to ask you what you do 'in the office'?

[Crevix]

i was reading cosmo and realised i have no idea what happens 'in the office'.

why do you need special clothes? do people really have 'office romances'? and 'office parties'?

and what sort of work is done 'in the office'?

Dh and I met at the office! managed to keep it secret for about three weeks. We were caught on a works night out having cocktails, we got a bit drunk and he was caught feeling me up at the bar, classy eh.
We are more likely to have a horlicks now.

We don't work together anymore, I work in a small open plan office. I spend my day mainly doing statistical stuff, manipulating spreadsheets and ordering goods and services. How I ended up doing this I have no idea, far too many numbers for my liking.

It is quite gossipy where I work and there was a romance between the most junior colleague in my dept and a real sugar daddy type senior collegue who was old enough to be her Dad last year. Many murmurings by the watercooler at the time.

I used to work in offices. A bit naff and irksome. Never found my niche.
I would like to have been in a newspaper office

I miss the office. I got to wear designer suits and feel like a grown up rather than a playground show off and to talk to male colleagues without people whispering I was probably having an affair. We did of course also have office politics and pointless meetings so you couldn't get on with the interesting bits of the job and the usual mindnumbing paperwork tedium.

I work in Parliament and the office consists of me, the MP I work for, another MP, his researcher and I currently have a rather sweet 20 year old boy being my intern.

Lots of writing letters, policy chat, shouting at the tv screen showing what's going on in the chamber, the occasional bit of plotting. Love it.

Interesting , club

I work pt in an office.

At home I spend my time trying to clear the laundry basket, trying not to lose my cool, and dealing with stroppy children.

At work I spend my time trying to clear my emails, trying not to lose my cool, and dealing with stroppy adults.

Same old, same old.........

I would like to have been in a newspaper office

Really scousy?

We all wear green eyeshades or trilby hats and raincoats if wet.

What else do you want to know?

do you have a notebook and a pencil?

And looky >>>>> we made a discussion of the day! in my 4 million years here i've never mAnaged that like winning the oscars.

We all perch saucily on the edge of the manager's desk; tight skirts, sky-high stilettoes, hair up in a bun, glasses perched on end of noses, giggling girlishly before releasing said bun allowing hair to tumble down. Boss is then yanked across room by his tie grasped in perfectly manicured hands before being kissing passionately against the filing cabinet with our Cheryl Cole lip-glossed lips...

Wha - where am I? Oh bugger - back to reality. Not one of us is under 45; cardis are the order of the day and I spend a good proportion of the day biting down hard on my fist to prevent myself rising to the bait of the slightly-more-right-wing-than-Mussolini style Daily Mailisms that spew forth from my colleagues. Well, it's that or discuss Midsomer Murders. Or a coach trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. Or slippers. Ooh that David Cameron's a nice young man isn't he?

Help me - oh please god help me...

The only office I worked in where I felt that it actually mattered that someone was there doing the job was when I was a Medical Secretary with the NHS. It was also the only job that I never dreaded getting up to go in to in the mornings.

Previously I had always worked in the Commercial Sector, mainly recruitment and quite frankly I did naf all apart from type the odd cv up. In some offices I think it is possible to do the bare minimum and no one would notice. In between popping out for morning coffee for everyone, pee breaks, lunch break and popping out for afternoon coffee for everyone I probably did about an hours graft a day.

I once worked in an office in where we were only required to do about 30 mins work per day. So we filled out time by chatting, gossiping, drinking free drinks from the drinks fridge, eating free snacks from the snack cabinet, surfing the internet, staring at the seagulls outside, scootering around the office, joining chat rooms, getting thrown out of chat rooms just for fun and having a lots of laughs. It was a bit boring though.

do you have a notebook and a pencil?

But of course Crevix

And what's more, I've never paid for them.

In fact, hands up any office worker who's ever paid for any item of stationery, especially rolls of of Sellotape come Christmas time.

I'm sure midwives get similar perks, but I can't immediately think of something that would be as useful.

Latex gloves?

I have the keys to my office and OH and I pop in there sometimes when no one else is there -

We end up buying our own stationary for work use. We never have pens, staples, tape, post it's ...

In the office where I work the dress code is jeans - even the CEO - and the people who dress up 'office-style' are regarded as weird.

Crevix I love this thread. As a Radiographer my entire working life I have always wanted to know what goes on. I have some temporary work for the next 5 weeks and the dress is 'smart casual', I have spent hours in Dorothy Perkins trying to work out what to wear when uniform isn't provided for me!

I have a cousin in PR and another in banking and I'm desperate to understand what they do all day, whenever they explain to me my brain goes blank as it makes no sense.

I have only ever worked in offices. In my current incarnation I am a solicitor in a high street firm. No deal we do, no claim we litigate is ever going to make the pages of The Lawyer or the Gazette but we like it.

Our building is the archetypal Georgian high street solicitors/accountants/bank. It is not open plan so we all have our own little offices arranged rabbit warren fashion on various floors. We are relatively high tech though and have good case management software and digital dictation software, so I speak into a digital dictaphone and the software sends my secretary an email which she can then listen to and type.

For flavour of what I might do in a typical day:

8.45 get to work, make tea, help open post
9.00 switch on computer, check emails, go through my incoming post, sort into file immediately/bin/urgent/not urgent. Check task list for the day and start dictating letters/documents for seccie to type. This continues ad hoc throughout day. Record my time on my electronic time sheet which adds it to each case as relevant - time being money to a lawyer. That's what we charge for.
10:00 conference telephone call with opponent's lawyer and district judge for directions on a case. Dictate attendance note and letter to client/other side's lawyer if needed
Rest of morning - dealing with calls/drop ins from existing clients, emails and calls from opposing sols.
12:00 conference with client and counsel to discuss case going to trial soon
13:00 lunch. One hour taken religiously every day. MY time.
14:00- 17:00 much of the same as morning, at slightly less frenetic pace and maybe some internet research/CPD etc because I am lazy and have recorded my time for the day by now.

limitedperiodonly I don't know if midwives do, but my mum was a nurse and we never bought a block of telephone note paper, post its or a mug because the drug company reps gave them away. All her mugs had names of esoteric bowel cancer drugs on them. It was fun.

My work is very busy, won't say exactly what I do, but much is done on the computer, in fact, all of it

We have office parties yes, but I don't normally go, I just wait for the gossip afterwards

Office romances do exist yes, I'm in one myself for the first time in my life, we work in different departments and on different floors. No-one knows yet kids self.

Speak to people on the phone, make appointments, fire off a few letters, process cc payments and always look ultra busy when the boss is around.

We never ever browse the internet, slack off, slag off the boss and discuss how much better we run things when she isnt there

We have office meals and drinks out, rather than parties, as for romance, nope, never, most of us are women and its a really small team, although I have worked in other offices where we had ultra fit blokes around that I had the odd naughty thought about to pass the time away

I am an HR consultant, so I advise small business owners on their HR/employment law problems.

I wear jeans if I'm in my office which is at home, or a suit if I'm out at a client, and either a suit or slightly less formal if I'm networking, which I do a fair bit of.

When I'm actually in the office typical things I would do are:

Answer emails from clients asking for advice
Draft letters for clients eg dismissal letters, redundancy letters, disciplinary hearing letters
Draft employment contracts/policies
Review new clients existing documents and draft a report telling them they are all rubbish
Receive a couple of phone calls from clients asking for advice
Send some typing/invoicing work to my Virtual Assistant
Research for my monthly newsletter
Prepare advice notes for clients giving them options on dealing with a situation/legal background

It's rare I get a whole day in the office though, I usually have some kind of meeting/event as well.

no freebies in the nhs not even allowed post-its any more [cutbacks]

talcandturnips so funny! You are wasted in an office. Start writing! I would read your novels!

I've always worked in offices. So have been the office junior through to PA and now am director of my own company so working in my own office.

Lots of time spent these days staring at a computer doing accounts (boring), marketing (slightly more interesting), personnel (horrendous) and mning (yay).

Somehow I enjoy it!