A lot of wind on Friday afternoon

Friday afternoon was odd because we had a guest speaker coming to address us in the canteen about “Changing Energy”. He blamed privatisation and the early running down of the coalmining industry. He mentioned alternative sources of energy, which would be many years away. A new nuclear power plant would take fifteen years to get up and running. Then he spoke against wind energy because he wanted to know where we would get our energy from when it wasn’t windy.

This brings me on to later in the afternoon. That was always Windy Miller’s problem wasn’t it, waiting for the wind.
George, Eric, Andy and one of the Steve’s were sitting around discussing the old TV programmes they watched as kids. Bod, Starfleet, Masters of the Universe, Captain Scarlet, Trumpton, Buck Rogers, Roger Ramjet Hong Kong Phooey they all got a mention. We’d got onto this through talking about how much money the bosses were on, so they could pay for their fuel without a worry. By the time the shortages and power-cuts come they’ll be emigrated to some beach somewhere without civil war breaking out. Jersey was mentioned, because that was where all the millionaires go to live. In fact you have to get a license to live there, and they don’t take any riff-raff. The only scum on the island are the ones who were born there and do all the work. This got us on to Bergerac, which leads us on to Midsomer Murders, and finally the declining state of television in general. Dan had never heard of Bergerac, so we said that we would have to see if Nige can get hold of it on DVD.

Andy: “I sit in bed on Saturday mornings having a flick about.”
Eric: “Too much information.” (smirking all round, so Andy repeats it).
Andy: “I have a flick about on Saturday morning….and I discovered the old Batman series. Eh? Biff!, Ker-pow!!”
Eric: “The Adam West one?”
Andy: “Yes.”
Eric: “What was the bloke who played Robin called…?”
Me: “Burt Ward.”
Eric: “That’s right. Didn’t he end up doing porn films?”
Me: “I don’t know about that.”
Steve (almost simultaneously fast): “Yes he did.”
Eric: “There was something worrying about the authority with which you told us that.”
Me: “He’s got the complete set on DVD.”

Staff Potential

Rick’s section are discussing their AMP (Achieving their potential), which partly decides how much pay increase they get each year. Jason is new to Rick’s section, and has never had an AMP review.
Dave: “Nobody upset Rick for the next two days lads.”
Rick: “I’m not discussing AMPs in the office, it’s supposed to be private.”
Jason: “I’ve never discussed my potential with you anyway.”
Dave: “You haven’t discussed it with him because you haven’t got any.”

Later on Jason is getting a round of drinks from the coffee machine. It’s late afternoon, so a few of the staff have left (he’s no fool). He comes round asking if we all want drinks. Dave asks for a water, then adds “…and have one for yourself.”

For our sections AMP, Karen took down the last 5 of our staff who joined for a meeting, because they have never seen the AMP before. She gathered them together and took them down to the canteen to explain it all. This left the remaining few staff looking puzzled as to why they had not been invited down with them. As she left the office she was heard to say “It’s nothing to worry about.” Then one of the Steve’s responded with “It’s too late now, I’ve shit myself.”

Calibre of 3rd floor staff

As I’m walking towards the print room with a couple of large drawings a middle aged woman who we’d not seen before walks into the office and heads towards the print room, but with her head scanning the room from side to side obviously looking for someone to help her. Not asking for help, she walks into the print room, and unfortunately I follow her in. Instead of asking for help she lets out some retarded sound “Ehh-eer” (a similar kind of sound to Helen when she wants help, but can’t be bothered to actually ask. There’s only me and Paul in the room with her, and having weighed her up already I ignore her stupid sound, I’m happy to say Paul does the same. After 30 seconds she realises that we are getting on with what we’d gone in for and decides to say “Help. Can someone show me which machine I need to fold this drawing?” Again I ignore her because I’m used to this kind of crap from Helen, and I don’t have any time for anyone who behaves the same. Sadly Paul comes over to her and points her in the direction of the folding machine, even though the sheet she has already has folds in it. He takes the drawing off her and shows her how to feed it into the machine, then carries on with his own stuff. She then unfolds her second sheet and tries the same with that. She manages to jam it into the machine to create an error on it then says to me “Which button do I press now?” I don’t know what she’s done so I have to go round and see what she’s done. I pull the paper out of the machine, which clears the error, then tell her that you just feed it in and the sensors detect the paper and it takes it in automatically. So I watch her fold her second piece of paper, pick her paper out of the catcher-tray underneath, then she starts looking around.
“Where do they come out?” she asks.
“Underneath, in the catcher-tray.” (I’ve only seen her with two sheets of paper)
“Where are they?” she says.
Half thinking that she might have had a third sheet I unscrew the part of the machine which lets you look inside. She tells me that none of the machines downstairs have worked properly since the power cuts on Monday.
Paul comes over and asks “How many should you have?”
“Two.” She says.
He holds up the two sheets she’s just put through the folding machine, “One, two.” He says.
“No, the copies.” She says.
“You wanted copies?!” Paul says, “This isn’t the copying machine, this just folds.” He takes her over to the large sheet copier and feeds one through for her.
“They’ve been folded twice now, look at the creases in them.” She says.
Paul makes sure she has copies and then takes her back to the folding machine and makes sure she’s folded them. Once she leaves Paul says “She asked for help with the folding machine didn’t she?”
“She did, she said can you show me how to fold this.”

Steve juggles left over bananas

Steve has a go at juggling with some left over bananas this week. He had a fair number of goes at it. It’s apparently much more difficult then the apples and stuff. The funny bit for us was Nige says “He’s in a rhythm now” just as he drops them.

Boss's performance

Before the boss goes on holiday for a week,he sends us this e-mail(which I think is serious):

"Team, I need a favour!

I am looking to get some 360 feedback on how you view me as a manager. Now I could ask you to fill in the umpteen page on screen questionnaire and let some consultant dress the results up prior to me seeing them, but as you are no doubt already thinking, that isn’t my style.

So this is what I am looking for…….

• While I am away next week, as I value your opinion, I would like you to consider ON YOUR OWN - What I am good at? What I am bad at? How do you view me?

• I would like you type up your answers so that they are anonymous, put them in an envelope and then put them in the fruit bowl to the right on my computer. I would appreciate more than one word answers and if applicable without it implicating the author, any examples supporting your comments.

As I appreciate that the comedians amongst you will not be able to help yourselves, all I ask is that you only put in one entry and that you highlight any remarks that I should not consider to be serious.

When considering your responses, please bear in mind that:

• I am the Section Manager as opposed to a Team Leader.

• Whether or not your working conditions have improved or worsened in the last two and half years as a result of me.

• Your own contribution to the Section.

Should you not take part, I will be forced into sending you the electronic invite!"

Towards the end of the afternoon, when a few people have left early, we get onto discussing the e-mail and what we should put on our comments.
Eric comes out with the fact that he doesn’t really have anything to do with him.

Me: “Maybe that’s a good management style to have? You don’t realise that he is managing you. Kind of …effortless.”
Alan: “He doesn’t do anything.”
Me: “That’s it I’m putting “he has an effortless style of management, that everyone envies.”

Then the boss comes to the coffee machine and says:

Boss: “You’re not supposed to be conferring. Your supposed to put your own views.”
Me: “Eric just wanted to know how to spell crap.”

Setting things straight

Now this week I found out that Neil is officially (or maybe not officially) off sick. I found out that, rather than having the day off on Friday, my boss and my team leader went on a home visit to try and see Neil. I don’t think that they got in. Karen told me that the downstairs blinds were drawn. They had, however, gone prepared with an official letter to stick through his door to make sure that he knew he was off work without any excuse at the time. So on Monday morning my team leader got a phone call from Neil, or Neil’s mom (I’m not too sure) saying that he was off sick, apparently with black-outs and headaches. According to her, Neil had gone to see his doctor to get a sick note, but his doctor was off sick himself, so he couldn’t get one.
Now at my doctor’s surgery if one doctor is off you get the choice of another doctor, and if his surgery is only a small one then they would get a locum in. Also, if I was having black-outs I would like to think that my doctor would get me straight over the hospital for a brain scan. Not sure if he’d find much, but I imagine that he wouldn’t mess about with stuff concerning the brain. So this all sounds very dodgy. When he started going through his first lot of “competency”, when he was missing days at work before, he had some counselling and they put him in touch with an Alcoholic’s group. So they’re fairly sure that it’s all drink related, especially with him turning up drunk the other Monday morning.
Apparently now, the next step is to get HR involved. This will take another three months or so for the whole process of sacking him to take place. They know because this is what happened to Fat Dave.
Yes. Sadly (although not for me, because I had to redo all his work) we had to let Fat Dave go. I know some of you were asking about where Fat Dave had got to. Even sending in sites like this:
that Dave would enjoy. In Fat Dave’s case this was solely based on his attendance record, rather than the crap work he used to churn out. Although I kept copies of all the crap he did used to hand in, in case his attendance did pick up.

I hope this doesn’t paint me as a heartless bastard, but I do have colleagues who come to work punctually, day after day, and work hard, and turn out a decent workload that they can (and should) be proud of. I work very hard myself, and don’t like having to do extra in order to make up for the freeloaders that I also have to work with.

So there you go. People have been asking all week where Neil has been this week. All I could tell them was that he was AWOL, because that is all I knew until Thursday. I’m not too happy with the secrecy (like having to interview Junior, even though he was the only bloke who had applied) and only getting told things when I need to know, and being asked to keep secrets from other colleagues.

There are a few more blogs I wrote about Fat Dave that I didn’t get chance to publish while he was still here, which will have you amazed. I will be publishing these retrospectively when I find the memory stick they are stored on, and when there is less going on at work to write about. I haven’t forgot that I promised you the story about Jen getting dropped on her head as well.

Alan's "magic pants" quest

Alan is messing about on the portal, he explains that he’s selling some stuff and looking out for a bargain laptop.
“I was getting chatted up by e-mail last night.”
“Really, who by?”
“This girl on the portal who’d seen my decks for sale. She sent me this (shows me e-mail) asking if I’m into Happy Hardcore. Then she went on to tell me which club nights she goes to and where.”
“Is her photo on the portal?”
“No.”
“Have you asked her to send a photo.”
“No.”
“Why are you selling your decks after holding out for this long?”
“I’ve really got to get a laptop. The missus complains that I’m on the computer all the time in the evening.”
“And you make too much noise playing World of Warcraft?”
“No, I’m in a different room. She wants me to be in the same room, even though I’m not going to be paying her any attention.”
“Oh. I thought you had your computer in the living room and would make too much noise. I mean, each time you pull on your “Magic pants” that must make a “ping” sound.” (Karen bursts into laughter at the thought of his “magic pants”)
“I don’t actually have my “magic pants” yet. They cost a lot of gold.”

He goes on to explain that if he had a laptop he could bring it into work and sort out a Virtual Network Connection to his home PC, so that he could do his World of Warcraft trading stuff remotely while he was at work. He tells me that he’s tried it on his notepad/phone (which looks like a mini laptop, but is still basically a phone for surfing the internet), but the connection wasn’t fast enough. It sounds like his ulterior motive has given him more of an incentive to get himself a laptop than sitting next to his missus on the sofa in the evening.

“There’s this girl here on the portal advertising Ann Summers Parties.”
“You should ask her for photos.”
Then he gets her photo on the portal.
“It’s been stretched a bit, so her face looks fatter, but she has a cheeky look about her.”
“Email her and ask her about her knickers.”

The boss

The boss is a lot more casual today, tee-shirt jeans and bomber jacket. I don’t know what he’s getting up to.
Anyway, another section down the office have a new starter who he’s been keeping a keen eye on, to se if she’s any good or a no hoper (we have our quota of no hopers at the moment). He held up the one document she’d been working on yesterday looking very impressed.
“Look at that, that’s great.”
Then looking over at us, because Clive, Nige, Neil and Andy are all out this week, we are next in his line of vision.
“You don’t get that standard of work out of Clive do you? Have we got any vacancies on your team? Is there anyone we can get rid of?” (jokingly)
“Shall we put some names into a hat?” I ask him. (All in jest, but in reality I wouldn’t mind)

New look boss

The boss walks in with, what looks like, a new suit with a proper umbrella (not one of those that folds up and can fit in your bag). He stands at the coffee machine looking like a tax man. Usually he’ll shout “good morning” over to anyone who looks up, but this morning he’s not looking around for eye contact. For a change I initiate the “good mornings”.
“Where were you yesterday?” he asks half heartedly. (Knowing I wasn’t planning to work Sunday). I just grin. Then I start the offensive:
“You’re looking very smart.”
“I’m on a mission”, he says cryptically. (Later, Karen tells me she thinks this means he’s on the pull)
“With the umbrella and the suit you look like Steed from the Avengers.”
“I can go home for this shit.” He says as he walks off up the office with his coffee and his brolly.

As he goes up the office Jim shouts “Having a go at you already? It’s not fair is it?"

Comic Relief 2

There’s not much happening today. Half of my guys are out on training for the second day running, so it’s quite quiet. It’s a dress down day for Comic Relief. My lot are quite boring and haven't actually dressed up as anything, even though there was all the talk of Batman and robin a couple of days ago.
I’m not looking forward to the usual people coming round collecting and wanting you to buy raffle tickets for crap prizes. On the good side – last time round some of the younger ladies from the floors below did come round wanting you to buy their cakes, dressed as very sexy nurses or a couple were dressed as cowgirls, with the shortest of skirts. Anyway, they’re probably old enough to be my niece if not daughters. With not much going on so far I’ll tell you some old stories to do with smut and innuendo which happens in the office a lot.

Alan is showing me the handwriting recognition function on his PDA. It works quite well. He writes Hello this is a test. Then I have a go and write “I’ve just bost Alan’s machine”. It translates this as “I’ve just bust Alanis machine”, which isn’t bad. Alan then points it towards Jen thinking she wants a go. She’s actually eating an orange and has juice all over her fingers. “Not right now,” she says, “I’m all sticky”.
It’s only a matter of who’s fastest to come back with saying “And you’ve got orange juice all over your hands.” This is the level of smut that we enjoy in the office.
Eventually Jen finishes her orange and goes to the toilets to wash her hands.
When she comes back I have to say “Have you got rid of the stickiness?”
She replies with “And I’ve washed my hands”. To which Alan and I erupt into laughter.

This reminds me of young Andy from the other end of the office. He’s best described as the office slacker in his twenties (he gets away with doing as little as possible, keeps his mp3 player on all day, even if he’s talking to you he’ll only take one ear-piece out). If he comes down to use the coffee machine he chats to everyone while he gets his round in. Sarah is heading towards fifty and has worked for the company since she left school. She shows the new recruits all the software packages we use and has to try and keep the lazy sods from falling asleep at their desks (which happens, we took a photo of fat Dave asleep the other afternoon. Then when he went for his performance review the next day – it was bought up as an issue. He denied being asleep, although he probably wouldn’t realize it was happening. In fact the guy who took his photo got into trouble for doing it. The boss said that it would look like everyone was ganging up on Fat Dave to get rid of him if he produced the photo. This is insane – The guy was asleep at his desk, and we have photographic evidence - & this could work in Fat Dave’s favour?)
Anyway I’m moving away from the point. You wouldn’t imagine that Sarah would be up for a bit of smutty innuendo, and you would think she wouldn’t get on with the office slacker, which makes it all the more funny.
They get to the coffee machine at the same time and Andy is polite and lets her in first, but then says “Can I press your buttons?” To which she replies “You can press my buttons anytime.”
Now every time they meet at the coffee machine he will ask if he can press her buttons for her. Or she will ask him “Aren’t you going to press my buttons for me today?” if he doesn’t say something first.

Bob and Clive are in the print room. Both of them could give Fat Dave a run for his money.
Bob: “Why do Russians wear tight underpants?”
Clive: “I’ve got no idea”.
Bob: “ Because they’re scared Chernob‘ll fall out”.
Clive: “That’s very poor you need some new material”
Bob: “That’s what I thought when I saw that shirt. It is bulging a bit.”

Bob then goes on to call Clive Sausage fingers as he’s trying to fix one of the printers.

Comic Relief

Helen arrives at 9.40. We’re curious to see what time she puts on her timesheet.
Neil reckons that she came in on Friday at 10.30 but only put 10.10 on her timesheet.

Yesterday in the canteen, queueing up for breakfast, we were discussing what we should dress up as for comic relief day. Dan wanted to dress up as Batman. I suggested he get Fat Dave to dress up as Robin. (We laugh at the idea of the fat idiot in a green skin-tight costume, with all the rolls of fat hanging down over his utility belt).
Me: "It’s got to be the old sixties TV series version. All you would need is an oversized green leotard with a red vest."
Dan: “Robin was supposed to be yellow wasn’t he?”
Me: “ No his cape was yellow.” (later we have to go on the internet to prove what Robin’s suit from the old Sixties series was like. We also have a look on some sites that you can buy the costumes from, but they don’t do Xtra Large)

They’d already started coming round with raffles and stuff for Comic Relief last week. There was a constant flow of people from other floors we’d never seen before. Almost as if the company employed a separate department just for bringing raffles and other hair-brained schemes round the rest of the staff that actually did some work. I know I couldn’t spare the time to walk round six floors asking if people wanted a raffle ticket.

“Have you seen Dave’s belt?” Dan continues. “He has it sooo tight. It looks really uncomfortable.”

“It’s better than having his trousers falling down. It’s bad enough when his shirt becomes un-tucked and you get a flash of the side of his enormous gut. Can you imagine what he must look like with his trousers down? It doesn’t bear thinking about. Are you thinking about it? I bet that’s put you off your breakfast.”
Linda is a couple of places further up in the queue, and she smirks as she looks round, obviously having overheard the conversation.

Me: “We could all dress up as each other. We could all get oversize shirts and stuff them with pillows and come as Dave.”
Mick: “Yeah, but I can’t dress up, I’m going to the doctors first thing on Friday.”Me: “That would be good for you to go to the doctors with your shirt stuffed with pillows. You walk in and say “I’m feeling a bit bloated””.

Juniors Eyesight

Junior comes over to talk to Neil and points his fan in a different direction. Don’t ask me why they’ve got fans switched on in February. Anyway, Junior has this thing about the force from the fans hurting his eyes. We tell him his eyes are too sensitive, and that he should get a free eye test sorted. “I can see fine mate” he tells us. “No,” I tell him. “You could have pressure building up in your eyes, I think it’s called Glaucoma. They do a special test for it at the opticians. Get yourself a free eye test. You should be due one, free from the company.”
Ginge backs me up “That’s right, because you spend all day on VDUs the company should give you a free eye test by law. They do that weird test where they blow air into your eye. I don’t know how that measures the pressure. They must have some sensitive equipment to do it.”
“I’m useless with that test”, I carry on, “I keep on blinking at the wrong moment. I think last time I had mine tested they must have tried about five times, then gave up.”
Anyway, he became more and more worried that he had got a terrible eye disease and was going to go blind.
He phoned HR and asked about a free eye test. They told him to keep a receipt and claim it back in expenses. He ended up with an opticians appointment at 3.45 that afternoon.
I left work about 4.30. On the drive home my mobile rang. It was Junior telling me that his eyes were fine, he wasn’t going blind. He’d just got dry eyes from “not blinking enough” (that’s apparently what the optician had told him). I asked if he needed eye drops. He said no, the optician had told him to put a warm damp flannel against his eyes every so often.
Surely he’s going to get bugs on a flannel and get an eye infection?
We were just glad that he’d got it all sorted out, and we could all relax over the weekend. He can get so wound up about nothing.

Number one blog

Ricky Gervais made a fortune writing “The Office”. I think the real life exploits of the characters I work with are much funnier. You can judge for yourselves.
The one similarity between “The Office” and my office is that we both have a fat bloke who doesn’t say or do much. In fact Fat Dave (as I shall be calling him for the purposes of this blog) has been noticed as being the splitting image of the fat bloke out “The Office”. Not that it would be difficult for any fat man to look very much like another fat man, as they don’t have any defined features – just general lumps of flesh.
About four months back we had a new starter on out section, who we will be calling Eric (but who’s real name has caused such a lot of amusement), who went down to the canteen with Fat Dave to get a sandwich for breakfast. Eric sat next to me at the time while I was training him. When he came back from the canteen he told me “I was standing in the queue with Dave and two fellas behind us in the queue, a few yards back, were staring at Dave and going “Look it’s the fat bloke out “The Office”.” Now I heard them say it quite plainly, so Dave must have heard them too.”
I told him “Maybe he gets it a lot and has got used to it. Although Dave often appears to be in a world of his own. You’ve seen his work haven’t you. He might not have been paying attention. Probably in a dream-world of his own…chasing giant donuts ”. Then me and Eric stopped for a second or two to imagine Dave’s daydream, with him running through a forest with a big butterfly net, with his belly rippling up and down as he ran, catching giant donuts. Then we looked back at each other and thought “Eeerrrr!”

This afternoon Dave has kept us entertained by nodding off at his desk. The whole section were watching at one stage. He just closes his eyes and we watch as his head slowly falls forwards in little jerks until his head reaches the point of no return, then he momentarily gains consciousness enough to pull his head back up straight. Then it starts all over again. He must have done this for a good half an hour before he got up to go to the toilet or something. Chris (from another section who was passing) even took a photo. We thought it would be good to take a few photos at different stages and put them together as an animated GIF. I would love to post the photo on the site, but for anonymity reasons I don’t think I can.

There should be a site somewhere where you can post photos of your fat colleagues. If there’s not, there should be. It could be called something like “Rate my fat mate”. If anybody takes the idea on board and makes the site up, let me know, so I can post Dave’s picture. If you know of any such sites, please let me know. Also if you do start up “Rate my fat mate” and make a small fortune from it, don’t forget my cut.

When he’s not asleep at his desk he is eating. Every morning he brings one of those trainer bags in with him stuffed with food which he picks at most of the day. He also goes down to the canteen for a bacon and egg sandwich for breakfast, and goes out for lunch, either for chips or a KFC. I tell the new starters to keep moving and to not stay too still for too long around Dave – in case he tries to eat them.

Sorry if I have offended any large people reading the blog. I don’t mean to be fat-ist, and next to Dave I am definitely not fattest.