BOUTIQUE ADVISORY: New laws introduced to govern office behaviour

From: Frustrated neighbour

To: Boutique Advisory

Hi there,

A member of the neighbouring ‘pod’ at my work insists on holding telephone calls on speaker phone, despite this being against (our open plan) office policy and it being incredibly frustrating and distracting. A brave fellow colleague has asked him to curb his behaviour on previous occasions; however it hasn’t made a difference.

What should we do?

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From: Boutique Advisory

To: Frustrated Neighbour

Hello Frustrated Neighbour,

Boy do I feel your pain. I bet his conference calls are not even the least bit interesting. Just talking about some boring work-related matter – I mean if he was on a conference call with TMZ.com because he’s actual their inside informant on what the deal is with Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom, then yeah, go for it and have your conference call on speaker phone. But seriously, when what you’re saying could be replaced with the sound of a 13-year-old learning to play the trombone, then it must stop.

I feel like this whole ‘it’s fine to have conference calls in open plan office’ is reaching an unacceptable rate. The incidence is so high that I firmly believe that the only solution to the situation faced by you and many others, is to petition the government to create legislation to have ‘telephone conference calls on speaker phone in an open plan office at your desk’ a criminal offence. Seriously. It should be in the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) [hahaha I love that the use of my law degree has been reduced from prospective career to now just being a source of snooty remarks for me to make and look intelligent with]. In fact, after a lot of legal research and running around the Law Library pulling several old looking books out of the shelves [then hiding them after using them…I think that’s a law student instinct that I just can’t seem to shake], anyway I’ve determined that the best place for my new legislation is under s 9A, Treason [LOL why do we still have ‘treason’ as an offence?…I probably shouldn’t make jokes about treason right? Or is it treason to joke about treason?]. It just makes sense…Treason is ‘a person who kills the Sovereign…levies war against the Commonwealth of Australia…instigates a foreigner to make an armed invasion of the Commonwealth…holds telephone conference calls on speaker phone at his/her desk in an open plan office’.

I knew that law degree would be useful one day.

May the laws of Australia be the lamp of your life.