Tattoo for Clive

Also found this tattoo which would have been great for Fat Dave. Instaed I am suggesting it for Clive.

Fat Dave Alive!

We were very pleased to hear that Fat Dave was alive and well. Ricky got a phone call from him around dinnertime. He was quite surprised to hear from him. Apparently he was trying to get through to someone in security. When he worked here he used to get lots of parcels delivered here, mostly containing parts for him to build computers (which he used to do on the side). There was some stuff which must have been delivered here for him, which he can’t get his hands on. Anyway, he’s back from Germany (they probably chucked him out) and split from his girlfriend. He’s working in a neighbouring town as an “IT Consultant” although Ricky said that when he said that over the phone, someone in the background could be heard shouting “No, tea-boy”. He ended the conversation with a “…now I’m back we should go for a drink some time.” To which Ricky replied “Yeah” (but meaning more Yeah…right.”). It set the office off reminiscing about the old days, of when he used to fall asleep at the desk. Ricky remembered him renting a posh flat in the city which had a balcony (which we thought wouldn’t support his weight) and a toilet which was screwed to the wall instead of the floor. At least twice it came off the wall, and he ended up fixing a car jack underneath it to support it.

Fat Dave update

I’ve been off work ill for a while. Coming back in I found out that one or two people had got a text off Fat Dave saying something like “Sorry I haven’t been in touch for some time, but I thought I should say goodbye because I’m moving abroad.”
Abroad is a very ambiguous tern to use, you would tell someone which country you are moving to. Apparently Raqueeb phoned Fat Dave to find out more about what he was doing. Dave told him that he was moving to Germany with his new girlfriend and her son. We think that he’s met her on the internet and are very worried (not that worried really) that she is one of those cannibals, who all seem to be German. I think she’s seen a picture of Dave and thought her luck was in (eating wise). I reckon she could freeze most of him and live off him for months. Either that, or she could be involved in a big network of cannibals, who meet up once in a while for a banquet. I can just imagine them wheeling Dave along, roasted, on a giant silver tray, with an apple in his mouth.

Old post from before Fat Dave left

I promised this some time ago:

One February morning, before breakfast, we are discussing accents. Some staff in the office have, what us locals term as, posh accents. Alan has had trouble with his young girls attending nursery picking up “common” terms of phrase, either from the other kids or the staff at the nursery.
Alan: “That’s how it started – my youngest started saying mi’. Can ~I have mi’ Playstation on?. So I corrected her and said “you mean MY Playstation.” She said yeah. Then I said okay then. Then she walked off saying I’m going to put mi’ _Playstation on”
Me: “Who’s taught her that then? The girls at the nursery?”

We have a go at him for having a posh accent. He’s outnumbered in our office.

Alan: “It’s only because I was bought up in a small village in Somerset. She likes to take the piss out of my posh accent. Saying that I say Grarss instead of grass, and clars instead of class. She tells me I’m middle class, where as she is working class.”
Me: “Well, we don’t mind being working class, do we Eric?”
Eric: “Thanks for that. I did think of myself as lower middle class.”
Me: “Well, I hope that’s put paid to any aspirations you had in that department, with an accent like that.”

After breakfast I go into the toilets after breakfast and hear Dave in the next cubicle actually speaking on his phone (he used to disappear for half an hour at a time throughout the day). It sounds like someone he knows. He’s talking about his interview tomorrow to be an RSPCA inspector.
Dave: “What am I up to? I’m looking at all that RSPCA stuff…”
It’s as if he doesn’t realise there’s someone in the next cubicle. He is still carrying on with the emptying of his bowel as he talks to who ever. I don't think they appreciate he is on the toilet.
At one stage his voice changes as he strains a little.
I finish up, and have to flush the toilet. Surely whoever he’s talking to will notice that and realise he’s talking to them on the loo.
A few moments after I’ve flushed he is saying goodbye and hanging up the phone.
I come out and have to share with everyone. I turn to Alan and try to extract Eric from his concentration.

Me: “Talking about being common – I’ve just been in the toilet, and Dave is in there talking to someone on his mobile.”
Eric: “What having a shit at the same time?” (told you he was common)
Me: “Well that’s just it. He’s not stopping while he’s talking. He’s chatting away, and then you can hear straining in his voice, then the dropping noise into the water..”

Next time we see him going into the toilet Eric says "Another phone call do you think?"

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.

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””.