Monday 31 December 2007

Post Christmas blues

It’s the time of year that makes the people that have taken off all their holiday off resentful. When Nige arrived this morning he asked Jason if he’d been in all week (except for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, which were bank holidays). He told him he had, because he’d got “no choice”.
I’m not sure if I’ve made it clear in a previous post, but Jim is not just renowned for singing throughout his working day. He also talks to everyone and anyone. The lady that cleans the toilets the security man that brings up the post, anybody he sees. In the mornings it’s a constant stream of “good mornings” as he has to speak to everyone as they come in throughout the morning. Everyone was discussing what kind of Christmas they had had. Jason moans that he’s been in here all over the holiday period, then goes on to say how many people were off sick on Friday. Then the people who were in were also coughing and sneezing everywhere, “like a doctors’ waiting room” says Jason. They carry on about how rough they’ve felt over Christmas and blame it all on the air-conditioning. Then Jim starts off :
Jim: “I was talking to this bloke the other week…who was I talking to…?”
Dave: “Everyone!”
They all have a big laugh at that.
Dave: “You walked into that one.”

Sunday 23 December 2007

Coca Cola sign opportunity

Don’t like publicising Coca Cola, but here is an opportunity not to miss:

Simply type your details and a brief message to your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/mum/dad/sister/brother/friend/cat et al. into a form on Coca Cola's website and it'll be included in a rotating broadcast, in lights for all to see, at Piccadilly Circus, at some point before 9pm 2 Jan.

You'll get an email to let you know when your message is scheduled to be shown, and if you can't make it into Central London in person, simply watch it as it happens online.

Messages will be moderated before being displayed too, so no rude ones please!

If you can’t get into London you can watch it on the internet. I tried putting up one saying “Clive wears pink. Clive has orientation issues. Happy New Year,” but it didn’t get past the login page.

Nige's Ribena war

I missed this yesterday afternoon, but Nige kept getting his Ribena pinched by Mark (from another section). He was so blatant about it that he used to pour it out in front of him. I bought in some liquid/vinegar from a half eaten jar of pickled red cabbage. I told Nige to pour his Ribena into another bottle, then pour the red vinegar into his Ribena bottle. He did this and waited for a day. Apparently yesterday afternoon Mark came and pinched what he thought was Ribena. Dan saw him and had to go into the corridor because he was cracking up with laughter, even before he’d tasted it. Nige watched as Mark diluted the Ribena at the water dispenser by the coffee machine. He walked back up the office, taking a mouthful as he went.
“Have you done something to this,” he asked. “It tastes vinegary.”
They all had a good laugh, except for Mark who accused Nige of trying to poison him. He won’t be pinching people’s drink again in a hurry.

Thursday 20 December 2007

Secret Santa Day



Another year done and dusted for the Secret Santa scheme. The best bit was one of the guys wrapping Clive’s present up in girly pink Christmas paper with fairies on. I think he should get the prize for most attention to detail. His present was one of the top few too, an elastic band gun (knowing how much Clive likes to flick elastic bands around the office. I had a go with it when Junior was being a pain in the arse, you can fire three or four in quick succession. Look at the enjoyment on Clive’s face.


I gave Dan a dancing snake/mp3 player speaker (photo to follow), which wasn’t as big as hit as I thought with him. I think that he didn’t realise what it was to start with. Then I think he got a bit embarrassed when everyone wanted a listen, and it created a bit more noise than he’d have liked.
Junior rubbished everyone’s presents, then declared that he wanted to something a bit different next year. He got a ball scratcher from Eric (no photo available). I think he was a bit disappointed. Full marks to Eric for noticing Junior’s need.

Wednesday 19 December 2007

Boss's Christmas Spirit

We have a section made up almost entirely of part-time mums, who do little more than answer phones answer correspondance, and the odd bit of printing. Today was their Christmas party. They were going out for a meal at dinnertime and had booked a coach to take them all to a nice restaurant. As they were leaving the boss said:
"Hey, this is crazy. All of you going in one coach. If ever there were a traffic accident on the way over it would take at least twenty minutes for me to recruit a new section."

Cruel, but very funny.

Tuesday 18 December 2007

What would have been a good t-shirt


This was what I'd got up to, designing something for my Secret Santa present. It ended up being a bit too late to send off and get printed up before the deadline.
I might still decide to put it on one of the T-shirt sites like Cafepress.

Crazy Helen’s Christmas spirit

Crazy Helen came over to Eric on her way to the drinks machine. Eric and a few others had been discussing the Secret Santa thing, because lots of them haven’t bought anything yet.
Helen: “You won’t have to buy me a present this year, because I’m not on your section anymore.”
Eric: “No, and you won’t have to exchange it.”
When she’d gone Eric explained to us that he had got Helen last year for his Secret Santa. He’d spent ages thinking about what to get, and quite a long time picking out a nice matching scarf and gloves set from Marks and Spencers (other glove sets are also available). He’d noticed what colours she wore to the office, and selected a nice colour that would go with the kind of thing she wore normally. Then on the day, as soon as present swapping was over, she collared Eric and asked if he had got the receipt, and which shop were they from. He said he probably did have the receipt and that he had got them from Marks and Spencers. To which she told him not to worry about the receipt because they would take things back anyway (I understand they are renowned for their relaxed returns policy).
Karen was first to say how tactless she was for doing such a thing. I couldn’t believe that someone would do such a thing, especially straight after the presentations.
Unfortunately I understand that she is going to come back to work for our section again in the New Year. Apparently she has made such a balls-up of anything she has touched for her new section that they want rid of her too.

Monday 17 December 2007

Wierd walk lady

There’s a girl that’s worked on our floor for a good six months now who has a very peculiar way of walking. She has generously enough proportioned bosoms, but walks along with her chest out and an exaggerated arch in her back, to try and show them off to her best ability. She walks with her head raised, so that she wouldn’t see anything on the floor if there were anything there to tread on. Then, I’m not sure if it depends on her mood or what shoes she’s wearing, she really pounds the floor as she walks past. You can hear her approach and then walk away from you if she walks down the office, and you always know who it is just by the sound. Karen and a fair number of the ladies on our floor watch her in disbelief as she walks past. Jim and Jason talk to her or flirt with her quite a bit, but you wouldn’t want to be seen in public with her because of her odd way of walking. This morning I was leaving Karen’s desk to go back to my own, just after this girl had walked past (and we had watched her in disbelief), and I gave Karen a laugh by walking back with my chest puffed out and a big arch in my back. She burst into laughter and had to explain what she was laughing at to Steve and Eric, who hadn’t seen me do it.

Diary delivery

Dan is in before me this morning. He’s complaining that he didn’t sleep all last night. He did go to bed though (not one of those nights when he goes out all night). For some reason he’s drinking chicken cup-a soup and taking Pro-plus caffeine capsules to keep him awake this morning. He also gets a red bull from the canteen when we go down for breakfast. We noticed that they were giving out company diaries on our travels, so when they reached our floor I was prepared. As they came along they got to Nige side of the desk first. With no-one sitting in Neil’s old desk at the moment I shouted over to Nige “Don’t forget to get one for Neil.” To which they happily handed over diary number two. Then Junior was out of the office, so I made sure we had one for him. Then as they got further down the office I went down and asked if we could have another couple for the two guys who were out of the office today. They’re not bad diaries this year, nice plain black things, okay they have the company logo on every other page and a bit of company related stuff that nobody is going to read, but not bad for free. Although we do have a new bank holiday on 32nd Octember (joke).

Christmas Eve

Monday is Christmas Eve. In the past we have been able to go home early, in true Christmas Carol style. These past few years though, since we’ve been owned by a new lot, we’ve had to work a full day (leaving at 3.00 at the earliest). Now they lay on a buffet at 12.00 in the canteen, and the day often dissolves into a big mince pie/chocolate eating binge with e-mails of Christmas and End of Year quizzes being sent round. They have made it a “Dress down Day”. Not much work is usually done. The bosses however take it to be a good time to tour round the offices to talk to the staff, probably seeing how much chocolate and mince pies they can find, but it always feels like they are looking round to make sure everyone is working. I’m sure the bosses all think that they are talking to the staff, trying to give off the vibe that they are normal, human people, just like us, but it never comes out that way. I remember offices where we got bottles of Whiskey sent in by happy clients, so we would be drinking whiskey and eating mince pies all morning then go down the pub at dinnertime. You wouldn’t have any clue how you got home that evening (we would catch the bus into work, we never drunk drove).

Nige’s source

Last week things weren’t going great for Nige. His source for getting the music DVDs of new releases and chart music had been nicked, and he was looking round to find a new source. This morning though, everything is back to normal and he bought in this weeks DVD. It’s usually full of Christmas stuff and party/dance compilations, but occasionally I can find the odd bit of stuff to copy off onto my memory stick and have a listen to.

This site gave me a laugh. I think it was a link from Boing Boing which I looked at because the decorations caught my eye, but then I saw the name of the site and could only imagine Knock off Nige cutting his old CDs and DVDs that have failed to burn properly. With the prices they’re charging, he wquld make more money from his failed CDs than the ones that write correctly.

Saturday 15 December 2007

Eric’s family

I asked Eric what he was up to on his day off (Friday). He told me that he was doing the rounds of seeing the extended family before Christmas. The ones he was seeing on Friday lived fairly close, but then he started to tell me about the others that he’d got to get round.
Eric: “You know all families have relatives that they try to avoid or hide away. Well the ones I’ve got see next week live in Cardiff. You know that programme with Mrs Bucket in “Keeping up appearances?”
Me: “Oh, yes?”
Eric: “Well that family that she tries to have nothing to do with, with that character Unslow?”
Me: “Oh yes.”
Eric: “Well my aunt and uncle near Cardiff are just like that .They don’t have the scrapped car on the front lawn, but they dress in rags and are as common as anything. The last time I went, my aunty is registered as disabled and the doctor goes round regularly to look her over, the last time I went to visit the doctor was round, examining her in the front room. I walked in, her husband had told me to go through, and she was there being examined. She said “Hello Eric. Come and have a seat.” All the while the doctor was finishing examining her. We go and see them once a year at Christmas, give them a Christmas card, and that’s it until the next year.”

Plotter trouble

The big plotter broke this morning, due to the paper getting jammed, because people pile up their drawings on the top of the machine, until it gets too heavy for the paper to come out at the back. Usually we can clear the jam and cut the paper out, but this morning one of the metal plates that takes the paper in had warped, and the front would not shut again. When anything mechanical happens we have to get the engineer from OCE to come and fix it. We pay for a twelve hour service, so it should be fixed the same day, but I have to phone the internal service desk first. The service desk type in all the details on the system, then give me a ticket number. Then they pass on the message to our IT department. Depending on the priority level, IT then have to phone me to ask what the problem is with the plotter, because the description that the service desk write down is useless. Then one of the guys from IT will come up and see if it really is broken or if he can fix it. Then when he’s looked it over he will call out the OCE engineer. So that wastes 3 or 4 hours, and the engineer will either come late on in the day so that nobody is around to explain the problem, or often which machine needs fixing. Usually he will come the next day and he won’t have the part we need, so we have to wait another three or four days for the part to come over from Germany and then for the engineer to come and fit it. So our 12 hour repair service takes more like a week.

The IT eventually called me at 11.25 to ask for the printer number and serial number, having phoned the service desk at 8.30.

Trying the café for the first time (or not)

There is a previous blog that I never got round to posting explaining meeting Glen (who I used to work with in another section) who was going over the road to a café for his breakfast sandwich needs, instead of queuing up at the canteen downstairs. More and more people have taken to doing it since then, which is weird because the queues downstairs haven’t been any shorter. So on Friday of the first time I was persuaded to order my breakfast from the café over the road, instead of the usual queue at the works canteen/restaurant facility. Junior was very keen and took all the orders. I’m not sure that Junior’s argument that “the café was only more expensive because the canteen is so cheap” really held water, but I thought I’d give them a try and then the rest of the office followed suit. Karen was against him doing it because he would have to leave the premises. She said:

Karen: “I can’t be seen to condone you leaving the premises.
Junior: “I could just say I was having a fag break.”
What if anything happened to you?”
Me: “Yes, that’s a busy road you have to cross.”
Karen: “What if you get run over on the way back? What would we do?”
Me: “We would miss our breakfast…or have to come and pick it up off the round.”
Karen: “Road-kill.”
Me: “That’s only if the rest of the traffic has stopped, or managed to swerve round the bacon baps.”

He actually phoned in the order and they offered to deliver them in 20 minutes, or phone back if he hasn’t had them by then. He phoned back after 20 minutes, for them to tell him that it would be another 40 minutes wait. He asked if that was going to be less if he collected them, and they said no. So he decided another 40 minutes would be nearly dinnertime (10.30) so he cancelled the order and came round refunding everyone’s money (short changing me by 10p because he hadn’t got the change, somehow). So we trooped down to the canteen to find the queue longer than ever, and because breakfast stops being served at 10.30 they were running out of stuff, and having to cook sausages and eggs from fresh. Jason was so long at the counter waiting for his egg that we left him there. He came back up to the office about 15minutes later saying that they must have been holding a gun to the chickens head to make him lay thy eggs, out the back.

Thursday 13 December 2007

Secret Santa/ Shrek mugs in Sainsburys

I sent an e-mail saying that if anyone has got Clive for Secret Santa, Sainsburys had got these fantastic mugs, which come with marshmallows and some chocolate drink. Only £5:

I’d used this photo from Ebay to show them, and stated “Photo for illustration purposes only, I didn’t buy one.”
I heard Eric and one of the Steve’s going “He has, he’s bought one really.”

Coats on the third floor

One of the girls from the third floor comes up in her coat. She usually fetches any post we have for them, and brings theirs up. I asked her if she was cold. She told me that they are all wearing their coats down there. I ask if the heating isn’t working down there. She tells me it’s freezing.

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Junior's telephone skills

Junior had cause to phone IT this afternoon. While he was on hold he was nodding his head. I asked “Is there any music playing while you’re holding?”
“Yes.” He said and put the phone on hands free for us all to listen.
Just at hat point in time though, a girl from the IT helpdesk answered. Hassled, he tried taking the hands free off, but hit the wrong button.
“I’ve cut her off.” He said. We all had a big laugh, and he went as red as Jim is orange.

Orange diet

Nige has stopped coming for breakfasts in the canteen in favour of eating oranges and satsumas. Hazel brought him a big bag of them this morning, then Mel came in from, dinnertime and had a big bag of satsumas for him too. Rick saw all these and said to him:
Rick: “If you eat too many you’re going to get ill.”
Nige “They can’t do you any harm.”
Me: “They might make you go orange if you eat too many. Then you’ll look like…(thinks for a while)…Jim.”

One (very busy) day in the life of PR - per week


This really infuriated me on the portal home page this morning:
"From Radio Devon to keeping The Guardian up to date - we hear from one of the team keeping Retail in the public eye.


8.30am – First things first, get to the office, read the papers – sounds simple but it’s of the utmost importance that we keep the business informed about anything from today’s news that could affect Retail’s decision making. Plus, I’ll see if any of our proactive campaigns have received coverage.

9.00 – Now that all of our stakeholders are aware of the media agenda for the day, I’ll just finish off writing that press release. It’s about xxxxxxxx at Christmas. Got to make it newsworthy as loads of other companies are vying for column inches at this time of year.

9.15 – Call from The Guardian personal finance desk to ask about the latest prices for xxxxxxxx. Quick visit to the pricing team for the latest figures and go back to the journalist with a response.

9.20 – Finish writing press release and send it round for approval.

9.35 – BBC Radio Devon call for an interview on xxxxxxxx, schedule it for 11.15am, on their mid-morning phone in.

9.40 - Start working on a new proactive campaign with the agency. This one is to encourage xxxxxxxx in businesses. It’s called ‘xxxxxxxx campaign’ because we’re trying to get businesses to label xxxxxxxx. It’s taken a while to get the statistics together to support the release, but it’ll be worth it when we get some good coverage through.

11.10 – Must go and get set up the Radio Devon interview, give myself 5 minutes quiet time before we’re live on air. When I come off air, I must let the relevant call centre managers know what was mentioned so that they can manage call volumes and responses. I’ll order the coverage too and get it circulated.

12.45 – When the phone has stopped ringing, I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon working on the final phase of the xxxxxxxx. It’s a huge structure and takes a lot of work to plan and set up but the public are really enjoying the tour.

1.20 – Spoke too soon! XFM just called and they want to do a pre-recorded interview about xxxxxxxx to go out on tomorrow’s breakfast show. Quickly set it up and brief another member of the team to carry it out.

5.00 – Got to dash home and pack, taking 8 journalists to see Spurs in The FA Cup tomorrow. Phew!"


Some people have got a cushy number. This was on the portal this morning, “A day in the life of…”
He gets into work at 8.30 (I start at 7.30) and has to read the newspapers for half an hour when he gets in. I e-mailed this over to my boss and tried to convince him that we should start our day off reading the newspapers for half an hour, and suggested he gets them ordered in. He was having none of it. Then he finishes work about 1.30 in the afternoon to get ready for a football match he’s watching tomorrow afternoon (what does he do in the daytime on Thursday?) on top of which the company are paying for him and 8 of his mates to go to.
If I was putting a day in the life of my job, I wouldn’t tell everyone I was doing half a days work, skiving the next day off, then taking my mates on a jolly on the company’s expenses. I hope they don’t expect him to go in on Friday after a late night boozing after the match.

Tuesday 11 December 2007

Coming down

No one was too shocked after Dan’s three day drug-fest in Amsterdam that he was phoning in sick on Tuesday morning. I was quite surprised he had turned up on Monday afternoon. I imagine that after spending three days solid smoking weed, he wouldn’t feel great when he had to return to earth. He had mentioned yesterday that he’d tried some of the special muffins they had in the coffee shops. I told him he should have brought some into work, like some people bring back cakes and sweets after they’ve been on holiday. That would have been a good Monday afternoon.
I e-mailed Lee (who used to work for us and now lives in Rotterdam). He’d met him over there. I asked if Dan had done anything embarrassing while he was out of it. This is his response:

“I was too tired, been working on the house. I came down to amsterdam for a couple of hours with Dan and a few friends. Tan was monged out!!! took him and a few other guys to find a bar called "lost in Amsterdam". couldn't find it but we got lost anyway! He brought a camera with him so I made him take some pictures. He didn't do anything embarassing just sat around like a statue.”

I e-mailed him back saying that was all he did on Monday afternoon too.


We also found this, which we think would be a fantastic present for Dan’s Secret Santa. Only available at t-shirt-hell.com

Frosty morning

This morning I had to spend 10 minutes de-icing my car before I could get in to drive to work. There was a clear sky overhead, but a bank of cloud rising from the horizon, which in the semi-darkness looked like the place where I live had grown mountains overnight, and I was driving towards them everywhere I turned.
Then I witness one of the most foolish sights of the winter. Some motorists are lazy and don’t like de-icing their cars. Some just clear a little letterbox shape that they can just see out of and hope that the chilling wind will clear the rest as they drive along. This morning though I saw the laziest. I was driving along on the main road when I saw a vehicle approaching in the side street to my left. He stopped at the give-way lines at the bottom of his road and opened up his driver’s door. At this stage I realised that he hadn’t cleared the frost off his doors, and the only way he could see to the side was by opening his door. This seems okay for turning left, but what was he going to do if he wanted to turn right? Was he going to open up both doors, and enter the road with his doors open? How about when he gets into traffic and he can’t open his doors because there are cars in the lanes either side? Can I get this put in the Darwin Awards? Or does it have to be printed in a newspaper?

Good business sense

Late yesterday we laughed ourselves silly after the geezer from the third floor came and asked if Nige was still doing DVD copies, and Nige told him that he’d given it up. After he’d gone and we’d laughed ourselves silly, Nige told us that he had ordered 17 DVDs off him a couple of months back (including some boxed sets), hounded him for a couple of days to get them done, then not collected them. Nige had got them in his boot for a couple of weeks, until he started to sell them on to other people. He’d still got some of the DVDs lying around unsold. This was the same guy who had tried to haggle with him for money off as well. Then he had told him that some of his copies wouldn’t play to try and get another set for free. Nige was wise to this though, and told him to bring the faulty copies back. He never did.

Monday 10 December 2007

Dan in Amsterdam

Dan returned from his long weekend in Amsterdam. A couple of his mates had dropped out, even though they had paid for flights and weren’t going to get a refund. He took some convincing earlier last week to go with his two other mates , who still wanted to go. He told us all that the first thing they did after dropping off their bags at the hotel was go to a coffee shop and get some weed to smoke, and was stoned all th etime he was there. He met up with Lee (one of our ex-employees, who now works in Rotterdam). He didn’t say much to him because he was so stoned. He thinks all he said was “hello” when he met them, and didn’t speak to him at all after that. He told us about the red light area, which they visited each night they were in Amsterdam, although they didn’t partake of the ladies. He explained that there were some older prostitutes there, about 40-45 years old.
“Nice?” asks Nige.
“Yeah, not bad actually. There were some really ugly ones as well though. Scary Isaw two guys going into the same door, for a threesome or something. There were some 60 year old men asking for prices.”
“Well you have to be careful when you’re relying on a pension.” I said.
They spent Saturday night/Sunday morning looking for a bar with a TV to watch the fight. The one they found was crowded and boiling hot.
On the way to the hotel in the morning he had a massive spliff, because he’d got a gram of stuff left, and he wasn’t going to throw it away. So he was high on the plane back as well.

Surprisingly, after his three day drug-fest, he wasn't up to doing much work and ended up going home at 3.00.

Christmas good will

Eb brings me over a cup of coffee when he comes in. It’s nice that some of them have been well trained.
I ask him how his weekend was. He says it was fine. He never lets anyone know what he’s been up to. I try to get more out of him:
Me: “Have you finished all your Christmas shopping yet?”
Eb: “I don’t do Christmas shopping.”
Me: “No? None at all?”
Eb: “I write Christmas cards, but don’t do Christmas shopping.”
Me: “What? Not even for your little niece?” (I once bumped into him in Morrisons and he had his little niece with him)
Eb: “No, I leave all that to the misses.”
Me: “I see. Your misses does the shopping. Not a bad attitude at all. I might try that for next year…So if I come in with a black eye, you’ll know I’ve suggested it to Janey.”
(He walks off laughing)

Nige's new box

Nige comes in telling me that he’s knackered. He stayed up on Saturday night to watch the boxing. I have only seen the end on the news where he falls over for the second time. Nige says it was a one sided fight all the way through. He then goes on to explain that it was only due to his latest investment that he was able to watch it. He’s bought a “dodgy cable box” (his own words) I think it’s called a “eurovox”. The way he explained it was that he has a normal cable box with the minimum monthly subscription charge. Then he has a box on top of that, with a splitter, which gives him access to the complete set of cable channels. His cable provider thinks he’s only looking at the normal channels and doesn’t pick up his added bonuses. He bought it off his “dodgy mate (again, his own words). He fits about 8 per week. It should have been £120, but he got it for £110, because of his connections. The bloke set it up for him on Saturday morning in about 20 minutes. He’s very pleased with it. He wants to watch all the sports channels mainly, but has also got Sky movies as well. I don’t know if his dodgy DVD business will suffer. The only thing he can’t get is Sky One, which no one can get unless they have the Sky plus, since Virgin and Sky fell out.

He tells Paul (Liverpool fan down the office) that Liverpool FCTV is crap, and that he would say that even if he was a Liverpool fan. “Not as good as the MUTV channel” he tells him.

Talking to Eric in the breakfast queue, they pay £110 a month subscription for his Sky package, which includes Sky sport and Sky movies. I ask if it’s worth it, he can’t watch that much TV. He says that his Mom and Dad watch it all the time, being house-bound.

Saturday 8 December 2007

Nostalgia

That reminded me of the old place, and the funniest thing I ever saw. Back in those days we all got paid monthly, but it was always on a Friday by cheque. So every payday we would all squeeze into a couple of cars and drive into town on the dinnertime to pay them into the bank, then get a bag of chips for dinner.
This one particular Friday dinnertime we had gone in the one lad’s car who had only past his test and got a car a few months before. We were driving down the High Street looking for a space to park, meanwhile there was a woman who had just driven into a space and was fiddling about with her handbag. The next thing we knew there was a bang, and I looked behind in disbelief as this woman sat in her car with no door on it. She’d swung the car door open to get out just as we were driving past. The lad driving our car stopped, got out. The woman was saying something that her couldn’t understand (she sounded foreign). So not knowing the protocol for this kind of thing he picked up the woman’s car door off the floor and handed it to her. Then he got back into the car and drove off. We ended up parking in a side-street. It was the timing that was the funniest thing. If she’d have stepped out of the car before we got there we might have hit her. If she’d only have opened the door a tiny bit, we wouldn’t have took the door clean off. The picture of him handing her door back to her has stayed with me for years

Wet the bed?

One of the women from another section was talking by the coffee machine. It was about 8.30, early for some people. Her friend walked past and said “What are doing in this early, Julie? Did you wet the bed?”
This took me back to my first job, when I would get asked by the office manager if I’d “shit the bed” if I got in a bit earlier than normal.

Thursday 6 December 2007

More Secret Santa ideas



Some of the section are still on the look out for for things to buy for the Secret Santa (I’m very smug now that I’ve got mine), but I’m still passing on ideas that I’ve seen.
One of my favourites is sadly out of stock at the Urban Outfitters site:






Then I found this the other day:

Now you can get your goldfish working for you, rather than just sponging off you.

Monday 3 December 2007

Back to the office

I've been off sick for some time. Having got back to the ofice today though, nothing seems to have changed.Dan is off sick, and in his place is Lorna (temporarily). Andy and Mark are doing their (almost) daily ritual of asking Nige hat DVDs he’s got in lately.
Andy: “Have you got Beowulf?
Nige: “No.”
Andy: “Have you got Fred Clause?
Nige: “No.”
Andy: “Have you got Jesse James?
Nige: “No.”
Andy: “Have you got Golden Compass?
Nige: “No.”

It then gets silly
Andy: “Have you got Pirates of the Caribbean four?
Nige: “Yes.”
Andy: “Have you got Shrek four?
Nige: “Yes.”

Lorna is sitting in Dan’s chair. She’s working away, but half hears the conversation. She asks Nige-
Lorna: “Have they made a Shrek four? I didn’t know it was out.”
Me: “No. He’s joking with them.”
Nige: “No. There’s no such thing. They ask the same thing every day.”
Lorna: “Are they making a Shrek four?”
Nige: “Not that I’ve heard. They’ve got to wait for Clive to become available.”
(Clive is nicknamed Shrek because of his likeness, although he’s not green in colour.)
x