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'It's opposite day': Seven perfect responses to being disciplined at work

RECEIVING any sort of punishment at work is stressful, but you can deal with it calmly and maturely. Or you can try these long-shot ways of weaselling out of it…

It’s Opposite Day

You may have been given a formal warning and two weeks’ unpaid leave, but tell them it’s Opposite Day and you’ve got yourself a promotion and a salary bump. Congratulations!

Play dead

Slump to the ground and do not respond when your colleagues nudge at your lifeless body. After a few minutes they’ll lose interest and move on. It works in Hollywood films, and they would never give a distorted view of real life.

Blame your twin

It was all an elaborate plot by your twin in an attempt to undermine you. Note: this is less effective if you are fraternal girl-boy twins. Or if you don’t have a twin. However your boss may avoid you in future due to being dangerously unhinged.

Call the police

Being told off is threatening behaviour if you’re a sensitive person, so it’s grounds for dialling 999 and getting the boys in blue to put that HR manager away for a long time.

Pretend they are dead

Also known as ‘Sixth Sense-ing’. Stare blankly past your boss and whoever else is disciplining you. Look unsettled. Then make a phone call to discuss the terrible freak accident they were all killed in. Ghosts can’t discipline you.

Call your union rep

Sounds crazy, but calling in a union rep can provide external support and clarification of your workplace rights. Actually no, this is too out there. Nowhere’s got a union anymore. Skip to the next one.

Play the UNO reverse card

We all know how important it is to keep one of these cards on you. Play this bad boy on your boss and now she’s the one getting disciplined. Or wondering why you’re wasting her time with a family card game and moving you to the top of the ‘suitable for downsizing’ list. 

Six cost-of-living tips for young people, by old people

THE cost-of-living crisis is worsening, and young people will bear the brunt. Here is 68-year-old Roy Hobbs’ advice to see them through it.

Get bloody dressed

Hoody finishes just above your bellybutton? Wearing sandals in November? Jacket unzipped? It’s your fault you’re cold. At your age I wore three pairs of trousers and the World War One greatcoat my grandfather had died in, and that was to bed. Put some clothes on and you won’t need your precious heating.

Build a real treadmill

And these gyms you go to are a waste of money. The thick end of 50 quid a month to run on a treadmill like a hamster? If you’re going to do that, build a man-sized treadmill and rig it up with flywheels to a generator. You could power the whole house with that. I’ll make you one in my shed.

Live at home until you get married

I never worried about bills until I was 27 because I was still sharing a bedroom with my two brothers. I handed over my pay packet to my mother and she kept most, put a little by and gave me ten and six back for toffees and the cinema. I was courting, of course, but in those days you waited.

Eat stodge

There were none of these pan-Asian flash-fried avocado brunch pizzas when I was a lad. We ate stodge, and plenty of it. What was it? Stodge. I think suet was involved, meat, certainly potatoes, vegetables to a degree but not to the point you could identify them. Good honest stodge. Three meals a day.

Stop messing around with those stupid phones

If you’ve got the internet at work you don’t need it at home. Just print off anything you need during the day. No wonder your hands are cold when you’ve got them poking out of a pile of blankets to work your mobile. What’s wrong with staring at the TV for six hours a night?

Be born in a more sensible year

Look at their dates of birth these days. ‘2002’ and ‘1995’. What bollocks. Get yourself a nice sensible birth year, like 1954 or 1968, and you won’t have all this trouble. Enjoy the postwar boom, get yourself a nice cheap house, final salary pension, retire. But the young today would rather be modern and cool.

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