It's A Hallmark Moment

One thing there has been a rash of recently are inter-office cards for various reasons that I don't care about being signed and given to people I don't know.

 I am a quiet person, I do my job, and I come home. I don't know 'Bob from accounting,' 'Dave from strategic planning,' 'Jane from project management,' or anyone else not 1) in my row, or 2) in my group.

Because of this, I don't need to know when 'Dick from processing' has a baby, and I don't want to contribute any money to his kid's college fund. The kid certainly isn't going to come find me in 20 years and say, "Man, thank you for that $20! You put me into Harvard, man! I would have had to go to west-side gangland community college if it weren't for you!"

Keep your cards in your own row, don't let them travel between floors, and don't ask me for money. The man has a job for a reason!

Plain-old aggressive office toy of the week: Airzoooka Air Gun

Phone Meetings

I have started announcing random people at meetings. I sit in a row of cubes that's relatively quiet, but one row over is a group of developers who thinks the H-shaped wall dividers, or maybe the plants, constitutes an impenetrable sound barrier. Because of this barrier, they feel the need to shout at each other, even though the combined distance between their two farthest people is over 15 feet (but not 16, that extra foot is a killer!).

This makes conference calls horrid to be on, as you have people trying to convey information on one end, and people screaming at each other about baseball (and they're old enough they STILL think the entire 'Who's on first?' routine is hysterical. Even after the 20th time this week).

Because of this, I have started to get up when they're yelling at each other, walk over until I'm literally invading their personal space and announce to my conference call,

"Hey guys, sorry to interject, but Dave here apparently has something that's so incredibly important to say that he needs to scream it out to the floor, so I'm just going to put him on." And I had the phone to him and walk away.

Plain-old Aggressive Office Toy Of the Week: USB Missile Launcher

I Don't Bother You At Work...

People in other groups at work have taken to ignoring all documentation and requests from me and my group, and have started emailing my group alias when they want to get a hold of someone in my group. They will ignore the on-call, ignore the documentation, ignore the on-call database, ignore the group that was created to escalate to the most adept person, and email MY ENTIRE GROUP AT 2AM.

So I've started taking a list of these people and cc'ing them on the most mundane of matters. I would copy them when asking about times, when getting information from vendors, when submitting PTO requests.

Plain-old Aggressive Office Toy Of the Week:  Pen that shocks people that click it