Scientists prove I'm an even better secretary than my delusions led me to believe previously.

Finally, along comes a study showing that something once thought bad (albeit by upper managment) is actually good.  The National University of Singapore says that spending time surfing the Internet at work will actually boost an employee’s productivity.  Researchers claim that this sort of “cyberloafing” refreshes workers mentally after long periods of work.  Granted, I’ve never partaken in these so-called “long periods of work” before surfing the Internet, but still. This is a study that we, and our bosses, should pay some attention to.  Also of note - excessive Internet monitoring actually leads to more Internet use by employees.  Looks like us employees are fine-tuning the act of spite.  Well done everybody! 

This was welcome news to me after reading a depressing study about that weapon of mass destruction known as sugar.   Basically, sugar leads to obesity, which can lead to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc. Sugar is evil.  Sugar will bite at your toes if they are hanging over the side of the bed.  These days you pretty much have to grow your own food in order for it to not be poisonous - and then you have to cover yourself in head to toe sun protection before going outside to pick it.  Even then, if you microwave any of that food in a plastic bowl you’re exposing yourself to cancer causing chemicals (according to a chain email I received from my mother-in-law).  Tupperware will also nip at your toes if they are hanging over the side of the bed.

It’s tough finding out that something you thought was good is actually bad for you.  It's even tougher trying to figure out which studies to pay attention to, and which to just shrug off as scare tactics.  But I have hope.  If researchers can prove that wasting time online is a good thing, who’s to say they won’t soon find that hard work, exercise, pap smears, and flossing are also hazardous to one’s health?  I have faith that modern science will someday declare us fat, lazy, and totally healthy.

It is then that a giant meteor will slam into the Earth, killing us all.

Guess I used all that Listerine for nothin' 

ProfessionGal

Ahhh, this poster made me feel terrible about my "too busy" attitude toward working out:

I found it over on ProfessionGal where you can find all sorts of career advice and fun articles to get you through the week....and also some inspirational stuff to make you feel like a lazy turdface.

Tuesday

"If it weren't for secretaries, I wouldn't have a stepmom." - Andy Bernard

The Homeless Guy Who Lives in My Cube

I just keep forgetting to bring home the jacket I wore in the morning...

Happy Friday

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination." - THHGTTG

Workaholism in America

Interesting article and infographic from Minyanville about workaholism in America.  I am always baffled by the fact that there are people out there who don't use all their vacation days!!  We actually had a guy who once spent his entire Caribbean cruise calling the IT guy about problems he was having with his BlackBerry.  It went so far that the IT guy Fed Ex'd a new one to a Coach store in the Virgin Islands so that he could pick it up when the boat docked.


Image by: Business Insurance Source

On the Road Again

A few posts back I mentioned that you should always jump at the chance to take an office road trip. I also mentioned that you should only volunteer to go if it's a nice day outside and if it doesn't involve city driving.

On Tuesday I got suckered into both.

After finally settling into my chair after a rainy commute, I was asked to drive an hour & a half into the heart of downtown Hartford Connecticut. Down. Town. I had no choice. Our intern was out sick, and the rest of our employees had apparently turned into stone heads, so that left me as the only viable option.

It all depends on you. 

"It's not so bad," I thought to myself back when I assumed I was driving to a nice lawyer's office and that maybe there would be some kind of trendy coffee shop downstairs where I could hang out before driving back. I stupidly didn't ask for details about where I was going before I left - I just had the name of a place that I assumed to be an office park.

It was no office park.

After calculating where the worst part of town was and recalculating me directly into it, my GPS informed me that I would be at my destination in .1 miles. Point 1 miles? I peered nervously out the window at a man talking to himself on the sidewalk. I paused to let a parade of trash bags filled with tin cans cross in front of me before turning into the apartment complex that my boss had sent me to. I drove slowly through the parking lot trying to figure out where to go. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to go to the management office, or if this is where the guy lived. Was I supposed to start knocking on doors?

Wifebeater clad men, sitting in their "yards" amidst piles of wet living room furniture, gas cans, and broken television sets, stared at me between cigarette drags and I immediately knew there was no way I was ever going to get out of my car. I did see one woman. She was getting out of Jeep wearing platforms and a boob shirt at 12:00 in the afternoon. The click of my doors locking did nothing to comfort me.

I called my boss to ask him why he had done this to me. Didn't he have work for me to do later? He needed me to come back alive, didn't he? After a quick call to our client (and probably his attorney), he told me that he had no idea he was sending me to a place like that. Then he gave me the property manager's cell phone number so that he could meet me right at my car. I called the property manager and tried to direct him to where I was parked:

"No, no, I said left at the hooker, left! If you see the homeless guy pissing on a brand new Rav4, you've found me."

And then, in what probably appeared like the nerdiest drug deal ever, I handed off the precious sets of engineering plans and hightailed it back to the safety of suburban Massachusetts.

Ask Secretary4Life

Dear Secretary4Life,
My cubicle neighbor has been coughing for weeks now. It’s extremely annoying and getting to the point where I’m considering asking to move my desk. Is there a polite way to suggest that he go see a doctor?
- Can’t Take the Coughing in Missouri

Dear Can’t Take the Coughing,
Seriously, where the fuck is my stapler? I literally just put it down and now it’s gone.
Best,
S4L

******************

Dear Secretary4Life,
One of my male bosses has been making very inappropriate remarks to me about my personal appearance. I think I should report him to Human Resources, but I’m afraid. What should I do?
- Uncomfortable in Utica

Dear Uncomfortable,
Anyone know how to change the Poland Spring bottle?
Best,
S4L

It Could Be Worse. And Weirder.

It's hard to one-up people when you're a secretary.  Say you run into a girl from high school and she became a lawyer.  Or maybe you run into a guy you used to know and he's now a doctor.  Maybe they're even married to each other.  Maybe they're the Huxtables!!  God, how bad would that make you feel?  Luckily for me, however, I went to high school with this freak show:

Former TSA employee faces child pornography charge

BOSTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - A Beverly man and former TSA employee arrested on child pornography charges appeared in federal court on Friday.

Andrew W. Cheever, 33, appeared before on a complaint charging him with possession of child pornography. Last December, State Police executed a state search warrant of Cheever's former residence in Lowell. The initial search identified approximately 2,000 images of child pornography and several uniform items bearing the TSA logo.

Read more: http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/former-tsa-employee-faces-child-pornography-charge-20110902#ixzz1XDu6STy5

So the pressure's totally off.  Before this happened I was only one spot ahead of the guy who was arrested for smearing fecal matter all over our elementary school.

Secretaries rule!

BK Does it Again!

What did I tell you?  I could have an entire blog with nothing but pictures of sad looking Burger King signs:

Try a California Whopper is what it's attempting to say.  I understand that half the letters are trying to commit suicide, but what's with the huge gap between "Try" and "A"?  That part is just totally uncalled for. Maybe it used to say "Try to keep down a California Whopper." 

Almost as sad as this sign is the amount of times I sat at this light before I was in the right spot to get a picture.