We’re going to go back over 3 years.
If you were around then, perhaps you remember Priscilla, Queen of the Cubicle.
Priscilla and I are still friends. We talk nearly every work day, only now things are different. For one, she escaped the cubicle. She married a dentist and abandoned me.
That’s really not true. We still talk, just like we always did. But still, she is cubicle free. Also, she is of the opinion that I abandoned her because I was the first to leave the place we both worked.
I get to bring Priscilla back for one last story about our time working together.
I couldn’t blog about this before. It’s possible, although not likely, that people we both worked with could read my blog and as long as one of us still worked there, then this story had to remain untold.
Well, she doesn’t work there anymore.
Now, I can tell you guys about our signs.
We both really hated our jobs. I worked for a misogynistic douche twizzle and Priscilla, well, her brain was underutilized. She worked in payroll and had to deal with people all the fucking time.
We spent all day at work with our internal instant message program open. We would talk, scheme, and come up with money making ideas which didn’t involve fluorescent lighting or working in a rat hole within a maze of rat holes.
One of our best times came when we started hanging signs on the communal bulletin board.
Our signs were way better than anything else on the board, but not well loved by all.
In fact, I am pretty sure we pissed someone the fuck off. Which made our project more fun.
I’m not perfect.
We started small and not out in the open. The first thing we did was to put a sign on someone’s moldy leftovers in the fridge. The sign had a picture of a trophy and said “First place – Baker Science Fair.” I was going to change the name of the place I worked, but why?
Then, when someone put an empty juice bottle in the fridge, we put a sign on it that said “Pessimists and optimists agree: This is empty”
We started hearing little whispers. “Who is doing that? Don’t they have work to do?”
HAHAHAHAAH. Probably, yes. We probably did have work to do.
We were emboldened and giddy with success and moved on to the bulletin board.
We couldn’t get caught. This was a business. And one must behave professionally in a business setting and that most certainly didn’t include putting full color 8 x 10 pictures of Drop Dead Fred and Ron Swanson on the community bulletin board.
We had a system. Priscilla would stand as casually as possible in the kitchen doorway and keep watch while I ran back to the bulletin board and put up a sign.
I am quite short, so the signs only made it midway up the board.
Also, I am not stealthy.
Once, after jabbing a pin into a sign, I turned to walk away and hip checked a lunch table with chairs stacked on it and the chairs all crashed to the ground.
Priscilla: What the fuck are you doing? How are we ever going to be spies if you keep knocking shit over?
Me: Maybe I should be the lookout?
Priscilla: You’d get distracted and wander off.
Me: That’s fair.
In spite of ourselves, we never got caught.
We heard a lot of chatter about our signs, but we feigned innocence.
What? It says what? Really? Yes, completely childish. Oh yes, and terrible waste of company time.
Anyway, I couldn’t write about this until we were both free of those particular cubicles. Most of the signs are long gone, but our sign maker, Randy, still had some of them on his computer.
Here are the ones we salvaged:
So, I mentioned that someone was annoyed by our signs. I don’t know who ripped them down, but someone took them down. The unicorn sign only lasted about 30 minutes. Some lasted for a day or two.
My favorites were the “Missing” signs.
We made “missing” signs for our signs that someone had taken down. I kind of wish I knew who it was. If I had to guess, I would pick Priscilla’s boss.
Randy could only find the first “missing” sign, but there were two. After the first one was taken down, Randy made a second one that was exactly the same, but it had another “missing” above the “missing”.
After the second “missing” sign was removed, we made one last sign. It lasted longer than all the other ones. I think it was up for a week. Our last sign just said “Y SO SERIOUS?”
Priscilla is the reason why Rubber Shoes In Hell is named Rubber Shoes In Hell. The name was born during one of our marathon chat sessions. Don’t tell her I said so, cause her head will swell, but she was my favorite thing about that job and I miss her terribly.
At my IRL job we’re about to move offices. I’ve decided there is definitely going to be a community bulletin board in the new place, and *someone* is definitely going to post silly, time-wasting signs on it. Let this be on your head.
YAY!!! I want to hear about it. And please feel free to steal one of our signs.
I once spent two hours attaching googly eyes to every plant in the entire office. I’m currently on a mission to have everyone (at the peon level) replace the photo on their ID tag with a cartoon character that better represents their personality. Gotta make it fun somehow.
I’ve been a reader for years and love the Pricilla stories. Keep writing… you’re brilliant.
Thank you so so much! I am glad to hear from you! I LOVE the googly eye idea! Where I work now is a small small office and I’d never get away with it. They’d know it was me.
I work at a big place.. about 300 people. But they recently put in security cameras so I will have to work on my stealthiness.
Oh yeah, gotta watch out for the cameras.
Dear the goddess, Michelle! Great post!!!
I LOVE the pessimist/optimist sign on the empty jug. I’m SOOOO going to steal that.
I leave “signs” on “Shit That Shouldn’t Be” around my house. (Two fully-grown, capable men–hubby and son–live here with me.)
Here are some recent ones:
“Seriously? This is as close to the trash as you could get?”
“Lost: The other sock. Perhaps someone’s foot is in it???”
“This kitchen is neither the closet nor the hamper. (But from the smell of things, someone needs to visit the shower.)”
I’m also going to start a sign campaign where I work.
I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes!
I can’t WAIT to see how it goes.
And WHY IN THE HELL do they throw shit on the floor right next to the garbage can? WHY?
See? Little things that make life bearable.
I’m totally stealing, posting and encouraging workplace signs.
Bless the well backed up hard drive.
Bless it hard <3
Hah! Yes! Please do. We need more silliness in the world, especially now.
It’s such a blessing to have someone with the same crazy sense of humor in one’s life. There was a pile of dishes in the sink in our office break room that was there so long it started to stink. I stuck a label on the top one that said “Do Not Disturb. Age test in Progress”. That’s from an old science comic I once saw with the label on a wrinkled rotting apple. It was immediately removed and no one mentioned it. This entire office has a stick up it’s ass.
HAHAHA…I LOVE that! having sticks up the ass just isn’t good for anyone. Loosen up, we only get this one shot at life and it’s silly to be all serious all the time.
HAHAHA. Co-workers can be the best. :-). I used to work in a government office and these two old jackasses would come in every day to complain about something. People were getting stressed out. So I convinced them to talk about ‘salad’ when they came in. It was code for “these guys are jackasses”. It’s amazing how many kinds of salad there are and how de-stressing it was to talk about it!!!
Whatever helps get you through the day, right?
Code words are ALWAYS good.
I love everything about this.
🙂
Okay; that’s just awesome!
I’m glad you’re both outta there
Thank you for the well needed laugh! I’m going to start ending all work conversations with “Why. So. Serious?” I will pause between each word for effect.
I was laughing my ass off at our old conversations and those silly signs. We did our best to make a bad situation more tolerable.
Sometimes a little levity can make awful things bearable. Your office signs reminded me of my friend Mark, who got me my first restaurant job. He was a busboy/dishwasher at the Sizzler Steak House in Eureka, and he would get bored and do things to amuse himself, like the time he made an obscene sculpture out of an uneaten baked potato and some french fries, and labeled it “SPUD INCEST” in ball point pen on a napkin, or the time(s) he wrote “SOCIAL PARASITE” in pencil on his paper hat.
Mark never got fired. He was the first of us to move from Eureka to the Bay Area, but he moved back after a couple of years. Last I heard, he was living in Virginia, where he was born.
Mark sounds awesome. I love people who do silly things. I am terribly amused.
You sound like you would be lots of fun to work with.
Haha. I am mostly quiet. But when I find my tribe, then I’m me around them.
You are amazing. And inspiring. It’s more fun in a place where you have to sneak around, but I’ll enjoy amusing my coworkers anyway.
Once I had a lengthy conversation with strangers in my building with post-it notes on the vending machine. It was fun but stopped when word got back to me that it pissed off the guy who stocked the machine.
Dammit..the soda dude always fucks things up.
If this was happening where I work, I’d laugh my ass off, as would most of my coworkers. Sorry your workplace is so humourless. Also, I wish I had your guts!
My current workplace is MUCH nicer. Not uptight at all. Smaller. Plus I’d never get away with it there. They’d know it was me.
I loved this. Decided we should be best friends.
Haha! Okay. I’m really low maintenance as a friend.
Excellent, when shall we begin?
There is no time like the present!
Why would anyone take those down? They would brighten up my whole day!
That’s what I thought!
i am now so stealing this idea.
My own cubicle-hell will never be the same.
i LOVE you!!
Haha..thank you! And please do steal them! Tell me how it goes
Ha, I’ve missed a lot of your posts lately, as I’m crumbling under the weight of study and trying to work in a job best suited to 20 year olds. Your antics with Priscilla have always cracked me up. Glad you got out of there but you created some comedy gold from the hell!
It really was a lot of fun. 🙂
<3
I escaped cubicle hell eons ago, but I currently have a part-time retail gig. I could maybe do a sign or two in the breakroom, see how long they last. (I'm thinking "have you seen?" will work best…
Let me know how they work out!
omg, I LOVED this. I’m so glad Priscilla isn’t there anymore so you could tell us this hilarious story. I’m pretty sure ‘The Office’ should have had this as an episode. No wonder you weren’t happy there. What a bunch’a stuffed shirts! 😀
I am glad she’s gone as well. It really was a toxic place to work.
About a year ago, my teenage daughter and her friend, who was sleeping over, decided to stay up all night and replace every family photo I have in my house (I have lots … guess I love my family) with pictures of people from The Office. They spent all night copying pics off the internet and using up all my expensive color cartridges. It was pretty hilarious when I came downstairs the next morning to see that these characters replaced my beloved family members. I don’t even watch or like The Office. The two idiots didn’t even see my dumbfounded reaction. They had fallen asleep!
HAHAHAH THAT is amazing. 🙂
A really good laugh. What the hell was the matter with those people?? No sense of humor?? I would have appreciated it myself.
A few people did. But we always kept the secret. Until now.
This is g******ed brilliant. (Asterisks in case G_d gets mad at me.) I’ve got refrigerator magnets up at my workplace (I took out all the gory zombie reference words, to be SFW) and they seem to be enjoyed. we have a new VPO and she has put up a new bulletin board where we should hang our accolades. And I just had an idea.
We also have a monkey. Ours is a ceramic bust of a monkey wearing a military costume with epaulets. The SLS hotel sent it to one of our former employees and she didn’t want it. We randomly bequeath it to various co-irkers, covertly, usually peering out like a creeper. We’ve had discussions already about when or whether to put it in Veep’s office.
Naw. I’m making a sign. Stand by.
OH yay! The tradition continues
#NeedfulThings2021
<3
XOXOXOX