The 2007 Office Awards
Looking back at a long year on the job
CRAIG SILVERMAN
December 31, 2007

From gun-toting co-workers to bosses who bring in police dogs and hired thugs, it was a year of the ridiculous and the sublime in the world's workplaces. Here's the best of the best, the best of the worst, and the ones we still can't quite understand.

Worst Workplace: Chinese brick kilns

Office denizens ain't got nothin' on the grievances of workers at Chinese brick kilns. Kiln owners were found to have engaged in “illegal employment practices, abduction, restricting workers' personal freedom, employing child labourers and even murder.” What else? Owners “made use of fierce guard dogs and hired thugs, who bashed labourers, adults or children, at will.” Oh, poor you and your lightless cubicle.

Worse Employee: Drunk ambulance driver

Police pulled over an ambulance driver in West Virginia after they saw him run two red lights. They soon discovered he had a patient in the back and that he thought he had turned on his siren and lights. Then, big surprise, he failed a field sobriety test. Get me 40 ccs of unemployment, stat!

Best Office Time-Waster: Faceball

Two employees at photo-sharing website Flickr this year created Faceball, the latest in office gaming (check it out at Faceball.org). The concept is simple: Two people sit in chairs three metres apart and lob a beach ball at each other's face. A facial hit garners one point. The Faceball slogan? “Your face, our balls.” The lure of said balls? “It's actually enjoyable getting hit in the face by your opponent,” said Dunstan Orchard, one of the creators.

Best Office Exit: Angry auction employee

From a farewell e-mail sent by a Christie's employee to colleagues at the auction house: “I feel it is best to quickly express my fondest appreciation for some of the endearing ideas that I have seen peddled around me: like how everyone seems to be replaceable, thinking outside the box is liken to heresy, favouritism is thicker than water and speaking the truth gets you in trouble.” Anyone for farewell drinks?

Worst Workplace Idea: Police-dog training

A New Zealand grocery distributor upset employees after announcing a plan to let law enforcement officials use its facilities to train police dogs. Included in the announcement was a totally unrelated reminder that the possession of drugs and weapons at work was illegal. “This is a workplace, not a prison,” Laila Harre, a union official, told a local paper. “This is about the training needs of the police and the whim of bosses to scare the living shit out of us.” If all goes well, employees may expect to see SWAT training on the premises next year. Drop that kumquat and kiss the floor, produce punk!

Most Dedicated Employee: Carla Bird

Ms. Bird, an assistant at Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios, worked 800 hours of overtime during a 17-week period, which equals roughly 12 or 13 hours a day, seven days a week. But the kicker was that her claim for $32,000 (U.S.) of overtime was paid in full. Maybe it's time to hire the assistant an assistant?

Best Lawsuit Excuse: Massages and sausage

James Bonomo, a former paper-sales manager for Mitsubishi International Corp., sued the company alleging he was subjected to a night of drunken karaoke followed by a forced “non-sexual massage” at a bathhouse while on a business trip to China. While in the bathhouse, he alleges, his supervisor compared his penis to an “Italian sausage” and another colleague snapped a picture of it with a cellphone. Even Dunder Mifflin's paper salesmen would be appalled.

Serves You Right Award: The Texas shooter

An employee at Al Boenker Insurance in Texas shot himself in both legs after bringing a gun to work and placing it in the pocket of his jacket. According to one media report, “The bullet passed through the man's left leg and then his right leg and through the corner of a bookcase before lodging in the wall of a cubicle occupied by a startled female co-worker.”

The local police chief said the man “just felt the need to carry it” that day. Now he'll just feel the need to walk with a cane.

Most Evil Gadget: GZ PC-Sport

The obsession with desk-bound exercise continued unabated this year. The worst piece of office exercise equipment was the GZ PC-Sport, a step machine that connects to your computer and fits under your desk. If you stop stepping, it freezes your keyboard or mouse. As if that doesn't happen enough already.

Best Work Quote: Gregg Adams

Mr. Adams, a professor of veterinary biomedical sciences at the University of Saskatchewan's Western College of Veterinary Medicine, spends his days arm-deep in the rectums of various animals to check if they're pregnant.

When asked about his job, he said, “Have I been pooped on by an elephant and a rhinoceros? Yes. I've been up to my shoulders in it.” Keep reaching for the, er, stars, Gregg!

Outstanding Achievement in Special Effects: IvanAnywhere

Ivan Bowman is a Nova Scotia-based employee of iAnywhere Solutions, based in Waterloo, Ont. In order to make his presence felt in the office that's 1,350 kilometres from his home, the company created IvanAnywhere, a robot stand-in that roams the hallways and attends meetings. Everyone seems to like it, but wait until they realize THE ROBOT ACTUALLY CONTROLS THEM!

Sources: Daily Mail, Kitchener-Waterloo Record, PassiveAggressiveNotes.com,, Manawatu (New Zealand) Standard, The New York Times, Shanghai Daily, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Fort Worth (Tex.) Star-Telegram, Associated Press.

Too busy organizing to be productive
The quest to find better ways to manage work and life may slow people down in a flood of paperwork, e-mails, blogs and books

CRAIG SILVERMAN
The Globe and Mail
September 24, 2007

Colin McKay begins most meetings by taking out two of his essential productivity tools: first, his BlackBerry; second, a Moleskine notebook he has divided into sections using coloured tabs.

To anyone in the know, that heavily tagged notebook is a dead giveaway: Mr. McKay is GTD.

"That's the calling card," says Mr. McKay, 38, director of communications for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in Ottawa.

GTD stands for Getting Things Done, a personal productivity system created by David Allen, whose bestselling book of the same name was first published in 2001.

Today, Mr. Allen's company employs 32 people and expects to earn $6-million (U.S.) in revenue this year from book sales, public seminars, corporate training sessions and a variety of GTD organizational accessories, including wallets.

At a time when stressed, overwhelmed and unproductive workers are grasping for better ways to manage their work and lives, a whole industry of productivity systems, websites, blogs, newsletters, books and experts has sprung up, focusing on major issues in time and workload management right down to ridiculously minute and basic activities.

"GTD helps me create checklists for myself," Mr. McKay says of the method, which uses tools such as e-mail and paper file folders, index cards and notebooks to organize commitments and workflow. "It has given me that little bit of a sense of order."

But as the productivity-obsessed swap tips online and around the office about filing systems, checklists and time management, advice often moves from the practical to the arcane. And the glut of suggestions and systems can actually cause people to become less productive while trying to master a constant barrage of new methods.

"Some people are system junkies," says Janet Barclay, who runs Organized Assistant, a productivity and organization consultancy in Hamilton.

"They try something and say, 'This is the greatest!' Then next year they spend all their time learning a new system."

On Lifehacker.com, a popular productivity site, a tip about managing e-mail or running a more effective meeting can be followed by a link to "15 awesome uses for aluminum foil." (Hint: You can sharpen scissors with it.)

Gina Trapani, the site's editor, says she's surprised by some of the tricks and tips sent in by productivity-obsessed readers.

"We've run some tips about incredibly mundane everyday activities that people put a lot of thought into speeding up or making easier," she wrote in an e-mail. (Ms. Trapani preferred an e-mail interview because, she wrote, "the telephone can be an inefficient way to communicate.")

One writer for the Productivity501 website is on a mission to achieve the elusive goal of a paperless office.

At 43 Folders, another well-known productivity site, the editor declared a "War on Clutter" around U.S. Independence Day this year after reading It's All Too Much, an anti-clutter book.

Mr. McKay says he follows the productivity websites but "draws the line where people describe in detail how they made a pen holder for their Moleskine and then get into a debate about which pen they use."

Mr. McKay confessed his own moment of system overload on his blog, CanuckFlack.com, when he wrote about "staring at a desk covered in GTD flowcharts, Covey checklists, coloured folders, varying sizes of Moleskine notebooks, and the latest DIYPlanner."

While some find it hard to stick to one system, others profess an almost cult-like devotion to their chosen approach. A dedicated GTD practitioner recently created a series of GTD fan buttons for sale online. One features a picture of Mr. Allen inside a pink heart with the words, "gtd 4-ever."

"David Allen said it, I believe it, that's the end of it," reads the product description. "This is a set of three buttons that celebrate the bliss of being organized."

And it's not just adults getting carried away with the productivity craze. In January, Geoff Ruddock, a 15-year-old student in Grade 10 at St. Andrew's College in Aurora, Ont., teamed up with some friends to launch Gearfire.net, a productivity blog for students. He can now talk the GTD talk with the best of them.

"I wanted to get on the headmaster's honour roll, so I looked for tools and ways to work smarter, not harder," he says.

"I see some people that really try hard but are always run down, and others who have a lot of initiative but don't have the time-management skills. I wanted to do well and wanted to make my time more efficient."

Is this something he picked up from his parents?

"Yeah, they get a lot done," he says.

When
the Blackberry service went dead last week, many people felt helpless
and disconnected. Patrick Tuite likely wished the outage had extended
to cellphones in general.

A lawyer representing John Boultbee,
who is being tried along with Conrad Black in Chicago, Mr. Tuite was at
the mercy of the court last Tuesday when a cellphone in his possession
kept ringing with the theme from The Exorcist. The judge confiscated the phone and put it in her office, where one assumes it continued ringing and speaking in tongues.

Mr. Tuite can take comfort in a 2007 survey of British cellphone
users by phone retailer Dial-a-Phone: 44 per cent of them admitted to
committing a "ring-tone faux pas."

And in a 2006 poll of U.S. workers by staffing company Randstad USA,
30 per cent listed shrill, ringing cellphones as their biggest office
pet peeve.

While movie theatres, schools and other public places make a point
of telling people to turn off their phones, the office remains the
haunt of flagrant phone ruffians.

People take calls or answer e-mail during meetings. Some cannot bear to remove their Bluetooth headpiece for even a
second; others talk at a perfectly normal level on an office phone only
to bellow on their cell as if trapped at the bottom of a well. Not surprisingly, all seem partial to ridiculous, loud ring tones.

"My ring tone is the quietest one possible," says Adeodata Czink, a
Toronto etiquette coach and president of Business of Manners. "The Exorcist was funny but not appropriate."

Ms. Czink says phones should be turned off in all meetings unless
you're expecting an urgent call, and the choice of a ring tone is just
as important as the volume. Keep it low and unobtrusive, she says. Try the vibrate setting.

Remember that a ring tone says something about you, and that something is often mouthed from behind your back.

Now that's something to be scared of.

ADVICE OF THE WEEK

 Clearing the air

“I know this may sound silly, but I get very distracted by noise,
and I often hear a lot of belching from your cubicle. If you're able to
do that more quietly, I would really appreciate it.” – A workplace
expert's suggested phrasing for approaching a co-worker who burps
constantly. If that failed, moving to another cubicle was suggested.
Crumbling Rolaids into his coffee was not. (Hartford Courant)

PRODUCTIVITY

April showers bring office slackers The
rainy, slushy April weather that hit Eastern Canada last week probably
also took a toll on workplace productivity. A survey of 6,000 workers
by CareerBuilder.com found that 21 per cent admit to being less
productive when it's raining outside and 9 per cent when it's snowing.

ART MEETS OFFICE

The creepy old guy “I think every office has some guy like Creed in it,” Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Schrute on
The Office,
told New York magazine when asked if the show's characters mimic real
life. “You know the character Creed? He's the old guy – there's always
some creepy old guy sitting in a corner, and nobody knows how long he's
worked there or what exactly he does. Everyone has worked with a Creed.”

BY THE NUMBERS

 Size matters
291 Average amount of square feet of an executive office in 1987. Today, the average executive office is 241.

98 Average square feet of a “senior professional's” office. The average call-centre employee's? Only 50.
International Facility Management Association

Craig Silverman is a Montreal-based writer and the editor of
RegretTheError.com. His first non-fiction book will be published by
Penguin Canada in the fall.