Thursday, October 9, 2008

Justifications for Avoiding Going into the Newsroom

(Oct. 9 edition)

• Construction at or near my desk, designed to hide death spasms of newspaper with cosmetic improvements
• "Married With Children" marathon on Spike I was able to watch during lunch hour
• Gas prices? Sure, probably
• Need to visit Hilton Head's only "adult" store for work purposes upon opening at 3 p.m.
• The unbearable horror of refrigerator clean out day, and other corporate nonsense that make me never want to work in an office again


Here's a list I made today, based on true events.

Responsibilities of an HR Director, As Divined Through Our Company E-Mails

• Announce refrigerator clean out
• Warn of items that will be removed during refrigerator clean out
• Decide on date for second notice of refrigerator clean out
• Announce general work space clean out
• Post fliers in hallways announcing general work space clean out
• Consult on locations for bins during work space clean out
• Cut health insurance benefits
• Consult Euphemism Dictionary for words to replace "drastic care reduction," "triplicate cost increase," and "no raises this year"
• Inspect refrigerator post-clean out
• Procurement of flu shot reservations from interested staff members
• Ensure that every time sheet is filled out each pay period
• Denote members of the staff who have failed to fill out their time sheet each pay period
• Organize charity function that costs more than the money that will be raised
• Post fliers announcing upcoming charity function

2 comments:

Vicki said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Vicki said...

I think HR directors should have to clean out the refrigerator then send out memos telling everyone they're a bunch of pigs and how horrible it was to throw out their moldy 2-month-old pasta.

But doing the actually cleaning might not fit into the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. work schedule of an HR director. There are so many emails to send out and signs to hang during those four hours it hardly leaves any time to ass-kiss the publisher about how much work she's doing.