Clueless Corporates: A parting gift from Lilly Lampshaded

Everyone always describes leaving THAT place as getting out of prison. Well, for me it's more like a reverse insane asylum...You go in lucid, bright as a new button and ready to take on the world, and leave a dull nutcase that swears at the elderly and licks windows. And anyone who's ever worked there before will tell you that the day they left Satan's asshole (cudos Mrs Bratjie) was the best day of their lives. This was also true in my case, except I was mad as hell too, so thanks to my favourite gal pal, Geegee, I present my small token of displeasure to the clueless corporates...

Now, things weren't always this bad, at least not until Mr Grumpy left and the fairy princess took over. Grumpy was fabulous, well after ten in the mornings anyway. Before ten, I would put his coffee on his desk, he'd growl at me, and I'd back away SLOWLY. Thats how he got the name you see. After 10 would be a totally different story, complete with funny e-mails, dirty jokes and our lunchtime rituals where 90% of the office would disappear to the company restaurant (read health hazard) with our Grumpy. He was the best, and with him running the show, business was pleasure (especially his farewell party at teasers...we're all still in shit with his wife cos of that, but that's another story for another time)

Then, along came the fairy princess. An overly well groomed closet case, overrated terrible graphic designer with an ugly red car. Now before he became Mr Yes Man, he was in the art department with Gothgirl and Airoplane Jane. Now she got her nickname, and her claim to fame, by chasing the fairy out of the office by irritating the living daylights out of him every time the song, Airoplane Jane played on the radio by putting the volume up full blast knowing how much this grated his last nerve! It was fabulous! Not long after that, when he became Grumpy's assistant, she handed his ass to him in a disciplinary hearing and made him squirm in front of the big boss.

So fast forward a year, and you have the fairy loosely behind the wheel of the runaway train. He had some mighty big shoes to fill and thus far he hasn't been able to do so. The "man" cannot command respect from an ant farm, no one takes him seriously, not even the cleaning lady, and he knows it. So he tries to compensate by threatening everyone with warnings on a daily basis or by crawling up the big bosses ass with lame inhouse campaigns such as WWAD (what would America do). What would America do indeed...Once in a meeting when he discussed the campaign I asked him..."so is it cool if we all move into caravans, marry our cousins and bomb the crap out of anyone we don't like?" He didn't find that very amusing. Also, in our weekly meetings, all the division heads, myself, gothgirl, mr chubbs, peter pan and meneer would take the piss at his silly campaign and call it "what would grumpy do".

The fact that he knows little about nothing also contributes to everyone's frustration as well as to the fact that we get away with most of the shenanigans we get up to. This became apparent when the fairy and bratjie would have constant arguements about things the fairy knows nothing about, Gothgirl having enough of him treating her like his own personal doormat, the secretaries being ordered to "put the heater in the box for me?" (really? Really! How hard can that be) and sending e-mails to girlie asking her to print things out for him when there's a perfectly good colour printer on his desk right next to him, and one particularly funny moment when an argument between the two of us resulted in the director being hit in the face by a rogue keyholder. Needless to say I proved my point and as usual I won my argument.

The only person that maybe has a small ounce of respect for him is his assistant, Rasbanjee (thank you Mr Bratjie). But the Rasbanjee himself can't command much respect wearing pink sneakers, tight short jeans and no socks! This is very apparent when good old colourful has a go at him. Now you may wonder why I call her colourful. Little secret...it has nothing to do with her ethnicity, but rather her very COLORFUL use of language. She often drops the ma se P bomb on Rasbanjee and she puts him right back in his place every time!

Since this IS Satan's asshole, it wouldn't be complete without DEVIL WEARS PRADA ( #mostbroken colourful) She's the obese lazy old bag shoved into the corner of the admin block, in charge of doing so-called human resources! I've always had a theory that she kicks the paving bricks in the parking lot, and whatever crawls out from under there, she employs. She has two new assistants now, so with all the time she has on her hands, she's constantly thinking of new ways to get on everyone's nerves. Once she drew up an evacuation plan for if an airplane crashlanded into the building during the world cup, and for if terrorists decide to attack us by blowing up the surrounding ATM's (the closest ATM is 2km away). I'm not making this up!

So with people like these calling the shots, can you blame us for going slightly mad, trying to hang on to our sanity by chatting to "normal" people on Facebook during office hours, drinking WAY too much coffee whenever we get a chance, smoking like chimneys and getting the non smokers to join us, consuming large amounts of alcohol during our petty 30 minute lunchbreaks, wrapping their office furniture in bubble wrap, making fun of them in meetings and sticking it to the "yes we can" man whenever an opportunity presents itself?

Lilly Lampshaded

To read Lilly's first take on Clueless Corporates, click HERE