I finally did something that I’ve often thought of doing at work.

After listening to another lot of inane conversation from the ‘boys’ on my floor, I finally went and gave the HR guy an earful today. My floor’s a pretty rotten place to sit. It’s dominated by men, rather unusual in the industry I work in, where you end to have more women. Most of the guys are okay but a few of them are plain idiots, and they really ruin everything. In the last year I’ve put up with increasing levels of crap, listened to more double meaning-ed sentences to wonder if some of them don’t have third meaning, and got to know far more then I care about the personal lives of my colleagues (including the women).

The guy who heads HR here used to sit with us earlier, so I figured he had an idea of the amount of crap that flies around every day. This morning began with a conversation in the morning that involved the worst of the offenders as well as the big boss (I actually had to ask him why that guy was being allowed to speak like that – not that it made an impact; this is the man who cracked bedroom jokes as part of his speech in a conference!). It sunk to really low levels though and I became really annoyed, so I went to the other floor, ranted to a gal pal in a position of some seniority, partook of sympathy and empathy both, and then finally went to the HR guy.

I figured I don’t care if I come off as a rat or even if this is not appreciated by the higher-ups, but there’s only so much I can endure. I’m really not interested in a daily dose of idiotic jokes on the other women in this office, stupid remarks about women in general, and general locker room conversation, including my neighbour’s favoured genre of movies before he got married!!!

Someone had to protest because no one is pulling them up, and I think everyone then begins to think its okay to continue the entendres. It’s been getting worse every day to the point where the jokes are actually aimed at people at work. I’d have spoken to my boss first but I don’t think he’ll pull up the main offender in question plus he wasn’t there. I don’t think HR will do anything anyway, even if he did listen patiently enough to me, but I think they need to be aware there’s a cause of concern. And I've never faced this issue anywhere else I've worked.

The HR guy’s smart enough to have picked up the undercurrents while he sat here though. The one humorous moment in the entire conversation with him being when he wanted to know if I wanted one of the female boss types to stop discussing her personal life in public and rather lurid detail.

And seeing all this in writing makes my workplace seem such a den of insanity and depravity, I’m surprised I’ve survived this long here! *sigh*

I was talking about a foodie joint with a few people at work on my floor. I’ve never eaten there, but it’s alfresco so when you walk by it you get a good idea of what you get there. So when I tried to tell a colleague about the food, all I could tell her about it was that the food looked good, and since one believes in economy with words as well, the description that finally came out was – “they have good looking french fries.”

To most people I know, this would have been a perfectly acceptable and understandable statement.

The people this was spoken to however, and here we speak of the brilliant gems that adorn my division and hence the however many square feet of the floor I sit on, found the description hilarious – the funny, snide kind of hilarious and not the cleverly amusing kind of hilarious. The idea that something like food could not be described as good looking seemed positively incomprehensible.

Huh?

I couldn’t see why it would be funny at all, so as all sane people do, I consulted the sane pals on the other floor. And voila! There was immediate understanding – of course food could be good looking and it must be because the fries look the perfect golden colour, and we must go eat at the place under discussion some time. Also plenty of sympathy over the reaction and the fools I share the floor with.

And hence it is now proven. I clearly have major wavelength issues with the people who sit around me. They don’t even read! I am so justified in my cribs about the workplace *sniffle*

The interesting thing about coming in to work on a Monday when there’s a big match in the evening is that everyone behaves like they’re still in the weekend.

I’m not complaining.:o)