488 Rules for Life: The Thankless Art of Being Correct

No one who has just been dumped wants to hear, ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea.’ It means nothing. If you must trot out this hoary old chestnut, then at least try to make it more accurate. ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea … but there are also a lot of bottom feeders and unpleasant smelly creatures that won’t be to your taste at all, plus a few nasty aggressive types with big sharp teeth, so maybe the ocean’s not the best place to go looking for a new partner.’

29

‘It is what it is’ actually means ‘please stop talking’

When someone says, ‘It is what it is’, they are not being wise and philosophical, rather they are sick of listening to you and are trying to wrap up the conversation.

30

Life is not a sport so you don’t need a coach

When life coaches first hit the scene, which I think was back in the nineties, it seemed like they were some kind of southern Californian joke that would go away faster than the trend for walking with ski stocks or using a PalmPilot organiser.

Life coaches, however, have not gone away, they have proliferated. And what has become apparent over the years is that, oftentimes, life coaches are people who have failed at other professions. So really the only advice a life coach should be doling out is: ‘If you want to turn your life around and become successful, you should become a life coach. Because then you can get paid to tell someone else how to turn their life around and become successful … by becoming a life coach.’

Come to think of it, maybe that’s exactly what they are doing and maybe that’s why there are so many life coaches out there.

SMOKING

31

If you smoke, you smell

All the time. And that’s okay, as long as you are aware of it. Sucking a mint only makes you smell like a smoker who has just sucked a mint. And washing your hands makes you smell like a smoker who has just washed their hands. Again, that’s fine, just don’t think you’re fooling anyone.

32

If you vape, you look a lot less cool than you think

In fact, you look like you are blowing a USB stick. Or R2-D2’s detachable penis.

EXERCISE GEAR

33

Only buy black leggings

Any other colour simply makes a feature of the sweat around your box and crack. Pop on a pair of light grey leggings next time you exercise and you’ll see that even when you barely break a sweat up top, downstairs you’ll be showcasing a right Rorschach inkblot test in your pants. That’s why people in the gym are staring—they’re either trying to work out what the stain resembles or, worse, they’re wondering if you’ve wet yourself. Because it’s difficult to tell the difference between sweat and wee, so there’s a good chance you’ll just look like a lady who went a bit too wide on her warrior pose and blew a piss-valve.

34

Stop calling it active wear

Most people I see wearing ‘active wear’ are at the shopping centre. So perhaps we should use the term ‘Lycra shopping outfit’ instead.

35

Once you are no longer active, get changed

You may wear your exercise gear en route to the gym or the park or the hot yoga dojo or wherever you are going to be active. You may also keep it on as you make your way home again and you may even detour to the shops, briefly, to pick up a couple of things. But that’s it. Once you’re home, admit that you’re not going to be doing any more lunges or downward dogs and that it’s time to put on some less-active wear.

36

Dress according to the standard of cyclist you are

Many of us enjoy a hit of tennis yet I never see anyone down at my local club sporting a full Serena Williams–style catsuit. Cyclists should bear that in mind and rethink their cycling gear. If you’re not racing in the Tour de France, there’s absolutely no need for those gut-hugging tops with multiple pockets all around that allow you to strap energy bars to yourself like dynamite on a suicide bomber vest.

You can probably live without those three bananas and four Clif Bars, not to mention the numerous electrolyte sachets. After all, you’re only going to be riding for about an hour at the most. The larger part of your morning will be spent sprawled across multiple tables at the local cafe drinking lattes with all the other middle-aged men in padded ball-bag pants and zip tops covered in logos of sponsors who aren’t actually your sponsors. And the reason they aren’t your sponsors is because you’re not a professional cycling team. You’re just some dads in clip-cloppy shoes trying to get out of parenting on a Sunday morning.

37

Men must wear shorts over leggings

The gym is no place for people to discover whether or not you are circumcised. That’s a private discussion for another place and time.

WORKING OUT

38

Lift less, more quietly

The odd noise of exertion here and there is fine, but if you are grunting and puffing and blowing your cheeks out to the point where bits of spit are starting to fly around, take some weight off, it’s obviously too much for you.

39

Don’t tell people you box

You participate in a boxing class. It’s different.

40

No naked parading in the change rooms

I don’t care how good your body is, I don’t want to see it striding from one end of the change room to the other, or bending over while you rummage around in your gym bag for your matching bra and lacy thong set. You have a towel, use it.

41

No vigorous towelling

Pat or blot yourself dry after a shower. Don’t rub yourself so hard that all your bits start wobbling and jiggling about. Just accept that it may not be possible to get yourself bone dry when you’re in a communal change area—that’s why talcum powder was invented. Channel your inner old lady and throw a bit of powdery talc around down there instead.

42

Keep two feet firmly planted on the ground at all times

Under no circumstances should you treat the change room like a woodchopping event. Don’t even think about putting one foot up on the bench and then using that towel like a two-handed saw, going back and forth between your legs. If that’s how you must dry yourself, wait for an individual cubicle to become available and have a go at yourself in private.

43

The park is not a gym

Take your kettle bells, your giant ropes and your lumpy male trainers shouting, ‘Don’t give up on me, Doyanne! (Dianne)’ and get out of what should be a lovely green space in which to relax, perambulate, picnic or just play on the swings. (If you’re a child that is—please don’t be one of those cutesy girl-women who giggles and gets her date to push her on the swing in a bid to be adorable.)

AGEING GRACEFULLY

44

Old men should not have long hair

Cut the ponytail off, fellas. The bad news is, it probably wasn’t even cool way back when you were young, but now it’s even less cool and it’s making everyone around you a bit sad.

45

Don’t lie about your age

The number one thing to remember about getting older (aside from the fact that old men shouldn’t have long hair) is that lying about your age is pointless. If you try to appear younger by knocking a few years off when you state your age, all anyone thinks is, Wow, she looks dreadful! or Does this old bat think I’m stupid?

When someone asks me how old I am, I prefer to add a few years rather than take them off. That way people will think, Gee, she looks pretty damn good for sixty-five! However, this trick doesn’t always go to plan. The inherent and ever-present danger is that when you tell someone you’re sixty-five and you’re really only forty-five, they may simply take you at your word and think, Yeah, that seems about right.

46

Put your feet away

Nothing gives away your age faster than cracked white heels and gnarly, split, yellow toenails. There is an odd phenomenon that occurs when men retire—for some reason they refuse to wear shoes anymore and instead decide to live out the rest of their lives in sandals. It’s like suddenly they want everyone to bear witness to the hideous crime scene they have going on at the end of each ankle.

When I hit retirement age, I plan to petition the government for a pensioner pedicure subsidy for both men and women. A weekly pedicure for the elderly is a great idea. For a start it prevents an old person’s feet from turning into a pair of festering petri-dish experiments, but more importantly, it provides a much-needed social outing for lonely seniors. After all, the manicurist is the perfect captive audience, trapped at the business end of the pedicure chair while the old person chatters away.

47

Don’t start singing like a Bee Gee

If you are having trouble hitting all the notes in your regular singing voice due to age, taking it up a notch and trying to sing in the key of ‘old lady falsetto’ isn’t going to help. Just turn your volume down and drone along quietly instead.

48

No one wants to hear about your ailments

That doesn’t mean you have to stop talking about them, just be aware that there is not a person in the world who is interested, not even friends the same age as you. The only reason they willingly listen to you talk about your various afflictions is so they can rabbit on about their own ailments the minute your mouth stops moving. It’s a bore exchange.

49

Leave the waitstaff alone

Flirting with waiters half your age is unseemly and could also be viewed as a mild form of solicitation—because waiters will always be polite and often times flirt right back—but it’s only because they want a tip. Ergo, you’re only getting their attention because you’re paying for it.

Men, no matter what age they are, flirt with waitstaff. They do it when they’re young and they keep doing it when they get old. And they always think they’re being incredibly charming. They’re not. For women, however, flirting with waitstaff is only something they tend to take up with enthusiasm once they hit middle age. It’s like they’ve finally found their confidence and suddenly they think it’s a bit cheeky and hilarious to hit on fit, young waiters. But it isn’t. For while the woman may see herself as a real cougar, all the waiter sees is a mangy old housecat yowling for attention.

50

Don’t pretend you don’t need glasses

If you’re holding the menu at arm’s length, you need glasses. If the font on your phone is billboard-sized and can be read by someone at the other end of the train carriage, you really need glasses.

51

Don’t use the word ‘pash’ anymore

Once you are forty, the time for pashing is well past. You can still do it if you must, but please find another word to describe it.

52

Have a mirror right next to the front door

You might not want to look at your ageing self but remember, a mirror is your best friend. And having a mirror right next to the front door, preferably a magnifying mirror, should be mandatory for all people aged forty-five and over. Basically, you want to do a quick check before you leave the house. You’re looking for renegade hairs and they could be anywhere: upper lip and chin for ladies; ears and nose (inside and out) if you’re a man. You want to remove anything that would transfix a small child and have them reaching out to tug it.

You also need to keep an eye out for those random straggly eyebrows that are so long you can only assume they’ve been growing out of your face since birth. How else do you explain the absurd length of them?

Once you’re happy you’re not leaving the house looking like the missing link, then do a quick once-over of your clothes, checking for any food spills. At a certain age, having a food stain down your front is the equivalent of having a sign around your neck that reads, They’re going to put me in a home soon.

53

Men, don’t dye your hair

For some reason, it just doesn’t work for you. And most of you look pretty good grey anyway. Which, personally, I find quite annoying. Men with grey hair are always described as ‘silver foxes’—people use words like ‘sophisticated’ or ‘Clooney-esque’. Whereas when I allow my hair to go grey, the only celebrity I resemble is Meryl Streep in Into the Woods.

AT THE OFFICE

A word about open-plan offices

It has been a long time since I’ve had a ‘real’ job and worked full time in a ‘real’ office. My most recent in-office experience was at the ABC during the production of the show that spawned this book, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering. In Melbourne, the ABC offices are housed in a brand-new, shiny building in Southbank. It cost a lot of money and I guess they spent most of that money on the outside of the building, which is why they didn’t have enough cash left to pay for any walls inside the building, walls that would help divide the vast open spaces into individual offices for people to work in. I can think of no other reason, other than budget, that would explain why our national broadcaster would inflict one of the most universally reviled working arrangements on their underpaid, overworked and yet surprisingly dedicated and loyal staff. Pretty much the whole of the ABC is open plan. Well, except where the executives work—that part of the office got walls and doors, which the execs must find really annoying. After all, they’re the ones who constantly champion open plan and tell the rest of us how great it is.

When I arrived at the ABC and discovered The Weekly office was open plan, I decided to work from home. This was not an arrangement I came to with management; rather, it was the only way I could get any work done. I never told anyone I was working from home, instead, I came in every morning, put my jacket on the back of my chair, scattered a few notes across my desk, placed my bag underneath, then took what I needed and went home to do some work. I was able to get away with this because at the time I lived only ten minutes down the road. So if I got a text or a call saying, ‘Where are you?’ or ‘Can you come to the meeting room for a read-through?’ I would reply, ‘Sure, just grabbing a coffee, back in ten. Smiley face emoji, coffee cup emoji, heart emoji, two exclamation marks.’

Ultimately, I was far more productive working from home than I would have been sitting out in the open among thirty other employees, a lot of whom were making necessary but still very distracting phone calls and some of whom were making distracting and completely unnecessary phone calls.

It did mean there was a fair bit of driving back and forth — which gives rise to my argument that the open-plan office model is not only highly unproductive thanks to the miserable employees it creates, but in my case it also contributed to global warming because of the time I spent on the road burning fossil fuels.

GENERAL OFFICE RULES

54

Don’t take your wang out at the office, ever

I realise this seems incredibly obvious but in the current climate, with everything that’s come to light about men sending dick pics, wanking in front of female colleagues or into pot plants, and showing off their knobs to co-workers like you would a new iPhone etc., apparently we do need to spell this one out. So here it is again:

55

Your penis should remain in your pants during office hours

Unless you are ALONE in a toilet cubicle using it to wee—then it can come out—but please, put it away as soon as you’re done.

56

During office hours, turn your phone to silent

It’s common courtesy; no one in the office wants to hear your Bernard Fanning, ‘I Just Want to Wish You Well’ ringtone, in full, every time your phone rings. No one. Not even Bernard.

57

Go easy on the reply - all button

We all get enough rubbish filling up our inboxes, we certainly don’t need to be included in irrelevant reply-all chains. Just because someone emailed a question to the entire office doesn’t mean you have to reply-all; just reply to the person who sent the email.

58

Don’t insert yay into Friday

No matter how happy you are that the week has ended, there’s no need to resort to using office clichés like ‘Friyay’. Especially in pointless inter-office group emails: Happy FriYAY everyone! Everyone knows it’s Friday. Everyone knows the weekend is coming. Everyone is happy. No one’s mood is buoyed by your arbitrary yaying.

‘Hump Day’ is similar to Friyay, in that there’s never any call for it. If you can’t think of anything to say to an associate in your office besides ‘Happy Hump Day!’ just give them a polite nod and pass without saying anything. It’s not compulsory to speak every time you pass one another. See rule 63 for clarification on the correct way to greet co-workers.

59

Stop the senseless ‘e - meeting’

Don’t write ‘pleased to e-meet you’ at the top of an email. You lost me at ‘e’—I’m not reading any further.

60

Team bonding activities should be optional

Some people love it when management decides that an afternoon of bowling or paintballing or (god forbid) karaoke will help everyone work better as a team. Others would rather be dead. So respect the rights of those who hate ‘forced fun’, which also includes themed ‘dress-up days’—not everyone enjoys wearing a fascinator around the office to celebrate Melbourne Cup Day. And maybe Fay from Purchasing is self-conscious about her broad caboose and doesn’t want to wear jeans on any day, let alone on Jeans for Genes Day when she’ll feel even more conspicuous in her sheets-of-denim being compared to everyone else in their teeny-tiny skinny jeans.

61

Don’t attempt humour in signs around the office

The problem with the jokey sign is that it does not withstand repeat viewings. People go to the kitchen or bathroom several times a day and there’s no way your note is funny enough that folks will enjoy it and chuckle every time they see it. What you should aim for in an office note is mild terseness. You do this by employing shouty caps and underlining:

PUT YOUR DISHES IN THE DISHWASHER—PLEASE

But avoid doing ‘gags’ like taking a poster of a cute pussycat and writing the following underneath it:

WASH YOUR CUP OR THIS KITTEN GETS IT!

And if you need to put up signs in the bathroom, humour should be the last thing on your mind. When I visit an office and see a sign like this in the bathroom:

IF YOU SPRINKLE WHEN YOU TINKLE, BE A SWEETIE, WIPE THE SEATIE

I’m not thinking, Oh that’s funny ’cos it rhymes, I’m thinking, Who in god’s name is pissing on the seat so often that a sign is required? After all, I’m in the ladies toilet. To the best of my knowledge, ladies sit down to go to the toilet and it is physically impossible to wee on the seat when you are sitting on that seat. If women are somehow spraying it around like tom cats in your office bathroom, the time for joking is long past, the only sign that should go up is one that says:

HEY LADIES, SIT DOWN

62

No personal calls in open - plan offices

In this unfortunate, modern world of open-plan offices, it surprises me that I have to articulate this as a rule. I assumed everyone was like me and got really self-conscious making personal phone calls when other people were within earshot. Turns out, some people aren’t the slightest bit embarrassed about others overhearing their personal calls, in fact they seem to revel in it. I witnessed one woman FaceTiming her young children from her open-plan office desk every day at around five o’clock. Perhaps it was her way of justifying staying late at the office. I say, if you miss your kids so much that you have to FaceTime them, just go home.

63

One proper greeting per day is ample, after that a nod will suffice

Working in an office can be stressful. Not only do you have to get your work done, you must also make an effort to socialise with your fellow employees, especially when you find yourself trapped together in the claustrophobic staff kitchen. At times it can feel as though your whole day is taken up both asking and answering bland questions like ‘How was your weekend?’ or ‘Got anything on this weekend?’ or ‘Hungover much? Heh heh’.

The point is that between regular trips to the kitchen, the bathroom and even the printer (to pick up those personal documents you’ve been printing out at work) you will cross paths with your co-workers multiple times a day. This means multiple greetings per day, and it’s not surprising that these become less enthusiastic as the day wears on. That’s why it’s okay to simply nod at your co-workers, or even just raise an eyebrow of acknowledgement from the second interaction onwards. It’s too exhausting to have to come up with new small talk for each passing, and if you’re not careful you can end up falling into the ‘say what you see’ trap (I am one of the worst offenders of this) passing someone in the corridor and saying something like ‘Ooh, having a cup of tea’ or ‘Mm, chips. Good stuff’.

Others try to cover their awkwardness by attempting humour, failing, then laughing at their ‘joke’ anyway: ‘Heyyy, nice green top, Ellen … did you see Sophie’s wearing a green top today too? Sorry guys, I didn’t get the memo! Ha ha ha.’

Remember if you have nothing of substance to say, it’s perfectly okay to go full Ronan Keating and say nothing at all.

64

No hot - desking

Hot-desking is a form of employee abuse. In years to come, I hope there will be a class action where all the people who have been forced to hot-desk will take their employers to court and sue them for damages. I am fortunate that I have never had to endure such torment. However, the poor staff in the ABC newsroom were long-suffering victims of hot-desking. I know they were suffering because I did an informal survey of the newsroom which revealed that no one enjoyed it. No one. Not one person said, ‘Yes, I quite like not having anywhere permanent to put my things. It’s also great not being able to personalise a space that I spend at least eight hours a day in. But most of all, I really like never knowing where to find anyone. It adds an element of discovery to my day.’