Today’s story line is; what people do when they are waiting for their printing to complete. This may seem like a very benign subject but I think you will be surprised at some of the behaviours I’ve witnessed. My desk position (for the time being) is at the end of a row facing one of the two printers that service 80+ people on this project. So when someone is standing there waiting for their print job to finish they are in my eye line, which is why I notice what they are doing. (Didn’t want you to think I was just nosy!) Here are a few good ones.
We have the traditional toe tapper. I didn’t actually think this was something people did other than when “acting” like they are waiting but no people do tap their toes while waiting.
Then there is the individual that always uses their printing time to do some stretching exercises, which is a very sensible thing to do if you are stuck in front of a computer all day. However, if the print job is a bit longer than normal our stretching turns into a full on fitness session with deep knee bends, calf stretches (using the wall next to the printer) and yesterday I saw him do a couple of vertical jumps. Now that is going a bit far as by then he had the attention of most of the room.
We have those folks who use their time for deep thinking. They stand their in front of the printer and you can see that their body is present but there is definitely no one at home. Their minds are somewhere else entirely and you can usually see from their body language if it is a good place or not. Yesterday I had the two extremes between the lady who had the biggest pout on her face I’ve ever seen on someone older than 4. About 15 minutes later we had the person who was obviously thinking about a very good dream or something else equally lovely because the look on their face was such that when they saw me look up at them they turned bright red!
Finally my favourite for this week is the man who I think was practicing his Karaoke routine for Friday night. He was literally doing various dance moves and singing to himself. No, I am not making this up. I couldn’t make out the words of the tune but the dance moves said someone who did most of their dancing int he 80’s and 90’s trying to adapt to something more Street. I have to say I could not help myself and I had to clap when he was finished. Keep your eyes open for funny office stories.
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