Sideswipe: October 30: Deadpan marathon supporter

Goading fit people...

Opinion

Office hell

1. Daily check-in meetings where everyone says, "continuing to work on what I was working on yesterday".

2. Who orders "fluorescent yellow" white board markers?

3. I was sitting beside this female colleague of mine, who has terrible hygiene. She took her shoe off during the meeting and started rubbing off the dead skin on her heels. I could see the white flakes jumping out like fresh popcorn. I inched further away from her gradually until there's enough gap between us. It was the most uncomfortable 30 minutes of my career life.

4. "We've got so much work, hire some temps!" (Boss disagrees but reluctantly hires temps). Three days later: "We're running out of work, how soon can we get rid of the temps?"

5. Company-wide staff meeting (Okay, there are only nine of us) where a whole 45 minutes was devoted to discussing snacks in the kitchen. One topic was if it was possible to buy smaller bananas, because normal-sized ones are too big.

(Via meetingrant.com)

Hair raising query

A reader writes: "Visiting a school on academic business recently a 5-year-old boy asked me why my hair wasn't black. Being a Pakeha with chemically altered tresses, I guess I was something of a novelty to him. I replied that I had changed my hair colour but didn't go into any explanation. He was only 5 after all and far from cognisant of the wily ways of women. He accepted my response thoughtfully and after due reflection said 'But it USED to be black, didn't it?' 'Oh yes!' I said. Who was I to interfere with his innocent and inclusive view of the world?"

Double-take...

One man's junk mail another's BBM

In 1989 a rural postie in Ohio, who called bulk-rate advertising "junk mail" in a newspaper story, and said the best part of his job was "pay day" and "quitting time" was suspended for two weeks without pay for "conduct unbecoming to an employee". Postie Richard Mendenhall, 47, said while the public called it junk mail the postal service wanted it known as "Bulk-rate business mail (BBM)". Junk mail was defined as advertisements "mailed in large quantities and addressed to 'the occupant'."

Easy novel writing: A plagiarist was caught after readers spotted two novel's were nearly identical except the one published first was a hetero romance and the other one told the story of a gay relationship...

Picture this: You'd never guess these people were tattooed from head to toe...

Video: Ok this is an ad for energyonlin.co.nz...but I hadn't seen it, no cash or favours changed hands and it's really funny...

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Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz