Ginger trouble

After the big meetings were over our boss got us round to talk to the rest of the staff who he hadn’t invited in to the big pow-wow. One of the girls had been in the print-room and had only turned up after the chat had started. Karen stopped him and pointed out that she was now in the office and needed to be called over.
Boss: “Don’t worry about her, she’s ginger. She’s used to being left standing on her own smelling of piss.”
Cat: “ I do not smell of pee!”

Big wig meeting

The company is going through a restructure, and there are a lot of promotions all becoming available at once. To allay people’s fears of missing out or moving around the big boss has been laying on meetings for managers and high –up staff. My boss invited me to a meeting at the last minute.
Boss: “Do you want to come along to a meeting to explain the restructure?”
Me: “Yes. When is it?”
Boss: “Now.”
Me: “Which room?”
Boss: “Follow me.”
He grabs Eric as well and we start tearing down the stairs, except I’d just finished my breakfast and had got a full, boiling hot cup of coffee in my hand, so I was a little slower.
I hate high level meetings where everyone talks in acronyms and other arms of the business which I know nothing about. At one stage one of them came out with T & Cs (terms and conditions), which made me think for a few seconds. I was worried that it could have been teas and coffees and that they were going to ration the trips to the coffee machine.

Cultural Blackspot

Due to my lateness, and the amount of resulting traffic, I felt compelled to take a short-cut behind the park, which misses out a couple of nasty sets of traffic lights. I’m glad I did because I was cheered up no end by a poster which was on the boarding surrounding a new housing development. It was just a big black circle on a white background, which said “Cultural Blackspot” over the top of it.

French stink - official

From the look of this I could have believed that this was an old April Fool:

New female presence

Since the latest move-round there are a lot more female staff up our end of the office now. It’s tough to gage how much of a sense of humour they have, or how quickly we might offend them. They normally get away with wearing anything they want to work, tee shirts often. This morning one of them turned up in a crisp white blouse and I was at a loss whether to mention that she looked smarter, or nice. I could have got the “I normally look like crap, do I?” response. Or I could have appeared creepy, commenting on her clothes. With the lads in the office it’s easy to just get stuck in if they’ve made a mistake with their shirt or a new pair of shoes. We would just rip into them. Today though, I’ve decided to bite my tongue until I’ve managed to work out how easily they might be offended.

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"

Steve's thought power

I walked past one of the Steve’s this morning, he looked to be staring at his screen without moving either hand.
Me: “Trying to move things on the screen using the power of your mind?”
Steve: “Yes, (sarcastically back) that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Me: “It’s not working. ..You need one of those hats to enhance your brainwaves.”
Steve: “They actually do sell them nowadays.”
Me: “No, one of those home-made silver foil things with coat-hanger antennae on.”
Steve: “Yes that would help greatly.”
Me: “Traditionally though, they’re used to stop the aliens reading your thoughts aren’t they?”
Steve: “Yes, I know the kind of thing you mean.”

Nige's movements

Sadly Nige has moved further down the office in the latest move and he’s also been away for a few days. Eric has been given the task of keeping an eye on anything funny going on down there that I might have missed. This morning he witnessed Nige coming in and Mark putting is arms out to hug him, telling him that he had missed him such a lot. “Don’t pull away,” he said when Nige avoided his arms.

Guitar Hero

Andy walked in this morning with his “guitar hero” box tucked underneath his arm. I asked him if he was going to plug it in. He said maybe. There was that episode of “IT Crowd” where they were playing it in the office, but there were only three people in the office. We have a large open plan office, so there would be a bit more disruption. As it turns out, he had only brought it in to lend to Mark. They ended up playing cards at dinnertime instead.