Male colleague: Check this out. This woman works for a company called Pubic Lice.

*Pause*

Me: Did you just say Pubic Lice?
Male colleague: Yup.
Me: Are you sure?
Male colleague: Yes!

Cue crazy Google session which, as you can probably imagine, yielded lots of nasty results about actual pubic lice and nothing about any advertising company by that name.

Ten minutes later…

Male colleague: Oh! She’s from Publicis, not Pubic Lice! That was a typo.
Me: That’s one hell of a typo.

And there was much hysterical laughter to be had.

Case #2
I used to work in a company that had offices all over Singapore. Once, I had to send some documents to a colleague in a different office so I told her to email her office address to me.

Five minutes later, I received her email. Her office was in Tampines, but instead of Tampines, she had written Tampons in her email. No kidding. I immediately replied to the email and told her to confirm the address. She replied with the same address again, so I called her.

Me: Hey, are you sure you sent me the correct address?
Female colleague: Of course.
Me: Why don’t you check again?

*Pause*

Female colleague: Oh my god.
Me: I thought so too.
Female colleague: This is so embarrassing!
Me: Is it that time of the month? Were you thinking of your shopping list when you were writing that email? Gee.

This was followed by some TMI conversation which I’d spare you from. At the end of the chat, we both realised that I could just dispatch the documents to her through internal mail thus omitting the need for her full address. Major duh.

So boys and girls, always check your emails before you send them out, especially to complete strangers. You don’t want your typos to cause grievous bodily harm such as dying or serious internal bleeding from laughing too much, do you?

No, seriously, I do. Picture this. It’s a slow day at the office and you’re bored out of your freakin’ mind. You’ve just seen an episode of The Office last night and you’re dying to try one of Jim’s pranks. You eye the colleague sitting next to you, you know, the one with the annoying laugh and even worse taste in music. You contemplate playing the prank on her but you’re afraid she’ll get mad and make good on her threat to report you to HR or worse, replace the Star Wars collectibles on your cubicle wall with pictures of David Hasselhoff. You’ll end up eating lunch alone for months, if not years.

It’s a tough decision but you decide to stay bored instead. As you make your 2893728th paper aeroplane, your phone rings. It’s a telemarketer. Your eyes light up. You haven’t had one of those for lunch for quite a while. You’re hungry. The telemarketer’s some guy from a fitness centre. As per Telemarketing 101, he sounds incredibly perky.

Fitness Centre Guy: Hi! I’m calling from xxx fitness centre! We’re having a promotion with abc bank, efg bank and xyz bank! You’re invited to enjoy a free session with a personal trainer blahblahboringshitblahblah! When would you like to come pick up your membership card?
Me: How did you get my number?
FCG: My marketing department gave me a list of numbers blahblahboringexplanationblahblah!
Me: I don’t want it.
FCG: Sorry?
Me: I’m not interested.
FCG: Aren’t you concerned about your health and fitness? It’s a good chance for you to … blahblahzzzzblahblah!
Me: Not really. I plan to be dead by 35.
FCG: …
Me: *hangs up*

Stick Chick 1: Telemarketer 0

So remember Office Creep? Maybe I should provide a little background on him. Apparently, his family’s loaded so he’s loaded by osmosis. There’s no other way to explain how he can afford his own private apartment and change his car 3 times a year on his current pay. I know this because his work buddies seem to love sharing this piece of information with me repeatedly despite me never having requested for it.

Anyway, Office Creep has been trying to get me to watch a movie with him, like on a date thing. A horror movie, no less. What? Was he expecting me to scream OMG SOO SCARRYYY, tremble a little, jump into his lap in fright and possibly have my arms glued around his neck for the rest of the night? I think there’s a higher chance of Tina Fey and me becoming best gal pals with our own secret handshake and all than that happening.

Recently, he wrecked his car of one month and bought a shiny, new one. Last week, he came over to my desk to share the joy.

Office Creep: Hey, I bought a new car! Again!
Me: And you deem this piece of so-called valuable information significant enough to share with me because…?
Office Creep: Huh?
Me: Why are you telling me this?

(Pause)

Office Creep: Hey, I bought a new car! Again!
Me: OMG, deja vu!
Office Creep: It’s a ABC model and I modified it with XYZ and added XXX sound system and other unimportant car parts thingamajits that can do lots of unimportant stuff that’re supposed to impress your panties off!
Me: Yes, but does your car get you from point A to point B?
Office Creep: Huh?
Me: I think my IQ just dropped a few points.
Office Creep: Huh?
Me: Why. Are. You. Telling. Me. This.

(I can totally do the capital letter thingy with my voice)

Office Creep: Oh. Wanna go for a ride?

(Pause)

Me: Look! Superman just flew past!
Office Creep: Huh?

And I made my escape as he was stupid enough to turn towards the window. I think I should rename him to Monkey Brain, Brain-the-Size-of-a-Pea, The Missing Link, God’s-Idea-of-a-Joke or something equally delightful. This conversation also reminded me of that Monty Python sketch, Literary Football Discussion.

1) “Can I bring my mum along?”
2) “Sure, meet ya at Nagrand?”
3) “Sorry, not enough HP to last through dinner. Gotta level up tonight.”
4) “I think of you as a brother and I’m not into incest.”
5) “Nope, not into guys.”
6) “Whaa..t? Sorry, I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up.” Make some static noises and hang up.
7) “I’ll love to go out with you, but first, I’ve gotta bury the last guy who tried to date me. He’s stinking up my garage. Wanna help?”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

1) See those pieces of paper with “Meeting Agenda” printed on them? Try making paper aeroplanes with them on your lap.
2) Now imagine one of the paper aeroplanes whizzing over your boss’s head.
3) Then you realise you could be fired for doing that and attempts to pay attention to the meeting.
4) As you have the attention span of an insect, your mind starts to wander again…
5) …and now you’re imagining your boss naked.
6) And he’s doing the macarena.
7) With pom-poms.
8) And a feather boa.
9) Snigger quietly to yourself and refuse to share the joke when your equally bored colleague asks you what’s so funny.
10) Then it hits you that a sight like this could possibly traumatise you for life.
11) Decide to do something more constructive instead, such as…
12) …compose time-wasting lists like this in your head for your next blogging opportunity.

Hey, at least I tried. This post has been brought to you by staff meeting 101.