Hey, there. Dave, right? Nice to meet you. I’m Mark Waggoner, I work in sales, over by the file cabinets. Enjoying your first week on the job? Great, glad to hear it. Well, I just decided to stop by because I noticed that a little earlier you were watching a funny video on your computer and you invited a few of our coworkers over to check it out. You were all really laughing it up, must have been four or five of you, all told. I’m glad you guys had such a great time. However, I just wanted to come over here because I need you to know right now that here, in this office, I’m the guy whose computer people huddle around to watch funny online videos.
Me, and nobody else.
I’m not mad or anything. Really, I’m not. I know you’re new here, and obviously you’re still learning the ropes, so I’m not going to come down on you for overstepping your bounds just because you didn’t know any better. But as a courtesy to you, before things go any further, I want you to understand that when it comes to the exhibition of humorous, weird, or completely crazy videos, I’m the man in charge of that, and whenever we get together as a group to watch these videos, it’s going to be my desk that people form a close semicircle around.
That’s my territory. And everyone around here respects that.
And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the effort on your part. We all work hard around here, as you realize by now, and sometimes it’s nice to break up the daily routine with a 30-second clip of a cat getting its head stuck in an empty milk carton or some nerdy kid twerking. It’s all in good fun, and I’m certainly not trying to put a damper on any of that.
But in order for this office to function, we all need to respect each other’s roles. And in this case, my role is pulling up comical videos on YouTube, and calling the people in my immediate vicinity to crowd around so they can watch a baby bonk his dad on the head with a toy mallet or some crazy German beer commercial. That’s what I do here. And, frankly, I’m great at it. There’s a reason why people come to my desk to watch humorous videos and not to, you know, Jeff’s desk. Or Carrie’s desk.
And, so we’re clear, everything I’m saying here also goes for videos of people trying to chug Tabasco sauce, local news anchors flubbing their lines, those “Bad Lip Reading” things, or a really cute Japanese kid who can absolutely wail on guitar.
Should you have maybe asked before you started playing a funny video on your laptop, just to make sure you weren’t usurping someone else’s duly earned office function? I mean, again, I don’t want to come down hard on you here since you’re the new kid on the block, so I’m willing to just let this go, but we do have a delegation of duties here and you need to learn it.
They are as follows: Kevin is the one who pins up those funny photoshops around the office. Lisa is the one who sends light-hearted softball game results emails. Jeff, well, I guess Jeff doesn’t really do anything. Carrie is the one who brings her lunch in a tupperware container from home and heats it up in the microwave. And I, and only I, am the one around whom people gather to watch videos of teenagers totally botching skateboard tricks. That’s always been my turf. And I’ll be honest with you, it always will be.
Also, I’m the one who uses a cool desk lamp that he brought from home. That’s my other thing.
And hey, I’m not trying to be a hardass here. I like a good laugh as much as the next guy, as evidenced by that hilarious mashup of Sesame Street clips with that Daft Punk song I had everybody watch yesterday. So, please, if you find a video on College Humor or Break.com that you think the office should see, feel free to send it my way and I’ll consider it. If I think it’s right for our crew, I’ll call everybody over and before you know it, we’ll all be enjoying it together, as a team. I’ll even make sure to let you know about it first, so that you get a good view.
But you make sure to send it to me first.
So, anyway, that’s how things work around here. Hopefully this little chat will just be a minor road bump in your otherwise happy and productive career at this company. Really, as long as you work hard and make sure not to step on anybody’s toes, you’ll be just fine. So good luck, and welcome to the team.
Don’t fuck it up.
