. Otherwise you may never know when you are done; just when you have finished thoroughly and cleverly hating the way that he sits down, rolling the chair backwards so that it smashes into the metal trash can with a teeth-grinding clang every. single. time, you will discover that what you really, really hate is the infernal throat-clearing. Ahem. For example.
"How far can you travel without leaving your desk chair?"
This one is self-explanatory, although we should note our complete failure to solve the staircase dilemma. If, like our team, you find yourself without access to hydraulics, we advise that you stick to flat surfaces.
"When will they notice that you have stopped [answering the phone]?"
Inspired by an attempt to avoid a pre-noon nervous breakdown, this experiment can be varied to accommodate any dreaded, mundane responsibility on your job description. The vital element here is to accurately gauge the Silent Grumble factor, where SG=the amount of time, on average, your co-workers will tolerate blatant incompetence while talking about it amongst themselves. The SG factor should be deducted from the total running time of the experiment, which is counted from initiation to the first mention of "Gosh, the phone has been ringing A LOT today, hasn't it, HILATRON?"
"How terse is too terse?"
Let's face it: what with surfing, pretending to work, keeping yourself awake on a Monday after successfully adjusting to a 3am bedtime on Friday and Saturday, and calculating how much of the color ink you can use for flyers before it gets missed, sometimes you just don't have enough free brain cells left for the social niceties, like saying hello and not scowling for eight hours straight and not threatening to bite people. This is a great opportunity for you to evaluate your subjects' willingness to tolerate anti-social behavior from an unexpected source. As the day progresses and your surliness grows ever more extreme, take note of facial expressions, verbal cues, flinching, running, and other behavior that might indicate when you have tipped the scales toward being "the crazy one."
"Where did your damned [mechanical pencil] go?"
This is a great time-wast...er, experiment. Select an easily replaceable object to which you can attach a great deal of emotional and territorial significance, then lose it. Spend the day looking for it in every nook and cranny; write paranoid treatises about who might have taken it and for what dark purposes; mutter to yourself about the lack of respect that you receive. Look in your boss's office last, because nine times out of ten, it will turn out that she borrowed it during a meeting and then promptly forgot that it wasn't hers.
*Created by science, to perform science! It's the cycle of life, embodied in glorious die-cast metal. Brings a tear to my eye, it does.
Posted by hilatron at November 15, 2004 02:45 PMExcellent! Might I add, sort of apropos of the first one for those in communal workspaces, "How Many Times Will You Hear Him Share That Anecdote?"
Posted by: Jess at November 15, 2004 09:05 PM