40 As Useless As Sayings for the Office

Offices are the natural habitat of the useless object. Nowhere else are so many things bought, installed, labelled and then quietly ignored. The whiteboard pen that died in 2019 is still in the tray. The suggestion box has a lock and nobody has the key. Somewhere on the third floor there is a printer that has never printed.

These forty are built for that environment. They work in a standup, in a group chat, and in the four seconds after somebody says “let’s take that offline”.

Forty for the working day

1. As useless as a meeting that could have been an email.
2. As useless as an email that should have been a meeting.
3. As useless as a printer on the third floor.
4. As useless as a mute button nobody presses.
5. As useless as an out-of-office reply on a Wednesday.
6. As useless as a whiteboard pen that has dried out mid-diagram.
7. As useless as a stapler with no staples.
8. As useless as a hot-desk booking system on a Monday.
9. As useless as a fire drill five minutes before home time.
10. As useless as a suggestion box with a lock and no key.
11. As useless as a team-building day in the rain.
12. As useless as a second monitor pointing at the wall.
13. As useless as a laptop charger at the wrong end of the table.
14. As useless as a password policy written on a sticky note.
15. As useless as an org chart drawn in pencil.
16. As useless as a job title with the word Strategic in it.
17. As useless as a printer queue on the last day of the quarter.
18. As useless as an all-hands with no questions taken.
19. As useless as a shared calendar nobody updates.
20. As useless as a conference phone in a room of eleven people.

21. As useless as a desk fan in an air-conditioned office.
22. As useless as an ergonomic chair with the lever seized.
23. As useless as a standing desk that only stands.
24. As useless as a coffee machine with the descale light on.
25. As useless as a fridge note written in the third person.
26. As useless as a swear jar in a warehouse.
27. As useless as a five-year plan in month two.
28. As useless as an appraisal form with one box.
29. As useless as a training video with the sound off.
30. As useless as a badge that opens one door.
31. As useless as a fire exit stacked with chairs.
32. As useless as a parking space marked Visitors Only.
33. As useless as a lanyard on a work-from-home day.
34. As useless as a photocopier with a jam in tray four.
35. As useless as a company handbook nobody has opened.
36. As useless as a suggestion that starts with Going forward.
37. As useless as a deadline agreed in a corridor.
38. As useless as a spreadsheet with one formula and eleven colours.
39. As useless as a status update that says ongoing.
40. As useless as a Friday afternoon calendar invite marked Quick Chat.

Where they land

The office version of this joke has one advantage over every other kind: the audience is looking at the evidence. You do not have to describe the broken thing, you can point at it. That also sets the limit — keep the target an object or a process, never a colleague. The moment it becomes a person it stops being funny and starts being a grievance, and grievances do not get repeated at lunch.

For the general-purpose versions, take the complete collection of fifty. If your workplace runs on tea and biscuits, the foodie edition is the one to read next.