h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Always be friendly and polite to any cleaners or facilities staff. These people make your office nice, and can be really helpful. I hate it when colleagues seem to think that if you aren't wearing a suit and sitting in front of a computer you are not worth good manners

Our facilities office shower nice people with fabulous gifts like gel-filled wrist pillows.

I want a pillow for my gel-filled wrist please

DON'T ring someone at 12:05.

If you do ring someone at 12:05, don't be surprised if nobody answers the phone. And don't just leave the phone ringing. If you've rung a company which employs over 5,000 people and the phone rings more than four times, GIVE UP and call back. You have most likely already caused at least two separate phones to ring and failed to get an answer. Further waiting is futile. Go and do something constructive until AFTER lunch, then try again.

If somebody does answer the phone and they clearly have a mouthful of food because they're eating lunch at their desk, don't be surprised if they're not prepared to leap up and do your bidding because you're too stupid not to realise it's lunchtime.

Don't get angry when they can't connect you to the person you want to speak to. You rang during lunchtime, idiot. Call back.



H.

What companies still have receptionists? Everywhere I've been, luxuries like receptionists and switchboard operators have been rationalised away. Unless the place is so big you have nothing to do with such people anyway.

Cleaners, yes. I'm normally still in the office when they come. As we sell to retailers, our customers are still around at 6, 7 8 in the evening. When the cleaners are vaccuuming.

We've just moved to a New Building so there's lots of rules. I never knew people could get so haughty about toast and handbags!

Anyway, from my point of view:

please take your stuff off the printer when you print it, not 4 days later.

Please either turn off your mobile 'phone or remove the 'Dom Jolly' ring from it

please don't bathe in aftershave so I can almost taste it

please look at me when I walk past and smile. I'm getting a bit cheesed off with people blanking me

that's all for now....

If you are too ill to be here: P**s off home. I don't want to hear you snuffling and blowing your nose every two minutes and I certainly don't want to witness the rain cloud that emerges as you sneeze for the fiftieth time this morning.

Liam.

You should complain to managers to provide lots of sick pay so ill people can afford to stay at home. I've come into work ill on occasion due to poorness.

And if you see me sat at my desk during lunch time, then please ASK if I'd mind covering you phone(s) whilst you go to lunch. Don;t just assume I will cover half the office. I might just have decided to spend my lunch posting to HooToo!

Sick pay isn't the problem. It's people doing the 'right thing' for the company and soldiering on. Some of the work I do here I can do at home - I can log into the company network so if I'm not feeling too good and I don't have any meetings on, at least nothing I can't do over the phone, I go home and get paid from there. I know this isn't always the case.

Liam.

I was going to say something like that! When I was a permie I thought sick people struggling into the office were evil, unclean spreaders of disease.

Now I am contract and don't get sick pay I would have to be actually unable to stand up before calling in sick (like when I had tonsilitis that made me faint) - and even then I'd try to see if I could work from home...

However:
If you cough/sneeze etc, cover your mouth and was your hands afterwards.

Here's the shocking bit (actually it's not that shocking if you've been paying any attention! ) I'm not a permie. I'm a contractor. But I can charge for all the hours that I'm working. I don't appreciate being made ill by people incapable of doing their work because they are unwell.

Liam.

Your appreciation will not feed their kids.

Ah but you presumably don't get paid for hours you don't work. Most contractors I know have a veritable pharmacy in their desk drawers so that they don't have to take unpaid time off. I was just saying that my own attitude to my own illness has changed now that I lose hundreds of pounds if I have to stay at home rather than sit snuffling at my desk...

I still maintain that permanent staff that don't stay at home when they are ill are evil, unclean disease-spreaders. Lets call them 'Typoid Marys' for ease of reference. When I do it I am obviously a hero, battling against the odds to do a great job for my clients

It's not fair. I want a permanent contract so I can stay at home when too ill or drunk to go to work.

Is this to go from a light hearted discussion about mock office rules to contingency planning for other peoples sickness? I personally do not give a flying f**k if my appreciation feeds their kids or not. It really is not my problem. I don't get paid when I'm sick/take holidays/paternity leave.

Liam.

*steps away from sudden outbreak of aggression*

It's exactly that attitude that makes people go into work when ill with no regard for whether it will affect others.

And when you do get paid, it's more than they do any way, so fairs fair really.

the attitude of Liam, that is, not the attitude of stepping away from aggression.