Jim bragging

As I mentioned before, Jim, Eric and One of the Dave’s had all had the Friday off work. When John comes in Paul greets him:

Paul: “Did you have a nice weekend John…and Friday?”
Jim: “Yes thank you. It’s nice to have a long one.”
Dan: “Bragging again Jim…about having a long one.”

Jim's day off

Jim, Eric and one of the Dave’s have all booked the Friday off. We started discussing what they might all be doing together, even though they are probably doing independent stuff. Then we moved on to Jim and his elaborate system of greeting everyone as the come through the door in the morning.

Rach: “Is there anyone he doesn’t talk to? He was telling me about going on holiday to India and bumping into someone he knows.”
Becky: “He’s always going on holiday. If you tell him where you’re going on holiday, he tells you he’s been there.”
Rach: “If you say you’ve ate shit on toast Jim’s done it first.”

We laughed. We had not heard that phrase before.

Happy Birthday Gee

Gee turned 40 yesterday. He’d brought in cakes this morning and was offering them round. He’d taken his birthday off to go to Warwick Castle to watch the jousting. Glen was down from the sixth floor as well discussing what he’d been up to. Becky walked in. I turned round:

Me: “Morning Becky.”
Becky: “Morning.”
Glen: “Afternoon.” (It’s only about 8.30 a.m.)
Becky: “Morning… I would normally be in earlier, but I’m relying on my mom to bring me in at the moment.” (Her mom works on the sixth floor)
Glen: “Why’s that?”
Becky: “I had a car crash last week.”
Glen: “Oh yes, much damage?”
Becky: “It’s a write-off.”
Glen: “Their fault or yours?”
Becky: “Mine… you know what it’s like when you take your eyes off the road for a second or two.”

She told Glen a few more details. Glen was just amazed that she’d been driving without looking in front of her.
After I’d finished talking to Glen and Gee I turned back round to my own desk, adjacent to Becky:

Me: “Couldn’t you get your mom to get up a bit earlier?”
Becky: “Well…no she car shares, with that Green-travel scheme. She picks up another woman who works on the sixth floor too.”
Me: “Is that worth doing.”
Becky: “Yes. She gets £50 worth of vouchers.” (I don’t know if that’s every month or year)
“Gives them to my dad and says “Here get some new clothes””

Either her mom isn’t very tactful or her dad is a real scruff, I didn’t ask which.

Smashing Becky

The other Monday I had taken the day off. When I came back in on the Tuesday everyone was making a big fuss of Becky, asking how she was. It turned out that she had not been in on Monday either because she had crashed her car. When the crowd had gone away I asked her how it had happened:

Becky: “I was driving my boyfriend to work yesterday morning. You know what it’s like – you turn your head to one side (she demonstrates turning her head) to talk to the passenger…then I just hit this car that was parked half on-half off the pavement.”

I wanted to say “You don’t turn your head to talk to people if you’re driving. You only turn your head when you’re manoeuvring or reversing.” I kept that to myself.
She wrote off her car, smashing in the nearside front corner. She indicated with her hand the degree to which her bonnet had crumpled.

Dan: “Did your airbag go off?”
Becky: “Yes.”
Dan: “Cool.”

The parked car she’d gone into the back of belonged to some guy who had no tax, no insurance and no MOT on the car. She found this out when he asked for her details. Becky mentioned this to the police when they arrived. They seemed very dis-interested, telling her that they had to see him drive the car before they can do anything. Even though they have all those adverts on the TV and radio telling you that hey have the power to tow your car away and crush it if it isn’t taxed. We were appalled at their attitude. The guy had been shouting “How am I going to get to work this morning?” Surely that’s enough to realize he had intended to drive it.
The next day she found out that the insurance company were going to pay out for the damage to his car even without insurance, MOT or tax.

Andy- ladies' man

Andy likes to have a rapour with the ladies, and can usually get the younger females in the office to fetch him drinks or items from the canteen. Especially in the case of the girls who haven’t worked here for too long and think that it’s normal There seems to be a backlash recently though. And one of the girls who used to wait on him has been ignoring him. Andy shouted over to her a couple of times and she seemed not to hear. He sent Ricky down to talk to her, when she went to the coffee machine, to try and get her to go and see him.
Ricky spoke to her quite softly to explain that Andy wanted to go up the office to see him:
“I’ve been trying to avoid making eye-contact with him all day.”

We all had a goggle about it because Andy was so sure that she would take him a cup of coffee up.

Swipers

For some time there has been some work going on around the building with people fitting security devices next to the doors on each floor. We were told that they wouldn’t be active until September, however we got this e-mail on Friday afternoon:

"Due to regulatory compliance following the integration of Data Retrieval and Data Management staff, swipereadershave been installed across the site.
This afternoon the readers in the Main Building will become active and you will need to swipe your access card to gain entry to each floor.
If you do not have an access card please contact the Security Team on the ground floor of the main building.
Thank for your co-operation - Facilities"

Yes, the e-mail did say “swipereadershave.” We all wondered if that was a new kind of razor. Late on Friday afternoon the swiper system to get into our office door from the corridor was switched on. This caused great problems on Friday (turning it on at the end of the afternoon for one).
Everyone has complained that they have to take their card with them even if they just go for a pee. Us sensible people have shirt pockets, but some of them have now had to start wearing them around their necks.
There are pockets of resistance. Andy is unhappy to have his toilet visits scrutinized, so he knocks on the door and gets Becky (who sits closest to the door) to let him back in.

This is just the kind of important thing that you would think our monthly Team Brief would inform you about. We had Team Brief on the Friday afternoon straight after dinner, and there was no mention of it.
There was the latest news from above that mobile phone ring tones are now banned from our office. Some people did have some terribly annoying ring tones, also they would leave their phones on the desk to ring when they went walkabout, rather than take their “mobile” phone with them. So there used to be people running back down the office to answer their phone, or the people at the adjacent desks having to put the phone inside the drawer. Now we are only allowed to have them on vibrate. So we’ll probably be having mobile races along the desks later on in the week, seeing which phones have the most powerful vibrate.

Clive's new motorbike

Clive had been talking about his new bike (a cheap 125 Japanese thing) for some time. When he came in on Monday with a biker jacket on and a helmet under his arm we all rightly assumed it must be roadworthy now. He had come with a change of clothes because of the heat; he would be very sweaty on a summer’s day with a big, padded jacket on.
When he took off his jacket to reveal a tee shirt I shouted over to Steve:
“Did you get the e-mail about dress down day?”
His helmet was matt black, so there were lots of jokes about him polishing his helmet, and “have you seen Clive’s helmet out on his desk” type jokes.

Jason has been coming in unusually early. He has just become a father though, and has been complaining about not getting any sleep any more. Paul came in and provoked him. Jason told him “It’s too early in the morning for an argument.”
Paul replied “It’s never too early for an argument.”

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.”

Alan's lego fun

Alan was telling us about yesterday’s conference jolly. They’d done some team building exercises, one of which involved building a bridge out of lego which had to be strong enough to stand the weight of a toy truck and a toy horse, but also had to be tall enough for both of the toys to pass underneath. However all the bricks were priced by colour and they had to work out a quote for the job before they could start building. Alan was quite pleased with his coming in under budget at £1,250. All the other teams had quoted around £4,000.