Work sucks. That’s basically the point of this entire freaking website blog. Life in the cubes is a prison of broken dreams and bad posture; where joy goes to die under florescent lighting. It’s the same thing, every single day, for the rest of your life. At first glance, outside of this blog (tell your friends), it may seem impossible to keep the demons of monotony and despair at bay. But as you get older, you realize that the joy is in the little things. Maybe it’s free lunch. Maybe the server is down so you don’t have to do work for a few hours. Maybe your co-worker quit in a fit of passion, shouting obscenities at your manager as they ran through the office screaming “Texas Forever” even though you’re pretty sure he’s from Oklahoma.
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get a day full of these little things, which I like to call “special days.” Special Days are those days at work that are slightly out of the ordinary, mixing up your routine just enough to make your life a teensy bit easier and more interesting. Spoiler alert- they mainly center around doing as little work as possible. Newsflash, but the work week does not need to be 40 hours (or whatever you work). If you’re working from 9 to 5 completely non-stop , you need a new job or to be paid like a millionaire. In Germany, they now work 28-hours and they invented pretzels and Albert Einstein so they must be doing something right.
Anyways, here are my ranking of the top 7 best days of work. Enjoy.
7. All Day Trainings
Every once in a while, you have an entire day (or sometimes 2!!!) blocked off for a “training.” This is usually some HR bullshit, or maybe they’re teaching you how to use a new program or something like that. It’s like being back in school all over again, except you’re not getting graded so there’s no shot in hell that you’re paying attention. You’re absolutely going to forget everything they teach you, but you get to waste an entire day so it’s cool.
Pros:
- Free lunch (and maybe even breakfast!)
- It’s probably sandwiches and a salad made of wilted lettuce and 1 crouton but beggars can’t be choosers.
- Perfect excuse to avoid work for the entire day
- Go ahead and put up an out of office saying “I am in an all day training today and will be responding sporadically.” Everyone will think you’re pathetic but whatever. They’re losers.
Cons:
- Boring as all hell.
- Try to take a lot of bathroom breaks, but be careful. It’s kind of like school where if too many people are going to the bathroom at once, it’s obvious and the teacher gets pissed. You may have to pretend to take an important work call to go clear your mind and check Twitter.
- If you actually have a lot of work, these can be very stressful
- If possible, keep your laptop open or check your work phone so you can track email. And no one will hold it against you if you actually step out to do some work.
6. The Holidays
In my younger years, I would use PTO to extend company holidays (ie 4th of July) into week long trips and go see the world. What a fool I was. I’ve learned from my ways now. I zig when others zag and stick around for the holidays. The office will usually be pretty empty, so when you show up, you’ll have the place to yourself. You can chill and watch movies on your iPad, get lost in Reddit threads, or write a WordPress blog on postgrad life. If you’re busy, you can catch up on work without people emailing you nonstop. And best part is, you’ve saved yourself precious vacation days.
- Best Holiday to Come to Work: Religious holidays when you’re not that religion
- Maybe it’s like Yom Kippur and you’re Catholic and everyone you work with is Jewish. Maybe it’s Easter Monday and you’re a Muslim working with Christians. I don’t know any other religious holidays but I’m sure they exist. Point is, you don’t care about this holiday at all and now you have an easy day at the office.
- Worst Holiday to Come to Work: Between Christmas and New Years
- Absolutely not worth showing up to the office. Chances are you have family in town or you guys are going to visit someone. Don’t miss out on that time dude. Work is not that important at all. If your job really cared about you, they’d let you work from home anyways.
5. Community Service Day
Once a year, you’ll have a company wide community service day so your giant corporation’s CEO can feel like good person and your PR team can write about it on the website. Everyone in the office is out and about, volunteering with children or cleaning up some abandoned park. Once you get past the cynicism, it’s actually kind of nice to get out of the office and help some people out. Feels good and you can brag about it to girls later if you want. Plus, it usually ends at like 3 or 4 and only try hards go back to the office afterwards so you have the entire afternoon off.
Orrrrr you can take it as a sick day, know taht you’re not missing any actual work, and play videos games all day at your apartment. Your choice. Be a bad person for all I care.
4. NCAA Tournament Day
I don’t really follow college basketball because every good player is like way younger than I am (embarrassing for me) and by the time I figure out which players are good, the season is over and they’re going to the NBA and I have to start all over again. But I’m obviously watching the NCAA tournament. The first day of the NCAAs is usually on like a Thursday and is universally accepted as the least productive day of the year. Someone in the office is usually doing a pool and everyone’s getting into it. All the cool sports dudes are jiving by the water cooler showing off their knowledge and over-reacting to every game so they can get attention for how macho and sports knowledgeable they are. Most of the girls are just picking teams based off mascots, color scheme and which college their sister-in-law went to but there’s 1 or 2 who actually know what they’re doing and will almost definitely land in the top 3. How’s your boss going to get mad at you for watching at your desk when all this nonsense is going on? Plus, NCAA has that boss button that you can use to throw up a spreadsheet or something when your boss passes by so you’re good my dude.
This also applies to the Olympics or World Cup. If your boss gets mad at you for showing some patriotism, call him Putin and you’re good. Additionally, I will also throw the Masters in here. I’m not the biggest golf guy since I’m not great at it (I’m very powerful man so my shots tend to slice erratically and I cannot putt for shit) but you can easily get away with watching this at your desk. Assuming your boss is a white dude, if he catches you he’ll probably just chuckle and say something like “how’s Phil hitting it today?” Classic bonding stuff.
3. Day of the Holiday Party
This is usually the last day everyone is in the office before heading out for the holidays. Most places will do the holiday party right after the workday so people actually show up. The day is pretty low-key from a work perspective; maybe there’s a mad dash around 3 or 4 to tie up some loose ends before the holiday, but usually everything is pretty much squared away for the rest of the year.
Once people start wrapping up work, there’s a fun little period before the party starts where everyone goes off to get all fancy and shit for the night ahead. People start drinking a little bit, everyone’s dressed up and looking as hot as you’ve ever seen them, and there’s a sort of nervous excitement about the upcoming party. It’s kinda like the homecoming dance in high school. This is your one chance to make a move on that cute girl who sits three rows over who you’ve never actually talked to. Are you going to make out with your crush tonight? Probably not. Will you start to overthink it, start pounding booze because you’re nervous, and then not speak to her until it’s winding down and you grunt something weird at her and she looks at you in horror? Of course. Because that’s what real white-collar gangstas do.
Best Part: You have something to look forward to
- Don’t be that guy who’s too cool for the holiday party. Just go, hang out with the 1-2 friends you have at work, sip some beers, and watch co-workers get too drunk and embarrass themselves. Get that Holden Caulfield shit off my blog.
Worst Part: You’ll be hungover for work tomorrow
- Don’t be a hero. Take the next day off like a grown up and enjoy yourself.
2. Summer Friday’s
God’s gift to mankind. Don’t feel guilty about completely abusing this privilege please. You’ve worked sort of hard all year. You deserve to get your weekend started early during the best time of the year. Get your skin that Vitamin C it so desperately craves. Hop on a train and head to the Jersey shore (or the Hamptons if you think you’re better than me you piece of shit.) If you’re a loser and have no trips planned, just head to happy hour immediately and sip some booze sitting in the sun. It just feels healthier that way.
1. The Last Week of 2 Weeks Notice
There is truly nothing sweeter. Every single day is amazing. The first week after you quit is usually a little stressful, especially if it’s your first time quitting. You’re a little nervous about telling your boss, you have to go tell the rest of your co-workers, and there’s usually some HR stuff that needs to be figured out. But by your last week, you’re good as all heck my dude. You’re just chilling at your desk, maybe getting coffee with some soon to be ex co-workers that you’ll miss. You’re passing off all your work, but honestly if shit hits the fan when you leave, who really cares? You’re on to greener pastures. Just know that you will be blamed for everything that goes wrong after you leave, even if it’s not your fault. No hard feelings. All’s fair in love and business.
Honorable Mentions:
- The day before you leave for a vacation
- Don’t stress out that things won’t get done while you’re gone. You’re not important at all and whoever you convinced to handle your shit will be fine.
- First day of your second week at a new job
- The sweet spot of still being excited about your new job, growing confidence that you know what’s going on and the complete absence of expectations from your new employers.
- Also, don’t update your LinkedIn until you’ve been there for a week or so. Don’t be a nerd.
- Team Building
- Can be fun, can be completely brutal.