Doodles

Keeping up the grown-up behaviour; Jason had spotted that Ned had been doodling on his desk-pad. He'd drawn a crocodile, and a cartoon, self portrait. Jason asked if Ned had too much time on his hands, to which Ned replied that he drew them while he was on the telephone.

So later on, when Ned had walked off somewhere, Jason drew his own little doodle on Ned's desk-pad. Ned didn't notice when he got back, so Jason had to say "what have you been drawing now?"

Ned laughed, Lee laughed, so I had to get up and walk round to see what he had done. He's drawn a cock & balls next to his self-portrait.

"I'm going to have to start a new sheet now," said Ned.

Then he forgot, until the boss came over to talk to him. So Jason was watching as Ned was talking with the boss, trying his best to keep the has hand covering the cock & balls all the time he was talking.

Mom date

Jason made us laugh this morning, telling us about how he has got complained about by a buyer on Ebay, apparently by sending threatening e-mails. He told us that he was selling some chairs on ebay, and because the bloke buying them was going to be picking them up in person; Jason asked him to claim on the site that he no longer wanted the items. That way Jason wouldn't have to pay Ebay the £20 fee. Jason explained that he wouldn't give any negative feedback, and he would keep his 100% status.
The bloke wasn't happy with the suggestion, telling Jason that "you have to pay Ebay fees".
So he left his mom at the house when the bloke was supposed to be picking up the chairs. This is what led to the funniest part:

"He asked my mom out on a date!"

She apparently turned him down, but this got Jason worked up.
We told him that he should should have got his mom to accept, and then get him to take her out for an expensive meal. Jason was more bothered about getting his £20 back.

Missing workers

I had last Thursday & Friday off on holiday, so when I got in on Monday I asked if I had missed anything. "Yeah, you missed loads", was the comeback. I thought they were being sarcastic, but as it turned out it was true.
Apparently on the Thursday, Jim (the quiet one) went missing at about 10.30 in the morning. Only it wasn't until about 2.30pm that anybody noticed.
He's usually quiet, so you imagine he is just working away quietly, as he does. Then he normally goes home for dinner for an hour or so, not returning until 1.10 usually. Usually you can set your clock by him.
Apparently one of the girls had heard him take a phone call, which is unusual in itself, then he just left without saying a word. Ned noticed he wasn't in at 2.30 and asked where he had gone. Nobody knew, so Ned got worried in case he had been in an accident on his way to or from dinner. He tried ringing the numbers we have as contacts for him, none of which got an answer. So they had a big conflab, and Ned and one of the other managers decided they should go and do a home visit, as he didn't live far away anyway.
As it turned out, he was at home, fine. His sister had rung him to tell him that his dad had been in some kind of traffic accident, and she had called him a taxi, or was in a taxi, waiting downstairs to take him to the hospital. His dad was okay. I couldn't find out why Jim had stayed at home instead of coming back to work. He reconned that he didn't tell anyone because the taxi was waiting for him. Also I'm not sure if he took the Friday off work too.
When Ned got back to the office his boss had asked if Jim was going to make up the time or was taking it as leave. Ned told him that Jim was fine, not answering the bosses question.

Then on Monday, when he came in, Jim looked like he'd got conjunctivitis. I had never seen anyone with redder eyes. I told him he should go to the doctors, then when he started complaining about them stinging and not being able to stare at his screen for long, I sent him home.

Then because Ned wasn't around, we then decided not to tell Ned until he noticed he was missing. Ned asked about Jim as soon as he walked back into the office, so we had to tell him.

No new job for Ned

Ned had been noticably moody for a couple of weeks in the build-up to his latest interview. He'd applied for a higher grade managerial job which 5 or 6 people had gone for. It was actually in the department that Alan had gone to, and of course Alan was favourite for the job.
We had given him a bit of stick about how he wasn't going to get it, and smiled when he came back into the office after his interview in his fancy suit.
Today was the day they were announcing who had got the job. Ned had asked me to go and see Alan on the sixth floor, and just ask in passing if he had heard anything. As it ended up, Ididn't have time to go and see him. Ned got a phone call around dinnertime confirming he hadn't got it, and that Alan had.
Having finished the whole process he told us how much he appreciated his current job, and it seems to have given him a new lease of life to try and do his current job better. If anything, I think he was relieved he hadn't got the job. Although he got a bit of stick from Jason when he heard he hadn't got it.
Sadly I didn't get a chance this afternoon to go and congratulate Alan

Bad hair day

Lee mentioned to me that he was going in to town to have his hair cut after work. I asked him where he goes. He told me Francesco’s; which I thought sounded a bit pricey. I told him that I used to work with one bloke who had his hair cut somewhere pricey, because they gave him a bottle of beer while he was having it done, and possibly because of the dolly-birds doing the cutting.
“Oh”, said Lee, “…they give you beer at Francesco’s, and I like it because they give you a head massage before hand.”
“How much do they charge?”
“£30.”
After that I kept a bit quiet, thinking that was a bit steep. It does account for the dodgy cut he normally turns up with the next morning, obviously not wanting to upset the girl doing his hair.

Run down

One of the Steves, as I said previously, turned up on Monday with a black eye. Not just a black eye, but some nasty scabs as well. As it turned out, he had been off since the previous weekend, when he had got run over on the Saturday night. He was apparently very drunk & can’t remember a thing about it other than being picked up off the pavement, or road, by the paramedics. He had spent a couple of days in hospital & the rest of the week recuperating. From the sound of it he is lucky to be alive.

Junior's nose job

I hadn't seen Junior about for some time. Asking Eric; I was told that he had taken some time off to have an operation on his nose, & time off to recover. Only a polyps operation, to stop him snoring, like Nige had some time ago. We joked about how it was a cosmetic operation to sort out the hideous shape of it.
Anyway, when he returned last week I asked him how his nose was. He was quite happy with it, except for it being dry and scabby inside at the moment. He told me that it was actually because he was throwing up most mornings that he had the operation. Apparently his nose was so blocked that when he was asleep all the mucus was gathering at the back of his throat, so that when he woke up in the morning he was being sick.
On the day he did come back, one of the Steve's had turned up with a black eye (I will explain this in a later blog). I metioned he looked like he'd had reconstructive surgery too.

Early leaver

Just after half past two on Wednesday there was a bit of a commotion down the office. It was Les, looking out of breath, talking about having just driven around the car park.

As he explained things further, it turned out that he had left the office at 2.30pm thinking it was 3.3opm (the earliest he is able to leave). He had got a doctors appointment at 4.00, and was fretting about leaving on time. He had left the office, having turned off his computer. No had twigged this, because it was nowhere near leaving time. So apparently he had got into his car and started to drive off, until he noticed nobody else was leaving, and checked the clock in his car.

He was very embarrassed coming back into the office. We weren't sure if this accounted for his red face, or if it was the running back up the stairs.

Marital duties

Les came in this morning a little later than normal. He was a liitle flustered because the closest printer had been out of action waiting for a yellow cartridge for over a week. Everyone had complained that this was an amazing length of time to wait for a cartridge to be delivered. They all suggested going to Staples and buying one off the shelf and claiming it back on expenses.

"I've got some DVD covers I need to print off", he tells everyone.

This is before any management get into work.

He changed the subject a little by telling us that the reason he had been 5 minutes late was that he had to carry out his "marital duties", then walked off to the coffee machine.

Sue: "I bet he means something like washing-up."

Louise: "Yeah, he just likes to make it sound a bit dirty."

He came back with his coffee.

John said: "Five minutes you say...were you bragging, or was that
twice?"

Les laughed: "At least that's something I don't have to do at the weekend
now."

John: "Yes, one less job for the weekend."