You tend to not notice just one or two – polo shirts happen, everything’s cool – but when they start to congregate it gets very obvious that you’re in the middle of a Situation (and if you say that to a group of young men and they all laugh, swear they don’t watch that show, and then immediately start quoting the show, you are among dudebros).

Other signs you are among dudebros, from actual observations in the field:

- Boat shoes are discussed in very serious tones. Loafers without socks are not boat shoes. If you make this mistake you are in trouble.

- You hear, “I am going to pound you so hard!” “Dude, you WISH, I’m going to be so far up your ass – ” and the sounds of a scuffle, and it turns out to be sports and not a porn shoot.

- “I don’t know about Chipotle, it’s a lot of carbs and I’m behind on my cardio. Let’s just hit the salad bar.”

- “Are the stripes on this tie too big? I don’t want to look like an intern.”

- “I can’t believe there’s no good place for beer in the neighborhood any more.”

- “I mean, she’s nice, she’s just not deep. I like deep.”

- “Oh man, there are so many girl drinks here I can’t even take it. Hi, can I have a sugar-free skinny vanilla latte?”

Chances are, you have probably met a dudebro. If not, they’re easy to spot – you will know a dudebro by his mating call, “Hey, my friend thinks you’re really cute, and I agree!”

But there’s nothing to be afraid of! When in his natural habitat, the dudebro is docile, even friendly. The more you look like a Barbie doll, Kate Middleton, or a Starbucks employee, the friendlier he will be.

You know you have upset a dudebro if he’s driven to his distinctive cry of distress (“Dude! Don’t just drape that sweater over your shoulders! What are you, a douche?”).

And, when provoked, the dudebro has been known to become discomfited, or even hostile! For your own safety around dudebros, do NOT:

- Get in between two men who are throwing a football back and forth. Not because they’ll hit you, but because there’s only so many euphemisms about balls you can take before you hand them DVD copies of Brokeback Mountain and say, “This joke is from 2005, and so is that shirt.”

- Beat them at a demonstration of physical prowess. I mean, if you can, you totally should, but just be prepared for them to give you a “respectful” nickname like The Crusher, and then have them constantly mention how much they work out and how weird it is that they’d even lose a game of badminton like that when they can benchpress like, 250.

- Feel free to explain institutionalized sexism to them, at length. They will blink a lot and nod. When you’re done, they’ll ask, “But then why are there so few women engineers?” Try not to stab them in the hand with a pen; you’ll get in trouble.

- Stare at them unblinking for a long time as they talk to you while you’re trying to do work. When they pause for breath, say, “That date was fun!” When they explain it wasn’t a date, say, “But Chloe said your date was exactly like that.”

- Challenge their ability to eat one hundred hot dogs in half an hour. They will do it and die you will be on record as the goader who started it.

However, since dudebros are proliferating and unavoidable, in the end it might be best simply to cultivate an identity they dare not trouble with – stack your desk high with books like History’s Greatest Massacres or some Virginia Woolf novels, which they can’t decide if it’s feminist enough to make fun of, and they’re not about to read big long books just to find out, so they’ll leave you be. In this way, you can peacefully coexist with the wild dudebro right up until he’s in Congress. Then we’re in trouble.

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Alison Burke demands that you RESPECT her GENIUS. *Throws boa over shoulder, walks out*
*Comes back in, shoves a magazine off your desk, walks back out *

2) Ladies: put on a touch of makeup. Men: slather it on. God knows you need it.

3) Don’t bring a water bottle – it makes you look nervous. Instead, bring a glass of chilled white wine, and if you get nervous, take a sip. You get less and less nervous as the presentation goes on! This is also nice to have during Q&A – if someone asks you a question you can’t answer, shout, “How DARE you!” and toss the wine in their faces. No one else will want to get in the middle of that. Question avoided!

4) Everyone loves an embedded MIDI file.

5) Print out a paper copy of the presentation for everyone, then make them refer to it constantly so you know they’re paying attention. If this is a presentation on the future of technology, this tip goes double.

6) Fill the beginning of your presentation with quotes from famous people. About halfway through, start sneaking in quotes from cartoon characters. See if anyone notices. Those that do are go-getters and deserve a promotion. If you’re unable to give out promotions, these people must be viewed as rivals and their promotion efforts must be sabotaged as soon as possible.

7) Pick a person from the audience at random. Go through your entire presentation as if you were giving it solely to them. Look at them constantly. Ask them questions. If the person survives the presentation without becoming a nervous wreck and/or peeing themselves, he or she is a go-getter and deserves a promotion. Or sabotage. See above.

8) If anyone nods their head to anything you say, ask them to elaborate whatever point you’re trying to make. Begin by saying, “I see [insert name here] agrees with me. Do you have anything to add?” Because you just know they’re nodding for the sake of nodding, and all that nodding makes them motion sick.

9) End your presentation with a rousing Elizabethan dance number. Make everyone participate.

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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.

Osey (as he calls himself), a self described “media-darling,” who only supports capitalism when buying wives, made several entries in this journal. Here’s a few I’ll share with you right now:

Dearest Miss Prissy Pants:

Osey

——

Dear Miss PP:

Osey

——

Dearest M to the Psquared:

Osey

——

Dear MPP (you know me):

Osey

——

Dear Mz Prizzy Pantz:

Osey

Isn’t that fascinating? Who would have thought the father of terrorism had such deep emotional connections to capitalism, 90s R&B and scrap-booking. Who knows what other delicious discoveries I might find in my day to day job: Perhaps the unrequited love letters of John Hinckley, Jr. to Cher, or a doughnut that’s rolled underneath the radiator (It’s still good!).

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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.

You might be thinking “How can I do that, stupid?”  Well, dumb ass, here are some tips to keep you toned!

Chair Spins

Not just a great way to free your inner “WHEEEEEEEE!” Spinning in your chair also works on troublesome love handles. Bonus: Enough spinning could lead to some awesome purging. More calories burned, score!

Ink Cartridge Juggling

Concerned about your upper body strength? Well, this exercise is sure to get those arms toned! Everyone knows you burn calories when changing the ink in your printer. But you can  burn an additional one calorie simply by partaking in the age old practice of circus performers and crazy homeless guys. Bonus: If you perform this feat in front of your co-workers, your hatred of them, plus your mind-numbing perfectionism will cause you to sweat, leading to the loss of an extra half-calorie! Ink-stained fingers will simply be a confirmation of your successful trim figure and sudden addiction to fluorescers.

Conference Room Jogging

Like me, you might spend a majority of your day running back and forth between offices, aware that your undergraduate degree in Musicology has failed you. Why not hone your disappointment in your 9 to 5 life and use up the last vestiges of your energy for a nice run around the nearest conference room. Work those glutes, peon! For ultimate calorie burning, pretend killer clowns from space are chasing you, or a predator droned shaped in the likeness of Donald Rumsfeld.

Filing

Fuck that, have an intern do it.

And there you have it! You are well on your way to working off the jelly from those jelly donuts. Don’t forget to end your cube workout with a rejuvenating facial massage. To your coworkers, this might look like you’re trying to end your workplace misery by rubbing your face off, but it’s simply a reward for your hard work! (Hint: don’t do this if you’re wearing eyeliner, or you will end up with some unattractive smudging.  This warning is for men too! Indeed, Andrew looks great in eyeliner–like a young Robert Smith’s gardener.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo-HUxDyHM

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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.

Probably the oddest was when I discovered someone had left a lacy pair of underwear on the toilet. There it was, pissing in the wind (see what I did there, AGAIN?), a mystery to my little bird brain. Who had left it there? A sexy ghost? A stripper with too many options? A Victoria Secret carpetbagger?

More recently, I’ve found some respite in my latest job. As luckily, there are a lot of women at my new company (feminism!), and I have therefore picked up some invaluable bathroom tips. Below are things that actually happen, all the time – I only believe in real-life lessons!

- First of all, pick a favorite stall. Only ever use that one. If someone is in it, stand right outside it and wait. However long it takes. If you peeing on the seat doesn’t mark your territory, then your accusatory, unmoving feet definitely will.

- If you want to risk someone else’s favorite stall, or you just have a complex that people will come in and laugh at you, the best thing to do is to hang long strands of toilet paper at the hinges of the doors, so they can’t stare at you through the door cracks.

- If someone is in your favorite stall, try to stare at them through the door cracks. If they have hung toilet paper there, mutter “Curses!” and wait.

- You can’t be too hygienic about bathrooms. When you come in, pull seven to eight paper towels, and suds them up with soap and water. Clean the seat vigorously, then drop the wad of paper towels in the toilet and flush. Go and pull seven to eight new paper towels. Come back and see that your toilet is inexplicably stopped up. Given such conditions, the only thing left to do is to drop the paper towels on the floor and leave the bathroom, never to return.

Men’s Room Etiquette: A Celebrity Rebuttal by Andrew Kaye, Men’s Room Expert

I don’t know what goes on in the ladies’ room. But I know men’s rooms, having peed in them for much of my adult life.

The most prominent feature of the men’s room is the very thing that sets it apart from the women’s room: the row of urinals that line the wall like sparkling porcelain barnacles*. Thanks to a unique quirk in anatomy, men can pee while standing up, which means men’s rooms need fewer “traditional” toilets and can utilize the saved space with almost twice as many urinals.

Urinals are frequently closely spaced and may or may not have a partition between them. This has given rise to an unspoken code of etiquette every man is familiar with, containing such wisdom as “Don’t look directly at the man peeing next to you” and “For the love of God don’t look at his penis.” But amendments should be made. I have seen business professionals do things in bathrooms that would boggle your mind. Here are some fresh new ideas to help the men’s room-challenged:

1-The urinal is not a table. Do not set your newspaper, coffee cup, office paperwork, water bottle, and/or toothbrush on top of the urinal. Dude, it’s a friggin’ toilet. I don’t care how clean you think it is, people piss in that thing. Don’t think there’s any urine on the top of the urinal? Think about what you do to dry yourself off after taking a leak and tell me it’s not possible.

2-Mind your distance. I don’t care how powerful your “stream” is, you don’t need to use the urinal from a foot away. No sane person does this**. Also? No one’s impressed.

3-Take care of your damn pants. Men’s pants are pretty amazing contraptions. They are custom built with buttons, hooks, and zippers, allowing you to use the urinal without ever having to remove them. Even your underpants have convenient flaps for fuss-free penis extraction. I should never see you at a urinal with your pants around your ankles. I shouldn’t even see you undoing your belt. If you require a complex surgical procedure to separate pants from pelvis, you should be in the stall with the toilet or at home with 24/7 nursing assistance. And even if you’re able to use your pants correctly, fasten/clasp/zip your pants while you’re still at the urinal. Don’t do it by the sinks. Don’t do it by the door. No one needs to see you flapping around while you fumble with your fly.

*The word “urinal” is in fact a combination of the word “urine” and the archaic spelling “barnical,” becoming, quite literally, a barnacle for housing urine.
**Not even Joaquin “Footlong” Hernandez, and he had a doctor’s note.

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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.

I hate forced social time. Your coworkers, much like your family, are not pickable pals. Usually, I can manage ten minutes of a birthday/holiday/last day party until I reach my breaking point. Then I think of an excuse to leave (“Holy shit, I left my unicorn in the oven!” or “I forgot to get back to Dr. Abacus!”).

There are generally two main types of office parties: The holiday sort, or the farewell party kind where people. Farewell parties particularly disgust me because I am jealous that I am not yet at death’s door and they often feature “themes” like luaus or Stetson cowboy hats (I look really hot in those, by the way! They do a great job of obscuring my planetary sized forehead).

Despite my urge to make up a hobnob of creative excuses, most of the time, I begrudgingly sit and enjoy my coworker’s “Congrats on the New Baby!” or “Good Luck with the Pancreas!” party. But under the condition that I am able to gorge my corporate misery with delicious high saturated fat snacks. The treats the party planners manage to smuggle in, like cocaine into a middle school are glorious and addicting. Cheesecake, ice cream cake, cupcakes, layer cake, and other foods I stack on top of each other to look like cake (the celery bagel cake I made will live on in delicious infamy).

While free food is great, the social component of these parties is overrated. It usually involves one or more speeches, followed by awkward smalltalk about 1.) the weather, 2.) your family, and 3.) the mouse problem. So you’re probably wondering, “How do I avoid listening to people talk while still enjoying free food?” Luckily, this columnist is a frickin’ expert.

1-Enlist the help of a willing sucker. Bribery works, as do threats and blackmail. So does shamelessness: “I’m soooooo busy. Could you bring me something back?” you say, giggling and batting your eyelashes while you wear a tight-fitting shirt–in fact, just behave like that heifer Charlotte does on a daily basis and you’ll do just fine.

2-Come to the party late. You’ll avoid any opening speeches and most of the crowd will have wandered away, but you’ll be stuck with leftovers. This isn’t so bad, as people tend to bring in more food than necessary. Don’t try this too much, though. You don’t want to earn the title “Office Garbage Disposal.” That’s actually why I had to leave my last job.

3-Use ninja magic. Self explanatory, really.

Of course, if the party is going to be totally lame, you might want to just avoid it entirely. You can always feign illness, but really hardcore people like me prefer a little more realism in their excuses. That’s why I always leave a piece of undercooked chicken in the break room fridge. Enjoy, Charlotte!

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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.

So, what do you survive on? You might consider sustaining yourself on rage, or perhaps glorious cannibalism. But maybe you’ve been taking anger management classes and your coworkers are too stringy to be edible. Well, don’t worry, I’m here to make it up to you with some handy tips on how to make the most of your lunch hour, even if you’re penniless and locked in your cubicle!

- This is where it really pays off to save every scrap of leftovers. Sure, you didn’t think you’d ever need that three-day-old side order of nachos from Taco Bell, but when you’re hungry enough they start to look like a king’s feast! Bring this winner home by carefully drizzling a single packet of hot sauce over the top.

- You didn’t think those Starbucks Via packets would ever be drinkable…and they’re not. But if you take them like Pixi Stix, you can at least fill the gnawing hole in your belly with something suitably cocaine-esque to make you forget your hunger for a few precious hours, until it’s time to hit the gym for that 15-mile jog you suddenly feel like!

- Wander the office halls until you sniff out a birthday/going-away/you’re so old(!!) party. There will be sandwiches! There will be soda! There will be cake! There will be–confused stares until you find the man/woman/centaur of the hour and embrace them like a long lost slice of pizza. The others will have no choice but to accept you as your own (especially since their are plastic kinves in the room, and you are known to wield them with powerful force, hence your adorable nick-name “Knifey.” )

- If you sprinkle enough salt on that wad of rubber bands, it actually tastes just like the chicken you cook at home, according to Bob, who took your lunch.

- Gather some napkins together and pour packets of grape jelly on top. Voilà! Fruit salad! Also a great source of fiber, or perhaps a stomach crap that will cause you to go home early!

- Skimp. That’s right. Go into that big white domino everyone else calls a fridge and carefully scrape at the top of everyone else’s delicious, edible food. If you take a little, it will go unnoticed, just like your pride!

- And then, a favorite of mine: hot water, a tea bag and some salad dressing. Your very own V8 juice drink, and it will taste just like the real thing, because V8 is gross.

I hope you find these tips to stave off starvation helpful. But I’m still in strong support of cannibalism. Since it’s cold out I suggest eating a Nordic person (the other white meat), or Charlotte. ‘Cuz that bitch has it comin’.
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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.

If I had my choice, I’d decorate my cubicle with all kinds of stuff for napping: massage chair, down pillows, comforter, and a barbed wire fence to keep out the infidels. It would also be chillingly filled with newspaper snippets that make me laugh, like wedding announcements and obituaries (not that there is much difference).

In reality, I just have a fake fish tank with a New Mexico state flag in it.

In contemplation, I’ve realized I may have to change my ways. But one has to be careful, and if you are like me, you hate your job and you want to be alone in your homicidal misery, or at least look so professional bitches know to stay away.

Of course, you have the option of putting up posters of odd stuff, perhaps an ode to your favorite serial killers or a collection of failed taxidermy. But this might be more fascinating than frightening, and you might collect a crowd of revelers like you are the bearded lady at a freak show.

Therefore, your cubicle can’t be horrifying, it has to be humiliating. A reminder, really, that the corporate juggernauts have eaten up your soul and replaced it with something as bloodless and lifeless as Keira Knightly’s acting.

And since stopping by your coworkers’ cells to chat with them about their decor defeats the entire purpose of avoiding inmate conversation in the first place, I have done some research of my own. Here are some foolproof guidelines for constructing the perfect cubicle design that will signal your complete submission to the corporate machine!

1. Personal Photos. Personal photos are the best way to improve the hopeless drudgery of your cubicle. However, I would never put a photo of someone I actually love on my desk, because I’ve seen cop shows before, and that’s always how they get you. With that in mind, consider putting up photos of people you strongly dislike! Or, if you want to play it more mysterious, use the people who come in the frames. To deflect questions about why you have so many black-and-white photos of strangers hugging on bridges, be prepared to burst into tears whenever someone asks.

2. Textiles. Whether it’s a hideous sweater you drape over the back of your chair, or a bizarre pair of slippers breeding under your desk – adding textiles looks like you care about spending long hours at your desk. Just make sure they’re so disgusting that people never want to ask where you got that sweater from.

3. Food. Don’t squirrel food away in your drawers or cabinets, let it be seen! A pile of food on and around your desk says, “I’m in it for the long haul! I could live here if I had to!” Boxes of cereal, ramen noodles, granola bars, and adorable microwaveable bowls of the pasta you ate when you were ten years old are all perfect for desk space decor–they’re inexpensive, colorful, and stackable. You could build a fort out of them if you really wanted to. And don’t forget to accessorize! Your cubicle pantry woudn’t be complete without a selection of plates, silverware, tiny packets of salt, and assorted napkins collected from local fast food eateries.

4. The Mug. Speaking of things you eat stuff with, you definitely need a mug. Preferably a large one that implies you drink a lot of coffee and/or chai. I have one that says “#1 Mom.” I don’t have kids, but it helps explain some of the photos of smiling children I have on my desk (See “Personal Photos” above).

5. Plants. This really says “I’ve been outside! It was nice!” and gives some hope to the other plebes that they too, have the possibility of wandering into the outdoors after a trillion hours of unpaid overtime. Maybe even when it is still light out! You want to make sure that the plant you purchase is 1) real and 2) capable of wilting without completely dying. The latter can then be carefully crafted into a symbol of your dejection, like the plant you are limp, but not defeated, like Braveheart after his limbs were torn off, or the Stock Market.

And that’s all you need to make your cubicle a “I-guess-I’ll-settle-for-this” home! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to navigate away from this column and buy some Corona bottle caps for my fish tank. I’m feeling festive!

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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.

Therefore, because of the mental exhaustion caused by my job (and my early onset dementia), I’ve found that my ride home on the subway becomes my only “me time.” Yes, that’s right: instead of going home and crying in the shower like a real woman, I prefer to let my emotions rain down while I shove myself onto a train car like I was lit on fire. Luckily, I’m of strong German heritage, so by “letting my emotions rain down” I mean “grimacing.”

Sometimes, “my time” is interrupted by “others.” “Others” who like to “talk” during “my time.” I hear a lot of strange things, but the “ones” I’ve “collected” below are by far, “the best.” (That’s a lot of quote marks, I think my keyboard is broken.)

• Do you mind if I put my knee here?
• Let’s go down to the waterfront, there be MAD hos down at the waterfront
• Is that thing scurrying over there a rat or a raccoon?
• But where did the circus clown touch you?
• No, I’m sure it’s not contagious! I mean, pretty sure, I haven’t talked to the doctor yet.
• If one more person does something to piss me off I swear to God I’m going to rip their fucking face off.
• Ugh, I stepped in some gum – oh.

Yes, “my time” isn’t really a moment alone with myself. It seems that even in my free time, I am inexplicably wound back in to the whines and moans of others, except in these instances I’m not getting paid and I usually leave feeling like I just got pregnant.

Oh, and #6 was me. Happy travels.

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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.

Trouble is, what to eat, and where can I go so that my boss and his daily planner can’t find me? My escape route combines cunning (staircases) and romance (three busted up Twizzlers for my cubicle mate in return for his silence). Most days, I pass the Clown and Puppet Emporium (which combines my fears of both medieval Latin and marketplaces) and head for the local bookstore. There, I run my hands over new books, until I get too many papercuts or my Fro-Yo cone drips down my Old Navy button up shirt.

There, in the stillness of the Home & Garden section, yogurt cool on my collarbone, I think about the book that I will write that will make me famous, MIME COLLAPSE. Yes! An amazing thriller about a world made entirely of mimes, soon struck down by an otherworldly tragedy that causes the world of mimes as we know it to fall! Imagine it! Mimes falling everywhere, white gloves waving in fear, the roads soon tarred with white makeup–people left to tragically  identify bodies through beret science.

Often, I get so caught up in my invisible mime box of dreams that I’m late back to work. That’s why those Twizzlers always come in handy, and maybe some left over Froyo as dipping sauce.

I’m nothing if not mimeful.

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Alison Burke is a writer from the Washington D.C. area, and has been a past Defenestration contributor. She enjoys cake and male models. She wishes her life was more like a Baby Bash video — save she would be the douche wearing a sideways cap as bikini-clad men grooved comedically for her viewing pleasure.