Alan’s further WOW adventures

Alan and Junior are debating the best type of characters to have on WOW. I ask Alan if he got his two duff guild members through the “instance” they were doing for six hours on Sunday. He says no, but they’ve worked out a strategy whereby the rest of the guild do most of it, then the two duffers join for the last five or ten minutes so that they can pick up their keys.
“Surely they’ll be just as bad on the next mission won’t they?”
“Yes”.
Junior carries on. In battle Alan’s magical characters can cast spells which affect the enemy for 45 seconds, then they have to stop to refresh themselves and drink more magic potion, whereas one of Junior’s warriors can just keep on fighting. He says that he can stun them for 30 seconds with a whack on the back of the head, or a kidney punch.
“Are you on about the game now, or is that a night out at the pub with you?”

Alan went on to tell us about the first World of warcraft wedding, which anyone got invited to on line. sadly, a bunch of people thought it would be a good idea to go and slaughter the bride, groom, and guests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6p4gq-t5-U&NR=1

Not sure this is the same wedding. Not that good a video, but funny idea all the same.

Last day of the month

The last day of the month is truly amazing. The car park has much more cars in it. Then I get up to the office and there are people already in there you would not normally see until 9.00-9.30.
I ask Dan and Nige how much time they have to make up today. Dan tells me he’s three hours down, but due to the flexitime rules he can be two hours down at the end of the month, so he only has to do an hour. I’ve got an hour over and above the eight hours I can carry over for next month’s flexi-day.

They aren’t really beavering away though, even though they have got into work. Dan and Mark sod off back downstairs for a cigarette. Meanwhile Nige has bought in his portable DVD player in to show everyone the quality of the Simpson’s Movie download he copied on Monday, so that he can take some orders. After an hour he’s got nine requests for copies (which he says he will bring in tomorrow). These include printing on the DVD and a cover.

Neil update

I’m not expecting Neil to return to work any time soon following what the boss told me and Junior on Friday. He (the boss) came over for something around dinnertime on Friday. He ended up on Andy’s machine. He was on his lunch break and was either in the toilet or having a cigarette and he’d left his web browser open on the Auto-trader site. The boss saw what cars he was looking at then changed the search to some Audi model that Andy wouldn’t be able to afford. Then Junior came over to leave something in my “in tray”, so the boss collared us both and told us that Neil had phoned him a couple of days ago, laying down the law and telling him he was going to resign. Bearing in mind his sarcastic nature and what he had just done on Andy’s machine, we were fairly unconvinced. He carried on:
“Really. God’s honest truth. He phoned me shouting the odds and told me he was going to resign. Pissed obviously, you could tell. I told him “You’re very tough on the end of a telephone.”
(He had given him a bollocking the day before about his absenteeism, and by all accounts left Neil shaking like a leaf).
“I don’t believe that, not Neil.”
“No. Honestly. Then he came out with something like “I’ve worked for bigger and better companies than this.”
“…And did he actually turn up for work for them?”
He clammed up a bit when Andy came back to his computer, then he turned round to him and said to him “We must be paying you too much if you can afford to buy one of them.”
Andy looked at his search on the Auto-trader and saw someone had tampered with it. After a couple of seconds thought he came back with “I wish I could.”

Not a happy Monday morning

Mid morning Andy came past and shouted “Hey, have you seen they’ve blocked the fuzzy site.”
This is the http://totallyfuzzy.blogspot.com/ where we keep an eye on all the music downloads for all the latest, and some very good older, music downloads. I was a bit pissed off at hearing that. Then when I went on the internet at dinnertime I found that all the blog sites I go on have been blocked by IT for some reason. Now I can’t even view my blog at work, and I used to enjoy surfing through some of the other blogs (with my sandwich in my one hand and the mouse in my other) to see what everyone else was up to. So, about 50% of my favourites are un-viewable.

Alan’s World of Warcraft sadness update

Alan comes in late on Monday morning. He always stops for a chat on the way past before taking his coat off.
“Nice weekend?” I ask him.
“No, not really.”
“Why what have you been up to?”
“Nothing much. I took the kids over the park on Saturday. Then Sunday morning I was back in here working till about 1.00”
”Did you manage to stay off the World of Warcraft?”
“No.”
He goes on to relay his sorry tale of how he was on it for 6 hours last night helping out a couple of duffers that are in his guild performing some task so that they can collect a key each. Apparently they all need a key each in order for his guild to perform the next task. He was even more pissed off when at the end of six hours they still had no key. I asked him why he didn’t get rid of them from his guild. He said that they had been there at the start up of the guild, and he would feel too guilty to tell them to go. “Isn’t it making the other members fed up and want to leave?”
“Yes, three of them, from Norway, logged on last night just to leave us a message that they were leaving to start up their own Nordik guild.”

Not a bad Friday

In the lift at breakfast time, coming back up to the office, Nige had held the lift for me and Chris, with a few other people in who weren’t too happy at waiting.
Nige said: “If it had been Clive, we wouldn’t have held the lift.”
“If it had been Clive, he wouldn’t have fitted in the lift.” I told him.

Alan came in happy, about 10.15. He’s managed to get his "magic pants" for playing WOW. He was up until 3.00 am playing it last night, then got up about 6.00. He looks too happy for someone who’s only had 3 hours sleep. He tells us that his daughter Freya has thrown up all over him when he dropped her off at nursery this morning, so he’s had to go home and get changed.

Ginger Steve won the Helen sweep this morning, winning about £12, so he was happy. She came in at 9.55am, if anyone is keeping track.

We had a big influx of work yesterday, so Junior rallied round and got half of the staff to come in on Sunday. Junior isn’t coming in himself mind, he reckons he’s best man at a wedding on Sunday.
This morning they realised that they hadn’t got access rights to get into the building at weekends (those who hadn’t worked on a Sunday before). So I told them to go down and see security and they would probably get them to fill in a form and get it signed by my boss. Security asked them to get their boss to send an e-mail to request their access be upgraded.
How is this for laziness? Not known as someone keen on work, the boss asked the guys to send him a request (which he is obviously just going to forward on). How lazy is it to not write a request to security and e-mail it.
Eventually, when they went back down to security, the person they had asked them to e-mail was off sick and they were unable to open his e-mails, so they got them to send them again to a different e-mail address.

Ginger Steve and his facial hair

For a couple of weeks now Ginger Steve has been growing a beard. Then on Monday he had shaved his cheeks, leaving the area around his mouth. Later on in the week he'd shaved the chin part, but not the tiny bit under his lip (leaving a kind of handle bar moustache with a bit extra) looking very "wild west", Wyatt Earp. Anyway, today I figured out who he reminds me of now.

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?"

Neil And Dan at deaths door

So Neil turned up for work on Monday, having had off a month as sick, then today (Wednesday) he phones in sick again. His brain scan is somewhere at the start of August. I don’t think they’ll find much. Although Karen said we’d feel terrible if he has got a tumour or something. Then to top it all, Dan was feeling tired and fed up yesterday and booked the afternoon off. Then this morning he rang in late to say he’d only just woken up, so can he have the day off as holiday as well.
What’s wrong with everyone? I do a full week.

Nige's nose

Nige was off the other afternoon with a hospital appointment to have a camera shoved up his nose. He was getting really worked up about it. Standing outside the lift we ask him about what he’s having done:
“They’ll most likely give you a local anaesthetic before they do it.”
“Why are you having that done?”
“Well, I went for a private consultation the other week to see what was going on. He told us he wanted to put a camera up there to see what was going on. He wanted to do it there and then, but he wanted to charge me for it. So he wrote off and got us an NHS appointment to have it done.”
“Maybe you won’t get an anaesthetic then.”

“How did you get on yesterday then Nige?”
“It wasn’t too bad. He’d got this spray that he sprayed up my nose to anaesthetise it. Then shoved the endoscope up it. It didn’t hurt at all while he was doing it, but afterwards, when the anaesthetic was wearing off it did.”

The doctor has confirmed he does have polyps, he also reckoned that one of his nasal cavities went off at an angle, and he now needed to go for a CAT scan to see where his cavity goes.
With everything going on with Neil as well, that makes two of my staff having “brain scans”. I’m not sure if they’ll find anything for either of them.

Autodesk communication

This morning we got an e-mail from one of the companies that produces some of the software we use for viewing the drawings we get sent:
Subject: “Is your CAD data slowing you down?”

I really wanted to e-mail back:
“No it’s the duff staff. Can you do anything about that?”

Timing

Alan and Jason come in late. By the time they get in everyone else has got their breakfast, so they go down to the canteen on their own.
When they come back Alan asks for the brown sauce (I keep a bottle in the desk draw because they charge 8p a sachet in the canteen) and relays this story to me.
They are standing in the queue downstairs, and Jason is talking to one of the women down their he knows, along the lines of
“In this place the higher up you are the less work you do. Take a look at the gaffers on our floor for example.”
At that precise moment our boss comes in.
“You weren’t bad mouthing me were you?”
“Would I do that?”
“Yes you probably would.”

At the same time as Alan is telling me this, Jason is telling Clive. Then the boss walks past with his sandwich just as Jason says his name.

Simpsons avatars

Okay. So we found the new Simpsons Movie site at dinnertime, which has a great "Create your own Simpsons Avatar bit to it. So for a couple of hours we were making avatars of all the people in the office. I can recommend it for hours of fun.


Here's me


Here's Clive


Here's Nige


Here's Karen

Simpsons movie

Goblin Rocket boots

Alan has been on the World of Warcraft again. He now thinks he’ll avoid it during the week and only play it at weekends. This morning he was telling us about some “capture the flag” style manoeuvre that he was doing with his “guild”. However one of the opposing team had some “Goblin rocket boots”. This meant that he could get higher than everyone else, so he would just grab the flag and get out of the way while the rest of his guild were trying to get Alan’s flag.
They deemed this as unfair, for some reason (it seemed as good a tactic that any other, and if you’ve invested in some “Goblin rocket boots” you want to get the best use out of them), so complained to the Games master. After about twenty minutes they got messages from the Games master saying that he would sort them out. Ending his message with:
“The ogres will be released.”

Alan was hoping that they would get their character with the “Goblin rocket boots” taken off them.

Dan's return

Dan has returned to work. While he’s been off he’s brought himself (well borrowed some money from his mom) an new car and a new television. He reckons he’s spent about £5,000 this month so far. He’s also bought an ipod for his sister’s birthday.
He’s still enthusing about his physio. He’s says he’s going to wait until his last physio appointment before asking her out. He doesn’t want any weird atmosphere while she’s still treating him.

As I said in a previous post, Mondays are always full of surprises. Of course Junior no longer looks like Doctor Evil, with four or five days growth of hair now. So all the Doctor evil stuff we were planning has had to stop.

Dan Update

Last week I sent a text to Dan for an update on his progress. To my surprise he said he may come in this week. Here is his text in full Ali G mode:

“Well, I responding well to physio, I also fancy my physio therapist, She is too cute!
May look to com bak next week if all is good.”

We all had to laugh at him fancying his physiotherapist. Karen didn’t seem surprised he was thinking of coming back, she said that he would have received a letter from HR informing him he was about to go onto half pay.

Times on line

Here's an interesting article on blogging for money.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2054743.ece
I have yet to succome to placing advertising on my site for a few dollars a week. Before I had my blog I used to write down funny episodes that took place on little scraps of paper, then try to write them up later. I must have lost about 50% of my stories doing that. Now all I have to do is log on to my blog when no oneis looking and quickly post the stories. I'm now building up a good sized body of writings, which I would have never been able to keep track of before.

Bringing Nige up to speed

Nige’s been away for a couple of weeks, so he doesn’t know the saga of Neil.
“Where’s Neil?” He asks.
“Off sick.”
“What with?”
“I’m not too sure what was on his sick note… but I think he’s got back trouble.”
“I see.”
“Yes. He has trouble getting it off the mattress in the morning.”

Weymouth?

Eric walks in and grabs a coffee on the way.
“Morning” he says to me and Nige while he’s by us.
“How are you?”
“It’s Friday, it can’t be bad.”
“Oh, it’s your last day today.”

I didn’t know Eric was having any holiday.
“What? Your last day?”
“Yes. Not my last day ever, I’m on holiday next week.”
“Where you going, anywhere nice?”
“Wales.”
“Where about in Wales?”
“Weymouth.”
Jason has half heard the conversation from down the office.
“Where did you say? Weymouth?”
“Yes, Weymouth.”
“I’m going there…(thinks)…late September.”
“Thank god for that. I thought you were going to say next week.”
“Cheeky $!**%&*!*£.”

Tattoos 2

Further to my previous post about Nige’s bulldog tattoo. This set off a whole conversation at the time about tattoos.
Rach has “Rachael” tattooed across her small of her back. When questioned why, she didn’t really have a reply. We did however think that this was a great idea. We’d been watching one of the CSI’s the night before (I never watch them that closely and couldn’t tell you which is “Miami”, “New York” or whatever) and we thought this practice would be really helpful for them. Everyone should have their name, and possibly post code tattooed on them somewhere, just in case they don’t have their wallet on them when they are murdered. We reassured Rach that this was a good idea, and that we were all going to have it done. We weren’t sure about, if we moved house, what we would do about the post code. You could have a small creature tattooed over the top of it and another number put underneath. This would also help in cases of identity fraud. You could go into the bank and drop your trousers in front of the cashier and show them your name tattooed across your buttocks, or anywhere else you decided to put it.
Nige put the dampers on the whole idea, because he has his son’s name tattooed along one of his arms as well. That would just confuse the investigators.

Flashback to Monday 5th December – Jen’s dropped on her head story (as promised)

“Morning Jen” Steve said shocked
“Morning Steve” said Jen.
“Strange to see you here at this time in the morning”
“It’s only ten minutes earlier than normal.”
“How come you’re in early?”
“Just woke up early and got up. Have you had a nice weekend?”
“I had a lovely weekend, including coming in here yesterday.” Steve said sarcastically.
“How about yourself, did you get pissed Saturday night?”
“Friday night, actually. I had a great time … until it turned disastrous.””Why what happened?””Someone dropped me on my head.”
Steve couldn’t help but smile.
“How do you mean?”
“Well we went to see this band Friday night.”
“…and you were stage-diving?”
“No. We all went to see this band. Then afterwards there was a bit of a fight outside. Then after that had all died down Mozza, one of my friends came running at me and picked my up, like a fireman’s lift, and started to spin me round. I was all “stop, put me down” then he tripped off the herb and fell over and I landed on my head.”
“Any damage?”
“It hurt like hell at the time.”
“Any permanent damage?”
“I hope not.”
“How will we be able to tell?”

Monday morning. Andy’s holiday and Junior’s hair (or lack of it)

Monday mornings are dreaded times. No one wants to come into work after a nice weekend. Some Monday mornings can be interesting though. It’s the time of the week when you can catch up with your colleagues who might have been on holiday the week before and done something exciting. It can also be the time that someone has got a new look, either they’ve bought some fantastic new fashionable clothes, or had a major hair re-style. Both of these awaited me this Monday.

Firstly, one of our new recruits, Andy, had been on a “retreat” in Norfolk. Odd, I know, but that’s what he wanted to do for his holiday. He’s older than most of the guys in the office, and into all this new age, spiritual stuff. He’s learning Tibetan and wants to travel there one day. But this week he got as far as Norfolk.

Karen came over and asked how his holiday had been. He had explained before he went away that it would be a week of meditation and quiet. He had been instructed not to take books or his Ipod with him, so he thought he was going to learn some spiritual secrets from some wise men. As it turned out, they sounded quite clever sods. It was a place of silent meditation, so they had filled the place with people who couldn’t talk to each other, so they couldn’t confer about what they thought of the place. It was mostly for people who were going to be ordained, he told us.

“Did you give up the smoking then?” I asked him.
“No. I was able to go outside and smoke. A few others smoked as well, but silently.”
“They didn’t stop you from going out then?”
“No…There was a really rough looking bloke who went out and smoked a lot, who was big built with tattoos, turned out he was a biker, but he was a nice enough chap. It’s just that you make judgments on appearance, and when you are only communicating by smiling and using facial expressions it’s very eery, especially with total strangers who you haven’t been introduced to.”
“They didn’t introduce everyone at the start?”
“No we just went straight in, in silence. Very un-nerving. Then there was the day to day business of sitting down to breakfast and not being able to ask for the butter.”
“How did you manage that then?”
“Well it was odd, but when I wanted butter it seemed to be there by my elbow. As if someone knew I wanted it.”

He did say that at the end of it all they stood by their cars and introduced each other.
Then Karen came out with the killer question, which I couldn’t help smirk at:
“Are you going to keep in touch then?”

He said he’d exchanged telephone numbers with some people. I couldn’t help thinking of them phoning one another up and just keeping quiet.

I had to wait till around nine for the next thing to brighten up the day. I was busy working, so I didn’t catch everyone who had come into the office. Chris came over and asked if I was going down for breakfast. I grabbed my money then went over to the other section of the office where Alan and Junior sit. Junior was sitting there with a virtually shaved head. I don’t know if it was a grade 1 or what, but there was very little but stubble left. We sorted out who was going down for breakfast. Chris was going to fetch Junior’s. I was shocked, and all I could manage was “Nice haircut” as I walked out the office. Waiting for the lift we had a bit of a joke about it, and I did say that he looked like Dr Evil from the “Austin Powers” films. When we came back Chris mentioned what I had said. Then the office broke out in very poor Dr Evil impressions, with people sticking their little fingers up to their lips. Junior made on that he wasn’t bothered, and even denied that he knew who Dr Evil was, insisting that he’d never seen an “Austin Powers” film.

Later on I decided I might start telling people that he had to have it done because had headlice.

In the afternoon Junior had cause to come over to see Andy, and asked him about his holiday. Junior was pressing him about what he wanted or thought he wanted to get from his experience. Then he asked if it was a cult. Did they go around kidnapping people to join? He wanted to know.
“Then shave their heads?” I had to add.

Anyway, I’m spending the evening searching the net for Dr Evil pictures, then playing about with the Photoshop.

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.

Canteen Staff

Some time ago in the canteen, they changed the staff around and put a much rougher looking woman on the counter that you order your sandwiches from. She’s a pleasant enough lady, but what makes her look rough is the fact that she has home-made tattoos on her arm. She has “John” in faded blue ink, very roughly written. Then on the other arm she has some initials. They aren’t too obvious, but if you’re queuing for any length of time, or if they’ve ran out of fried eggs to go on your bacon sandwich and you have to stand at the; counter there isn’t that much to look at. Now the only people you imagine have home done tattoos are people with a lot of time on their hands, possibly very drunk; but I imagine she’s been to prison. This puts a new slant on the rest of the canteen staff. I imagine that they could all have been to prison at some time (one of the jobs you see people doing in prison is cooking. You can just picture them spooning out massive mounds of mashed potatoes from giant catering sized vats). You can visualize that they might go into catering after they’ve left prison, if they’ve spent years doing that kind of work.
So obviously the next step is to imagine what crimes they’ve been in for. Then I can imagine them getting in each others way in the kitchen and knife fights breaking out.
Now usually it’s all in good spirits, but you do get a bit of banter down in the canteen, especially Junior. He can a bit picky and ask for certain bits of bacon with not too much fat on. I can imagine one of the ladies from the canteen cracking one morning, and lunging at Junior with the big knife they cut the sandwiches with.

Alan's "magic pants" quest

Alan is messing about on the portal, he explains that he’s selling some stuff and looking out for a bargain laptop.
“I was getting chatted up by e-mail last night.”
“Really, who by?”
“This girl on the portal who’d seen my decks for sale. She sent me this (shows me e-mail) asking if I’m into Happy Hardcore. Then she went on to tell me which club nights she goes to and where.”
“Is her photo on the portal?”
“No.”
“Have you asked her to send a photo.”
“No.”
“Why are you selling your decks after holding out for this long?”
“I’ve really got to get a laptop. The missus complains that I’m on the computer all the time in the evening.”
“And you make too much noise playing World of Warcraft?”
“No, I’m in a different room. She wants me to be in the same room, even though I’m not going to be paying her any attention.”
“Oh. I thought you had your computer in the living room and would make too much noise. I mean, each time you pull on your “Magic pants” that must make a “ping” sound.” (Karen bursts into laughter at the thought of his “magic pants”)
“I don’t actually have my “magic pants” yet. They cost a lot of gold.”

He goes on to explain that if he had a laptop he could bring it into work and sort out a Virtual Network Connection to his home PC, so that he could do his World of Warcraft trading stuff remotely while he was at work. He tells me that he’s tried it on his notepad/phone (which looks like a mini laptop, but is still basically a phone for surfing the internet), but the connection wasn’t fast enough. It sounds like his ulterior motive has given him more of an incentive to get himself a laptop than sitting next to his missus on the sofa in the evening.

“There’s this girl here on the portal advertising Ann Summers Parties.”
“You should ask her for photos.”
Then he gets her photo on the portal.
“It’s been stretched a bit, so her face looks fatter, but she has a cheeky look about her.”
“Email her and ask her about her knickers.”

New MD

It’s always nice to get a new personal message from your boss. We have a new MD, and he sent round this on the e-mail to show he’s human like me and you. With a pony and chickens.

New I P Phones

We recently got new IP phones throughout the building. These were initially viewed as a pain in the arse, because you had to log-in to them every morning and log-out again when you finished in the evening. While there are so many people off I’ve discovered the up side of them. Previously when people went on holiday someone else had to mess about answering other people’s phones when they rang. This week I don’t have to do that, because if people aren’t in the office then they aren’t logged-on, so their phone won’t ring. Although when they get back in the office they’ll have a load of messages stored that will take most of the first day back to trawl through and sort out. I’m not fussed though.

Songbird 2

Jim is bursting into song again. This morning he was singing the latest Take That single (it’s very sad that I recognise it). Unfortunately Nige is off, who would usually shout “I thought the radio was on”, or “I thought Gary Barlow was in the room then”. What I really wanted to do is for someone to say “I thought Gary Barlow was in the room then”. Then I could shout “I thought you knew who the short, fat, old geezer singing was.”

The boss

The boss is a lot more casual today, tee-shirt jeans and bomber jacket. I don’t know what he’s getting up to.
Anyway, another section down the office have a new starter who he’s been keeping a keen eye on, to se if she’s any good or a no hoper (we have our quota of no hopers at the moment). He held up the one document she’d been working on yesterday looking very impressed.
“Look at that, that’s great.”
Then looking over at us, because Clive, Nige, Neil and Andy are all out this week, we are next in his line of vision.
“You don’t get that standard of work out of Clive do you? Have we got any vacancies on your team? Is there anyone we can get rid of?” (jokingly)
“Shall we put some names into a hat?” I ask him. (All in jest, but in reality I wouldn’t mind)

Missing Neil/ Dan on the mend

Since last Monday, when he turned up pissed and late and got sent home, Neil has not turned up for work or been in contact to phone in sick. He was under disciplinary procedures anyway, I imagine that if he does turn up, he’ll be out on his ear. This is quite sad because he was a good worker when he did turn up. Not like Clive who gets away with murder, then when he does submit any work it all needs re-doing. He’s got to be the next on discipline.

I also texted Dan yesterday to ask how he was getting on. He’s had plenty of visitors and his mates have kept him happy with more DVDs and stuff. His arm is painful, but he’s started physio and they reckon he’s doing okay. He was surprised about Neil going AWOL again. He asked is I hadn’t tried phoning him. I thought that it wasn’t really my place to ring. There’s obviously some weird stuff going on in Neil’s life, which I don’t really want to get drawn into. Surely the boss has got contact details for him and they should be talking to him to find out what the problem is, if they’re bothered.

Jim's Peter Cook impersonation

A little later Jim’s mobile goes off. He takes it out and looks at it before answering it.
“Not again,” he says. “It’s that Sienna Miller after me again.”
No one’s paying much attention to his Peter Cook script.
“I say Ricky! It’s that Sienna Miller after me again!” as he walks out into the corridor to answer it.

New look boss

The boss walks in with, what looks like, a new suit with a proper umbrella (not one of those that folds up and can fit in your bag). He stands at the coffee machine looking like a tax man. Usually he’ll shout “good morning” over to anyone who looks up, but this morning he’s not looking around for eye contact. For a change I initiate the “good mornings”.
“Where were you yesterday?” he asks half heartedly. (Knowing I wasn’t planning to work Sunday). I just grin. Then I start the offensive:
“You’re looking very smart.”
“I’m on a mission”, he says cryptically. (Later, Karen tells me she thinks this means he’s on the pull)
“With the umbrella and the suit you look like Steed from the Avengers.”
“I can go home for this shit.” He says as he walks off up the office with his coffee and his brolly.

As he goes up the office Jim shouts “Having a go at you already? It’s not fair is it?"

Heather and the admin team

On Friday Heather came over and in her childish pathetic voice said to me
“What shall I do about this job that’s due date is 2nd?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s only a half hour job, and I’ll probably get it done, but if I don’t, what shall I do with it? Shall I pick up a job that’s dated 3rd instead?”
At the time I was quite busy (I do work quite hard a lot of the time).
I told her just to do the job, and if she didn’t get it finished we could finish it off on Tuesday and backdate it. Blame it all on the post or admin. It wasn’t like it was anywhere near home time.

I’m happy to blame admin for a load of stuff. They’ve had an influx of new staff that haven’t had any training and a let run riot around the building. We’ve been having incomplete files sent up by admin for a few weeks that have caused us agro, and stopped us from completing some jobs on time.
Then the other week I was asked by this short, fat geezer “Where are the jobs to go down stairs?”
Not knowing who he was I asked if he’d got job numbers of the ones he was chasing. He then explained he wanted any jobs that are ready to go downstairs and I realised he was a new admin bod. I pointed him in the direction of the basket for jobs that are ready to go to admin to send out, making sure that he knew that only the bottom basket was for downstairs, the top basket gets sent out somewhere different.
He’d been happily collecting stuff for a week or so, then on Friday he came up and asked if there are any jobs to go down. I had a look in the basket for downstairs and it was empty, so I said there weren’t any. Then he said “How about these in the top basket?”
I explained that they went somewhere else, and then he went pale.
“Oh. I emptied that this morning and took them downstairs as well.”
He ran downstairs as fast as his little fat legs would go, then fifteen minutes later he came back with the pile that he thought was all the ones he’d taken from the top basket. I sorted through them and was just in time to put them in the post where they go to.