I hate office humour. I hate it. Loath it. It’s so obnoxiously shit and should be punishable by public beatings or at least a short walk over a floor covered in thumb tacks and up-turned plugs. On fire. In the dark.
It’s disgusting.
The type of ‘joke’ that’s borne from a single, stupid misunderstanding or minor non-event that the wheelie-chair jockeys latch on to and repeat, ad nauseum – all day – until your eyes bleed and your brain begins to starve itself of oxygen, screaming for a way out. It might be a slight trip or a stumble whilst carrying a cup of tea, that magically transforms into OH MY DAYS, DID YOU HEAR WHAT ALF DID EARLIER? HE FELL! FELL! THERE WAS TEA EVERYWHERE! IT WAS A TEA-MAGEDDON! AHAHAHA!. This piss-poor excuse for conversation is then usually repeated to the people who were present, and already know full well the banality of the situation, but still join in the guffawing like retarded hyena’s choking on speedballs. Then some other poor fucker, usually someone like me, will wander past minding their own business, carrying various bits of paper and trying to look busy enough to divert the attention of anyone in charge. And they’ll be stopped, perhaps physically, and the entire bloated saga will be retold, acquiring various bells and whistles along the way. A shitty re-imagining of something that barely happened. It’d be like re-making ‘The Happening’ or something. The hapless office-worker in question will then mutter a polite ‘lol’ or some other appeasing utterance and try to be on their way. Except they won’t be allowed to go.
Oh, no.
They didn’t find it funny enough, did they. So more ‘AHAHA’S will be barked, and the story will be told again at a higher decibel. “YOU WILL FIND THIS FUNNY!” they scream, blind to the fucking obvious fact that THEIR AUDIENCE WILL NOT.
This epic retelling will happen every time someone new happens to walk past, regardless of how many other poor bastards are sat in the vicinity, hearing the same tepid story for the sixteenth time within the hour. Often, the same people will be collared, again, and have it rammed down their throat, again. Occasionally the jabbering twat-tards will recruit another comedy leech, who’ll hook on to the main group and throw in their own AHAHA’s, and repeat it again to the same unfortunate folk who the first lot have already grabbed. It’s like a violently depressing mobious strip. You can’t see where it ends or why the fuck it’s so interesting.
“OHMIGODDIDYOUHEARWHATALFDID?”
“Yes. Yes I did. Off at least six people. I also got the circulated email and the stack of post-it notes you left me.”
“WELLLETMETELLYOUAGAINBECAUSEITISBRILLIANTOHMYGODYOUWILLLAUGH”
And out of mis-guided politeness and an over-all desire to not be fired for lashing out and scraping a co-worker’s tongue out with a biro, before punching holes in it with one of those little machines (forget what they’re called), you sit, and you smile, and you listen again. Acutely aware that you’re stabbing yourself in the thigh with a compass; you can feel the blood dripping down into your socks and you fantasise about being anywhere – anywhere – other than where you are right now. Your brain flits happily to a dream-land, where you’re stuck in a Beirut prison, sucking cocks to avoid a shivving. It’s happier there.
But, I digress. As with most of these shoddily written tirades of abuse, my thinly-veiled anger is actually centred around a real-life incident that has happened, and managed to catch the attention of my ire. Office Humour. I hate it.
An example:
Yesterday, an elastic band was being idly played with by a bored co-worker; thumbed and stretched and twisted around fat, useless fingers when it suddenly decided it’d had enough and it darted off, up into the air and landed innocuously on the ground a few feet away.
That doesn’t sound like award-winning comedy, does it? But that’s where you’d be WRONG. Clearly. You fucking moron. This is Graham Linehan territory, this. It’s destined to go down in history as the single funniest occurrence since Jade Goody kicked the bucket. It’s absolute fucking GOLD. Duh. How did you not realise? Are you stupid or something? Maybe you didn’t hear the exact details, so I’ll repeat it again, louder and a little too close to your face for comfort.
Yesterday! An elastic band was being HILARIOUSLY played with! Thumbed and stretched and twisted around glorious, comedy-imbued fingers! When it suddenly decided it’d had enough! And it darted off, up into the air and landed INCREDIBLY FUNNILY on the ground a few feet away! AHAHAHA.
Ahaha inDEED.
I got back to my depressing little desk and was greeted by the shining, happily spastic faces of all of my co-workers (I am genuinely fucked if any of them ever find this site). They were eager to tell me the news; some literally bursting at the seams.
And they told me the story, each of them.
“Oh” I said, sitting down and flicking my monitor back on. Wrong answer. Incorrect reaction. Error 404: Humour Not Found. I didn’t say “AHAHA!” and run off to tell the cleaner, like they expected any normal person to do.
So they told me again, highlighting each point and bookending it with more hysterical laughter.
Strangely, I didn’t double over in fits of torrential laughter this time either.
The worst part of it is, one co-worker wasn’t in work yesterday. They are in today; so it took less than ten minutes of the working day before I heard the entire story yet again, this time with the added bonus that it almost hit someone. So yesterday’s piece of nothing suddenly becomes the hottest topic today. I’ll be surprised if it isn’t on the company homepage by lunchtime.
The strength of this particular brand of innocuous humour lives and dies on the strength, or weakness, of your imagination. If you can hear the above story and stop your brain immediately leaping to something more interesting (say, a blue pen) then you have a chance of finding it funny. If, however, you prefer your comedy to have any sort of substance or funny bits, you’re destined to remain outcast from their inbred society, living off scraps of genuine humour. Or reading Twitter all day.
For example, something half-funny happened regarding the elastic band incident. During one particularly hellish retelling late yesterday afternoon, one of the less intelligent specimins cried out “HA! THEY SHOULD CALL YOU THE……….”.
Then they stopped, and fear flashed across their eyes as they realised they had absolutely nothing else to say. No ending to the sentence they’d birthed without thinking. A horrid botched-abortion of a line that had no right to exist in the first place.
Five seconds passed and “…..band…..” dripped from their mouth, desperately fighting against itself, not wanting to be heard.
Another lengthy gap of vapid nothingness passed as her audience waited with baited breath. Or, in my case, lurching awkwardness smothered in cringeworthy comedy. Then “…..snapper…..” came out, rounding off the full sentence. Was it an attempt at a nickname? Was she about to say something offensive and had to do a mental u-turn at the last second? Is she just a bit thick? We may never know.
“That was pathetic!” I said, smashing the silence with a hammer. “Why did you even bother talking?”. Mean, maybe, but I’m all about negative reenforcement.
It was priceless, watching her slowly die inside as the words refused to come, culminating in the most pointless line of the whole escapade.
Anyway, rant over. You band-snapper.
Chris <chris@onlybees.com>
