It’s Just Another Day at the Office, where there’s no shortage of stupidity, frustration, and plain old absurdity. These witty short stories expose the funny truths of cubicle culture. If you work in an office, you’ll nod in knowing recognition; if you don’t, you’ll shake your head, amazed that things actually get done in the corporate world. Sometimes, the best way to survive the workday is to laugh at it.
It’s Just Another Day at the Office, where there’s no shortage of stupidity, frustration, and plain old absurdity. These witty short stories expose the funny truths of cubicle culture. If you work in an office, you’ll nod in knowing recognition; if you don’t, you’ll shake your head, amazed that things actually get done in the corporate world. Sometimes, the best way to survive the workday is to laugh at it.
Peter hadn’t visited all the meeting rooms in the building yet, since he had only worked at ATS for a week, but the Overwatch Room was by far the most opulent. Its gleaming cherry wood table, artwork, and plush carpet exuded sophistication. It was significantly more extravagant than QTech’s facilities, he thought, settling into his soft leather chair. Important decisions were made in rooms like this one, and as uncomfortable as it was to sit straight, he believed his posture should reflect the room’s dignified atmosphere.
According to a recent email, his VP had snagged this grand room for the weekly sync with his senior managers. Peter was the first to arrive and he exchanged pleasantries as each one came in.
“Is there an agenda?” Peter asked. “I’m not on all the mailing lists yet.”
Victor looked up from his laptop. “I didn’t see one.”
Strange, Peter thought. At QTech, agendas were always sent out at least twenty-four hours in advance. How else can participants prepare?
“Fred’s trying to join the meeting from home,” Candice said, “but his connection isn’t working. He’s going to reboot his machine.”
Peter clenched a fist. Of course, Fred waited until after the meeting started to try to connect. What about testing out the technology early in case there’s a problem?
A larger-than-life face appeared on one of the two TV screens that dominated the front of the room. It was Mandy, beaming from her home office. “While we’re waiting, I have someone to introduce to y’all.” She held up a brown ferret to the camera. “This is Daisy.” There were oohs and ahs all around the table.
Peter’s eyebrows rose. A ferret? This isn’t a zoo. We’re supposed to be working here. Peter turned away from the spectacle and opened his inbox. A dozen new emails had appeared since he had arrived in the room. There was plenty to do during the delay.
It was ten past and they were still waiting for their absent peers, in addition to their VP. Victor fidgeted in his seat. “Well, I’m gonna grab my lunch,” he said before leaving.
“God, I hope it’s not tuna again,” Candice said under her breath.
Food? Peter thought. Food always disrupted meetings. That’s what the lunch break is for.
The other senior managers seated around the table chatted and joked with one another. Peter tore himself away from his email for a moment to perform some mental math. Assuming his peers earned a similar salary, they had cost the company hundreds of dollars by sitting idly for the past fifteen minutes. He found it ironic, since they’d been asked to clamp down on discretionary expenses like team lunches and celebratory T-shirts. Apparently ‘meetings’ like this escaped such scrutiny. Surely, all of them could be working on their laptops while waiting for quorum.
Julian, one of the senior managers, burst into the room, out of breath. “Sorry, the emoji review ran late.” Julian was young and keen, eager to make a name for himself. Peter also wanted to make a good impression, but he wanted to understand how things were done before suggesting any changes.
Julian took a seat near the head of the table. “All right, what’s on the agenda?”
The senior managers turned to each other and shrugged.
Peter shook his head in disbelief and bit his tongue. At QTech, meetings were canceled if there was no prepared agenda. It was one of their seven principles of effective meetings.
Mandy’s voice over the speakers broke the silence. “That’s a big yawn for my big girl.”
Everyone but Peter smirked. Stupid rodent.
“What?” Julian said. “No agenda?” He jumped out of his seat and stood next to the side wall, which was also a floor-to-ceiling whiteboard. “All right, what about outstanding action items from last week’s meeting?”
Silence. Everyone’s eyes were glued to their laptops, except for Larry and Raj, who were discussing sports at the back of the room.
Julian should rein in the off-topic conversation, Peter thought. QTech trained all its employees to properly facilitate and participate in meetings. ATS would benefit from similar courses.
“Candice?” Julian asked.
She blinked, startled. “I’m sorry, I was—What were you asking?”
Peter shook his head. Julian should ask everyone to close their computers. Candice can revisit her shoe website later.
Julian sighed. “I was asking if there were any action items from last week’s meeting.”
“Uh, I think someone was supposed to meet with the TR team to discuss their needs for LTT,” she said.
The door opened and Adam took a seat. “Sorry, I’m late. My meeting went into overtime.”
In his short time at ATS, Peter had observed that almost every meeting had spilled over. QTech limited meetings to either twenty-five or fifty minutes so there’d always be enough time to be punctual for the next one. Peter considered suggesting that once the damn VP showed up. If he showed up.
“Okay,” Julian said. “Did anyone actually meet with the TR team? Anyone? No? Well, who wants to take that action item for next week?”
Julian scanned the room. No one looked up from their laptops. “Candice, how about you?”
“Fine,” she said, gaze locked on a pair of high heels on her screen.
“Excellent. Can someone write that down?”
The room remained silent until someone at the back belched under their breath.
“Thanks for volunteering,” Julian said, busy testing the whiteboard markers on the wall.
“That wall’s not a whiteboard,” someone shouted.
“Sure, it is.” Julian used his finger to try to wipe away the large LTT he had just written, but it didn’t come off.
“The front wall isn’t a whiteboard, just the side wall.”
For a moment, everyone looked up from their computers. Julian finally had everyone’s attention. “Oh well, any other outstanding actions?”
Everyone returned their attention to their laptops. Candice was already ordering her new footwear. Larry and Raj resumed their sports debate.
Laptops should be closed, unless needed, Peter thought, his shoulders tensing. True, this wasn’t QTech. And it wouldn’t be fair to preach to his new coworkers how the competition ran things. But still, QTech’s meetings ran like clockwork. Should he not say something?
“No outstanding actions?” Julian asked. “Okay, then. Before I went on vacation, we had started talking about the new LTT program. How far did you guys get into the planning process?”
No one looked up from their computers. Peter leaned over to his left and peeked at Candice’s laptop. She was busy exchanging Slack messages with someone, possibly telling another meeting attendee about her new shoes. To his right, Adam was browsing a tropical vacation website.
Peter shifted in his seat, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the distractions. Multitasking was a myth. Especially in meetings.
“Larry? How far did you get in planning for the LTT program?” Julian asked.
Larry looked up like a deer in the headlights. “Sorry, what did you say?”
See? Peter thought. Multitasking doesn’t work.
Julian sighed. “How far did you get into planning for LTT?”
“Well, it was more brainstorming than planning,” Larry said.
Victor came back with his lunch and rolled his chair to the back corner where he ate from the container on his lap. A fishy aroma pervaded the room.
“Okay,” Julian said, rubbing his hands together. “Then let’s start planning the LTT program.”
A toilet flush sounded over the speakers.
Peter cringed. Fortunately, Mandy had turned off her camera, but she really needed to mute her microphone. He opened his computer and sent her a friendly Slack message, breaking his own multitasking rule. Closing his laptop, he promised himself no more messages.
Julian uncapped a whiteboard marker. “Okay, first, we’ll need to—”
Peter couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Julian, can we at least write an agenda, so we’re all aligned?”
Before Julian could answer, the door opened and Brent came in, carrying his lunch. “Sorry I’m late, I had to use the microwave downstairs, because some idiot nuked his fish up here.” He took a seat and looked around. “What’s going on?”
Julian sighed but appeared optimistic. “We’re trying to plan the LTT proj—”
“But we don’t have all the requirements,” Candice said. “It’s a little hard to plan without fully understanding the scope.”
“Wait,” Adam said, looking up from a resort website. “I thought we decided on the scope two weeks ago.”
“We discussed it, but we didn’t decide on—”
“Sure, we did,” Adam said. “It’s all in the kickoff document. Here, let me share my screen and I’ll show you.”
Adam started typing on his laptop. “Anyone remember how to project a screen onto the TV?”
Victor rolled up beside Adam and whispered some instructions between bites. Adam wrinkled his nose and recoiled from him.
Peter, too, had to lean away.
Raj burst out in laughter. He and Larry had been quietly arguing about the Dodgers all this time. Peter wanted to insert his opinion into their conversation.
Focus, Peter, focus.
Adam managed to connect his laptop to the TV in front of the room. Everyone watched as he navigated through the labyrinth of shared folders looking for his file. The tabs on Adam’s browser indicated that he had been visiting several travel review sites.
It seemed as if Julian didn’t want to wait. “Okay, while he’s searching that, we should discuss—”
“No permission?” Adam shouted. “What the—? I should be able to access the file. Can anyone else see it?”
“Not in a million years,” Raj said quietly. He was still talking about baseball with Larry.
Peter gestured to get their attention. “By the end of the season,” he mouthed, before scolding himself for getting pulled into their conversation.
“Whether or not we have the scope,” Julian said, trying to regain control, “we don’t actually need to plan right now. What we need is to plan for a plan.”
“What a stupid idea,” Mandy said, voice booming over the speaker.
Peter surreptitiously checked his Slack. He sent Mandy another message about her unmuted mic, feeling hypocritical for opening his laptop.
“A plan for a plan?”
“That’s right,” Julian said. “But first, we’re going to need a pre-meeting.”
Peter raised his hand. “What’s a pre-meeting?”
“It’s a meeting to discuss the logistics for creating a new meeting series where we plan for our plan.”
“Why not just hold one big planning meeting?” Peter asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Julian said. “We can’t do that in one meeting. We need an entire series to decide how we’re going to define and document those requirements.”
Peter surveyed the room as Julian droned on. Other than Victor and Brent, who were enjoying their lunch, everyone else was hunched over their laptops. Nobody seemed to be listening to Julian. And if they were, no one seemed excited by the prospect of more meetings.
The door flung open, and Alex White strode in. Finally. The VP was forty minutes late. “I’m double booked with a customer right now,” he said. “We’re on a ten-minute break. Yeesh, what’s that stench?”
Victor closed his food container.
Julian pulled out a chair for his boss. “Take a seat, Alex. I was just organizing everyone’s efforts for planning the LTT program.” He began speaking more quickly. “We’re going to hold a series of meetings to finalize the gathering of requirements so that we can pull together a plan to implement phase one of the program.”
Alex remained in the doorway. He nodded and opened his mouth, but Julian kept talking and gesticulating wildly.
“In parallel with that, I recommend we create subcommittees so that we can coordinate our pre-meetings for the design and coding phases.”
Subcommittees? Peter wondered where all this was coming from. The group hadn’t discussed any of this.
Alex raised his finger and was about to say something.
Julian saw it and kept speaking. “If I may finish, Alex, I’ll run and coordinate all the new pre-meetings myself and I’ll report the status to you as part of our existing sync up. In addition—”
“I’m canceling the LTT program,” Alex said.
Julian almost fell out of his seat. “What? Why?”
“After rebalancing our evolutionary roadmap to accommodate the economic headwinds in this dynamic market, LTT no longer aligns with our revised strategic priorities.” Alex said. “Excuse me, I have to get back to my other meeting.”
After the VP walked out, everyone glanced at each other in confusion. The silence was broken by all the phones and laptops in the room chiming in unison, reminding everyone of their next meeting in fifteen minutes. An opportunity to do this all over again, Peter thought.
The speaker beeped and Fred’s face appeared on the TV. “Sorry. My computer needed an update. Can someone catch me up on what I missed?”
“Fred!” Mandy’s voice rang out. “You haven’t met Daisy yet…”
Fred fawned over Mandy’s ferret as the other managers packed up and filed out of the conference room.
Peter stayed behind and shook his head. How did anything get done in this company?
QTech’s meetings were rigid, full of agendas and spreadsheets to track decisions and action items. ATS’s meetings needed that kind of structure. He grabbed one of the whiteboard markers, still warm from Julian’s grip, and uncapped it. All QTech employees could recite the seven principles of effective meetings. And in a dozen words, he could ensure everyone who used the Overwatch Room would know them, too.
With the smelly marker hovering an inch away from the front wall, he considered what he had experienced in the last hour. Despite the chaos and lack of productivity, there were moments of humanity—something QTech’s meetings never had. Nor were they a pressure cooker like those at his former employer.
He capped the marker. Maybe the best way to improve their meetings—our meetings—was by being a warm participant rather than a cold outsider. He was certain he’d find like-minded leaders who were just as frustrated, and together, they could gently introduce some discipline into ATS’s meetings.
Just Another Day at the Office by Rob Fitzel is a collection of humorous (though not hilarious), daily-life, hi-tech office anecdotes that happen at a fictitious Information Technology (IT) company named ATS. Employees of IT companies worldwide (including HR, Admin, and Support Services) are likely to relate to them easily. You may find some anecdotes in it that resonate with similar experiences at your workplace, making it come alive for you, and thus doubling the pleasure of reading!
The IT industry is distinctly different from others, like manufacturing, construction, or healthcare. IT employees spend most of their days inside quiet, air-conditioned office halls, seated inside cubicles or at desks, eyes fixed on computer screens, many lost in thought. There’s no lifting of heavy loads, machine operation, or critical ICU monitoring. Instead, in IT, everyone is thinking about work most of the time. Working long hours is common. Except at lunch and coffee breaks, only a few people move about, so that quietness rules the workplace.
Almost everyone in IT is well-educated and well-paid. The hire-and-fire culture is most prevalent, and most employees experience at least one layoff during their careers. One outstandingly notorious aspect of the IT industry is the unequaled rate of obsolescence of the technologies it uses/develops. Every time Intel releases a faster computer chip or Microsoft rolls out a new version of Windows, countless PCs are trashed to make way for the latest tech. This is particularly true of the corporate world, where no one wants to be left behind. Similarly, sweeping changes occur when path-breaking software arrives in the marketplace.
In summary, IT is a vast and ever-changing sea that you cannot control, yet must constantly pursue and keep up with.
The book’s anecdotes offer a window into different aspects of IT employees’ lives. One describes the difficulties a new ATS employee has adapting to its culture and policies. Another is about an intern journalist tasked with publishing their monthly newsletter. The wrangling among the VPs over the order in which their names should appear in it reveals their petty-mindedness.
An IT employee has to balance personal life and a work environment like the above. It’s too hard to keep up with the rules all the time, and day-to-day lapses that occur form the substance of these anecdotes: getting even with a colleague who wronged you, a VP caught committing a nepotistic act, stealing office resources for personal needs (printing one’s resume at work), etc.
As I said in the beginning, this book is pleasantly humorous but not side-splitting or uproarious. Most office goers will like it, but because of the resonance afforded by prior familiarity with the IT industry and its quirks, the ideal audience would consist of IT workers alone. Apart from the IT audience, I recommend it to all readers (with a basic knowledge of IT) as a companion for a brief journey, to fill up waiting time, or if you find the lifestyles of IT workers bewitching.