How To Run An Office

When Abby rolled in a half hour late this morning, nobody was surprised to see an email two minutes later simply stating, “Donuts in the break room,” because this is the rule. Fifteen minutes and you’re late. Anything over sixteen minutes and you bring breakfast. This was one of the first ‘rules’ Liz put in place after taking over as department director, and it works well. Keeps us all on schedule for the most part because even if it’s just a couple dozen donuts, nobody wants to buy breakfast for eight other people on any kind of regular basis. I know I don’t. The closest bakery for me when I’m running late is Petra’s, and eight breakfast croissants can set me back $40.

We have a lot of rules in the office, none of which are written down officially, but they’re no less in place and ruthlessly enforced and all things considered, they constitute a nice way to effectively run an office peopled by eight women of various ages and diverse personalities. I’d have to say the majority of them center around use of the bathroom. There’s the toilet paper rule. If you’re the last one to use the bathroom and you leave anything less than 20 squares of tissue on the roll without changing it, you’re going to get an email from someone if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you’re more apt to find someone standing in your office doorway announcing to you (and everyone else within earshot) that you forgot to change the toilet paper.

Likewise nobody wants to be called out for splashing water all around the sink so the next person who happens to lean against it while washing their hands gets to walk out with a lovely water stain across the band of their skirt.

It’s not an official rule that you must be an animal lover, but if you absolutely don’t like animals it is understood you will keep your opinions to yourself. This is largely due to the fact that between the eight of us, there are 3 dogs and 6 cats, respectively.

The lower right hand cabinet in the bathroom is a veritable mini-Costco of hair products and if you’re in the throes of a notably bad hair day and about to meet with a client, it’s perfectly acceptable to pilfer a spritz or two of someone else’s Tresemme to get you through. More than the occasional spritz and it’s an unspoken understanding that you’ll buy your own product or at a minimum, the next can of what you borrowed.

Everyone has free use of the bathroom, but setting up camp in there to apply your make-up, do your hair, or do anything else that requires more than five minutes will find you receiving the same kind of talking to. I think we’re all trying to stay conscious of this one, and the only person who actually does a wardrobe change in there is Casey, when she changes before her nightly sessions at the gym. This can be a problem when I’m waiting to use the bathroom because I know if I don’t I’m going to wish I did when I’m sitting in traffic that (Murphy’s law being the inevitable it is) will back up and make me twenty minutes late getting home just because I didn’t.

Everybody eats at their desk sometime and that’s fine, it’s what you’re eating that matters. We’re collectively OK with just about anything except onions. Onions are the gift that keeps stinking up the office long after the sandwich/salad is gone. The only offense worse than eating onions in your office is eating them in the boardroom, because that makes the daily 2pm meeting stink, too. I think this rule evolved years ago when one of our admins insisted on buying her lunch from the local taco cart every day at 11am, and from 11:15 until closing, the whole office smelled like the inside of an old burrito. I remember driving home and catching stray whiffs of red pepper and salsa that seemed to somehow have infiltrated my hair and my clothes, too.

It’s not a rule but an accepted fact that we have a comprehensive in-office recycling program. You’re free to bring in your old magazines, books, DVDs, and all those make-up samples you get at the Clinique counter when buying moisturizer, and put them in the break room, the unofficial ‘recycling area’. By the end of the day, they’ve been pretty much guaranteed a new life and a new home. Likewise you can bring in just about anything from your refrigerator and count on it being consumed. With all the weekend entertaining Jules does, she pretty much keeps us in veggie crudités every Monday, which is nice. There’s generally always a bag of tortilla chips in the break room and salsa in the fridge and without question, it’s open for anybody who wants it. But we do rigorously enforce the whole ‘double dipping’ thing, and ask that any utensil that’s been in your mouth doesn’t get put near or in anything that’s likely to go in anyone else’s.

I suppose it’s a given that you can also bring any homeless animals to us and we’ll give them homes, as well. Jules wound up adopting the feral cat from the loading dock, and Holly’s now the proud owner of the black tabby discovered wandering the east end of the parking lot. I adopted Gus because Casey routed pictures of him in an office email, thus weakening my defenses and finally slapping the kybash on them altogether by telling me how happy Basil would be to have ‘a brother’. I like to say with that, I ‘gave at the office’ and can absolve myself of the inclination to ever adopt another animal again.

We keep a coffee pot in the back and if you drink the coffee, you’re on the rotation for replacing it when it’s gone. I personally stick with cafeteria coffee, because as time goes on I’m less and less of a coffee drinker. I seem to require one cup in the morning and occasionally a cup in the afternoon and it makes no difference to me if it’s instant, canned, or liquid concentrate, I just need the caffeine. The office coffee pot can apparently only process bags of coffee with a starting price of no less than $12, so it’s understandable there are really only about three people who are still drinking it.

I suppose the final and handiest rule is that of absolute honesty. It’s just a given around here that nobody’s going to lie to you about anything, and if you ask an opinion you’re going to get (at least)one. I personally enjoy this one, although I’ve learned long ago never to ask, “Does this skirt make my butt look big?” when I’m having one of those days where I feel like my butt is big, and I can see in the mirror that it’s big, so why set myself up for being told I need to somehow make it smaller. I have also saved money by employing this rule when it comes to salon appointments. Just last weekend I stopped into Liz’s office and announced I was going to hit the salon Saturday and have my color done again. “Uh, no,” she said, glancing up at me. “You’re not ready yet.” I then bent down so she could inspect the top of my head and she said again, “couple more weeks,” which was great because it saved me not only cash but a few hours of my Saturday that otherwise would have been spent in a salon chair.

My very favorite of all the ‘rules’, however, is that for the most part, what happens in the office stays in the office, to borrow from the old Vegas slogan. Let’s just say we’re not always Human Resources Correct, but that’s OK. Maybe it’s because we’re not that we’re able to handle stress as well as we do, and spend so many hours together every day, year round, and consistently get along. It’s our unspoken ‘Code’, and it’s never broken.

Never.

No matter who’s asking.

When Liz received her fifteen year service award recently, our General Manager asked if anyone had any ‘stories they’d like to share’. Well, nobody did, or at least none they wanted to share in the executive boardroom in front of the General Manager. “What about you, Madeleine?” he asked, “anything you want to share?”

I didn’t hesitate a second. “Nothing,” I said, and held up a hand against his protest. “Let’s just say we have a code.”

And I’m very glad we do, or at least I know I will be when my own service anniversary next comes around.