Real New Office

Computer movements

2011-11-07T13:29:00.001-08:00

I think I had explained in earlier blogs that the company had been taken over and then sometime in the summer the new company had positioned second computers, screens and keyboards on everyone's desk; ready for the change-over. This left us with very little desk space. Then a couple of weeks ago we found that some of the new computers, which were just lying idle on the desks had been spirited away...nicked.
There was some talk of police involvement and security footage being watched, although security isn't the greatest and I imagine the police would just laugh at them for leaving the computers out, unused for anyone who wanted to, to pick up.
Today the IT guys came round to take them all away again. Partly because we will be moving floors at the end of November, for a while at least, while the air-conditioning is fixed. We aren't sure if we will be returning to the same floor, or if we will remain on the second floor.
Surely they would have been better off leaving the new machines in storage rather than leaving them for months on the wrong desks.

Diwali

2011-11-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

Diwali was a bit more "in your face" this year. The canteen had got a special menu on for the week, not that I would try their effort at Indian or ethnic food. I asked a few of the guys in the office what it was all about, with a few different interpretations. Mostly it seemed that the asian blokes all had to go and meet their counsins and possibly less closely related friends in big gatherings in the pub. Hiten went missing the one morning, coming in really late with a hangover. Vits showed up later than normal on the Friday with a terrible hangover. Although they all assured me that they had to do it because it was a "religious thing".

It's for you

2011-10-31T13:46:00.000-07:00

Lester and John are going to be greatly missed when they take their severance at the end of November. They were keeping everyone entertained first thing this morning again. Lester had been given and old LG phone which he hadn't got a clue how to work. He asked John if he would let him phone his mobile so that his number would come up on the display, so that he could find out what his own number was. John read out his number sloswly so that Lester could input it into his phone. When he'd typed in the number he then realised that he didn't know how to ring it. I shouted down: "It'll be the left hand button." Stu was closer and told him to hit the green button, but it didn't show up green until he hit it. He managed to dial, then John eventually answered his phone, although he took his time because his ring gets louder with each ring, and he liked to listen to it get louder, for some reason. John answered the phone with a "Hello Lester, are you phoning in sick again?" Then he read out Lester's number to him. Then Lester asked about if it would come up on the display as John next time he phoned John's number. So we explained to him that that would only happen if he had John in his contacts list. Of course; he didn't know how to input his number in to his address book.
By dinnertime Lester was complaining that he would never get the hang of the phone and that he was going to give it back.

Halloween

2011-10-31T13:27:00.000-07:00

There was a special menu on down in the canteen for halloween, which got us talking about what we would cook for a nice halloween meal, when we went down for breakfast. Most things involved pumpkins, but Hiten and myself became a bit more inventive. I decided that a nice meatball mixture made into the shape of a brain would be good. Then I could stick holes in it, filled with tomato sauce, then with either prawns or thick spaghetti coming out of the holes to look like maggotts. It was only until it was too late to order that I found some brain molds here;

http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/zombies/aa74/; and here; http://www.firebox.com/product/1993/Zombie-Brain-Jelly-Mould?aff=1108.

On yer bike

2011-10-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

Downstairs where the support guys live, Daz had told me on Monday that Sean, who cycles to work, had been involved in an accident that morning and was in A & E. He reckoned it wasn't a big smash, but he didn't know if his ribs had broken or not.
He was back in this morning telling me that the "fat had stopped him from being hurt too much". He had a badly bruised/swollen thumb and his left arm had been badly grazed. He explained that at the time he leaves for work it is still dark. At the junction with the traffic lights he can usually get up the left hand side of the cars; if not he jumps up onto the pavement where there was a dip in the kerb. However, that day he couldn't fit through the side of the cars, but they had been resurfacing the road, and the jump up onto the kerb was now a couple of inches.He went one way, on to the pavement, while his bike went along the kerb and into the car. He reckoned it was all in slow motion, and then he was lying on the floor for 5 minutes, winded. When he got up a bloke had come over to him, he thought to help him, so he told him that he was alright and that he could go. The bloke said that he wasn't going anywhere. He was the owner of the car that his bike had hit and he wanted some details from him.He looked at the blokes bumper and told him that it was only scuffed and that it would wipe off. Then the bloke, who Sean had gestured; only came up to his nipple area; said he was going to punch him.

"I've just come off my bike and you want to hit me?" he said.

They did exchange addresses and apparently this bloke had threatened him on the phone yesterday about paying for his damage.

Sean said "I wouldn't mind giving him £50 to have his scuff buffed up, but I ain't paying for a new bumper. The bloke was a prick."

I asked if Daz was in today. Sean told me that officially he was and that you could contact him on his mobile, but he knew that he was off, pointing at his bosses empty chair.

Tardis

2011-10-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

Looking at one of the Council's notifications of new house naming and numbering this morning I was fairly amused to find somebody had been allowed to call their new house "The Tardis". I shared this with a couple of people on the e-mail. In reply I got:

"I think it’s going to be built last year."

"Modest exterior houses a surprisingly spacious interior with modern décor."

& "Doctor on call 24-7"

In his pants

2011-10-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

There was a lot of talk this week that there was going to be Dress-Down Day every Friday from now on until everyone leaves. There was nobody to confirm this, we were all waiting for the boss to send out a mail confirming this. John even told Neil that it was Dress-Down Day today. So he felt a pillock on Friday when he ws the only one in the office in jeans & teeshirt. Jason was threatening to come in plain clothes anyway. Ned told him that if he did, he would make him work in his pants. He repeated this on Friday too. Jason said that there was something wrong with him to want to see him in his pants. He went on to tell him that he was wearing his Sesame Street Cookie Monster Pants.

Photos

2011-09-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly;Bob came in on Monday with his compact digital camera and asked if we could all have our group team photograph taken, as that this was one of the last times that everybody would be together. He asked me if I minded organising the others. I told Ned; who thought it would be a good idea after the initial surprise. Unfortunately Ned went missing after dinner. So I spoke to the others, who Iwas shocked to find were all up for it, and organised it for Tuesday.
Just before dinner we all decided that we should have it taken outside in the sunshine, and grabbed Sam from one of the other departments to take it. he took two on Bob's cameraand two on Kerry's i-phone. Sadly Jason was playing up, sticking his fingers up for the first one and making more lewd gestures for another couple. Out of the four, only one of them was useable. I'll have to post the photo once I've annonomised all the faces.

Wasp

2011-09-04T05:40:00.000-07:00

There are a lot more wasps about this year. They aren’t to be taken too lightly. Earlier on in the year Lee was stung by one at this desk, and his hand swelled up quite a lot. I can’t remember if I blogged about that, but I had to take him to the Asda to get the pharmacists advice; and ended up buying him some anti-histamines.

On Friday though there was one in the office. The air conditioning isn’t working and as the day wears on the office gets really hot, so we have to have fans on and open up the windows as wide as possible to get some breeze flowing through. I hadn’t noticed the wasp; engrossed in my work of course; until Vits and Jason shot up out of there seats and headed towards me.

My manager was in, and asked what the problem was. Jason was keeping a safe distance from the wasp, near the manager’s desk.
He said “I’ve never seen you move so fast.”
Jason replied “Only when I run from police and dogs.”
“And wasps!” said my manager.

The wasp flew up into the strip lighting unit above Jason’s desk and stayed there for a while. When it flew back down Lee opened up the windows as wide as possible and wafted the thing out, before slamming the windows shut behind it. Later on there were a couple of wasps on the window looking to come in.

Lecture

2011-09-04T05:39:00.000-07:00

Most of my postings are work related, but on Friday I took my car in for its MOT and I heard this when I went to collect it. The mechanic was sorting out my bill and telling me that I needed to change my rear windscreen wiper. They had been sent three different ones by their suppliers during the day; ranging from a tiny 5” wiper to a 20” one, so they decided I needed to get a genuine Toyota one rather then a look-e-like one. While this was going on another customer came in who I recognised as being there at 8.15 in the morning dropping a vehicle off. Obviously a regular customer they greeted each other.

Mechanic 1: “How’s things?”
Customer: “It’s been a tough day.”
Mechanic 2: “Tough day?! You wouldn’t know a tough day if it turned round and bit you.”

They bantered for a little while then got on to talking about last week, when the police were swarming around trying to catch speeders, which they seem to do once a year. Then the customer got on to telling us about one of his drivers being pulled over by the police one of the nights.
Customer: “They asked him where he was going. He told them he was going to a lecture about binge drinking. “Binge drinking…” said the policeman “…who organises a lecture at 12.30 at night?”
“the wife” said the driver.

After laughing at that the mechanic serving me told us that he had been on holiday in Spain with the wife and another couple two weeks ago. They had been drinking in the hotel bar after their evening meal, and his wife had gone up to bed on her own at 11.00, leaving the others drinking. This bloke had stayed for another couple of glasses of wine (for some reason he couldn’t drink beer) then gone up to the room. When he got into the room his wife asked what time it was. He told her around 12.30. She said “You’re grounded!”
“Grounded?...”he said “…you can’t ground me!... I’m 50.”

Flats or Apartments

2011-08-31T12:17:00.000-07:00

I was changing some of the address data we hold this morning, which had been updated by the post office. This entailed changing a load of "apartments" to "flats". Looking into the address history on the database the last entry for most of them read "address changed as per estate agents" on 14th September 2010. Obviously if you are an estate agent you are going to write "apartment" instead of "flat", because it sounds nicer. I wonder how many of the residents who receive their next mailing addressed to "flat" rather than "apartment" are going to feel cheated. I wonder if you could sue the estate agent for selling you an apartment which turns out later to be a flat? I also wonder who at the Post Office decides if a development is flats or apartments?
Also, is that a UFO behind it?

On the Fringe of Culture

2011-08-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

Lester had been to Edinburgh for the end of last week. When he came in this morning Kerry had asked him about it and what he had gone to see. He explained that they hadn’t realised that the festival was on, and all he wanted to do was see the sights, but he couldn’t see much because of the crowds of studenty types handing out flyers and juggling. He hadn’t been to any of the shows, although he had picked up arm-fulls of flyers that he had been collecting. Everyone knows him to be a bit of a hoarder and laughed when he said that he was going to put them with his collections of bus tickets and beer festival flyers and beer mats.

Piercing surprise

2011-08-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

To my surprise this morning Jason came in with a lip piercing in his bottom lip. He complained about how much it hurt and how swollen it was.
“Did they give you a local anaesthetic for it?” asked Lee.
“No just an antiseptic wipe.” …he continued “I went in and asked how they did it, and she explained she just sticks a needle in.”
He went on about how he wasn’t d fond of needles and how he had to keep his eyes shut. Then he went back on to how swollen it was. Lee said that it should settle down after a couple of days. Then he told us how he had felt like he was talking like Bubba off Forest Gump, followed by a really good impression which left us all in fits of laughter.

Getting bigger?

2011-08-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

I had to answer the call of nature this morning after breakfast. John was in there washing his cereal bowl and mug.
Yesterday I had noticed him pouring his cereal into his bowl when I got in and had asked him "What are you having for breakfast?"
Before John could answer, Andy shouted over "Everything by the look of him!"
Back to this morning. I had entered my cubicle and doing my business, while John had finished his washing up and gone to the urinal. I'm not sure if he was at the urinal or was over at t he mirror when I heard him say to himself (I think) "Oh no I think it's grown."
This was followed by a second "Blimey, it has as well."...which I'm fairly sure was said looking in the mirrors by the sinks.
It has remained a mystery what he was talking about, or how big it had grown.

Interviews

2011-08-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Sadly, this week we are all having our counselling interviews to see where we might all fit in with the new structure, or if we want to volounteer for redundancy. Lee came back from his interview around 1 o'clock looking flustered and a little red faced. I asked him how he had got on. He said it had gone alright, but he had ended up having a bit of an argument with the new manager. I asked how he had managed to start an argument and he told me that he had disagreed with one of the guys answers. He had asked what was the main reason for one of our processes and Lee had said that the main reason was safety. The new manager had pressed him and carried on asking forn the main reason. The one outcome was that we all know what one of the questions is now, and the answer the boss is looking for is actually cost. I agreed with Lee though, and tried to make him happier by telling him that he was okay to disagree and question the boss on their first meeting.

Looting law

2011-08-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

Being a little older than most of the rest of my team I am often asked for my opinion, as the voice of reason. So with the rioting and looting going on last week, a few of the guys were thinking they were missing out being stuck at work. They were looking at the photographs of the looters and laughing that they hadn't got the sense to cover their faces. The biggest laugh came from the picture of a woman looting Poundland for a multipack of crisps.

I was shocked to be asked by one of them if looting was legal. He thought that if the shop was open, out of hours, then it was his civic duty to keep the contents of the shop safe from any unsavoury characters. It was a good job that we'd kept him off the streets for thye day.

Oppressed by ball difference

2011-08-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

With it looking very likely that everyone is going to break-up as a section, Ned has been trying to organise one last team event away from the office. His favourite idea involves a pool tournament, which he has organised in the past. He has been asking everyone if they are intereseted without actually telling them when he is proposing to do it. Jason has been winding him up about the last tournament, where Jason lost the final to Dan. Ned has been explaining that everybody pays £5 to go, part of which goers towards entry into the club. The rest of it being prizemoney for the winner. Apparently there should have been a play-off between the two of them, being a final, rather than Dan winning on "ball difference"-having potted more balls. It was late by the time of the final and people were leaving, so they decided to award the winner on "ball difference". Ned had got it all typed out, with spreadsheets of all the previous tournaments, with the results of all the games, stretching back years.
Dan came up from the other end of the office to talk to me about preparation for his counselling interview. He used to work with me on my old section, but now works in the furthest corner of the office away from my current section. Jason saw this as an opportunity and quized Dan about what he remembered about the tournament, which wasn't much. Dan went back to his end of the office while Jason continued moaning. Then he came out with his - "my people are used to being surpressed" -he meant oppressed, being mixed race; he like to be black when it suits him.
"You're oppressed?...he's Vietnamese...his family came over on a tiny boat to escape the oppression." I pointed out.
I went on to tell them about Lee's family coming over as refugees, and his story about staying in a fenced off camp for weeks before being dumped in the dodgiest area of the city when they were housed where nobody else would live.

New Era

2011-08-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

Jason was amusing us with some of his warped morals when he came out with the fact that he keeps losing clothes. What he does is leave some of his clothes and other items at various girlfriends houses, which he imagines keeps them happy because they think he means to come back at some stage, which he doesn't always do. I asked if it was some scheme whereby he gets rid of his old clothes instead of taking them to the charity shop, but apparently not, he leaves some good stuff like addidas tracksuits, and his latest "New Era" hat.

Then he told us about this one girl who he had bored with. He had been round her flat and "Done what he had to do". Then left to go to the takeaway for some food, but decided he didn't want to go back. So he didn't, but he did want to get his hat back. So he decided to tell her that he had "lamped some geezer who was touching his car while he was in the takeaway." He then told that they had called the police and he had to spend the night in the cells.

A very complicated web.

Forms

2011-08-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

Last week we had to complete a form to say which positions we were interested in for counselling purposes, to see who was going to stay and who was going to be made redundant. Most people had got theirs filled in and sent on time. Jason however was not particularly organised, asking anyone who came near him if they would fill in the form for him. Ned got so annoyed he agreed to do it. On the Tuesday morning we came in and Ned had filled out a form for Jason, along the lines of "Why are you interested in this job?...Because nobody else would employ me."
There was some other stuff, I'll have to sse if I can get a copy and scan it in to put it on the site.
We were in fits of laughter...he must have spent some time thinking about it.
Jason was flitting between just putting down that he wanted redundancy, and filling out his form properly in order to stay. He ended up going for the speedy option of saying he had no skills or training that would suit any of the vacant positions.

After maternity

2011-08-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

One of the Debbies came back to work today after 6 months of maternity leave. She seened to spend most of the morning having her passwords all reset and even having software re-installed. Then just before dinner Sue started asking her how she was finding being seperated from her baby. She said she was okay today because the kid was with her mom, but Friday she was going to be concerned because the kid has to go to a nursery. She had wanted to return to work part-time, but with the redundancy thing going on, she wasn't able to get part-time.
Then, just before dinner, they had a terrible conversation about nappies. These days apparently they are so tight, with elasticated seams, that the doings stay put. However, this can make the nasty business all compacted. Then Sue went on about the fact that when she had her kids there was no such thing as disposable nappies, and she had to wash them all & re-use them. Not what you want to hear about just before dinner.

Thumbs up

2011-07-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

Cam came in to work on Tuesday with his right hand in a plaster cast. He had pulled a tendon 4 weeks ago, but not done anything about it. In fact he had been carrying on training with weights at the gym, until he decided it wasn’t going to go away. Apparently the hospital had x-rayed it to see if there was anything broken, then the doctor had told one of the nurses to take him to have a plaster put on it. As he was walking down the corridor he asked the nurse “Where are you going to put a plaster?”
She explained that it wasn’t going to be a “band aid” plaster.
The funniest part of it was that they had plastered it with his thumb sticking up, so he looks like he’s giving the thumbs up to everyone. Of course he now has the trouble that, with his thumb in such a position, he can’t get the sleeve of any of his shirts over it. He only has one sweatshirt which has enough give in it to get the sleeve over his thumb. So because he’s got to keep the cast on for two weeks, he’s got to find some new shirts with baggy arms, or cut some of the shirts he already has.

Clive's rule

2011-07-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

Clive was sitting at his desk at dinnertime with his scale ruler near his mouth.

"Are you still hungry?" I asked.

He grinned back, "No."
What am most bothered about is if he's trying to measure anything off his computer screen rather than using a scaled drawing.

Euro millions jackpot £160M

2011-07-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

Everyone has gone Euro lottery crazy, even though there are so many people buying tickets that you are less likely to win than ever before, or have to share your prize. Each little clique has set up their own syndicate, but where people move between cliques there is an overlap, so you don't want to turn down any offers of being in their syndicate, in case they win and you're left in the office on Monday with everyone else being millionaires. So it's all proving very costly, having to cough up £2 a pop.

Pigeon

2011-07-08T11:53:00.000-07:00

Earlier on in the week the office was boiling hot. With the air conditioning being turned off, waiting for the 4th floor to be renovated, we had all the fans on and all the windows open as wide as we could. Then, towards dinnertime I saw Lee lunge at the window to shut it. A pigeon had landed on the ledge, and apparently another time a pigeon actually flew in through the window. It had to be chased round the office by the security man with a mail sack. LOucky escape this time round.

Harry Potter - kids film

2011-07-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

So it appears that the last Harry Potter film is released tomorrow. Lee brought up the subject, telling us that the local cinema has nothing but Harry Potter across all 14 screens tomorrow. Kerry and myself admit that we have never seen a whole Harry Potter film all the way through. Lee is a bit of a fan, but says that the first one came out around the same time as the first Lord of the Rings film, which he preferred. He went on to say that the next one of those is out sometime soon:

Me: "The fourth film in the Lord of the Rings trillogy?...Did someone write a fourth one just for the cinema?"

Lee: "No they're making The Hobbit...in two/ two hour films. It's all about him finding the ring to start with. I don't know how they're stretching it into two films."

Me: "Oh,...The Hobbit,...we had to read that at school."

Kerry: "Me too. The book was about this thick." (gesturing with her hands at a fairly big book thickness)

Me: "It takes all the fun out of it if you have to read it for school."

Vits: "Is it that old then, the Hobbit?!!"

Kerry: "Thanks. It's not that long ago"

Me: "Yes, it is that old...there weren't any printed copies...they were hand written by monks."

Lee: "On parchment."

Office double act

2011-07-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

I got in this morning and John and Lester were at it.
Lester; “We do thinks together, we’re a family.”
John: “If I was to say to you “let’s go sailing for a week…”
Lester: “Well I wouldn’t fancy going sailing anyway.”
John: “Well how about if I said I’d managed to get tickets for the rugby 6 nations.”
Lester: “She wouldn’t let me,…not stop over ..she knows what I’m like,…or what I used to be like.”
Vits was ear-wigging, the only other person in at that time down our end of the office;
Vits: “I love their conversations.”
Me: “What are they on about today…what’s started it all.”
Vits:(Whispering) “Well… you no Adam is leaving today. He’s going to work in Brighton for 4 days a week.”
Me: “I’d heard that.”
Vits: “Well the money he earns should pay for bed & breakfast accommodation…but he’s leaving his girlfriend here. Then Lester says that he couldn’t do that, because he’s got a family. Then John asks what they got up to last night. Lester said she was ironing in the kitchen while he was watching television , drinking his beer. Then John pointed out that they don’t actually do anything together."

Adam came in on his last day. John asked "Have you sorted out any digs down there yet?”
Adam explained that he hadn’t, but that it wouldn’t be a problem.

When the conversation kicked off again Lester said that he wife was going down to London today:
Lester: “She’s going with the school.” (I had forgot his wife is a teacher).
John: “What are they going to see?”
Lester: “Don’t know…the sights…didn’t ask her.”
Then as a comedy finish:“Stopping over for the night.”

Beware of the dog

2011-07-04T12:32:00.000-07:00

Some of the field staff have difficulties with customers out on site, so they often get the admin team to add comments on the database, against certain addresses. I assumed that this was informing staff that there is a dog which might cause them harm at the address, rather than a comment about the owner.

Jason's holiday

2011-07-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

Jason had gone on holiday to Ibiza, taking his mom and brother. Apparently his plan was to leave his mom on the quiet side of the island, while he went over the other side to party. We had been discussing the fact that he wanted to take severance, although I had heard that he was moving into a new apartment.
Lee: “He is…but it’s his auntie’s apartment…he’s paying her rent. He can’t stand living with his mom anymore.”
Me: “I thought he was actually buying somewhere.”
Lee: “No, renting off his auntie.”
Me: “So he’s taken his mom on holiday with him? But can’t stand staying with her?”
Lee: “ I’m not sure if he’s told his mom he’s moving out yet. I think this is a sweetener, before he tells her he’s moving out.”
Kerry: "How's that going to work? If he picks up some woman and takes her back to the hotel and his mom's there?"
Lee: "Well, it depends how drunk he gets them."
Kerry: "Yeah, the sort of girls he attracts."

He had taken a couple of days holiday at the last minute before he went on holiday, and no-one was taking any bets about him phoning in yesterday to book another day off. Sure enough he phoned in with a story about not getting back home till 3am from the airport and can he have another day off. I told him we were expecting him to phone in anyway and asked how is holiday went. He laughed at us talking about him, then went on to tell me how hot it had been and that he had got sunburnt. I was shocked because he's mixed race. He went on to tell me that he was covered in calamine lotion, and that he was peeling, leaving him a mixture of coloured patches. He also had white eyes, because he had been wearing sunglasses all week. He reckoned we would all be laughing at him when we saw him.
Then today we were expecting him to phone in again because it was daft to come in for one day. So sure enough, we weren't suprised when he did. He told me he wasn't sleeping too well with the sunburn and finding it difficult to get comfortable. We are all looking forward to taking the pee out of him when he turns up on Monday.

Cherry time

2011-07-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

I saw this story in the news about bumper crops of cherries, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinkadvice/8609262/Cherries-Will-we-have-a-record-crop.html and thought of Ned, who has booked next week of to go and visit his parents and harvest the cherry crop from their cherry tree. Last year he spent days up the tree with a bucket around his neck, then selling them to the local grocer.

Sue's stain

2011-06-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

Sue came back from the loo, having dropped a bit of her dinner down her:
Harmi: "Sue, what's that damp patch on your skirt?"
Sue: "I dropped a bit of cherry yoghurt down me, and I didn't know if it would stain, so I rubbed it with some water.."
Then feeling she needed to say more:
Sue: "I haven't wet myself!...I know I'm a certain age now, but I'm not incontinent yet."

Allergy

2011-06-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Rachel, from the other end of the office, e-mailed me. She used to work near me and Dan, and knows I carry some hayfever pills around with me, in case I forget to take mine in the morning. Dan used pinch some off me when his hatfever was bad. So the mail read something like:
Rach: "Have you got any allergy pills?"
Me: "What are you allergic to?"
Rach: "HUMANS."

Rabbit stew

2011-06-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

John was looking at walking and cycling maps again first thing this morning when I got in. Later, Lester came in and handed him a plastic container of food.
John: "What's that?"
Lester: "Rabbit Stew."
He went on to explain that it was a sample of what he was going to be cooking "on the road".
John: "So you're bringing pots and pans with you?"
Lester: "Yeah. I've got a stove, some pans, and a rabbit snare."

We've now got visions of them sitting at the roadside like Elmer Fudd or Wiley Coyote, waiting for Bugs Bunny or roadrunner to come along.

From the way John spoke about things up till now, he was finding pubs for breakfast, dinner and tea.

Learning from life

2011-06-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Joss came down from the 6th floor to talk to one of the girls, and told us about her harrowing driving lesson. The driving instructor had told her to drive down by the park, and they had just started doing a 3 point turn in the road, when out of nowhere came a strange acting local. He started banging on the car, then the instructor told her to lock the doors. After he had tried the doors, unsuccessfully, he started shouting at them to get out of the car. So the instructor told her to put her foot down and get out of there. Obviously being stressed, she jerked away hitting the kerb.

She thought that the guy looked like he was either drunk or on drugs. I suppose driving scholl cars aren't a bod target for robbery, after taxis, because they must drive around with a fair bit of money in.

2011-06-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

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.

Doodles

2011-03-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

Keeping up the grown-up behaviour; Jason had spotted that Ned had been doodling on his desk-pad. He'd drawn a crocodile, and a cartoon, self portrait. Jason asked if Ned had too much time on his hands, to which Ned replied that he drew them while he was on the telephone.

So later on, when Ned had walked off somewhere, Jason drew his own little doodle on Ned's desk-pad. Ned didn't notice when he got back, so Jason had to say "what have you been drawing now?"

Ned laughed, Lee laughed, so I had to get up and walk round to see what he had done. He's drawn a cock & balls next to his self-portrait.

"I'm going to have to start a new sheet now," said Ned.

Then he forgot, until the boss came over to talk to him. So Jason was watching as Ned was talking with the boss, trying his best to keep the has hand covering the cock & balls all the time he was talking.

Mom date

2011-03-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

Jason made us laugh this morning, telling us about how he has got complained about by a buyer on Ebay, apparently by sending threatening e-mails. He told us that he was selling some chairs on ebay, and because the bloke buying them was going to be picking them up in person; Jason asked him to claim on the site that he no longer wanted the items. That way Jason wouldn't have to pay Ebay the £20 fee. Jason explained that he wouldn't give any negative feedback, and he would keep his 100% status.
The bloke wasn't happy with the suggestion, telling Jason that "you have to pay Ebay fees".
So he left his mom at the house when the bloke was supposed to be picking up the chairs. This is what led to the funniest part:

"He asked my mom out on a date!"

She apparently turned him down, but this got Jason worked up.
We told him that he should should have got his mom to accept, and then get him to take her out for an expensive meal. Jason was more bothered about getting his £20 back.

Missing workers

2011-02-22T13:16:00.000-08:00

I had last Thursday & Friday off on holiday, so when I got in on Monday I asked if I had missed anything. "Yeah, you missed loads", was the comeback. I thought they were being sarcastic, but as it turned out it was true.
Apparently on the Thursday, Jim (the quiet one) went missing at about 10.30 in the morning. Only it wasn't until about 2.30pm that anybody noticed.
He's usually quiet, so you imagine he is just working away quietly, as he does. Then he normally goes home for dinner for an hour or so, not returning until 1.10 usually. Usually you can set your clock by him.
Apparently one of the girls had heard him take a phone call, which is unusual in itself, then he just left without saying a word. Ned noticed he wasn't in at 2.30 and asked where he had gone. Nobody knew, so Ned got worried in case he had been in an accident on his way to or from dinner. He tried ringing the numbers we have as contacts for him, none of which got an answer. So they had a big conflab, and Ned and one of the other managers decided they should go and do a home visit, as he didn't live far away anyway.
As it turned out, he was at home, fine. His sister had rung him to tell him that his dad had been in some kind of traffic accident, and she had called him a taxi, or was in a taxi, waiting downstairs to take him to the hospital. His dad was okay. I couldn't find out why Jim had stayed at home instead of coming back to work. He reconned that he didn't tell anyone because the taxi was waiting for him. Also I'm not sure if he took the Friday off work too.
When Ned got back to the office his boss had asked if Jim was going to make up the time or was taking it as leave. Ned told him that Jim was fine, not answering the bosses question.

Then on Monday, when he came in, Jim looked like he'd got conjunctivitis. I had never seen anyone with redder eyes. I told him he should go to the doctors, then when he started complaining about them stinging and not being able to stare at his screen for long, I sent him home.

Then because Ned wasn't around, we then decided not to tell Ned until he noticed he was missing. Ned asked about Jim as soon as he walked back into the office, so we had to tell him.

No new job for Ned

2011-02-16T12:58:00.001-08:00

Ned had been noticably moody for a couple of weeks in the build-up to his latest interview. He'd applied for a higher grade managerial job which 5 or 6 people had gone for. It was actually in the department that Alan had gone to, and of course Alan was favourite for the job.
We had given him a bit of stick about how he wasn't going to get it, and smiled when he came back into the office after his interview in his fancy suit.
Today was the day they were announcing who had got the job. Ned had asked me to go and see Alan on the sixth floor, and just ask in passing if he had heard anything. As it ended up, Ididn't have time to go and see him. Ned got a phone call around dinnertime confirming he hadn't got it, and that Alan had.
Having finished the whole process he told us how much he appreciated his current job, and it seems to have given him a new lease of life to try and do his current job better. If anything, I think he was relieved he hadn't got the job. Although he got a bit of stick from Jason when he heard he hadn't got it.
Sadly I didn't get a chance this afternoon to go and congratulate Alan

Bad hair day

2011-02-13T10:41:00.000-08:00

Lee mentioned to me that he was going in to town to have his hair cut after work. I asked him where he goes. He told me Francesco’s; which I thought sounded a bit pricey. I told him that I used to work with one bloke who had his hair cut somewhere pricey, because they gave him a bottle of beer while he was having it done, and possibly because of the dolly-birds doing the cutting.
“Oh”, said Lee, “…they give you beer at Francesco’s, and I like it because they give you a head massage before hand.”
“How much do they charge?”
“£30.”
After that I kept a bit quiet, thinking that was a bit steep. It does account for the dodgy cut he normally turns up with the next morning, obviously not wanting to upset the girl doing his hair.

Run down

2011-02-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

One of the Steves, as I said previously, turned up on Monday with a black eye. Not just a black eye, but some nasty scabs as well. As it turned out, he had been off since the previous weekend, when he had got run over on the Saturday night. He was apparently very drunk & can’t remember a thing about it other than being picked up off the pavement, or road, by the paramedics. He had spent a couple of days in hospital & the rest of the week recuperating. From the sound of it he is lucky to be alive.

Junior's nose job

2011-02-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

I hadn't seen Junior about for some time. Asking Eric; I was told that he had taken some time off to have an operation on his nose, & time off to recover. Only a polyps operation, to stop him snoring, like Nige had some time ago. We joked about how it was a cosmetic operation to sort out the hideous shape of it.
Anyway, when he returned last week I asked him how his nose was. He was quite happy with it, except for it being dry and scabby inside at the moment. He told me that it was actually because he was throwing up most mornings that he had the operation. Apparently his nose was so blocked that when he was asleep all the mucus was gathering at the back of his throat, so that when he woke up in the morning he was being sick.
On the day he did come back, one of the Steve's had turned up with a black eye (I will explain this in a later blog). I metioned he looked like he'd had reconstructive surgery too.

Early leaver

2011-02-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

Just after half past two on Wednesday there was a bit of a commotion down the office. It was Les, looking out of breath, talking about having just driven around the car park.

As he explained things further, it turned out that he had left the office at 2.30pm thinking it was 3.3opm (the earliest he is able to leave). He had got a doctors appointment at 4.00, and was fretting about leaving on time. He had left the office, having turned off his computer. No had twigged this, because it was nowhere near leaving time. So apparently he had got into his car and started to drive off, until he noticed nobody else was leaving, and checked the clock in his car.

He was very embarrassed coming back into the office. We weren't sure if this accounted for his red face, or if it was the running back up the stairs.

Marital duties

2011-01-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

Les came in this morning a little later than normal. He was a liitle flustered because the closest printer had been out of action waiting for a yellow cartridge for over a week. Everyone had complained that this was an amazing length of time to wait for a cartridge to be delivered. They all suggested going to Staples and buying one off the shelf and claiming it back on expenses.

"I've got some DVD covers I need to print off", he tells everyone.

This is before any management get into work.

He changed the subject a little by telling us that the reason he had been 5 minutes late was that he had to carry out his "marital duties", then walked off to the coffee machine.

Sue: "I bet he means something like washing-up."

Louise: "Yeah, he just likes to make it sound a bit dirty."

He came back with his coffee.

John said: "Five minutes you say...were you bragging, or was that
twice?"

Les laughed: "At least that's something I don't have to do at the weekend
now."

John: "Yes, one less job for the weekend."

Icey spill

2010-12-20T10:57:00.000-08:00

Jason phoned in this morning after telling me that he had been involved in a collision.He had brought, or exchanged his old car for, an old rear wheel drive MG sports car. He had already admitted he had trouble controlling it in the icey weather. Apparently this morning he had just put it into 2nd gear, lost control of it, and hit one car; knocking it over the central reservation and into one coming in the opposite direction.
It's the bus for him for the rest of the week.

On a planet far far away

2010-12-15T10:08:00.001-08:00

Andy took his helmet home with him, but today turned up with the arm pieces to his stormtrooper kit. He explained that he had brought the kit for £150, but thought he could sell the completed kit for £900. The only problem I could see was that he was cutting it down, for example taking an inch off the arms, so that it would fit a short dumpy Star Wars fan.

I also bumped into Tom in the lift, who sheepishly confessed that he had taken last week off; same as Junior, to play the World Of Warcraft expansion pack.

stormtrooper in a tea cup

2010-12-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

A week of surprises continued today when one of the guys from the other end of the office brought in the stormtrooper helmet he was putting together from a kit. I don't know why, but it broke the day up.

Alan came and took a look, and he showed me the photos of his Halo helmet that he had started making, but didn't have the time to finish.

Eric had told me last week that Junior and some of his mates had taken the week off to play with the latest expansion pack to World of Warcraft. Today I bumped into Cat, who is now Junior's girlfriend, and asked her what she thought about it. She said that she had created a character to play it, but she was only a level two, and she had much more important things to do with her time.

Bi the way

2010-12-13T09:46:00.000-08:00

It's good to catch up with people after they have had a week off on holiday. Although I wasn't expecting this e-mail after I'd asked John what he'd done with his week off. Especially as he is one of the quietest members of the team:

"I said my week off was eventful – Basically I came out as bisexual – short
story is my ex girlfriend found out (something I wasn’t expecting) had to tell
dad and sister before anyone else told them. Bit emotional, but went well. Bet
you didn’t expect that."

He went on to ask if I could sort out some support for him. I looked at the employee Assistance Programme, but couldn't really find a subject to fit, so I gave him the web link to look at for himself. He's now told a couple of the team, but not everyone. I'm not going to tell anyone who he hasn't told already.

I'm not too sure what he expected, & we aren't sure what to expect. Is he going to behave in a camp fashion around the office now. He's not exactly effeminate, nor a particularly smart dresser. Now when I look at him though, I wonder what it was that his ex-girlfriend had found out.

Cold

2010-12-07T09:52:00.000-08:00

The Friday before it snowed was cold. It had been cold all week anyway, but Friday was the day that everyone was complaining. Some the staff come in, knowing it had been cold all week, dressed for a holiday in the tropics, no jumpers, yet one of them had come prepared with a thermometer.They started off complaining about the cold and put their thermometer on the desk, watching it go from 21 to 20 degrees. Then the others started asking what the temperature was now, every 20 minutes.

I knew that the 6th floor had had trouble with the heating earlier on in the year, so went upstairs to ask if anyone had still got the little electric heaters which they all had under their desks when the heating did pack-up on their floor. Luckily one of the guys had kept one back and agreed to let me borrow it. They were all a bit surprised when I came down with the heater. Then plugged it in by the main complainer. Then they watched as the thermometer went back up again.

I'd like to know if they sit about in shorts and tee-shirt at home with the heating on full at the weekends.

Sick days

2010-11-12T01:04:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the people in the office who get the vomiting and diarrhoea bug, then only take the one day off sick, I had a dreadful night on Wednesday, and have had to have a couple of days off. Having eaten nothing for a day, I wonder how many days I might be able to go without food. On the good side, I was looking to lose a little weight.
At the hospital they have a policy where you are not allowed back until 48 hours after your last episode. Explaining this to Ned, he asked what I meant by an episode. I wonder if he thought I was talking about TV programmes?

Expecting

2010-11-10T11:50:00.000-08:00

I was discussing with Clive what he thought we should do with the £50 that Mark had won on our Premium Bond syndicate. Of course most people think we should throw it all away on the lottery, which is why we started the Premium Bond syndicate in the first place.

Then he told me that he was now an expectant father. Unfortunately he is no longer with the lady in question, but seems a bit more involved than Jason was. I suppose it helps if you are told before the baby is born. There are a few ladies up our end of the office who have just gone off on maternity leave, all of which we have tried to get involved in the baby naming process. I thought Clive might be a bit more amenable to giving his son the middle name "Danger"; but he didn't seem keen.

Clive's birthday again

2010-11-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

I went down in the lift with the guys in the lift for breakfast and they asked if I was going out on Friday for Clive's birthday. This was the first I'd heard of this:

Me: "Where you going then?"
Hiten: "Somewhere over Bristol."
Me: "What? why so far? He always goes to weird, out of the way places. Is
it because he has to go places where nobody knows him?"
Chris: "Yes, he's banned from anywhere close by."

Takeover

2010-11-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

I got a bit of a shock in the middle of the morning when one of the big bosses arrived side-by-side with our boss, asking if we could gather everybody up the one end of the office. Apparently, some of the papers over the weekend were speculating that the company was going to be taken over. Basically the boss came in to talk to everyone about the speculation, even though he knew nothing about it at all. All this was supposed to set our minds at rest. He asked if anyone had any questions and confirmed that nobdy knows what is happening, and there will be a bit more news on Wednesday. They would have done better to wait until there was some solid news before they got everybody talking.

BBC News Strike

2010-11-07T07:34:00.000-08:00

I was very surprised on Friday and Saturday to see a range of completely strange/new faces on BBC's Breakfast, due to the BBC reporter's strike. I did wonder why, if the regular presenters are on strike due to a greivance about their pensions, why weren't this other bunch also on strike? I imagined the regular presenters sitting at home shouting "scab" at the telly all day. Then on the local news they had dragged out a very old political correspondant with a big mole on the side of his face, which really didn't help my concentration.

Junior volunteers II

2010-11-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

I saw Junior's lady friend at the coffee machine this morning and asked her what had gone on yesterday about the film crew. She told me that they didn't actually turn up in the end. However Junior had been expecting them, and had even had a shave that morning to prepare. I asked if someone was providing a script or if he was supposed to write something. She had asked him the same thing, and because he wasn't tearing his hair out trying to think of what to say, she thought that they knew what they wanted him to say. He had told her that he wouldn't say anything on camera that he didn't agree with.

Big bang

2010-11-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

One of the girls in the office was leaving yesterday to go on maternity leave. They had put out streamers and balloons around her desk, and did a small presentation around 11.30, to hand over the proceeds of the office whip-round and leaving card.

She went home about 1.00pm.

Then Sue, her team leader, decided she would tidy up. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she was clearing up all the streamers, then saw her un-tie all the balloons then carry them into the corridor with her big pair of scissors.

A few moments later there was a bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, as she burst the balloons; as if she had taken someone out into the corridor and shot them. Everyone looked round, then were still looking around as Sue walked back in with the remains of the balloons, smiling.

Junior volunteers

2010-11-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

Out of the blue last week I got an e-mail, the day before a workshop at the local hotel, saying something like "Thank you for volunteering to stand up in the middle of the presentation, when asked, to demonstrate the 16 people per year from the company who are injured at work."

I don't know who put my name forward, and it was no big deal in the scheme of things. I did feel a little annoyed that I wasn't asked; just volunteered by somebody. And which bugger picked me out of the 200 people or so that went to the workshop?

Anyway, I was quite amused this morning when Junior came down the office complaining. He had been volunteered by the boss to be involved with a camera-crew who were on their way, supposedly to make a video about "Diversity" within the company. He was hoping someone was going to volunteer to go on camera and speak about the subject. Of course nobody did, and I'm not too sure who actually took part in the film in the end.

I did warn him though that his small-checked, black and white shirt was going to cause strobing.

Toner

2010-10-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

I was very annoyed yesterday watching the news about the toner cartidge bomb which was found at East Midlands Airport. The newspapers all referred to it as an ink bomb. You would think that a newspaper would know the difference between toner (powder) and ink (liquid).

Kerfuffle

2010-10-31T13:27:00.000-07:00

Ned was talikng in the office about the trouble that had been caused over the recycling bins, but was choosing his words carefully:

Ned: "It's all become a big ker..., blown out of proportion."

Jason: "You were going to say kerfuffle then weren't
you?"

Ned: "Yes, I was, but I'm trying to avoid saying it. I like that word
though."

Jason: "It's all a bit of a kerfuffle!" Jason repeated in a high pitched
voice."

Me: "Who says kerfuffle all the time? Some TV character."

Jason: "It's Little
Britain."

I had to think for a while.

Me: "Oh yeah. The guy that pushes the wheelchair."

Jason: "That's right."

Me: "Lou & Andy. I don't know which is which though."

Trouble on the 4th floor

2010-10-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

This is a genuine e-mail sent round earlier this week by one of the staffwhich has completely been blown out of all proportions. The manager of the guys responsible for the mess had appologised, and everyone was keeping their heads down and being on their best behaviour. The woman who had sent the mail wasn't happy with the appology and half-hearted excuse, and has now escalated the matter as a formal complaint. It has now gone to the regional
manager for our department, who has sent round a stern response to all the managers (I only know because Ned showed me). He finds it hard to believe that it has all got so high, forcing the department manager to comment on their behaviour. He is now asking for any information on who the culprits were and threatening to suspend flexi-time for everyone on our floor. It's just like being at school again.
All,

Last night when I came back from off site, I was disgusted to find that
staff had stacked the so called empty cups into one compartment of the recycle bin, higher than the actual stands surrounding the Business Centre, instead of distributing them amongst the other empty compartments. Most of the cups had the used teabags still inside them, when staff are fully aware (there is a poster on the plastic cup recycling bin) that these cups are turned upside down to ensure there is nothing inside them when stacked for recycling, otherwise recycling cannot take place and this incurrs a penalty cost to the business. Not only that, but the dregs compartment attached at the side was full and overflowing, it had overflowed onto the actual unit and saturated the surrounding carpet. I was stood next to the cleaners when they took the top off the unit, the fluid that spilt out was disgusting and spilt not only onto the carpet, but also onto the cleaners. This also incurrs a cost tothe business as they now have to arrange for the carpet to be cleaned. The cleaners were very upset and angry about this this, and so was I, I am ashamed that such an immature act has taken place within thisdepartment on the 4th flr, and the fact that whoever witnessed this disgusting act/s and behaviour, did not challenge the staff responsible. This is unacceptable, and I told the cleaners so. They have made an official complaint. I would like this incident to be investigated and the person/staff responsible to apologise to the cleaners, as this was a despicable act, these are human beings that have to clean up after them.

Lottery winners

2010-10-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday I got talked into putting in a pound for a syndicate up my end of the office, when the National Lottery was on a roll-over. The fantastic news was that we got a line of 4 numbers and could have walked away with £7 each for our £1 stake. Sadly that's not what happened. What happened was that they all decided to put the ful 90-something-pounds on the Saturday roll-over.

You're imagining that we lost the lot...but no...we won £10 back as much as we put on to start with. So what are we doing with the money? Throwing it back on the lottery. Meanwhile two people shared the £13million rolled-over lottery on Saturday.

Butlin's

2010-10-21T13:29:00.000-07:00

Jason has actually booked some real holiday for the end of this week. Before he left though, he wasn't looking forward to it. He's taking Jason Junior to Butlins holiday camp in Skegness. Lately it hasn't been the weather for the seaside.

He had done some research. He knew Dora the Explorer was going to be in residence there. He even knew a bit about the characters in the TV series.

We couldn't really imagine him doing much with the kid though. We only have visions of him eyeing-up the red-coats.

Dan's in-laws

2010-10-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

I happened to bump into Dan in the city centre on Saturday dinnertime, which reminded me of this sad story.

He has just got married and bought a new house. His next door neighbour decided to move out, and they thought they might take a look at buying the house to rent out as an investment. not being loaded, they spoke to his wife's parents about lending the money to do this. Naturally her parents wanted to see what they would be investing in, so they arranged a viewing. Sadly for Dan, they loved the house, and thought they might like to live in it. So Dan has the very real nightmare of the possiblity of his in-laws moving next door. This might be alright if you had a good relationship with the in-laws, but he really doesn't get on with her dad. Stupidly the wife and mother-in-law thinks that they would get to like each other better if they spent more time together. Of course this isn't the case at all.

Dress down Alan

2010-10-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

Occasionally we have a dress-down Friday, where we all pay £1 to a nominated charity and wear plain clothes for the day. Our last one was Friday 1st October just gone. We were all amused yesterday, 8th, when Alan walked in wearing tee-shirt & jeans. When asked, he admitted he had got his Fridays mixed up. Luckily he wasn't in any meetings and he could hide in the corner quietly for the day.

Just to clarify; the picture is not actually of Alan.

Drinks machine

2010-10-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

When I got back from holiday a few weeks ago the biggest change was that there was a new coffee machine. I was amazed to get this e-mail today:

"It has been brought to our attention from the Klix Vending Engineer that
some of our machines are being written on in permanent marker pen.Please do not
deface the Vending machines in any way as they are on lease and do not belong to
the company.If any machines are vandalised i.e. written on, the
company will incur a cost to replace the affected areas/parts

Thank you for your co-operation"

Paternal

2010-10-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

Jason returned from his two weeks Paternity leave, all smiles. He didn't say how much contact he had actually had with his offspring and his mother. Ned was hoping that he would let it slip that he hadn't been to see the kid at all, and he could start some kind of disciplinary process with him.
I've been asked about this a lot, and basically all he had to do was sign a form saying he was the father of a new baby (no proof needed what so ever) and he was given two weeks extra paid leave.

Hair

2010-09-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

One of the oddest occurences happened this morning in the office. I got in a bit later than usual and saw that Lester had had a haircut. It was Jim's birthday as well, and he had ballons and streamers were all around his desk.

Then it came to light that Lester had got Jim to cut his hair in the toilets that morning with some clippers that they had borrowed.

There was a lot of talk about how he had cleaned up after himself, being no hoover or brushes anywhere to use. When I went to the toilet later that morning you could see the hair all around one of thye sinks. I still do not know why they did it, or why that particular morning, or why in the toilet.

Has anyone ever had their haircut cut in the toilets where you work?

Cappuccino

2010-08-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

Lesley asked where Jason was at some stage. I had to try and keep a straight face while I explained to him that he was on unexpected Paternity leave. After laughing about it he asked if it was genuine. I explained that he had been showing photos round, but he wasn't too happy about the kids name, he wanted Jason Junior(or JJ).
"What colour is it?" he asked.
"Kind of a cappuccino colour," we told him.

Cherry picking

2010-08-30T07:34:00.000-07:00

Ned had taken a weeks annual leave to go and visit his family down south. When he got back he had brought a big basket a cherries in with him to share.He explained that he had been picking cherries at his dad's house. "Stuck up the tree for three days, with a bucket round my neck," he expanded. "Like a flippin' monkey. While my dad and brother watched him from their garden chairs."Apparently, many years ago, it had been his idea to grow a fruit tree. So every year he goes to pick the cherries off it. Entrepreneur as he is, he managed to pick 8KG, which he sold to the local shop.

Offspring

2010-08-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

Jason got a shock a few weeks back. A young lady that he had been friendly with about 9 months ago texted him to tell him that he was a proud father.Now fatherhood is a weird thing to have thrust upon you unexpectedly; obviously he had mixed emotions about it all.Then his next thought was Paternity Leave (two weeks extra holiday for nothing).It was left to Ned to work out everything with HR; was he entitled? What proof did he need that he was the father?In the meantime Jason was showing photos of his offspring around the office on his phone.With the comment "He looks like me doesn't he?", obviously strengthening his case.
Apparently the young lady's Caucasian boyfriend, who was now living with her, was a little confused that his new baby had a coffee coloured complexion.

After a couple of days of asking around, we got a visit from a HR bod, who told us that all he needed to do was sign a disclaimer saying that he was the father, and he was going to spend two weeks bonding with his new son.Then that was it. We had to cover for the next two weeks while he managed to get an extra two weeks paid annual holiday.The girls in the office, who had all had legitimate Maternity leave in the past, it's more difficult to fake if you are a lady, were all spitting feathers.

Jumper clowns

2010-08-27T08:35:00.000-07:00

What is it?;mid August and torrential rain. Chris is off today starting his journey to Reading for the festival.Little chance of him getting sunburnt this year.I got into the office this morning and a couple of the lads had dug out jumpers to wear over their workshirts.

Taking the pee

2010-06-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting week. I'm really worked up this weekend with the brand new IT Crowd series 4 starting, & Glastonbury, & the World Cup match on Sunday with Germany.

Then this afternoon I got an e-mail containing the word "urine". It was from the Occupational Health Department, about one of my guys with kidney stones, who she's had to write a report on.

Chips with everything

2010-05-28T00:05:00.000-07:00

When I first saw this I thought "Great I could have all my staff chipped, so I know where they are at all times."

But you know that they would all be off with computer viruses.

Fitting achievement

2010-05-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

Today, an achievement of sorts. Our team was the first on our floor, and possibly the company, to get a "Fit Note" sent in. One of the guys is off work with kidney stones, which I am told is painful. I can't really see the point of changing. No doctor is going to enquire that far into what their patient does for a living, and decide whether there are other duties they could carry out which the employer may or may not agree with.

Hairy Deb

2010-04-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

The team that sits next to ours get on much better with each-other, and take it in turns to buy biscuits. This morning there was only one biscuit left, and everyone was being too polite to take it.
“It’s an English thing, isn’t it? Not taking the last one” said Les.
“I’ll have it shall I?” Said Deb.
“Ah, there you go,…” said Les “That’s the Greek in you.”
“What else would you say was a Greek thing then?”
“Being smelly and hairy” said Les.
“…Especially the women.”

Smart lad

2010-04-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

Since Lee has moved into nice new apartments near the city centre he has been shaving and had his hair cut, even wearing ties on odd days. I asked him if it was because all his neighbours are smart young professional types, and he doesn't want to look the only scruff in the buiding. He just smiled.

Simples

2010-04-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Ned has a weird habit, because he is quite small, of standing up momentarily to look around to see who is about- just like one of those meerkats. I'm thinking of getting the guys to tell him "simples" whenever he asks how things are going.

High visibilty

2010-02-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

Nev has been putting himself about a bit lately, he’d got an idea for increasing the quality of information we get from our customers, and he wanted to try it out. He’d organized a trip into the outside world for himself and a couple of other interested parties. This meant he had to have a company issue bright orange, high visibility jacket. Not the most flattering thing on most people, but Nev is tiny and for some reason he had ordered himself a medium sized jacket. He tried this on in front of us all yesterday afternoon and it dwarfed him. We couldn’t help but laugh at him. This morning he had left it lying around the office. We thought he had deliberately left it behind, Jason couldn’t help himself. He’s built like a brick house, he put it on and flexed his shoulder muscles, giving it a good stretch. It would have done up on him, but the sleeves were a little short. Eventually Nev arrived and took it with him, without trying it on again. The other thing that was funny was that there was a sixty percent chance of snow forecast.
Nev had said that it took him back to his paper delivery round days. This made us laugh more because he is so small, and we could picture him delivering papers today.

No more murder

2010-02-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

I had missed the conversation where Jason must have been telling everyone that he’d sold his i-phone. So this afternoon, at ten past two
I asked “What time is it?” to Jason.
He looked around at the clock, then lifted up his old phone. “This is all I’ve got now.” He said dejectedly.

Winter in Paris

2010-02-21T01:13:00.000-08:00

Lee had had a great time in Paris, he told us when he returned on the Wednesday. He had done the Louvre, and seen the Mona Lisa, although I had warned him that it was tiny. Unfortunately, the last day, that they had chosen to climb the Sacre Coeur, it was snowing.

There is no transport up the hill, and you have to walk. He was also disappointed that the day he had gone to see the Eiffel Tower and got up early to miss the crowds, the crowds had all got up early as well. There was such a big queue to go up it that they didn’t bother.

Murder

2010-02-21T01:09:00.000-08:00

Following on from the previous afternoon, at ten past two
Jason asked “What time is it?”
“About ten past two” I told him.
“Murder She Wrote time.”Then for a few seconds he unplugged the headphones from his device to play a bit of the theme tune

'Snow time for that

2010-02-11T11:56:00.000-08:00

Lee has been looking forward to going on holiday to Paris for 5 days for some time. However he wasn’t impressed when it snowed yesterday, his last day before his trip. I asked if he would be coming in to work if the airport was closed tomorrow. He said no.

I-phone Murder

2010-02-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

Jason managed to get his hands on a Jailbroke i-phone for very little money. Lee managed to sort out some of the teething troubles with it. Jason had spent the previous week just messing with it getting nowhere, not being able to play video on it. Kelly showed him a site where he could stream TV (something like "TV Catch-up”). Considering he had just had a week and a half off sick, watching television, he spent the afternoon listening to “Murder She Wrote” on it.

Tic-tacs

2010-01-13T12:47:00.001-08:00

Nev, my boss, can get really intense at times, but then unwittingly cracks me up when he gets his long words mixed up (or even the smaller ones). He always asks me at the end of any meetings he calls with the team why nobody says anything when they are asked for their opinions. I told him last time that some of them don't want to offend one of the guys by pointing out faults, but afterwards they will tell me stuff in private. I suggested calling the next meeting when this guy was out of the office. He said that would be a good idea if it would get them talking. Adding

"Whatever tic-tacs you want to use."

Belated Christmas Message

2010-01-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

Due to the fact that Nev was off from December 18th, we got a very odd Christmas message from the boss yesterday. He’s catching up with his e-mails today, which mostly means he goes round asking if anyone dealt with this or that, from three weeks ago. My memory isn’t that good. It’s also amusing to see his speedy typing going unchecked.
_____________________________________________
Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2009 8:47 AM
To: Distribution List
Subject: FW: Christmas Message

Everyone,

I wanted to take the chance to thank you all for your
hard work and efforts during 2009. I know I have only taken up my position at
the very end of the year but already from my conversations amongst the team I
can see that 2009 has been a challenging but very productive year for the
team.

We have successfully moved to a new structure designed to
make it easier for our customers to do business with us. We have also been
growing relationships and generally raising the understanding within the
business on what we do. These moves have been well received across the
business.

In addition to this we have also been successful in
winning work from across the group. Most notable is the project to support XXXX
in organising their many thousand documents.
2010 offers a number of
opportunities for us as a team.

I wish you all a safe
and merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Regards

Secret Santa

2009-12-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

I've not had time to blog for some time, but Christmas brings all the jokers out in the office. This years Secret Santa was fairly tame. Tom got a giant inflatable football, which he spent most of the rest of the morning blowing up. Then realising he would have to deflate it to take home, on the bus, he spent most of the afternoon squeezing it to get all the air out again. In the end he got someone to drive him home with it half deflated.

Jason had bumped into Tim in the 24 hour Asda, buying cat-food, in his running kit. Jason was buying his Secret Santa present for Tee, who sits across the way from him. Strangely he opted for a ladies jumper. He came into work early to wrap it and explained that he was going to wait for Tee to wear it, then tell him that he wears women's clothes. Unfortunately for him, as soon as it was un-wrapped, Elaine said "That's a woman's jumper". Tee then went round all the women in the office asking what size jumper they took, with a few funny looks. It was a size 14, but he didn't realise that it was quite large for any of the women in our section. Eventually one of the girls from the 6th floor came down for something, a little larger, who admitted to being a size 12. When she saw the jumper she thought that it was nice and would probably fit her.

With Jason's joke backfiring, he was more miserable to open up his present, which was a ball (meant for exercising with). The trouble with this was that Nev brought him a ball, for playing with in water, last year - which he had moaned about for over a month, since we had decided to do a Secret Santa this year. He was so wound up that he told everyone that he's never going to participate in Secret Santa again.

Course

2009-11-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

I was quite shocked by the guy that has been taking the course I have been on for the last couple of days. He's an old Yorkshire-man in his sixties and for some reason during the coffee breaks, probably because the other people on the course were much younger, he kept coming over and talking to me to ask how I thought the course was going. We got quite chatty and he was telling me all sorts of stuff about where he was going to consult for the rest of the week, and being his own boss he could spend the following week just playing golf.
So during one of the coffee breaks, while we were down one end of the tea-room, he told me that he had been biting his tongue quite a bit over the time we had been on the course. Where he came from there were very few people of different race, and he was used to talking about them in quite derogatory terms. I could understand that the area where I work is quite multi-racial, but he actually came out with the word "n1**er", which shocked me partly became there were no actual black people on the course, only an Indian girl and a mixed-race girl.
I didn't know whether I was happy with him confiding such things to me.
He was quite odd in other ways, such as saying "electroplating" instead of "electrocuting" when we were discussing the Health & Safety element of the course.

Jason's trip

2009-09-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

Before I went on holiday, Jason was telling me about his cousin who had been invited on a hen week holiday in Spain. Jason was telling him he should go, and get him an invite too.

On my return on Monday, Lee told me that Jason had booked the holiday- at last minute- and had gone at the weekend. He had just split from his on/off girlfriend and was enjoying his freedom now. He thought it would be great, just him and his cousin and about ten young ladies.

Lee had got a text from Jason at the airport though saying that the girls were very noisey, I'm not sure that they will last the week with them.

Short shrift

2009-09-10T10:35:00.000-07:00

One of the women in the office has left us in the lurch and gone on maternity leave for four months. So this week we have interviewed five temps to replace her. One of the guys that we saw was tiny and looked like he should still have been at school. He was actually in his twenties and had a previous job before being made redundant. My boss, who was interviewing with me, is quite short anyway, so when I went back up to the office after the interview to ask the others what they thought about the little fella no one could believe he had left school.

I had to add my own thoughts though. That my boss would have had someone who would look up to him.

Jason forgets his clothes

2009-08-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Curiously someone had made Monday dress-down day instead of Friday. Of course about a third of the staff forgot over the weekend and came in their usual clothes. Jason, for one, forgot completely. He’s taken to cycling into work though. He came in late on Monday because he had forgot his trousers, so he had caught a taxi back home and come back with his usual work trousers on. He was a bit unhappy to find two thirds of the staff in jeans. He made us laugh last week though because he had forgot his underpants, so had his cycling shorts on under his trousers. He asked to have a half days holiday for the afternoon because he was so uncomfortable sitting at his desk with them on.

The same theme tune

2009-08-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

I am finding Nev increasingly difficult to take seriously. He talks about motivating the staff, yet seems the least motivated of the bunch, and most active to try and move on. When he gets a bollocking from his manager he always passes this down and tells everyone to cut out the chat and joking around. He always laughs at Jason though when he comes out with one of his stories. But most of all I find him really funny when he is trying to come out with a well known phrase that someone else has obviously used to him, but he can’t remember properly. Today he was passing down a bollocking and came out with:
“We have to all be singing from the same theme tune, or whatever.”

Playing Fast Ball with the boss

2009-07-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

I still get the odd e-mail from my previous boss. I'm not sure if the term fast ball really goes with the word faffing. I think that just using the term fast ball makes him a dickhead:

“Team, please be advised that the attached is a bit of a fast
ball!
There appears to be some confusion of who should be completing
the Diversity Course – Managers, Team Leaders or both.
As it only takes
an hour and all training is good training, save faffing about, can you all
please complete the course before the end of the month.”

Nev's new laptop

2009-07-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

Nev has had his desktop PC replaced with a laptop. He had it for the week before he went on holiday. The first day he was late in because he had to turn round and go home to fetch it. For the rest of the week he was wittering that he was going to forget it one day. On his first day back off holiday, yesterday, he came in asking if there was anyone off on holiday today. I pointed out that Jason was off sitting two exams.

“Good he said, I can use his machine for the day.”

Then sheepishly in a quieter tone:

…”I’ve left my laptop at home.”