Newsflash. Work is terrible. It’s something that we all have to do, but no one particularly wants to do it. It’s a cruel trick in which you have to go to a place and do things that you would never normally do, for a nominal amount of money that is usually too little, and for […]
Most of us enter the working world pretty ill-prepared for the harsh realities of office life. Even college isn’t much of an education in that regard; hell, arguably the most valuable thing one learns in college is how to bullshit your way through a class you didn’t do the reading for — a life skill with many […]
There comes a time in everyone’s career when you will quit your job. You will stand in your boss’s doorway, cock your head and say, “Do you have a sec?” You will quietly shut the door. You will sit down in that weird chair reserved for guests and your boss’s jacket, palms sweating, and tell […]
Like online dating and stopping to talk to people you haven’t seen since college at Urban Outfitters while shopping for underwear, job interviews are a necessary evil. If you have a job, you got that job because you put on your fancy “interview pants,” took a long lunch and went to an office somewhere to […]
High school is the ultimate preparation for the place that we will all end up eventually — the modern office. In high school, you learn how to navigate tricky social situations, and you figure out, sort of, where you stand in a mixed social environment in which you are also expected to succeed. College is […]
You’re probably kind of good at your job, but are you a good coworker? You might think you’re a good coworker, because no one’s ever said otherwise and everyone seems to like you, but here’s the thing: it’s hard to tell someone that they’re a bad coworker, because it feels like a personal indictment of character. […]
Your co-workers are the siblings you never really wanted, but ended up with anyway. You may not know what Andrea from accounting does when she leaves the office, but you know exactly what it looks like when she tries to hide her crippling online shopping habit behind Excel spreadsheets. You can tell when Jonathan in […]
People make a lot of fuss about cubicles, and how they are soul-sucking, useless work environments. “I’m in a cage! I am not free,” the cubicle dweller whines, but you know what? They have it better than most. Privacy! My kingdom for privacy. But open offices are the norm these days, and you heard it here […]
Work is kind of a slog as is, but if you work with people you hate? Well, start looking for something else, because the people you surround yourself with in the office are almost as important as the actual job itself. We can’t all be blessed with coworkers that are competent facsimiles of our best friends. Instead, […]
