Here are more office humor cliches–those things people say in response to typical office situations even though they know they’re not worth saying. Then, per usual, our staff updated each cliche to better fit our modren times.
Here:
When a coworker introduces you to their non-work friend and the friend says to you, “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about you”:
Old: “All good things, I hope! Ha! Ha!”
New: “There’s birds about me? Huh? Oh, you’ve heard about me. Probably not good things. Ha! Ha!”
When you’re in a meeting with a client who flew in from California to your cold Midwest state:
Old: “Thanks for flying all the way from California! Did you bring any of that beautiful weather with ya? Ha! Ha!”
New: “This harsh weather depresses me something special! It’s just gray and lifeless for months! Ha! Ha!”
When you get in the elevator at the end of the work day and it luckily doesn’t stop on any other floors between your company’s floor and the parking garage.
Old: “Hey, looks like we got the express! Ha! Ha!”
New: “Hmm? Oh, this is my floor already? Sorry, I was daydreaming about what could have been! Ha! Ha!”
When you come in in the morning on a Tuesday or Wednesday:
Old: “Is it Friday yet? Ha! Ha!”
New: “I wish I could just get on a horse and ride and ride and ride forever, the headwind blowing the tears off my face! Ha! Ha!”
Simic: The Most Power-Abusing Poet Laureate in History?
Sour old fangs plucked and
Raining ugly from a swollen maw
Which receives a new savory mouthful from above by the tears of its beast
It looks back with downpulled eyes at the blanched columns
As it strides away to that forest. All green black thick unknown. Just forest.
Warshington, DC - After reading this cocky rebuke from Poet Laureate Charles Simic, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) throws the letter down in anger. Leahy, as well as many senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle, believe the surrealist poet may have been overstepping his Constitutional powers lately. In one incident, earlier this year, Simic convened a secret group of CIA operatives to monitor every item purchased in the United States with a credit card held by anyone with an Arabic- or East Asian-”sounding” last name, even if they’re an American citizen. The group was also to apprehend, question, and if it was felt necessary or almost necessary, torture those card holders. The crumpled letter is Simic’s reply to Leahy’s attempts to bring the 69-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner in for a committee investigation.
“In this riposte, Charles is obviously saying, although in a more roundabout way than probably necessary, that he is not a part of the executive branch. Which is supposed to mean that the Constitutional limitations on that branch do not apply to him,” Leahy explains. The chairman’s attempts to rein Simic in are increasingly frustrated by the fact that the poet could probably also claim he is not beholden to the rules for the legislative or the judicial branches as well. “We’ve got to stop this abuse of power, though. And we’ll find a way,” Leahy promises.
“Charlie’s a good man. Tries hard. I stand by him. Furry… He does what poets do excellently,” said President Bush when asked to comment on the many calls for the laureate’s resignation. Also, several worry that the president may not understand the resignation letter even if he got it. “If it’s in any kind of verse, the president may find himself in a fix trying to interpret it,” warns House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But if he has anything to say about it, Simic isn’t going to be resigning soon. “I’m completely working within the bounds of my office although, admittedly, in a more innovative capacity than my predecessors. Some of them wrote in pure rhyming verse. Some with free-verse. I’m moving into a non-verse, human rights violation-type of scheme. And I think it’s quite powerful,” said Simic.
“No one’s used the office of the poet laureate nearly to this extent ever before in the United States,” says Ted Kooser, laureate from 2004-2006 and author of the massively popular collection “Delights & Shadows.” “The most power any laureate before Simic assumed was when [Rita] Dove, the only limerickcist to hold the post, declared the ‘Man from Nantucket’ should be rewritten with the Man’s dick not so long as that he could actually suck it. This way, parents could feel better about sharing this classic with their children. But what Simic is doing is equivalent to, not only putting the length back into the Man’s dick, but doing so to the point that the dick is so massive, its shadow darkens not just our land, but the whole world and its future and its past,” said Kooser fully aware and proud of his metaphor.
Today, we wanted to honor a giant of humor prose and who better fits that description than Woody Allen? James Thurber. Below, we reprint his classic New Yorker piece, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”:
“I’m going to kill myself,” the Commander muttered to himself as he stood on the wobbly chair in his sultry motel room in the middle of this endless lonely Arizona desert. “Jesus. I’m so sad. I’ll just put this noose around my neck and fall into the sweet sleep of forever…”
“Walter! What in Heaven’s name are you doing now?” barked Mrs. Mitty. Walter Mitty woke out of his daydream and looked back at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. She had gotten back into the car after finishing her hair appointment at the New Milford salon.
“Why do you have that gun to your head?” she asked.
Okay, here are some office humor cliches–those things people say in response to typical office situations even though they know they’re not worth saying. And, assuming you don’t mind, we propose new cliches to take their place.
When Ted walks into the breakroom where you’re having a conversation with someone else:
OLD: “This is one of the ones with no calories, right? Ha! Ha!”
NEW: “I’ll eat this, I guess, but I know I’ll get this total sugar crash and get so depressed. Especially on a day like this, with all this fucking rain, pardon my French. I don’t even really like doughnuts; they’re too sweet. But…I don’t know…”
When you walk into the breakroom and a bunch of your coworkers are laughing at something they were talking about:
OLD: “You guys are having too much fun! Ha! Ha!” or “No laughing allowed! Ha! Ha!”
NEW: Ask what’s so funny and, after one of the nicer of the group takes the effort to repeat the whole dialogue, kind of shrug and say, “Guess you had to be there.”
When you have to do something like get a ream of paper, tear it open, and load it in the copier:
OLD: “Well, that’s my workout for the day! Ha! Ha!”
NEW: “It seems like everytime I use this fucking thing, pardon my French, I have to load some fucking paper in it, pardon my French.”
When out at lunch, getting burgers with coworkers, and it’s taking a slightly long time for the food to come out:
OLD: “What are they doing? Killing the cow? Ha! Ha!”
NEW: “I have so much work to do today. Ugh! Can’t stand that place.”
Whenever someone does anything that you may not have any other quick cliche response to:
OLD: “That was like on, uh, that one episode of ‘Seinfeld’! Ha! Ha!” For example, if a lizard falls from the ceiling tiles onto a monkey that someone brought into the office for some reason, refer to when Kramer did that and George gripes about when people talk to him in the bathroom, etc., because, believe us, there is an episode you can somehow match to anything that happens in life.
SECRETARY
How was your weekend, Mr. Prime Minister?
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Too short.
THE STORIED CHURCHILL witty comeback above is just one example of the countless “zingers” that helped lift British spirits during the German bombings and two other major events that would round out a nice list of three.
Office humor cliches have survived because they bolster the office environment’s blatant insincerity and tedium. However, we need new office humor cliches that even better capture the essence of the singularly soul-crushing modern office. Try these!
Upon running into someone for a second or third time that day:
OLD: “Hey! We gotta stop meeting like this!” NEW: “When I saw you last, I asked you to put together that spreadsheet. I haven’t gotten it yet, and that’s unacceptable. Get it done.”
Seeing someone microwaving their lunch:
OLD: “Hey! What are you making me?”
NEW: “How much more time on this? I have stuff to microwave too.”
Walking past a temp filling in for Kathy for the day:
OLD: “Kathy, you look different today!”
NEW: “Oh, good! Another temp we have to spend most of the day training and who, for what’s left of the day, will do everything a little wrong and leave us worse off than if we had just done nothing until Kathy got back!”
Greeting the counterperson in the corporate cafeteria:
OLD: “Hey! You must have been up all night making this food, huh?”
NEW: “Some of that I guess.” (Point at the food you want.)
