Recognizing the telltale signs that the next zombie invasion is headed to your office
Image source: Hilobrow.com
Currently, we have hundreds of books and countless YouTube videos telling us how to survive the zombiepocalypse, and many of them provide useful technical and non-technical content. But what about detecting the first signs of next coming of zombies before they strike? You need to upgrade your zombie spotting skills. Here are some signs savvy technical communicators should be on the lookout for before it’s too late.
Note: this may or may not protect you from a zombie invasion, but worth sharing…
- When you arrive at the office parking lot, you notice some cars with their doors open and alarms blaring. Yet no one is in sight, even the smokers’ corner is abandoned.
- Your first email of the morning comes from your fellow technical writer, and the subject line reads “mmm, brainz.”
- At lunch, you notice some of your SMEs have developed a penchant for pasta with gray-looking, suspiciously lumpy alfredo sauce…
- Later in the afternoon, you see the delivery man dragging his right foot on the carpet…
- You worry that the healthiest, most-outdoorsy tech writer is looking rather pasty…
- You aren’t fazed by the bloody handprints on the copier, but you find it odd that it isn’t even jammed…
- At the late-day weekly office meeting you find those disgustingly perky co-workers are even more disgusting than usual, with raspy but monotone speech patterns and really bad make-up jobs.
- Your manager suddenly takes an interest in all things intellectual–or rather brainy—collecting the latest brain stress ball, gray coral paperweights, and desktop backgrounds of cranial autopsy photos, just before scheduling a “brainstorming” session with your team.
- You find yourself constantly distracted by suspicious grunts from passers by lost on the pathways around the cubicle farm…
- As you leave work, you see the IT guys carrying dozens of boxes of Twinkies, rolls of duct tape, and cases Mountain Dew…. in the direction of their computer room. You say to them, “Looks like it’s gonna be a long night!!” and they just speed up to an almost run.
- You feel pretty happy about your latest purchase of a cricket bat, even though you have never played the sport…
If you see any of these signs, keep that cricket bat next to your desk and make nice with the IT guys. They’re pros at zombie spotting, and at least they know what’s up.
