"He works in an office".
God, what a sad wave of sympathetic dread used to wash over me when I heard those words. The word "office" held connotations of boredom, monotony, putting on weight while simultaneously getting lighter as every day quite a big part of you dies, forever.
(Happy blog today, I promise)

I will be arguing against the above point of view - not because it's not true (I did enough temping while saving to leave the country to know it very often is - have any of your office tasks ever involved scanning and filing peoples' suicide notes?!), but because it's not the only kind of office.
Ladies and gentlemen, as it turns out, an office just means: a place, where business is conducted. I don't know about you, but naive as I am, I was surprised that scraping a daily accumulation of mould off one's soul was not a necessary part of the definition.

It's so easy to complain when you work in a office. Essentially you're sharing a carpet with people you have zero in common with, apart from the carpet. No matter how positively you think or feel, it only takes 2 or 3 irritating situations to present  themselves at once for you to idly daydream about introducing your fist to your monitor, or the face of a colleague. Examples of such situations include:

   - Your computer not loading the page. Ever.

   - Your computer freezing on a page. Forever.

   - You ask the IT genius, who already thinks you're an idiot, to help you with your evil computer, and the moment they touch it with their magical IT fingers, it starts working, blinking innocently like a little girl with rosy cheeks, blonde ringlets and the devil in her soul. You say "It didn't do that before, I swear..." and the IT genius says "Hmmmm" and walks away, secure in the knowledge that you are, in fact, an idiot.

   - Someone is peeling an orange near you. Which is the rudest thing a person can do short of actually smearing you with it. When you peel an orange, it's like spritzing everyone in your immediate area with orange juice. If I wanted to smell like an orange do you know what I would have done? I WOULD HAVE PEELED AN ORANGE. But I would have done it in the bathroom so as not to affect you with my deviant desires.

I'm sure you can think of many more examples...these things happen in every office. The solution may seem to be to put a fist through the monitor or pelt the offending colleague with apples and bananas, but really, the solution is to let everything balance out with the moments in the office that have the opposite effect. Perhaps my office is a little more friendly than others overall because we all live together, work together and play together, but here are a few examples of the moments than save you...

   - someone gives you a cookie for no reason

   - you're permitted to lie on the floor to demonstrate that you can make Maltesers float

   - a Frenchman takes a moment to dance in glasses, a woolly hat and a bike helmet

   - someone has a hilarious sneeze

  - you're given autonomy on a project you're actually excited about

My own story I feel will strike a chord with a few people...having just arrived from Mexico less than a week before, I was nervous about how I would get on with my colleagues. Since the office is in New Romney, Kent, I knew that if the people weren't good, nothing would be as there would be no escape in this little seaside town.
I arrived at the office and met my boss, where the following exchange took place:
"Hello Erica, nice to meet you. How was your trip?"
"Very nice thank you."
"Can I take your bags?"
"Oh thank you, they're not too heavy."
"Great - would you like a coffee?"
"That would be nice - do you have decaf?"
"F*** oooooooooooff..."

That was the moment I rejoiced inside, ladies and gentlemen. That was the moment I knew my internship would be a great experience; because the work you do, in or outside an office, is about the people you work with, and I wouldn't want to work with anyone who wouldn't tell me to f*** off when I want decaf.

Is that just me?