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'?

Used to be an Orthopaedic Ward Sister, then a District Nurse but now I work in an office :-)

Like most people I go in too early, take v little time for lunch and leave far too late.

Other than that I spend my time dealing with a lot of telephone and email queries (we have a phone rota so no-one gets stuck answering the phone all day), proof reading and checking paperwork, organising events, phoning companies, invoicing other companies etc,etc.

Did work in Pharmaceutical Research Trials for a while and that was fun!

My office is worse than The Office!

I have a senior manager who bellows out choice phrases like 'he's really put his cock on the block now, hasn't he!'
I have a supervisor who makes stupid ignorant racist comments like 'I'm not racist but I've never met a Polish person I liked'
The guys behind me thought it would be a laugh to have a blow up doll on their desk and no one batted an eyelid except me.
They laughed at a gay colleague's holiday pic of him sitting on an ostrich in South Africa making comments like 'Bet thats the only time you've had a bird between your legs'
We've had loads of coupling ups, shagging in toilets etc.
Social evenings are mad with colleagues regularly getting totally drunk and making arses of themselves.

Those are just a few examples of what I've had to put up with.

I regularly come home and shock my husband with my 'Tales From the Office'

I work in the City for a large financial organisation btw.

I work in a school so my day starts with lots of calls that little Johnnie isn't going to be in as not well, messages are written out and put in registers, parents come into pay for trips dinners etc. After about 9.30am I get to do my work which will involve reading registers for the day, chasing absent pupils, making referrals to Ewo, counting dinner numbers and telling chef how many he is catering for and in amongst all this answering the never ceasing ring of the telephone to parents and people who think that teachers have nothing else to do but wait for their call, (I am flabbergasted by the number of people who ring to speak to teacher X at 10 am or 2pm who sound so surprised when I say they can't take the call as they are teaching.) I do letters for the head reports for governors and anything else that teachers want and one day a week I write the school newsletter. I love my job, we wear smart casual no jeans, but anything else is ok.

I'd love to escape the office, but I do enjoy it most of the time. I like to dress a bit smart, a nice dress and power heels. Hair can't be tamed, so I'm not super sleek like some of my colleagues.

First job of the day is bagging a desk. We have 'hot desking'...basically a cheap way of squeezing lots of people into a small space.

Most of the time I'm in meetings, or writing/reading papers for meetings, or writing papers to follow up from meetings. Today was great as I was called out of a meeting to attend another meeting at short notice. That is a regular occurrence.

Today was particularly bad though, was shouted at by my boss in a meeting. And I don't think I did any 'real' work as by the time I came out of all my meetings it was gone 5. But I did have a fun catch-up with a colleague, which although a meeting, was over a nice cup of tea in a cafe.

Normally I write papers, talk to people, make decisions, suggest decision for others to make, talk to economists, travel and attend international meetings, discuss issues with lawyers, pretend to be innovative. As well as manage people, which means saying yes to annual leave, showing concern when they're ill, giving them the crappity jobs and the odd good job to make up for the rubbish ones, sending them on training courses, etc etc.

A lot of my day is also spent reading and sending emails. I could pretend to be very productive just be doing emails and attend meetings, but that would only be part of my job.

I drink copious amounts of tea to stay focused and awake. And cake when someone brings it in. Chatting about non-work stuff normally limited to early morning, lunch (always at desk) or evening.

It would be great to have a more active job, rather than having to leave the office early a few times a week to go to the gym to make up for sitting on my backside all day. It's exciting when I have meetings outside the building, as usually I'm running late so get to have a little bit of exercise.

Can't wait until I get preggers so I can escape ... although former colleagues who've succeeded said they miss the control of office life. Hmmm.

Saf, how hilarious.

The ostrich thing sounds bonkers.
Guffaw at 'cock on the block.

I would enjoy the risque aspect of being somewhere non PC and right on.

georgimama My MIL was an NHS physiotherapist. Even though she's retired she has an inexhaustible supply of stuff. Chief among it is not very nice or particularly absorbant (allegedly) absorbant tissues.

Her house is filled with other stuff including a number of wheely trays to serve patients' food on which makes her attempt to serve us a romantic breakfast in bed somewhat surreal.

I did manage to get a surgical collar off her once when I ricked my neck but sadly it was the wrong size.

She's coming to stay with us tomorrow. I predict a riot of more random items she squirrelled away during her 40 years service. Sadly no exciting drugs.

I respect her though for her advice on dealing with male patients excited by being handled by attractive young physios: 'Just give it a smart slap, dear. It's less embarrassing all round.'

I work in Politics. We shuffle paper, go to meetings, drink a lot of coffee, deal with some lovely people, not so lovely people and all sorts of charities/lobbyists/departments/schools etc

Oh, and we always have gossip

Busy doing nothing, working the whole day long
Trying to find lots of things not to do

Smallwhitecat no, though that does sound like something that would happen here.

Moondog some of its hilarious but a lot of it is really offensive. For example a tall black girl gets called 'snoop' because colleagues can't remember her name. An Irish guy is always called Spud to his face, and he doesn't like it.

I think they cross the line a lot of the time.

I work for a very large international law firm. My office is great, our dept is very matey having been built up from a small team to a huge team then culled by redundancy back to a small team. We have had romances (one couple are now married with kids), and illicit affairs, and disastrous divorces resulting in screaming down the phone/throwing phone about office/kicking over chair and being manhandled out. We celebrate everything with cakes (birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, promotions, day with a "y" in it...). We drink gallons of tea and bitch in the kitchen. We have lots of department do's like royal wedding party, bbq, cheese & wine nights. We have a big meal out for Christmas every year which always ends up with us in a bar until 3am, extremely drunk and paying for it the next day.

In-between all this, we do not very exciting law work, moan about clients and shuffle far too much paper.

I work in a medical lab. I get to wear really comfy scrubs and sneakers with a lab coat over the top.
I spend my days up to my elbows in other peoples bodily fluids :o and the clap :o (main duty is molecular testing for STD's, aint I the lucky one?)

oooooooo this thread has made me miss my office life
great fun loads of romances, office politics, power games etc etc
i was nearly in the city once too - turned the chance down as i enjoyed being a p/t mum too much

i used to analyse stuff lots of computers figures and graphs

Don't know if it's the same in the UK Crevix but here in NZ we have consultant midwives, as well as consultants in everything else.

i've done management. it was shite and i plan to never manage anything ever again. even if i would get one day a month in an office.

no special clothes. can wear jeans, and trainers if I'm not in a meeting. or in court. in fact, high heels are verboten, on the off chance that I will have to do some Running Away.

people mostly fight over the phones , try to butter up the lovely admin lady so she'll do our paperwork, compete over who's got the biggest workload and make snide comments about Certain People's abuse of the flexitime system.

Old office:
Two of the team started seeing each other, so it went from happy group where we could all make fun of the guy (the highlight of our day!) to the following:

• two managers would go over to each other's desks, whisper, look at every one and giggle and bitch to each other
• couple would stare lovingly over screens at each other. She'd do all his work and get pissy if I told him off for not filing emails in the shared mail box (which he never did)
• other colleague and I would bitch all day using Office Communicator (like MSN for the office)

New office:
we eat a lot of chocolate, cake and crisps (people bring in all the time). Lots of chatting and joking, lots of tea and coffee. MUCH nicer

sounds like you should have a look at the description of the office in Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road.

My office is at home so dress rules are relaxed. Especially as I'm the boss. If meeting clients, it's business clothes (not suits though - more often than not a dress. Suits seem to be disappearing!)

I'm in PR so today at my desk I have talked to a journalist about a feature I'm writing and started writing the feature. Chatted to a client about a speech I'm writing for him. Sent out some press releases. Written a report about what I've been doing for a client in the last quarter for a meeting I'm going to this afternoon. And written a quick draft press release about a very boring product which I'll polish up this afternoon when I get back before sending it to the client to approve.

I've been remarkably productive!!

There is romance (and maybe more) in the office if DP comes round for a coffee and often wine is consumed at the desk if I'm working late.

Hmm, our office is small open plan so you can hear every telephone conversation and soup slurper (yes that means YOU Cameron!). I can no longer have inappropriate banter with the Chife Exec because everyone can hear. so the day is more dull.
I make phone calls, emails, go to meetings, put on events, write the monthly ezine and produce the quarterly magazine, all around business support.

oh, and absolutley no romance though the others think I am shagging the boss

We also (yay newish job!) often have drinks, like on Fridays, occassionally during team meetings and so on. We have a whole drinks cupboard and everything, and occassionally have cheese and biscuits as well.

Ooh, I love this thread! I'm permanently on the lookout for a new job, and this is very informative!

I work in two offices, one at home (dressing gown, chocolate digestives on tap, BBC News Channel on constantly so I don't get lonely but I have to scrabble for the mute button when the phone rings) and one in education (casual clothes, wine in the fridge, very bad language and lots of banter, and yes, office romance (met DP there)).

My job at home consists of lots of phone talking, organising of schedules, negotiating and media bullshittery. My other job consists of lots of record keeping, planning projects, and reading of pointless emails containing bewildering jargon written by arses.