Post Grad Problems Blog » Office Humor

At your run of the mill office job, not all coworkers are miserable, only like 87%. Cherish the 13% you don’t want to die in an office fire, especially that 11% made up of the three to seven people you would actually consider sleeping with. To be fair, it’s not like you wish death on that 87% so much as you’re just indifferent as to whether or not they burn alive in agony. You’re not a terrible person; you’re just not a good one either.

 The 87%, the vast majority of your coworkers, are more likely than not walking piles of uselessness in terms of your own life. You don’t work directly with them, you are not friends with them, they are not sexually attractive to you, and they are not even your age (or within ten years of your age). It almost seems as if they are there simply to fill your peripherals. That might sound sociopathic, but an office has a way of doing that to a person, which is nice because it helps you justify stealing slices of pizza from the break room fridge.

I feel nothing!

Few things are more depressing than the interactions between yourself and these people. They happen everyday, multiple times a day. In fact, sometimes the quality of your day depends on how well you can avoid these interactions. They are the very definition of superficial, and if you’re anything like me, a little bit of you dies inside every time you have one. Maybe that’s how you become the people you’re currently seeking to avoid as much as possible? So many little bits of your once vibrant soul have withered away and died from those interactions that you eventually become the hollow, peripheral, half-human making useless small talk to some other mid-20-something. It’s the circle of not having a life.

In this way, working at a fast food restaurant or as a maximum-security federal prison guard is completely preferable to working in a corporate park. At least at those jobs people are real with you. When they say things like “I will CUT YOU motherfucker!” they mean it. When someone at your office says, “Have a nice day,” they don’t actually care if you do or not. They’re just saying it to fill the silence. Call me crazy but I value sincerity, even if it’s at the end of a sharpened toothbrush.

I can’t stand talking to people just to talk, and the office environment is rampant with that bullshit. From break room interactions to meetings to God forbid bathroom conversations. Unless I’m pissing on your shoes, there is no need to talk to me while I’m at the urinal. Unless the bathroom has literally exploded into flames and I haven’t noticed because I’m taking a nap in the handicapped stall, there is NO NEED AT ALL to talk to me while we’re both (in theory) dropping deuces. Even then a simple knock will do, no need to make our escape from certain death awkward.

 Maybe I’m just an asshole, but every time someone made small talk with me at my old jobs, I always wondered, “Why are you talking to me!?!” Were they trying to be nice? Don’t bother, you’re a 49-year-old obese man who stopped drinking 25 years ago. We have nothing in common. You could give me a free sub sandwich and I’d still avoid you at all costs, unless I saw you carrying another extra sub sandwich at a different time, in which case we’re boys.  Maybe they were trying to impress me? I hope that wasn’t the case. Clearly I’m not impressive, I work at the same place they do.

 If there was something interesting to talk about, sure, let’s have it. “Did you hear Diane the receptionist had a miscarriage? Yup, she was riding in a carriage through the park and the cobblestone road was way too bumpy.” Irony and dead babies? I’m game to listen to that story, no matter who’s telling it. However, stories about kids, half joking complaints about home life, and anything about the weather that isn’t “OH FUCK THERE’S A TORNADO IN THE PARKING LOT AND IT JUST GAVE DIANE ANOTHER MISCARRIAGE!” are completely unwelcome.

 Besides from actual work and terrible paychecks, the unwelcome interactions of daily office life might be the worst part of a corporate existence. Please don’t talk to me 87% of my coworkers, you’re not interesting and/or I don’t want to have sex with you. Come back when you have gossip or free food, preferably both.

 You might think you have one of the worst bosses in the world, but your supervisor pales in comparison to the worst bosses to ever grace the silver screen.

Mr. Ducksworth - The Mighty Ducks 

Ducksworth had one of the biggest hotshot lawyers in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul metro in Gordon Bombay. After Bombay’s DUI arrest, Ducksworth got him out of any possible jail time and bailed out his star employee, cutting a deal with a judge to force Gordo to coach pee-wee hockey. Bombay turned around District Five and led them to the playoffs. Bombay added some muscle at the end of the season, poaching star forward Adam Banks due to a districting technicality, but unfortunately, Banksy’s dad was a friend of Ducksworth’s. Ducksworth, Banks’ dad and Bombay’s nemesis, Coach Jack Riley, cut a deal with the pee-wee league to let Banks stay with the Ducks’ main rival, the Hawks. After Bombay protested, Ducksworth fired him.

Famous asshole line: “Gordon, I’m going to make this very clear. Are you prepared to lose your job over some kids? Some game?”

Tony Perkis – Heavyweights

A former overweight, tormented child with severe daddy issues, Tony Perkis bought a fat camp with his trust fund, overtaking the former utopia for fatties and turning it into a factory of pain and suffering for overweight grade schoolers. Perkis seemed jovial and passionate at first, but soon devolved into an evil villain, trapping kids and camp workers in fitness hell, eventually being imprisoned by his minions after a six-mile hike gone awry. 

Famous asshole line: “Attention campers: lunch has been canceled today due to a lack of hustle. Deal with it.”

Colonel Jessup – A Few Good Men                                     

Besides laying power move after power move upon Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee during Kaffee’s courtroom questioning of Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, Jessup is one bad guy. He forged a phony transfer order to bail himself out of being charged with murder and ran a military operation in Gitmo that might rival the Nazis in 1940s Germany. Jessup forces one of his subordinates to forge the transfer order of a murdered marine, in turn causing the subordinate to commit suicide before he has to testify against Jessup in court. What a dick.

 Famous asshole line: “You see Danny, I can deal with the bullets, and the bombs, and the blood. I don't want money, and I don't want medals. What I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty white uniform and with your Harvard mouth, extend me some fucking courtesy. You gotta ask me nicely.”

Gordon Gekko – Wall Street

A wheeling and dealing Wall Street yuppie, Gekko embodied the spirit of the 1980s. He acquired publicly traded companies and got rid of the waste. He was really good at it too. He didn’t give a fuck who he had to fire when he took over a company. He took the young Bud Fox (great name) under his wing and tought him the ropes of the cutthroat world of the stock market. Mergers and acquisitions. Eventually, Bud and Gekko were at odds over Blue Star Airlines, and Bud ended up screwing Gekko out of millions of dollars. Gekko showed Fox the way, and his protégé screwed him over. But what really makes Gekko a terrible boss is that he agreed to be in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps.

 Famous asshole line: “Lunch is for wimps.”

Bill Lumbergh – Office Space

He is the epitome of the awful boss in the post-modern corporate world. Micromanaging constantly, condescending towards his subordinates and obsessed with doing what’s right for the company. But his view of doing what’s right for the company consists of filling out TPS cover sheets and putting up redundant banners in the office. He plays favorites in the office and steals staplers from people. Then take into account that he has no problem with making people come in on the weekend and his voice is more annoying than nails on a chalkboard. Bill Lumberg is the penultimate horrible boss.

 Famous asshole line: “Is this good for the company?”

John Milton – The Devil’s Advocate

He’s the devil. No, he’s literally the fucking devil in the flesh. Al Pacino’s character of John Milton played the ultimate mind fuck on Keanu Reeves in this classic ‘90s thriller. Reeves plays a talented southern lawyer, Kevin Lomax, who has never lost a case, representing child molesters and other undesirables along the way. Milton seeks out Keanu to join his high-powered, multinational New York City law firm. Lomax soon comes to find out that there’s some truly shady shit going down in Milton’s firm and is swallowed whole into the seedy underbelly of Satan’s law practice. Lomax’s wife is driven completely batshit insane from living in New York City with you know, the devil, and eventually kills herself in front of her husband. In the movie’s climax, Milton reveals to Kevin that he is in fact his father and that Lomax is the spawn of Satan. Then Milton wants Kevin to have intercourse with his half-sister to procreate the antichrist to bring about the end of the world. Try working for that guy.

 Famous asshole line: “Call me dad.”

Miranda Priestly – The Devil Wears Prada

In the realm of female-centric cinema, The Devil Wears Prada takes the cake as the ultimate girly-girl movie. Anytime a movie has Stanley Tucci playing either an in-your-face kind of gay man or an effeminate companion of the main character, you know no man with a working set of twig and berries should willingly watch this movie. Anyway, at the center of the story is Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief of Runway magazine, the biggest fashion magazine in the world. She hires Andy Sachs, played by the sometimes tolerable Anne Hathaway, as her secretary and we see the torment that Miranda puts Andy through on a daily basis, giving her impossible task upon impossible task. Whether it’s her ridiculous daily Starbuck’s order or finding her kids a copy of the newest Harry Potter book just hours before they leave on vacation, Miranda is a real bitch. Don’t think I could make it in the New York fashion scene. Good thing I don’t want to.

Famous asshole line: “Details of your incompetence do not interest me.”

Warden Norton – The Shawshank Redemption

As if going to prison wasn’t soul-crushingly depressing enough, imagine your warden was also a corrupt, money laundering, pious murderer. Warden Norton took Andy Dufresne under his wing as his personal accountant, freeing Andy from the laundry and away from rapists that had tormented him in prison. Dufresne gained the favor of the warden by washing his dirty money, but when Andy found a break in his case that might prove him innocent, the warden had the witness murdered. Prison politics. But old Andy got the last laugh, escaping from the prison, stealing all the warden’s money and exposing his crimes within the prison, leading to Warden Norton’s suicide and the best ending to any movie ever.

Famous asshole line: “Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me.”

1. Getting A Job

Congratulations! You’ve managed to become a contributing member of society! Even if it’s just a temporary job at Best Buy to boost your résumé until you find a real job that suits your skillset, and you graduated a year and a half ago, at least you’re getting paid. I mean, the job market is still brutal. Most people would be more than happy to dish out facts about flat screens at Best Buy. Yeah. Keep reminding yourself of that. More than happy.

Whether you’ve started your career, or are just passing the time with hourly pay, the fact that you’re employed tells people that you are, at the very least, slightly motivated to survive. It’s still brutal trying to bring home girls from the bar when your parents are your roommates, though.

2. Moving Out Of Your Parents’ House

You’ve finally managed to save up enough dough to move out of your parents’ house. Sure, your one bedroom apartment is a shithole, you still regularly need assistance from your parents to pay bills, and you don’t own any furniture so you use a computer chair as a dinner table, but at least you’ve finally got your own place. All you have in the refrigerator is a three-week old gallon of milk and an empty pizza box, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. Now you can watch porn whenever you want, and no one can take that away from you.

Securing your own place of residence tells the world that you are at least making an attempt to appear to be an adult, and attempting to appear to be an adult is half the battle.

3. Becoming Financially Independent

You’ve either finally been cut off by the parentals, or gotten a pay raise that allows you to break the shackles of financial dependence. And to think you graduated just three short years ago. It’s funny, but you never realized how quickly things like car insurance and cell phone bills can add up. You’re probably going to have to cut down on unnecessary expenditures, and take a hard look at your cable bill that features every premium channel, but post-grad life is all about making sacrifices.

Don’t get a big head. Your dad still does your taxes. However, being financially independent is still a big step toward being taken seriously by friends and family.

4. Getting A Pet

The loneliness that comes with a quarter-life crisis finally got to you, so you made an impulse purchase and got a dog. Congratulations, you are barely mature enough to take care of yourself, and now another life is in your hands. You had a dog growing up, so you thought this would be easy, but you were wrong. Prepare to smell like piss and shit for months. The little bastard will probably eat your dinner table (computer chair) too, so you’ll need a backup place to eat.

Having a pet, and keeping it alive, tells people that you are probably a caring person, and might have a normally functioning brain.

5. Learning How To Present Yourself

You’ve delayed the inevitable for as long as possible, but it’s time to take the next step into the American business world. You’re a professional now, so you need to start looking like a professional. No longer will that half-assed bowl cut you’ve been rocking since the eighth grade pass as an acceptable hairdo. You find yourself a barber who has two good eyes and a full set of fingers, and cough up $50 twice a month for a dominant hairstyle that screams, “I make deals.” Now it’s time to pack up all your collegiate clothing, and drop that shit off at Goodwill. No, it’s not okay to save your favorite frat tee from 2006 and wear it to the grocery store. What if you run into your boss? Nobody takes the guy who wears an Office Hoes and CEO Bros t-shirt seriously. You’ll be the laughing stock of the office. Hit Jos. A Bank and buy yourself some acceptable business casual that fits into your pathetic budget.

Looking like you’ve got your shit together tells everyone you’re ready to leave college life behind, and become a real boy.

6. Getting A Girlfriend

You’re sick to death of every relative asking when you’re going to settle down with a nice girl. One-night stands are becoming a thing of the past with every passing year, and closing on strange isn’t the easy task it used to be in college. Women in the post-grad world demand to be taken seriously, or at least taken out to a reasonably priced dinner before disrobing so that you can poke around in their proverbial cubicle. So you nut up and start dating. When she asks why you don’t have any furniture, and you’re eating your meals off a computer chair, just lie and say you just moved and your breathtaking collection of antiques is in storage.

Having a girlfriend tells the world that you’re capable of successfully dividing your attention between your professional and personal life. Everyone is proud of you.

7. Purchasing A Car

That Tahoe your parents bought you in 2009 gets the job done, but it still stinks like beer and puke from that road trip you took for your football team’s bowl game during senior year. It’s time to up the ante. Odds are you’re going to get yourself into a lease that doesn’t quite fit into your budget, but fuck it. Everyone is in debt, right? What the hell is the point of all those credit cards if you can’t floss a little bit? Grab yourself a nice Toyota Camry with leather interior and satellite radio, and let all the bitches on the block know that you’re a man of means.

Purchasing your first car lets people know that you’re not afraid to let the bills pile up, and join the debt-plagued dregs of society.

8. Getting Married

Ah yes. Marriage. The ultimate sign of adult conformity. You found yourself a partner of the opposite sex (or the same sex, not that there’s anything wrong with that), and you’re ready to take the everlasting plunge of monogamy.

I think Alec Baldwin said it best in The Departed:

9. Purchasing A Home

You’ve made it. You’re living the American dream. You’re buying a fucking house. No longer will your meals be consumed in a dark apartment off a computer chair while watching reruns of 30 Rock on Netflix. You’re a man now, and men live in houses with wives and kids and animals running around and shitting everywhere.

Purchasing a home tells people exactly how much money you make.

10. Producing Offspring

Maybe it was on purpose, maybe it wasn’t. It doesn’t really matter, because you’re having a baby. If you could ask the 21-year-old version of yourself if you’d have kids before you were 30, he would respond, “Are you out of your fucking mind?” and then shotgun another Keystone Light. None of that matters now. Brace yourself, because shit is about to get real. You thought cleaning up after that pet you got was a pain in the ass? You’re about to have a miniature human being on your hands that you’ll be one hundred percent responsible for.

Having a kid tells people that you’ve successfully made the transition into adulthood. Your days of never-ending Halo 4 marathons, binge drinking, and peaceful sleep are over. I’m praying for you.

For the record, I've only done 5 of the 10 things on this checklist, so I don't know what happens after you've completed them all. I assume you just die. Be careful out there.

 Will Ferrell “Mr. Tarkanian”

“Well, I’m a stickler.”

Ed Glosser, Trivial Psychic

“You don’t get it, do you? You’re wasting coffee!”

Nick Burns, Your Company’s Computer Guy

“MOVE!”

Will Ferrell Shows His Patriotism

“Sorry I’m late gang…”

Japanese Office

“It’s funny because it’s racist.”

Board Meeting

“Cut Human Resources.”

Adele Therapy

“Last night I watched the series finale of ‘Friday Night Lights’ and it really messed me up…”

The Richmeister

No quote necessary for this one. Just be glad we were all still in diapers or eating Happy Meals when this classic sketch was undoubtedly being copied in every office building in America.

Tom Brady Teaches Us About Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

“Be handsome. Be attractive. Don’t be unattractive.”

Richard Pryor’s Job Interview

“Dead honky!” Nothing like blatant, over-the-top racism to slate yourself into SNL history.