Silly Office Games

So, do you ever do this?

You send out an e-mail asking for help on something work-related, and someone takes the message and contorts it into a game of "define the abbreviation", just because you didn't bother to spell out an acronym, and then the other couple of people on the group e-mail start to play along, until you have a flurry of e-mails being traded between office several feet apart from one another in a little game of "tag, you're it"?

Or

You sit in your office and send a funny story to someone who sits about 5 feet from you and listen to them snort/guffaw/chortle and then WAIT for them to send back their remarks so that you can start to craft your OWN remark back and never ONCE have to leave your office?

Or

Leave a comment on someone's blog who works right around the corner from you so that they can read that little dropped bomb at their leisure and you don't have to get up to tell them you read their "secret public journal" (a la Mike Birbiglia) and had a little sumpn-sumpn to say about it?

Well, me too, and I love it. I love me some internets and e-mail (as I've rhapsodized about before), and I love being silly like a little kid who's just goofing off in her room with some friends who came over to talk about Bobby Sherman and the cute Monkee and wind up dressing in old clothes that Mom doesn't want anymore and pretending to be British royalty or some kind of woodland sprite and telling jokes about people's underwear. Because, underwear! Funny!

Yes, the internet is good for a great many things, not the least of which is keeping close touch with your friends both far and near through meaningless (yet funny!) interchanges.

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Once, a long time ago, I worked the deli counter in a combination bar/sandwich place (really! high glamour factor goin' on there), and I guess I was perceived as being kind of a hardass. I was the shift manager, which meant that after 7 p.m. on weekdays and after 4 p.m. on weekends I was in charge, and to my everlasting irritation found that with the job title I would be the lucky recipient of all the crappy attitude from pissed off customers or drunken college students from next door who wanted free sandwiches (almost a direct quote - "Aw, come on, it's closing time and I'm HUNGRY but I spent all my money on beer! Cut me a break!" and then I'd say no, and then they'd call me a bitch, and everything was as it should be and I could go back to swabbing out the deli case and washing pans full of meat chunks and herb mayo) .

For the most part, I took this job a little too seriously, and didn't enjoy it as much as one might think someone would enjoy a job at which one could enjoy unlimited tortilla chips and molten-hot liquid nacho cheese for snacking upon. So it came as quite the shocker to my coworkers (and me, to be honest), when one day my "woodland fairy in her Mama's sequined gloves" persona came to work instead of the usual "I'm too sexy for my shirt, so don't mess with me" Tiff. For some reason it was all bets off that day, and when I sang, in a very loud voice, to one of my coworkers (now my sister-in-law) about the way her boobs looked in her pink oxford button down shirt, my "tough girl" personality took a hit, which cracked my shell, and, as a consequence, let other people in.

I find it's good not to be the tough girl, all the time, (emphasis is mine....) - though I do reserve the right to air her out every once in a while!

Everybody should.