Have you ever considered how much silliness can be accomplished with the use of graphs and charts? No, we don’t mean the quarterly sales projections.

Try some [tag]Pie Chart Humour[/tag] if you wish to see Pac Man in a Pie Chart.

or

Check out [tag]Graph Jam[/tag] for other sorts of graph-related silliness.

Now you can enjoy some seemingly work-related silliness. Just don’t laugh too loud in your cube.

Okay. This one requires a tiny bit of background information. [tag]Newark Public Library[/tag] has a blog on which they recently posted a humorous epitaph for one of the frogs which had lived in their aquarium. In the course of the post, they mentioned that they hoped to find a replacement for the position of Library Frog I soon.

Wouldn’t you know it? Not two posts later the job req for [tag]Library Frog[/tag] I appeared. Enjoy, and don’t forget to check out the pay scale.

(Do you ever wonder if you might be suffering from job burn out? Well, this lovely e-mail that we found circling the internet might be able to give you a new perspective on your problem. Either that, or give you some scary ideas. A hat tip to Katie for sending this our way.)

TOP 10 SIGNS OF “JOB BURN-OUT”

10. You’re so tired, you now answer the phone with “Go to Hell.”

9. Your friends call to ask how you’ve been, and you immediately scream, “Stop asking me all these damn questions!”

8. Your garbage can IS your “In” box.

7. You wake up to discover your house is on fire, but go back to sleep because you just don’t care.

6. You consider a 40 hour week a vacation.

5. Visions of the upcoming weekend help you make it through Monday.

4. You don’t set your alarm anymore because you know your pager will go off before your alarm does.

3. You leave for a party and instinctively bring your ID badge.

2. Your DayTimer/Work Planner exploded a week ago.

And the NUMBER ONE sign that you are burned out because of work…..

1. You think about how relaxing it would be if you were in jail right now.

(This slightly deranged poem was sent to our inbox recently by a certain MKEJenkins. We offer MKE a hat tip…and a sincere hope that her job isn’t quite this bad. Enjoy!)

The Lost [tag]Dr. Seuss[/tag] Poem

[tag]I love my job[/tag], I love the pay!
I love it more and more each day.
I love my boss, he is the best!
I love his boss and all the rest.

I love my office and its location
I hate to have to go on vacation
I love my furniture, drab and grey,
And piles of paper that grow each day!

I love to work among my peers,
I love their leers, and jeers, and sneers.

I love my computer and its software;
I hug it often though it won’t care
I love each program and every file.
I’d love them more if they worked a while.

I’m happy to be here. I am. I am.
I’m the happiest slave of the Firm, I am.
I love this work, I love these chores.
I love the meetings with deadly bores.

I love my job – I’ll say it again
I even love those friendly men.
Those friendly men who’ve come today.
In clean white coats to take me away!!!!

(A Hat Tip to Dianne for sending us this roving e-mail of linguistic merit. We had encountered some of these words before, but others were new to us. They should come in handy for you in your office life.)

[tag]Essential vocabulary[/tag] additions for the workplace (and elsewhere):

1. BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

2. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

3. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.

4. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

5. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.

6. PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on.

7. MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation’s answer to the couch potato.

8. SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What Yuppies get into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.

9. STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

10. SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

11. XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace.

12. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them.

13. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

14. ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

15. 404: Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error Message “404 Not Found,” meaning that the requested site could not be located.

16. GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions.

17. OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake. (Like after hitting send on an email by mistake)

18. WOOFS: Well-Off Older Folks.

19. CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing gas while passing through a Cube Farm.

(A Hat Tip to Ellen for sending this mass of puns our way. We’ll bet that you can hear the groaning from there.)

[tag]Food for thought for the career minded[/tag]!

My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned, couldn’t concentrate.

Then I worked in the woods as a lumberjack, but I just couldn’t hack it, so they gave me the ax.

After that I tried to be a tailor, but I just wasn’t suited for it, mainly because it was a so-so job.

Next I tried working in a muffler factory but that was too exhausting.

Then I tried to be a chef, figured it would add a little spice to my life but I just didn’t have the thyme.

I attempted to be a deli worker, but any way I sliced it, I couldn’t cut the mustard.

My best job was being a musician but eventually I found I wasn’t noteworthy.

I studied a long time to become a doctor, but I didn’t have any patience.

Next was a job in a shoe factory, I tried but I just didn’t fit in.

I became a professional fisherman, but discovered that I couldn’t live on my net income.

I managed to get a good job working for a pool maintenance company, but the work was just too draining.

So then I got a job in a workout center, but they said I wasn’t fit for the job.

After many years of trying to find steady work I finally got a job as a historian until I realized there was no future in it.

I could have been a Violinist, but I’m too high-strung

A Bowler, but it’s not up my alley,

A Magician, but the urge vanished,

A Librarian, but I shelved the idea,

A Plumber, but it was only a pipe-dream

My last job was working at Starbucks, but I had to quit because it was always the same old grind.

SO I RETIRED AND I FOUND I AM PERFECT FOR THE JOB

[tag]Jean Jean and The Evil Cat[/tag] is a film short that previously appeared in the [tag]Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation[/tag]. It is just plain silly and random. Enjoy!

From the Inbox of [tag]Silliness.org[/tag] as received in 4/4/2000

Biggest Drawbacks to Working in a Cubicle:

1) Being told to “Think Outside the Box” when I’m in the @#$%? box all day!

2) Not being able to check E-mail attachments without first seeing who is behind me.

3) Fabric cubicle walls do not offer much protection from any kind of gun fire.

4) That nagging feeling that if I just press the right button, I will get a piece of cheese.

5) Lack of roof rafters for the noose.

6) My walls are too close together for my hammock to work right.

7) Women: Damned near impossible to adjust your bra or slip without comment.
Men: Co-workers tend to stare when you take your pants off.

23 power cords, 1 outlet.

9) Prison cells are not only bigger, they have beds.

10) When tours come through, I get lots of peanuts thrown at me.

11) Can’t slam the door when you quit and walk out.

[tags]Work Humor[/tags]