Since the idea that Lester and John are opting for early Statutory Voluntary Redundancy, they have been planning what they are going to do with their time. John has suggested some rather challenging walks, some of them for days, even weeks. these would include camping out wherever they got to on each day. Lester had said that he wasn't used to camping. John had been trying to tell him that it was fine.
Lester came in yesterday and told John "There's something that my wife and you afree about."
John: "What's that?"
Lester: "That a should pitch a tent in the garden and sleep out there."

Redundancies

Did I mention we are facing some redundancies? It's very odd, with most of the office depressed and not sure if they are going to have a job and pay their mortgages; and the other half (the oldies that have worked there for years) rubbing their hands together, hardly able to wait to get their voluntary redundancy and early retirement. I've never seen some of them so happy. Sue and John down my end of the office are the only ones with any energy, thinking that these are the last few weeks of their working life.
Other than sorting out my CV and vaguely looking for alternative jobs I've had to start taking a look at what rubbish I've got on my work PC, to see what I want to keep. A lot of it is little blogs which I had written at work, and used to e-mail to myself to post on here. I did find quite a few I don't think I had posted and so, tried to e-mail a bunch over to myself. Unfortunately one of them got stopped by the profanity detector, and quarrantined. So I'm going to have to read through them all before sending them home. There were some good ones, which were worth saving and brought back some happy memories.

No holiday

Meanwhile over the other side of the office, Lester was getting to grips with the company portal holiday booking system.
John: “You’ve booked the 20th & 21st. That's two days.”
Lester: “No, I’m only booking off the 20th. I’m coming back on the 21st.”
John: “You need to book the start date as 20th & end date as 20th.”
Lester: “That makes no days doesn’t it?”
John: “No you twonk, it’s one day’s holiday.”
Lester: “What do I have to do if I want no days off then?”
John: “Don’t put them on the portal then!!”

Strange parents

We felt a little sorry for Jason when he was telling us what he was up to at the weekend. Jason had spent the weekend with his small boy and the mother of his son, I stress –not girlfriend or anything like that. He met her on some night out up north, and didn’t have what you could call a long term relationship with her. He complains about her all the time and thinks she is only out to get whatever she can. He took them both into town and bought the kid a £100 D & G tracksuit for his first birthday, and two pairs of trainers. He showed us some pictures on his phone, and then told us about his mate, who they met up with, who also has a small son. He winds Jason up, and was doing this by asking the mother of his child if she had considered moving down to live with, or near Jason, to be like a real family. Kerry asked what Jason’s mom had thought about the kid. Apparently she has not seen him. Jason said that she was particularly maternal. She went on to ask about his dad.
“Oh, he’s likely to spoil him rotten, like me. Although he’s not spending any money on him until he’s had a DNA test.”

Get out of jail

Like many workplaces at the moment we have bbe threatened with redundancies for some time, since being taken over around April time. Sadly today, they anounced that they wanted to loose around 700 staff, which left everyone in a mood.
Jason managed to cheer us up though, as usual. He'd been looking around for jobs for some time anyway, and a couple of his mates work as prison guards. He had tried joining the police, but they weren't taking people on. His mates had told him that there was a new prison being built not far away, and he would almost certainly be able to get in, as a guard.
I asked if it wouldn't be a very depressing environment to work in. Jason reckoned that it was like a "youth club, but for older people..." according to one of his mates who he went to see inside, six months back. There was a big rant from Elaine about sentencing, and people given 5 year sentences being told they only actually serve 2 and a half, before going on to suggest that Jason would be open to bribery, and would probably be smuggling stuff in for the inmates. That, coupled with some of his dodgy-dealing, buying and selling schemes, he would be more likely to end up on the inside rather than outside.

Here's Bob

Ned and Lee weren't about when Bob was telling us about bumping into Elaine on a tube in London. We asked Elaine as soon as she got into the office and she was all "Oh my god, Bob tapped me on the shoulder on the tube!!".
She had to give a repeat performance when Ned and Jason finally got into the office. They hadn't heard earlier on in the week, when Bob had told us his version.

Surprise, it's Bob

Towards the end of last week a few of the staff have taken holiday, while the kids were off school. Elaine had told us that she might be going to London, but we didn't realise that Bob was taking his family to London to watch the Switzerland vs England match, and do some other stuff over a long weekend.

So we were quite amused when Bob said "Guess who I saw on the tube on Saturday."

He had seen Elaine with her husband and kid. Which is quite a feat, considering how many tube trains there are, and that they were going to completely different destinations. Even ending up in the same carriage.

He told us that he only realised it was them as he stood up to get off the tube, and tapped Elaine on the shoulder and said "Hello and goodbye".

We are now dying to hear how shocked she was to end up meeting Bob in London.

Easter Chocolate showdown

Lester amused us this morning telling us this his wife are not currently talking. Sue had asked if he was up to anything romantic with his wife over the bank holiday.

Apparently they had been given a large box of Thorntons chocolates for Easter to share; other brands of confectionery are available; so they decided that his wife would have the top layer, and he would eat the bottom layer. However his wife had taken some from his layer. Not being very happy about this they had an argument, and at some stage he had put a post-it note in with the chocolates saying "Fat B*tch".

His son told him that he was being a bit over the top argueing over a bit of chocolate, and not talking. So he had a bit of his son's easter egg without being offered, to show his that it was a big deal, and his son isn't talking to him now either.

Junior's hols

I was very amused when Mark from the 5th floor told me that he had bumped into Junior and Cat (his lady friend) in Albufeira, Portugal. Apparently they were in some bar watching the English football. Cat told me that she had seen Mark looking at her and she thought she recognised him, but couldn't think where from. She thought he might have been off the TV. Junior recognised Mark from work, but couldn't think of his name. Mark had gone on a golfing holiday, and told me that he had been drunk for about 7 days solid.