Is It Just Me? (8 page)

The joy of the office would be best illustrated with a short list, so, MDRC, please re-charge your teacup, plump up that cushion behind you, and settle down nicely for . . . (and cue applause) . . .

Having read the word ‘stationery’, I predict that right now you’ll either be punching the air in recognition and delight, or scratching your head in bafflement as to why on earth anyone would get excited by such a thing. If it’s the former, please read on – you’re in for a treat. And if it’s the latter, then please read on – because you’re sorely in need of re-education.

As far as I’m concerned,
nothing
is as exciting as a giant cupboard full of bulldog clips, Post-it notes, marker pens, pencils, A3 pads, A4 pads, Jiffy bags – oh, the Jiffy bag, with it’s internal bubble wrap . . . I’m too excited to go on. Reading a large office-stationery-order list is, for me, like reading the menu for a fine and rare banquet. If you like your job and are proud to serve your company, then furnishing the office with the relevant stationery is a satisfying and noble task. And if you’re . . . well, if you’re perhaps a teeny tiny bit less keen, then the stationery cupboard is basically a safe arena to engage in victimless petty theft. It’s
not
just me that has righted many a grudge by the tucking of a booty of Post-it note pads into a bra (men, please feel free to use your pant area instead), and a highlighter pen into a shoe, is it? ‘Ha ha, I’ve got mine,’ you think, as you look nervously around you, an inch away from the scene of the crime. It definitely represents MIRANDA: 1 CRUEL WORLD: 0.

Even if you’re not criminally inclined, then stationery offers ample opportunity for impromptu, mid-afternoon sessions of arts and crafts. Have you ever made a miniature Eiffel Tower out of bulldog clips, MDRC? Ever challenged yourself to eat a tub of Coronation Chicken using only paperclips? No? Get to it at once. There are larks to be had, I tell you.
Larks.
Not spectacular larks, I grant you, but ones that have saved many a young office drone from falling into a slough of despond. (If only bulldog-clip towers could be considered a suitable hobby for someone in their thirties).

Of course, the more ‘extreme’ the stationery, the greater the possibility for upbeat creative carnage. During my stint as office manager, I once accidentally ordered the wrong size package of bubble-wrap. Six enormous rolls – the size of those Swedish exercise balls – arrived. And it wasn’t long before I’d enticed all my colleagues – even dreary ‘It’s all about Health & Safety’ Debbie – to spend the rest of the afternoon rolling around the office on them. Including (for one misguided moment) using them to bounce down the stairs. For our final foray, perilously close to when the boss was due to return, we decided to place all six in a row and take a diving roll along the top of them. I went first (naturally). As I did so, the rolling effect took my loose top with it, up over my head, as I finished my spectacular manoeuvre with a professional gymnast pose.

Upon which, the boss returned.

My dear colleagues all naturally scarpered, though I wasn’t to know this as I still had my top over my head. The boss was greeted by the vision of me standing in my bra proudly doing a ‘gymnast finish’ in front of a lot of rolls of bubble-wrap as colleagues beavered away dutifully around me. No real way to recover from that one. Another of life’s hideous hiccups.

Yes, wholesale quantities of stationery can create an adventure playground for the irresponsible. Which leads me to number two on the list of my very favourite things about office life . . .

Definitely deserving of its own category, if only because the stationery cupboard provides the most wonderful refuge from the occasional ravages of office life – indeed, from life itself. In one office I worked in, the stationery cupboard was large and well appointed enough to house at least four people for up to five hours before anyone started running out of oxygen. A bunch of us – when we were hung over and meant to be mail-merging for a big event – used to pretend we were going in there for a ‘very important mail-merge-based meeting’. We would then bed down for the morning – lying on the bubble-wrap, heads resting on Manila envelopes – and snooze peacefully, like monkeys in a cage.

Even when you’re fighting fit, the stationery cupboard can provide a welcome bolthole. There’s nothing like breezily declaring, ‘Just popping in for some printer cartridges’, only to lock the door behind you and lie back in the restorative darkness or, in my case, begin early attempts to write comedy sketches by torchlight.

Also, if you’re any kind of amateur photographer, it’s an excellent makeshift darkroom. All hail the stationery cupboard.

Enjoyable mainly because of the potential for disaster when they get into the wrong hands (my hands). As office manager, I had to set up and maintain a new and rather complicated phone-pager system. After a week of vast confusion and fun teaching people how to page each other, the system went live. Unfortunately, it took a while for the novelty to wear off, and my peers still saw it as an hilarious tool of ridiculousness and joy, rather than a legitimate means of transmitting information. Which led to one particular episode, where I sat at my desk having a serious face to face chat with my boss, while a friend paged me and spent a full five minutes making animal noises at me down the phone. I later paged this friend back and loudly let her know that, ‘I’ve just done a poo so big it won’t flush.’ Unfortunately, I’d pressed the button which conveyed my message efficiently to all offices, including all desks and meeting rooms. My career at that company was relatively short-lived.

I’ve had similar troubles with email. When I first started temping, it was still quite new and wildly exciting.

What’s email?

What? Oh . . . umm . . . it’s a kind of letter, but sent through a telephone line –

WHAT?

Look, can we come back to that later, please? It’s going to be a bit of a big explain. Sorry, MDRC. So, once, the CEO’s PA sent a round-robin email asking if anyone wanted to go the Millennium Dome (the CEO had a stall there, and was a huge fan). I replied, ‘I’d rather have sex with Robin Cook, but thanks, anyway. P.S. I had that sexy dream again last night, the one about Bill in Accounts. This time he was dressed as a knight, but with Speedos. Weird!’ I then realised I’d hit Reply to All, including all staff, trustees and all offices in England, Wales and Scotland. I had to formally email all staff, trustees, and all offices in England, Wales and Scotland to apologise, and to let them know that having sex with Robin Cook was absolutely not something I was particularly keen to do, and ditto with Big Fat Bill in Accounts. I then had to immediately send another email, to all, apologising for calling Bill both Big and Fat, and that I was sure there were many people who found him very attractive. Robin Cook, perhaps. I then had to send another email, to all, apologising for suggesting Bill was gay, which I knew he wasn’t and apologies to his wife and daughter (who, I understood, worked in the Sussex branch) . . .

Quick, let’s move on to number four.

When I worked in an office, meals took on an almost mythical status. I, and all those around me, became completely, unashamedly and noisily obsessed with lunch. Lunch was no longer a simple refuelling exercise: it was the glittering oasis in the middle of what could sometimes be a dreary day.

At around 10.30 a.m., the lunch-rumblings would start up:

‘What are you having? Pret or the Italian sandwich place?’

‘I want a meatball sandwich.’

‘Ooh, no,
I
couldn’t possibly, I had a meaty breakfast.’

‘Apple or yoghurt for afters?’

‘I’ve bought a Twix to have at half past three.’

‘Maybe you should have half for pudding.’

‘Oh, no, I couldn’t – it wouldn’t go with my yoghurt.’

‘Oh, yes. Good point.’

‘What time is it?’

‘10:45.’

‘Oh, well, not long to go now.’

‘Is 11.30 too early to have lunch?’

And so on.

I remember when wraps first came in – that was a turning point in office lunch history. ‘Do you know, I think I might brave a WRAP?’ you’d say. Then you’d come back into the office with your wrap, and everyone would crowd round for a look at your wrap. They’d ask concerned questions like, ‘Does it fill you up, your wrap? Does the wrap fill you up as much as the sandwich?’ All very important wrap-based questions, because heaven forbid you had a disappointing lunch.

Then sushi came onto the scene, and we all thought ourselves incredibly cosmopolitan and chic. We’d spend £7 a day on sixteen grains of rice wrapped in a piece of green tarpaulin, which over the course of a year added up to the value of a small house on the South Coast. But we didn’t care. We were at the very cutting edge of lunch.

Then, at around 4 p.m., the conversation would turn to dinner – what was everyone having?

‘Anyone going Chinese?’

‘I might get one of those curry banquets in a box from Tesco.’

‘I’m going scrambled eggs.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll have chips at the pub first.’

‘I was going to say . . .’

It was boredom, pure and simple, which brought about this obsession with the next feed. I was occasionally nostalgic for a richer time, when meals were the boring things you had to do between interesting activities. It was to be a bitter realisation that the older you got, the more vital meals were to alleviate the boredom or pressures of the day.

But, being in our mid-twenties and in an office, we were happy with our daily food convos. And the joy – the total, unadulterated
joy
– brought by the occasional Friday McDonald’s. That was big news. At about eleven o’clock, someone would say, ‘I feel it today – today’s the day, I know it’s naughty, but I just feel the need . . . I’m going
McDonald’s
.’ Audible gasps from the surrounding desks. Then a half-hour conversation about what you get if you go McDonald’s.

‘Six nuggets.’

‘Oh no, I wouldn’t waste McDonald’s calories on nuggets; I’d go straight for the quarter pounder with cheese.’

‘I’d do a small cheeseburger and leave room for the apple pie.’

‘Careful, the filling’s hot,’ some card would shout and oh, how we’d laugh.

‘Oh no, if I’m going to do it, I’m going big, I’m going Big Mac Meal,
and
apple pie. There, I said it.’

‘Well, I’d go Filet-O-Fish.’ Silence. Stares. Who said that? Who on earth would suggest such a freaky, revolting thing?

Um, hello?

Oh, hello, Little M. What’s up? Is it urgent? Because, you know, I haven’t quite finished my list –

It’s just, I don’t mean to be rude, except that I do. I was hoping the office list would be a bit less rubbish than this. I mean, making bulldog clip towers and hiding in the stationery cupboard? Making a damned fool of yourself over an intercom? Becoming weirdly obsessed with sandwiches? This seems neither fun nor fulfilling.

Ah, but wait until you hear my fifth and final reason why office life is a little bit splendid. You’re going to love it . . . Little Miranda, and My Dear Reader Chum; my fifth, final and far and away most vital reason why office life is absolutely marvellous is . . .

What? Really?!

Yes, it most certainly is. Or it can be, if you put in the effort. You see, MDRC, this is the twist in my tale. Overindulgence in boarding-school jollity made office life very hard for me at first. But then – hey presto – the varied fun-having skills I perfected at school went on to make the whole damned thing that bit more enjoyable. And, what’s more, for me, office life very often brought to mind the best bits of school: the day was nicely structured; the job was low pressure but interesting enough; you could switch off at the weekends; all your friends were right there in one big open-plan office; you could steal and hoard people’s sweets; you could subtly, cheekily indulge your dislike of authority via artfully placed Post-it note cartoons and delightful slacking off; and every day at five you could shoot out of the door and leave the day behind. Even though I didn’t always realise it at the time, it suited me down to a tee. And remember, as the saying goes: ‘You spend your youth working eight hours a day so that when you become boss you have the privilege of working twenty hours a day.’ Being the office junior has many a perk.

You will enjoy it, Little M, I promise. It’s a very positive interlude in our life.

Does that mean you do something different now? Something more exciting, more part of the plan?

Ah, now. That would be telling. You’ll know, soon enough.

Ooh, are we an MP? Did we actually become prime minister? Or maybe we’re married . . .