Visiting Mark

Having had a long weekend I was a bit depressed about going back to work. When I got in my idea that no-one would have done anything and I would have four days worth of crap to catch up with was confirmed. Then mid morning junior said that he had phoned Mark yesterday and that we were going to go and visit him this afternoon.

Mark has been off work with a bad back for over eight months waiting for physio and lately injections in his back.
We stopped off at Subway for dinner and picked up a meatball marinara for Mark too.

Mark was glad to see us. He’s not been out much. You would have to be desperate for company to be glad to see Junior.
We started off asking how he was getting on. He’s having his injections next week and thinks he might be coming back to work the week after that. Then he asked us about the changes to the department at work. We told him all about the comings and goings while he ate his sub. Then as we relaxed a bit more Junior asked how his girlfriend was coping with looking after him. To be polite, Mark asked how Junior’s love life was. He knew that he was having trouble with his girlfriend before he had gone off sick. Junior explained that she had left him just before they were going to move into a nicer flat together, leaving him £1000 out of pocket, having already paid the deposit. We figured out that it must have been about six months ago. They had been going out together on and off for about eight years. Then surprisingly, in an unguarded moment, he confessed that he was actually seeing someone from work, and that he was hoping that things might work out with her:

Junior: “You know who I’m on about, don’t you?” (to me)
Me: “I don’t know
anything”
Junior: “You’ve heard all the rumours though?”
Me: “I’ve heard
the odd thing.”

He went on to tell Mark that he had been seeing Cath, who had worked on our section for a few months. I knew that they had been places together, because she had split with her husband last year and they were both going out “on the pull”. The boss had also been suspicious and had started rumours about the two of them, but we had assumed it was just the boss winding people up. I was probably more surprised that one of the office rumours was true, and that he had offered the information up freely.

Junior: “This is all in strictest confidence.”
Me: “Of course.” (with a
smirk).

New phone number

Junior was giving out his new company mobile number and asking people for theirs. We weren’t that happy to give out such information, but if he came up on caller display we could just ignore him (since we only have them on vibrate in the office anyway). Mark has been off for a few weeks with a bad back and Junior tried to phone him to se how he was progressing. When Mark called back Junior was out of the office in a meeting, Mark called me instead. I passed on the message from Mark, but Junior still wanted his number, so I read it to him off my display:

Me: “0785……”
Junior: “Hang on I haven’t got that far yet.”
Me: “How far have you got?”
Junior: “A far as the K in Mark.”

Film 2008

Men shouldn't be subjected to "Chic-flick" movies. this is Mark’s review of 27Dresses:
"I got up and did the washing up"

Hyper Junior

Junior has been hyper all day. He’s only doing half a day because he’s going to get tanked up in the afternoon before going to the football. Considering the kick-off is 7.45pm, that’s some drinking time they need.
He got into work just after 7.30am this morning, which is unheard of for him, then spent an hour or so messing about with the settings on his and “Quiet” Mark’s Nokia N95s, so that he could video conference in our 2.30pm meeting that he was missing out on. The tests worked and we were going to sit him in the middle of the table while the meeting was taking place. It would have been just like Charlie’s Angels. I wanted to find out if we could video it as it happened, then add a different soundtrack to it.Whatever hapened to that covert footage we had of him with his wireless headphones on that we were going to set to music? Karen thought he was buzzing so much that when we were going down for breakfast she told me not to let him buy any Red Bulls. As it happened, he was further along the queue than me, so once he’d got his sandwich he went straight for the chilled drinks cabinet and waved his Red Bull in the air in defiance before paying. I had to explain that he’d waved his Red Bull at me when she asked why I’d ignored her. It then appeared that the boss wanted to come to the meeting to see what we were up to, and to tell us some news the he had. In the end Junior reconsidered things. So by 2.30 he had either forgotten he was going to do it, or thought better of it.
He might have a good time at the football, but he missed some vital news about a fair number of promotions on the cards, which I’m not sure we should tell him about.