Murphy's Laws for the Workplace

(This post is a part of the "weekend's are for fun" series.)

Law 1: When you are hard at work, no one notices. The moment you open your browser and start surfing, your boss will walk in.

Law 2: When your stock options finally vest, they will be worthless.

Law 3: If you are in a meeting making a presentation to all the big shots, your laptop will freeze right in the middle of the presentation.

Law 4: If you are in a meeting with some lame-ass peers, the presenter's laptop will not freeze even if there's blood oozing out of your ears from all the boring droning.

Law 5: If a product fails, it’s because you are a stupid engineer. If the product is a runaway success then it’s because of the great management your company has!

Law 6: If a company claims to have a good work-life balance, beware. The definition of work-life balance usually is -- you do the work, the upper manager has a life.

Law 7: You will be paired with the biggest moron on the team, if your project is technically challenging.

Law 8: You will be paired with the biggest credit-grabbing kiss-ass on the team, if your project has high visibility.

Law 9: You will be paired with the laziest bum on the team, if your project has tight deadlines.

Law 10: If you are a I-like-a-quiet-workspace person, your cube will be right next to the office gossip spending all the time gabbing on the phone.

Law 11: Conversely, if you are an office gossip, your cube will be right next to the I-like-a-quiet-workspace kind of person, so you don’t get any juicy gossip.

Law 12: If you have a product that can make coffee, prepare presentations, and create kickass code all by itself, your marketing team will come up with an ad campaign for a garden variety boring widget.

Law 13: On the other hand, if your product is really just a garden variety boring widget, your marketing team will promise a 100 different high profile clients that you will deliver a product that can make coffee, prepare presentations, and create kickass code all by itself, and while it's at it solve the world hunger problem.

Law 14: When you don’t have any hobbies that can be done easily from a work place, you will have no deadlines and too much time on your hands. The moment you pick up a hobby that can be done from your work place (hmmm.... blogging?), it will shower deadlines.

Law 15: Your clients will almost always want the product immediately after a long weekend so you can work while the rest of the world is having a vacation.

Law 16: If the deadline is just before the long weekend, something will keep breaking, preventing you from completing it on time.

Law 17: There will always be a traffic jam on the mornings that you wake up late, and have an early meeting.

Law 18: Every time you go to the coffee room, there will be the last cup coffee left and now it’s your turn to brew a fresh pot.

Just venting out some steam. It's quite therapeutic actually! Feel free to add your own "Murphy's Laws for the Workplace" if you would like :)

If you like this article, you can bookmark it or subscribe to the feed.