Go team! 10 ways to impress your workmates

Maybe you find your workmates agreeable. Perhaps they carry a rancid odour and repulse you on a physical level. Be that as it may, these techniques will ensure your popularity and their co-operation.

1. Solving problems. When I told my dad that I had problems at work, he told me to “go in there and bark like a dog”. No shit. This is his cumulative advice from forty years in the workforce. I said would it not be better to, say, table my concerns in a meeting. He said no and that if I barked like a dog I would “gain an edge”.

2. Muffins. Bringing in any variety of sweet baked goods is a traditional means by which to impress fellow workers. Again, I sought my dad’s opinion and asked whether doing so would ingratiate myself with others. He said, “No. You go in with a huge cake and say, ‘There, pigs. Eat.’”

3. Babies. Why are these constantly being brought into the workplace? I would not want a baby in my workplace any more than I would want anyone who is guaranteed to shit their pants or vomit on themselves. And yet people are captivated by this. It seems all a baby need do is belch and it wins universal popularity and respect. So be it. If workers are impressed by people of limited physical abilities, then that is what you should give them. “Attention staff. You will see that today I have brought in this old man for your pleasure. I understand that his motor skills are minimal and that he is unable to restrain natural discharges or evacuations. Even now you will find he is sitting in his own waste. Please enjoy his inability to walk or communicate.”

4. Demand that all staff handle the old man personally.

5. Demand they pet and feed him.

6. Nicknames. I have an existing name; I do not need an additional one. Workmates insist on changing my name in the belief it will generate familiarity and goodwill. Wrong. I had a workmate decide to change my surname, Timpano, to Tim-meister General. That’s not a name; it’s bullshit and it made me want to crush his face. He would have impressed me by simply using my registered name.

7. Use office furniture and supplies creatively. My dad, for example, is endlessly impressed by the fact that his chair has wheels. Last week he actually called me into his office to show me how he could “fly”. This involved him lying with his gut on the seat, extending his arms and legs and then violently shaking himself. This seizure would, over an extended period of time, cause the chair to move forward some inches. Certainly, this did not impress me; I actually understood it as a cry for help. But others seemed to be amused.

8. Comic Sans. This font offends me on a personal level. I would therefore advise not to simply disable this font, but to actually disable those who use it.

9. Food. I used to work with a man who came in each morning with a large, steaming pie. He would not have this pie contained in a bag; he just walked around with it in his hand, distributing its boiled pig scent throughout the office. He would have impressed me by taking himself and the stinking pig pie into the fire escape.

10. Pet dogs. These seem to serve a similar social function to babies. Workers bring them in to impress other workers. But again, why? What is impressive about a dog, domestic or otherwise? It runs around. The end. I have only ever been impressed once by an dog. Once. And not because it actually did anything, but because it looked a bit like James Caan. But even then, the resemblance was vague, so I rapidly tired of it and asked for it to be removed. A chimp is an impressive animal. Source a chimp.

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