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Girlinlove

The Parking Spot Anti-Christ, and Other Office Dramas

by Girlinlove []
Published on 19/4/07 in Culture
The office is a lot like high school. You think you got out when you went to college? No way. That was your last hurrah, jail bird.
Office culture is a study in minutia and petty feuds. I have only worked in mine for a few months. Different people have labels. Mine is the "crazy girl from the west coast." Whenever I say anything that could be even remotely distinguished from ordinary office chatter, a cry goes up of "she's from the west coast. Those people are crazy." I could be talking about traffic, tap water, American Idol, movies, relationships...it matters not. I am crazy because I am from the west coast.

I admit, my birthplace does distinguish me from most of my office counterparts. I do not eat grits or fried chicken. Or fried twinkies. I also don't eat at Krystal or Popeye's, popular southern fast-food chains. I do not smile to people's faces and then spread horrific rumors about them behind their backs. Still, my nickname would persist regardless of these differences. I could become a sweet-tea guzzling, two-faced fried food maniac just after my lunch hour today, and I would still be crazy. This is because office culture is the perfect petri dish for the cultivation of sticky stereotypes and petty hatreds.

Like the cat lady down the hall who continually complains about how other people do their jobs, especially if you happen to criticize her penchant for acting the pied piper to a growing gang of local strays. Or the department a few buildings away with the established habit of transferring all inquiries to another department. Any department, so long as they can hang up and go back to surfing MySpace, answering e-mail, or purchasing bric-a-brac on Amazon.com. Or whatever it is they do over there. It isn't work.

The current controversy? Parking spaces. The raging debate centers around a simple ideological disagreement: is it wrong to take the traditional parking space of a colleague, when you know full well that he or she always parks there? One woman in the building terrorizes the parking lot, seizing the prime spots of long-standing employees, forcing them to park a hundred feet away under a tree dropping 40 pounds of pollen an hour. If it happens to you, is it random, or is it a grudge? Why? Why, God....why? What did sweet Sharon down the hall ever do to deserve such an injustice? Suspicion mounts, resentment builds and spills over, until one side of the building is convinced the parking spot thief is the Anti-Christ, and the other quite firmly believes the opposite. Dirty looks in the hallway, a few terse e-mails, and you've got yourself a full blown office turf war.

Water-cooler chatter has nothing on this one. Suddenly, the construction across the road holds no intrigue. Interdepartment feuds are abandoned. Colleague incompetence, normally a shoe-in for a bitch-fest? Who cares. And don't you dare suggest that the parking lot Anti-Christ may simply just be looking for the shortest walk to her desk. Try that and all you'll hear is a ripple of murmuring about crazy people from the west coast. Trust me, I know.

Working in an office is actually a lot like being a high school student. There are cliques and rivalries, grudges and gossip, even mascots (the VP's dog, for example, or Mr. Boots, the building's stray cat). There are hygiene-impaired outcasts. There are beauty queens, only this time they drive SUV's and have 2.5 perfect children who win soccer trophies.

And then there's me. The new kid. I don't fit anywhere, and when I sit down at my desk to another day of web-streamed alt-rock (to drown out the local country station playing across the room), that suits me just fine.

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14 Comments

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JaneCopland

Jane
I am a horrible parker, and I drive a biggity Jeep. I like having to park my car in a lot up the road from work because there are no spaces left at the office. The reason for this is that the lot is always mostly empty and the chances of me hitting someone else are minimal.

Whenever I have to parallel park, I want to cry. SOMEONE BUY ME A MINI! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Written on 19/4/07

sportrider

Sidharth Iyer
Learn to ride a motorcycle. Problem solved :) Written on 19/4/07

JaneCopland

Jane
Oh man, that scares me more. The good thing about my car, however, is that it always wins. Someone rear-ended a Jetta behind me once, throwing that car into my Jeep's rear bumper. The Jetta's front end was totally fucked up. The VW symbol was smashed to bits and its grill was bent completely inwards. It was going to cost a lot to fix.

The back of my car? Not a bloody scratch. Gotta love that sweet American steel :) Written on 19/4/07

sportrider

Sidharth Iyer
See, if you were on a bike, you would be on one side, and the jetta would just run thru. hell you could have saved him a lot of money. But thats the biggest downside to bikes. No protective steel cage.
But i bet no one has as much fun as i do commuting. Written on 20/4/07

girlinlove

Girlinlove
true, but what do you do when it rains?

Motorcycles rock in terms of gas mileage, too. I own a particularly nice Suzuki c90, and I love it.

Still, accidents are possible and occur in the thousands every year, often resulting in serious injury or death. So be careful and always wear protective gear.

-Suzy Safety Monitor Written on 20/4/07

sportrider

Sidharth Iyer
What if you don't count the idiots who thought they could learn to ride on a R1, and then pull wheelies up and down the local strip while wearing nothing but shorts and a visor? Written on 20/4/07

girlinlove

Girlinlove
oh, that makes it about 100. All 100 that are left are caused by strung-out crackers with loose bowels who speed through intersections without stopping to check for traffic. Trust me. Every last one of them. Written on 25/4/07

JaneCopland

Jane
Yeah, I felt bad for the driver of the Jetta. It was neither of our faults and the person who rear-ended them was long gone by Sunday morning when we discovered the accident. The back of the Jetta was fucked up, too.

Probably was hit by a Jeep Cherokee :P In.Destruct.Able. Written on 20/4/07

Killer

Ty Henry
What color would you like your mini? Written on 19/4/07

JaneCopland

Jane
Red, of course. Written on 19/4/07

girlinlove

Girlinlove
Are you giving out mini's? Because I want one. Dark Red, like blood, not to be confused with cherry or fire-engine red. Thank you. You may deliver it to my apartment complex parking space. Oh, wait. I don't have one there, either. Crap. Written on 19/4/07

tiburonbite

Él Tiburon
Even West Coasters commit Çoast on Coast crime. I went to school in Arizona, and when they found out I was from Southern California, they went into this retarded stereotypical monkey-dance of "heeey maaaann, suuurfs up duuuude...like... hang looose maaaan."

I wanted to grab them by their mullets and explain that California is only hours away and if they ever sold enough meth to gas up the Camero and drive out there, they'd see that it's not a Jeff Spicoli convention. Then again, that's just more idiots on our freeways. Nevermind, stay here and believe whatever you want.

Cowabunga. Written on 20/4/07

girlinlove

Girlinlove
hmm...we have something in common! My grandmother, who lives comfortably in a retirement resort in San Diego (spread the wealth, grandma!), has always, as far back as I can remember, called people from Arizona "zonies." I always understood that to be a reference to the odd and often crazy ways in which people from Arizona and California differ.

I have no emperical evidence to back that up. Just my grandma, who can suck down a margarita in minutes flat, before the taco salad even gets to the table, and then politely and in total sobriety ask me if she can finish mine. I respect her enormously. Written on 20/4/07

JaneCopland

Jane
I commit this crime when I make generalizations about people from Florida. Then again, I went to Florida once and all my stereotypes were proven to be rather true. Written on 20/4/07

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