It only happens in the soapies.

Upstairs admin is fighting with downstairs admin. Upstairs admin has formed an alliance with marketing, who is now spending more time carrying messages between the two parties and trying to keep the peace than pursuing sales.

Meanwhile, downstairs is desparately trying to bury their mistakes before upstairs find them. And when upstairs does find them, they're told they just don't understand the problem they have to deal with downstairs. Meantime, marketing has to catch the ball and smooth ruffled client feathers, once again at the expense of valuable finding and keeping new clients time.

Meantime, one of the management team ends up accidently hooking up with one of the downstairs secretaries on a sms chat channel. By the time they realise they've been chatting up a known "stranger", it's passed an easy and timeous exit. So now downstairs is abuzz with rumours. They "did" it. She got pregnant and had an abortion. They're still seeing each other. He's chasing her. She's chasing him. He's actually not interested. She's the one trying to end it. Of course, our management person knows nothing about it. Or is not telling. In fact no-one wants to talk about it, but they talk about it most of the day anyway. At least downstairs.

Field staff return from the day's work all hot and grumpy. Actually, they're not all grumpy. It seems the more they are paid, the grumpier they are. Strangely enough, the ones that are paid the least seem to come back almost... happy. Glad the day is over, I guess.

Techie x is absolutely incensed that management won't provide a computer so that he can check his personal yahoo email box. Management is incensed that viruses and trojans kept appearing on the computer techie x was using without authorisation and magically stopped once access was denied.

Techie y isn't happy with his assistant. His assistant isn't happy with him. Actually, the assistant isn't happy being an assistant for anyone, so it's nothing personal.

The boss is thinking of setting up a boxing ring in the rec room....

Office politics. Don't you just love it!