CW's

I didn't know what a CW was either until my 9th grade social studies teacher, Mr. Hatfield, enlightened me. A CW is a Clock Watcher, and I think before Mr. Hatfield became a teacher, he worked in my office.

A couple weeks ago, the entire office was herded into the conference room for a reminder on the policy regarding tardiness and other policies designed to reduce morale and otherwise remind us that we are being micromanaged out of our souls. (One is not allowed to trade their entire soul to the devil, er, management, up front for gold or vacation days, it is stolen one paragraph of the employee handbook at a time.)

Effective the day after said meeting, the receptionist was tasked with logging each person's arrival time at the office, as well as times "in" and "out" for lunch. Personally, I reached the maximum allowable tardies in 90 days, which is 3, after exactly... 3 days. I'm still here, so they can't have been too serious about actually firing people over it. Either that, or HR hasn't finished the paperwork for my last check.

Anyway, so the whole policy makes for an office full of CW's. Case in point: a colleague of mine arrived at the office one morning and there were three people in the front lobby. The moment she stepped in the door, as if those present were watching the final rally at Wimbledon, three heads swiveled up to look at the clock on the wall... and her arrival time was noted in triplicate. (White copy - HR; Yellow Copy - Manager, Pink Copy - Employee.)

Copyright 2008 Stapler Tales