Clueless Corporates by Lilly Lampshaded

As I walk out of the secretaries' office I can't help but feel inspired. We just had a long conversation about which 7de Laan character we are. This is the kind of thing the 'little people' get up to when those in the Ivory Tower aren't watching. If you're stuck in a 10000 square meter cement and steel cage for a minimum of ten hours a day, you have to do something to free your mind from the traps of deadlines, written warnings, disciplinary hearings, sales targets and more big words nobody really cares about.

So let me tell you a little something about the people I work with:

As mentioned I have two secretaries, we'll call them Colorful and Girly. They provide most of my daily entertainment and I wonder how they ever get any actual work done? Girly will send out a memo asking not to be disturbed as she is busy with wages and she locks her office door. In reality this means Colorful's had a heavy night and needs to catch a nap, and Girly has Very Important Business on Facebook to attend to. Sometimes Girly will join Colorful - who's on Facebook all day every day anyway - and they catch their forty winks together. And as usual, they love a good gossip as well, but we'll get there later.

Then there's Meneer in the adjacent department. He's a sweetheart that takes way too much abuse from these people. He is also one of my favourite people on the planet. In the mornings before work starts, he always makes coffee and toast for us or brings me some of his mom's famous rusks. We also take all our tea breaks together. Now Meneer might be abused but he's no angel either. Let's put it to you this way... Work is something we do to fill time between coffee breaks. Sometimes we even take two coffee breaks an hour. Sometimes Meneer will bring a Woolies cheese platter and some crackers and we'll sit on the balcony like Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip and we'll get funny looks from the Directors.

Then there's Peter Pan. The Go To guy if you need anything personal done, if you want a movie to watch over the weekend, or if you get tired of office coffee and prefer a cappuccino or hot chocolate. He's one of the last surviving members of the LoadShedding 2009 office cricket team. Back then we didn't have a backup generator and whenever Eskom decided it's our turn to be in the dark, we had to keep ourselves entertained. Being in the highly pressurised industry we're in, we were all issued with stressballs and faulty office equipment was always available. And that's how office cricket was born. One stressball, One broken keyboard, Six bored employees and it's game on! The rules were simple (we had to keep it simple as we played in partial darkness) whatever you knocked off the Gothgirl's desk got you points. Maximum points for knocking over her coffee. Those days are over now, so now the folks in that office keep themselves entertained by defacing the motivational posters the HR department puts up. My favourite being a poster saying "Smiles are contagious, be a carrier". They scratched out the word Smiles and replaced it with the word Hangovers.

Although not all of us smoke, we usually gather outside on the balcony for a smoke and exchange information. Of course Colorful always has the best "skinner" but she's always eager to share. We also send her to go find out what’s happening where. She usually comes running down the stairs past my office throwing all kinds of hilarious hand gestures, then I know it's THAT time of the day. Hot topics of discussion are usually the closet cases on the design team or what the numbsculls in procurement got in incentives this month, as well as the PA's upstairs having so-called overflow PA's because their non-existent workload is too heavy!

Then there are our weekly meetings. The fairy princess that calls himself our boss has no boardroom etiquette whatsoever. He's always on his Blackberry and always has something in his mouth. So as a team we decided to take our phones and our lunchboxes into a meeting as well and we didn't really pay attention to what he had to say. Needless to say, Fairy hasn't done it since. Our meetings are also notorious for the verbal altercations between myself and the fairy, so much so that it has Girly so distracted that she can't take notes as she slides off her chair. Peter Pan and Meneer are usually my backup when this happens. These days I provoke the Fairy more for fun than actually trying to get my point across.

When you leave home before the sun rises and get home after the sun sets, you have to find ways of entertaining yourself. Of course there's many more shenanigans to write about but that’s another story for another day. Apart from us goofing off half the time, we are the ones that meet the deadlines and make the magic happen! And that makes me wonder...are the Corporates really clueless, or do they turn a blind eye because we do what needs getting done?

Lilly Lampshaded