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Jul. 31st, 2009 @ 04:01 pm I win
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Here we are then - I've got an hour left at work. August I'm going to basically be on holiday, September and October much the same but with some vague attempt to start writing, and after I've had a rest I'll start trying to put The Plan into action in earnest. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that in the next few weeks as I start to adjust.

But in the meantime, I'm about to leave the job I've been in for 11 years. I've cleared my desk, and the "Sweet Zombie Jesus!" avatar I've used on this post, I've made the wallpaper on this computer to give someone a laugh next week when they use it. Short of missing a couple of people, I'm not feeling particularly emotional about leaving. The other day as I was walking in to work, as I turned the corner and saw the office I had a flashback to starting work here, with 11 years ahead of me, and had a sudden realisation of just how long a period of time that is. All I can say is I'm glad I didn't know at the time what a long haul I was in for. I don't know that I'd change things if I could, I mean I am where I am now and anything else is just funky alternate universes where I turn right instead of left and the Earth is conquered by aliens as a result.

Fearless Leader has never, at any point, even mentioned in passing to me the fact that I'm leaving, and with 50 minutes to go as I type this hasn't made any effort to get in touch to even say goodbye, so there's a sign if you needed one about what a spectacular cunt the man is.¹ And frankly, I think him avoiding the subject comes down to embarrassment. Headless Chicken at least was civil and said goodbye.

But between them I think they have more than enough reason to be embarrassed. Because they never actually intended to make me redundant. After all, redundancy pay depends on how long you've worked there, and 11 years makes for a decent-sized payout they probably didn't really fancy making (if they'd really wanted a redundancy they'd have targetted someone who'd only been here a couple of years and wouldn't have cost them as big a lump sum.) They wanted me to take a "new" job they'd come up with that would involve me coming in at 5am every day, working downstairs for a few hours, then coming back up here to (presumably) do the same work I now do in 8 hours, but in 4. But first they told me my job was in danger to make the shitty alternative look attractive. I know this is what they did because they've done it to others before me. Except I said I'd take the redundancy, which from their reaction was obviously never something they expected to happen.

I've always said that since FL took over the management style has been not to bother getting to know the people here or the work we do, but to presume to tell us how to do it anyway. Well in this case it's come back to bite them, because this whole thing started with them trying to play games with my head, and they didn't know me well enough to see how it might not go the way they wanted. They didn't need to know I had a background in theatre that I've been getting more and more interested in recently, and which I might want to revisit. They didn't even need to know that I've been increasingly unhappy here for the last couple of years. All they really needed to know (and everyone else in the company knew this and would occasionally ask about it) was that my dad died a couple of years ago leaving my sister and I two flats which last year we finally managed to sell. If they'd known that much they might have realised I may have alternatives open to me if I left here, and that using it as a threat against me might not work. But I guess they didn't know that, so here we are.

I don't know if The Plan will work, if I'll be able to make a living writing and/or in theatre or will have to take some other shitty office job sooner or later. But that doesn't really come into today, because today's my last day in this job (by the time I've typed all this, there's now half an hour to go) after 11 years, and the end of the particular batch of office politics I've been describing on this blog since it started. The office politics culminated in this little game the management decided to play with me, and whatever happens next this particular game is one that I win.

¹in fact Fearless Leader is also leaving the company today, and to my knowledge has not spoken to any of his soon-to-be-former employees
Jul. 19th, 2009 @ 08:54 pm Hi, Anxiety!
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As seems to be a theme lately I spent much of Sunday asleep. Whereas normally I seem to dream reassuringly bonkers stuff, today I had no less than three rather disappointingly obvious anxiety dreams about the fact that I'm leaving work in two weeks' time with nothing concrete to go on to. Funny, 'cause when I'm awake so far I've not panicked about it, but obviously when I'm asleep it's on my mind.

First up, last night I dreamed I was cutting my fingernails. While I was clipping the middle finger of my right hand, the nail split precisely in three, with straight lines running down the nail. Two of the pieces came right off, leaving a sliver of nail along the side. The bare patch of skin felt tender but not painful, and I was left wondering whether to try and pull off the remaining piece as well.

Then I had an afternoon nap and dreamed I was in the office on a Monday, on the phone to a very angry customer who was demanding I get hold of back issues of some obscure magazine for the last couple of months. She's phoned every single Monday asking for the same thing, and even though I'd called the publisher every week to be told they pulped the old issues and didn't have any stock, the customer was telling me to keep calling them and get hold of the issues from somewhere.

Finally, I woke up from my nap and promptly fell back asleep again to find myself having successfully left work and produced one play, and having on the back of it been commissioned by some reputably company (possibly the Young Vic) to direct a new musical they were putting on. I think one of the characters was a kid because we were at a primary school looking for child actors. The school was a series of virtually identical, interconnected buildings that felt familiar, either because it was a mix of different buildings in reality or because I've dreamt it before. I needed the loo (at least that's realistic) but not particularly urgently. I'd entered the building about halfway along and was moving towards the reception area. There wasn't a gents' where I expected it, so I ended up back at reception where there were two small toilets up a step. But when I went into the gents' it was full of old packing material and I couldn't use it, so had to try and find somewhere else.

Funnily enough, although they're all pretty classic anxiety scenarios, I didn't feel particularly stressed by any of them, except a bit during the middle one. Maybe that's a good sign? Stressful times ahead but I can cope with them? Answers on a postcard or an "internet."
Jul. 11th, 2009 @ 08:49 pm Limbo
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No, not the dance, the state of being neither one thing nor the other. That's kinda how I feel at the moment, with another three weeks to go at work. I don't have any plans for this weekend or next, which can be a bit boring: As part of The Plan, the idea is I'm going to be using these kinds of weekends to get extra writing done. It makes sense - there's more people about doing stuff, so it'll be easier to do shopping etc in the week and ensconce myself at home at the weekend typing up hopefully-hilarious dialogue. I just hope I can get into the mindframe to do it, because at the moment I'm nowhere near it. A month ago I could have got started straight away, but I guess all the getting messed around at work has got in the way.

I think I will be able to get started, hopefully a couple of weeks into my sabbatical. I'm keeping busy in the first few weeks anyway to clear my head, including lots of theatre (obviously) and a trip to visit friends I haven't seen for a couple of years. So I'm looking forward to all that. In fact at the moment I've got into the habit of every so often picking up my phone and looking at the calendar, at the things I've got planned from August onwards to cheer myself up - it's become like a comfort blanket or a nervous twitch. Most of them are theatre trips of course, but after a few weeks I also want to start going to the gym, partly to get fitter and partly to add structure to my days.

Meanwhile I seem to be sleeping a hell of a lot on these quiet weekends (although the muggy weather probably isn't helping with that.) Even starting a blog post seems like a lot of effort (though as you can probably tell once I start I keep going...) Don't worry, this isn't me getting depressed and thinking I'm doing the wrong thing by leaving work (that's not to say I'm not due a massive panic as it gets closer, I think we can assume that's going to happen.) But at the moment I'm quietly confident that once I've put some distance between myself and my current work situation I'll be able to start work on The Control Room. In fact I recently came up with a completely new ending for the play which I'm still not sure whether I want to use or not (it could be construed as what the Simpsons writers call "a screw-you to the audience.") But at the moment I think still being involved in office politics means I'm not ready to take a step back and write about it.
Jun. 15th, 2009 @ 04:25 pm A delay to The Plan
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Not entirely surprising, this, but the start of The Plan to be my own boss and try writing a play will have to wait a bit longer: I've now got my official last day at work and it's the 31st of July - a month later than I'd hoped. It's not a major setback and like I say it's not unexpected. The good news is this is a firm date: I pretty much told Headless Chicken that they've been dicking me around long enough with this so the least they can do is allow me to make my plans for the future with a definite date in mind.

The other good news is the extent to which Headless Chicken can no longer even try to cover up what a spectacular fuckup they've made of things. See, if you try to mess around with people sometimes they turn the tables and mess around with you instead.
May. 7th, 2009 @ 01:14 pm Who's the boss?
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Well, I've done what I've been planning to all week, as Fearless Leader and his deputy Headless Chicken have proven they were doing exactly what everyone suspected: Trying to play mind games with me. After last week's threat of possible redundancy, we speculated that they in fact had some shitty alternative job they wanted me to do instead, and figured leaving me to stew for a week would make me jump at it. And what happens today? Headless Chicken calls me into his office to say that I and three others on the shortlist to go can apply for a new position they're creating, working 5am to 1pm. That's 5am folks. I don't drive, so we're looking at either a Night Bus into work every day, or cycling in the middle of the night. In the circumstances I think it shows real professionalism that I didn't actually use the words "fuck that for a game of soldiers."

Of course FL and HC aren't (thank fuck) among the three people who read this blog so they wouldn't have spotted how excited the prospect of getting away from here made me. They wouldn't have noticed the network of support I have who've been encouraging me to at least try and take my writing further. Something I'm now in a position to do. It might come to nothing, but we won't be able to say I didn't give it a go. Between HC's threat last week and the meeting today, I've spoken to a lot of people, including my sister who insisted I don't change my mind about wanting to leave, and it's time for me not to be the sensible one for a change. But what I can't shake is speaking to my friend Alex (not the Evil one) last week. I mentioned I'd been working here 10 years and she said that's not possible, only to realise it coincides with how long she's been married so it is a decade. "Before you know it, it'll be 20 years..." Now if that's not a sentence to haunt me into making my move, what is?

But like I say, FL and HC probably thought they were uniquely clever in coming up with a little mind game that'd have me begging to work unsociable hours. So me happily saying I'd take the redundancy and let the other three keep their jobs came as a surprise - he even admitted as much. Oh, what's wrong? Did that interfere with the cunning plan? Turns out you might be the boss of me here, but not when it comes to the rest of my life. Give me a shake-up if that's what you want, but don't be surprised if I don't settle exactly how you expect me to.
May. 1st, 2009 @ 01:05 pm Find out after these messages
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So things are either about to change significantly for me or... not. At the end of this year I'll be turning 35 and over the two-and-a-half days I was at home ill I spent a lot of time idly pondering over how I'd like my life to be different. What'll probably not come as much of a surprise is that I'd rather I was working in a very different area; ideally making theatre rather than just watching it, but at this point any change would probably be for the best.

Given that these things have been at the foreground for me lately, it's hard not to see it as a sign that yesterday afternoon Deputy Fearless Leader (aka Headless Chicken) asked me into his office to let me know my job's no longer secure. Once Customer Services moves to the other office they don't think there's enough work to keep me here, and unless they come up with an alternative they're going to make me redundant. I'll be told what's going to happen "in a week, or maybe earlier than that, or later," i.e. "feel free to sit around not knowing what's going on until the fancy takes us to put you out of your misery." I'm not quite sure what the point is of giving me this warning that I may or may not be losing my job; I just think the rumours about Headless Chicken actually enjoying letting people go are true, and he's going for the American Idol approach of increasing tension just for shits and giggles. "And the person who's going home is... going to find out after these messages."

Now the opening paragraph's probably tipped you off that I'm not, as would make more sense in These Uncertain TimesTM, desperately keeping my fingers crossed that they'll find something for me to do. Instead the possibility of being made redundant feels like I'm up for parole, as in god knows what's out there for me but at least it isn't this. Unsurprisingly, the various people Round These Parts and elsewhere who've been telling me for years to try my hand at writing professionally see this as my chance to do so, and I can't help thinking the same way. I already have a very clear plan of what to do if and when I leave here, and it doesn't involve instant job-hunting (I'm lucky in that I have the inheritance money as a cushion for a while.) There's no point going into anything more definite until I know one way or the other, but after this jolt I can't help thinking... If they do say they're keeping me on, should I cut my losses and go anyway? My heart's not been in it for years, and the thought of at least trying to do something better, somewhere else, has had me more giddily excited than I've been for a long time.
Feb. 2nd, 2009 @ 05:36 pm Snow laughing matter
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I'm blaming Boris. For eight years while Ken Livingstone was Mayor I had to listen to anyone who didn't like him say "I blame Ken" every time something they didn't like happened, and I reserve the right to do the same to his gibbering successor. And since Boris became Mayor the buses have been fucked (not surprising when his main public transport policy is "I don't like bendy buses, I don't think they're safe even though statistically they're safer than the alternatives but never mind about that let's get rid of them!") Last night I mentioned the snow; 24 hours later it's still snowing and London has responded by lying down and playing dead. No public transport. No buses, which is frankly batshit 'cause cars and trucks are happily using the roads, but not a single bus could get going this morning? If I had any sense I'd have said fuck it and stayed at home. Apparently I don't have any sense because I walked into work - over an hour and a half what with having to tread carefully on the ice.

Once there Karen and I suggested to Fearless Leader that we run tomorrow's labels in case we can't get in at all tomorrow, but he said he'd risk it because he was confident it'll get better by the morning (presumably he got this from all the weather reports saying it'll get worse by the morning.) So fuck it, if there's no buses tomorrow I'm staying in bed, on his own head be it. We got the most urgent stuff done as soon as possible, and most people left early. FL asked me and Karen to stay until 2:30 in case the phones rang because we're the people who live the nearest. We ended up leaving before then because the snow was coming down very heavily and the last thing we wanted was to be stuck there. FL had said he'd pay for us to get cabs home, which is all very well except by 1ish all the cab drivers had fucked off home - we phoned every cab company we could think of and the best offer we got was a 2-hour wait on time and a half. So back on foot it was, another hour and a half through the snow...

So it turns out the snow was even less fun than I'd predicted - I was ankle-deep in sludge at times and my legs are sore from having to tread oh-so-carefully for over three hours (I had some nasty slips but managed not to actually fall over.) Anyway, I hope things are back to normal-ish tomorrow - not 'cause of work, but I've got theatre - A Midsummer Night's Dream, oh the irony.
Nov. 12th, 2008 @ 08:03 pm He must breathe through his arse
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My mum's getting married tomorrow, in a ceremony that redefines the phrase "low-key" - I get the impression she only just about got around to telling me about it, when she remembered she'd need a couple of witnesses. In fact she let me know by text, adding "if you can't get the afternoon off work, don't worry about it."

When she first got divorced Mum was adamant she never wanted to get married again, and has been perfectly happy just to live with her other half for the best part of the last decade. But as she's getting older she gets more worried that if anything happened to her he wouldn't have any rights to stay in the house, and as far as I can tell that's the sole reason for the trip to the registry office tomorrow. Knowing her, she'll probably be back at work on Friday.

I, however, will not because I figured if I was having Thursday off I might as well have Friday too and make it a long weekend. So as far as I'm concerned it's now the weekend, yay! Frankly it couldn't have come at a better time because by the end of today I was on the verge of throttling one of the people at work. As well as the usual barrage of information about how he'd have to take lots of work home with him (because he's too busy in the office TALKING ALL THE TIME to actually get it done,) and how the sun shines out of his daughters' arses (fatherly pride is one thing, but with the amount of detail we get I'm dreading the day we hear about his eldest's first smear test,) today we also got a running DVD commentary on everything he was doing. And not the good kind of DVD commentary where you find out interesting stuff - I mean the kind where someone walks into a room and the director says "and now he's walking into the room..." The man can talk for so long without pausing for oxygen, he must breathe through his arse. By the end of the day when I was trying to show someone how to do some of my work while I'm away (which he was already struggling with) only to get interrupted mid-sentence, every sentence with some sarky comment about how it didn't really need doing anyway, I was on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

...And relax. Which I now can, 'cause I don't have to put up with any of that again until Monday. Frankly, I expected a bit more reaction from Vanessa to the fact that she'll have to get through two days at work without me - howling, hair-pulling, loss of bowel control, that's about the acceptable minimum, but there was none of that. Maybe she was putting a brave face on it.

In the meantime I've got my mum's wedding tomorrow, at which I'll get to see my sister, who finally escaped from all the red tape and came back from Greece last Sunday. A couple of people have said I must be a bit weirded out by having to go to my own mum's wedding, but to be honest it's barely crossed my mind. Maybe it's because they've been together so long they might as well be married already; or maybe it's because my mum herself has been so blasé about it so far that it's hard for anyone else to get too excitable.
Nov. 8th, 2008 @ 03:04 pm Theatre is good for you
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For once my finances and the theatre trips I've wanted to make have worked together nicely, as just as the first bit of cash from the flat sales in Greece has come in, so a ludicrous amount of shows have been announced that I've wanted to see. Now I'm in the slightly insane position of having at least one show booked every week between now and the start of March. Plus a few big events after that, like the Sir Ian McKellen/Patrick Stewart Waiting for Godot, the Jude Law Hamlet, the Simon Russell Beale/Ethan Hawke Winter's Tale and Cherry Orchard and of course the final performance of Avenue Q.

Still, I can now justify the spending in that theatre is clearly good for your health, as demonstrated by [info]vanessaw this week. All day Thursday at work she was looking miserable and felt like she had the 'flu coming on. Admittedly part of her not looking great was down to her having cut her own hair and ended up with a mullet, but that's Vanessa for you. Still, she went home to get changed and when I saw her a few hours later to get a coffee before going to the Old Vic, she'd brightened up and didn't even feel fluey any more. And she admitted it was totally down to the fact that as she was getting ready to come out, she was looking forward to the second leg of The Norman Conquests and spending some time with that mad group of characters again. After enjoying the show as much as she'd hoped, her good mood then continued into yesterday, and she looked a lot brighter at work despite having a very long, tedious job to do, made longer and more tedious by the constant phone calls from Fearless Leader asking if she was finished yet (the first call, of course, coming roughly 5 minutes after she started, despite her having just told him it'd take her at least 3 hours.)

Her good mood's still there today, which I know because I texted her - actually because I was worried the therapeutic effects of the theatre might have worn off. You know when you start dreaming despite not being quite asleep yet? That happened to me last night, just as I was dropping off I had a very sudden, quick image of Vanessa standing inside one of the glass doors at work (I was on the outside) wearing a long blue coat and looking sad. Despite not being superstitious that sort of thing makes me nervous so I made sure to text her this morning to make sure nothing bad happened last night. Turns out she's fine and still in a fluffy mood. So she was just invading my dreams to cause mischief. Troublemaker!
Sep. 8th, 2008 @ 07:53 pm Paint the whole world with a rainbow
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If you read my blog posts even when they don't have rude pictures in them you may recall that at the weekend I tried to brighten up the drabness of work by buying some multicoloured pens to write with at the office, inspired by Karen's big bag of mad colours.

This morning, as soon as I walked into the office Karen said "Nick, I've got a present for you!"

Aw, see, once in a blue moon someone at work does something nice. Now I have more coloured pens than I know what to do with although, as I'd suspected, half of them are too pale to actually write with. Seriously, I think the yellow one must need lemon juice or something applied to it before you can see what's been written.
Sep. 6th, 2008 @ 02:31 pm Juice, colour therapy and the aggressive yawner
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Instead of coming straight home after getting a haircut this morning, I took a diversion and went by the retail park to pop into ASDA and Staples. I tend to buy juice in ASDA rather than Sainsbury's because it's cheaper and they have more varieties. Of course Sainsbury's juice doesn't tend to explode, which I have known the ASDA stuff to do, but I guess it's swings and roundabouts.

I mainly wanted to go into Staples though, to buy some pens for work. No, things haven't got so bad they're making us buy our own stationery, but obviously we just get the boring blue, black and red ones from the catalogue. And it probably says a lot about how desperate I am to break up the tedium at the office that small pleasures like writing in lots of different colours helps me get through the day. Even different shades of blue/black/red cheer me up a bit, but throw in some green and purple and you're really talking. Karen started the rot this week by buying herself two packs of multicoloured biros, 20 per pack, two for £2 from Woolworths. I might have got off my arse and got the same thing from Woolies myself 'cause, you know, bargain, but a lot of the pens are "unusual" colours, and after a week of trying to decipher Karen's notes in yellow ink, or pink ink on a pink Post-It, I decided to opt for less pens for my money, but ones that could actually be visible to the naked eye. Yes, I'm aware how desperately sad this whole paragraph is.

I've been yawning a lot this week. Maybe I'm tired eh? I yawned a lot in the second half of Dorian Gray, which wasn't entirely the show's fault. I've got into the habit of going for a coffee before the theatre, especially if I'm going after work. That way if it's a bit slow to start, I've got a bit of caffeine in my system helping me concentrate. But there was unexpected traffic on the way to the Tube station which meant I didn't arrive as early as usual, and once I got to Islington the coffee shop I like is in the opposite direction to Sadler's Wells so I had to do without my caffeine fix. Sadly I seem to have inherited my dad's way of yawning, which if left unchecked can degenerate into a weird hissing sound, so I have to be careful. Still, none of my yawns this week came close to the terror I saw when I was walking from ASDA to Staples. This tall, late-50s man was yawning right at me in what appeared to be an aggressive way. It was all teeth, and made me think that's what it must be like if Tom Baker was trying to eat your head.

Unsurprisingly, writing this post is making me yawn. It's probably making you yawn as well, although maybe out of boredom. I think I'll have a coffee.
Aug. 18th, 2008 @ 08:27 pm Everybody's dead, Dave
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First day back at work today, half the office had gone on holiday, so it was stressful but I survived. The closest I got to not surviving was one of [info]vanessaw's customers, calling to see if I could get her any more of these back issues she'd asked for last week. Vanessa had sent me an email warning this woman might call, and that she was just disappointed that we couldn't get everything she wanted, but we'd sent all it was possible for us to get.

So I paraphrased Vanessa's email, letting her know that what we'd sent her was all that was still in print.
"I asked if she could get this Chinese paper, could she get that?"
"We don't have any titles other than the ones we've already sent you."
"The article I wanted was from the 16th of September last year."
"We don't have any titles other than the ones we've already sent you."
"But Vanessa said it didn't publish on that date so it might be the issue of the 17th."
"We don't have any titles other than the ones we've already sent you."
"The article was on the website."
"We don't have any titles other than the ones we've already senzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Ten minutes of this. It was like the Chocolate Factory confusion all over again. Or the first episode of Red Dwarf when Holly has to keep repeating "Everybody's dead, Dave."

I finally got her off the phone by saying I'd email Vancouver to ask if they have a title we already know they don't have, before getting back to her to say that they don't have it. I may even bother to email Vancouver, once I've got the rest of my inbox cleared. Which'll be roughly this time next year.
Aug. 1st, 2008 @ 08:02 pm What can go wrong, will go wrong
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The last day at work before a holiday always drags, and in my case it always seems to be accompanied by a catalogue of disasters that make it seem as if 5pm will never arrive (or it'll come and go and I'll still be stuck trying to fix stuff.) Pretty much every printer in the building decided to act up which kept me running around all afternoon, but biggest hassle was the phone lines dying at lunchtime. It's up to me to get them fixed, which meant calling Head Office on my mobile. Fearless Leader is on holiday so the only work mobile available was [info]vanessaw's, which means she's the one they'll be contacting with any updates. No, it hadn't been fixed by the end of the day, but I've left all the information available for people in case it's not sorted when they get in on Monday. But now it's officially not my problem (and as a bonus, no calls from annoying customers all afternoon, result!)

I managed to get away on time which means yay, I'm now on holiday for two weeks! Not that it feels like it just yet, in fact it doesn't even feel like the weekend. It'll probably kick in tomorrow once I've got the boring stuff like laundry and supermarket shopping out of the way, and my time will officially be my own. Failing that, as of Sunday when I start a frankly ludicrous amount of theatre trips, it's bound to sink in.

In the meantime, I didn't sleep well last night so I'll probably start my holiday with a very rock'n'roll early night.
Jul. 31st, 2008 @ 10:25 pm Book review: Then We Came to the End
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Joshua Ferris' debut novel Then We Came to the End comes garlanded with praise about how hilarious it is, but personally while the tone is one of comedy, it didn't raise much of a smile. Perhaps because the subject matter is too close to home: The action takes place in an office building, and like the title is narrated in the first person plural by the workers of an advertising firm, all under the constant threat of redundancy. While this conceit is interesting and makes for a tone of uncertainty about who's next for the chop, it does mean the characters feel underdeveloped, and hard to care about much. The only section where the novel really flies is in an interlude halfway through, where we follow the seemingly distant boss on the eve of her surgery for breast cancer. Here it becomes genuinely involving and the change of pace is welcome.

Maybe the problem with Then We Came to the End is that it's too accurate - I guess after spending all day at work dealing with petty office politics, I don't need a fictional version in my leisure time as well.
Jun. 20th, 2008 @ 01:44 pm The Management
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So as of today it seems I've got a promotion, on paper at least. Fearless Leader wanted to have a meeting with me to discuss job titles - largely because the previous FL had a tendency to change everyone's title around whenever he got bored, so I wasn't even sure what my current job title actually was. From now on I'm Systems & Operations Support Manager. Needless to say this doesn't come with any extra money. And I'm still not actually managing anyone. I can't help suspecting there might be an element here of FL making up for holding interviews for a new management job which I would have liked to have gone for, and not actually telling anyone here about the vacancy until after it was too late. Also bringing my title in line with Martin's (in one of his pointless rejigs, FL Mk1 accidentally gave Martin a job title with "manager" in it; a couple of years later he noticed and tried to change it back, but Martin's not completely stupid and was having none of it.)

Anyway, now I'm a manager, although in name only. Still, it'll look better on my CV when I've finally had enough and decide to look for another job. Although I'll probably gloss over the "Systems Manager" part - it might give people the false impression that I actually know anything about computers.

In other news, [info]vanessaw blurted out to FL that I write theatre reviews on this blog, thus alerting him to its existence. Cue awkward silence of the "Well I'm not going to actually ask you where to find the blog," "well I'm not going to offer" variety. How shall we punish Vanessa for this indiscretion? Perhaps a sustained campaign of creeping up on her and making her jump, hair-pulling and insults is in order. Oh wait - I do that to her already.
May. 30th, 2008 @ 11:19 pm This is me playing the world's smallest violin
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Some good news for a change at work today: One of our competitors has gone bust and it's looking good for us getting the majority of their customers.

Yes, yes, a nicer response would be to feel sorry for the people (no longer) working there, but my reaction might have been less schadenfreude-tastic if it wasn't for the fact that most of those customers were stolen from us in the first place. Either stolen outright or, in a "mutually beneficial" deal they worked out with the previous Fearless Leader, they let us continue supplying the (maximum hassle, minimum profit) daily papers, and took over the (minimum hassle, maximum profit) glossy magazines for themselves. They've been ripping us off for the best part of a decade so no, perhaps I won't shed any tears for them.

And they had a bloody stupid company name as well.
May. 15th, 2008 @ 07:17 pm Voice Post: Office rant + You're Hired! (for bedroom duties)
Shifty
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“This might be the second time this voice post turns up 'cause I don't know what happened last time I tried to do it. I couldn't even record - er, type up earlier, which is why I was doing it like this in the first place.

Can't be bothered going through it all again but basically it was this fascinating story about work and how Fearless Leader had a barney about everybody being on the phone so he had to wait a hundred rings before anybody picked it up. And he had a go at Chrissie, who everybody likes so you really don't do that. And then he got a bit apologetic 'cause he realised that you really don't do that 'cause everybody likes Chrissie so, you know. I'm repeating myself quite a lot here. Yeah, Vanessa wasn't even there, so she doesn't even know about this.

In totally unrelated news, a little while ago I saw Simon Ambrose from last year's Apprentice in the Caffe Nero and he was looking very fit, and I definitely would.

The end.”

Transcribed by: [info]nick730
Mar. 13th, 2008 @ 01:46 pm Now you see them
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Gah! This has been a particularly shit week at the office, with some bloody thing or other happening every day to hold us up and make sure I don't get to go home on time. Today it's two steps forward, one step back, as one of the new system's quirks that's been slowing me down massively seems to have finally been fixed. On the downside all the documents in my PC's shared folder (i.e. most of them) have vanished into thin air. The folder's empty, there's no indication of there ever having been anything in it, and our IT consultancy's utterly stumped. It doesn't even seem as if my own PC is to blame - there's something similar happening on Martin's computer, and it seems like whatever bug is responsible found its way to my shared folder over the network and went to work.

If this turns out to be a virus I will not be impressed - our current antivirus software is so intrusive it kicks everyone out of whatever they're doing at least once a day, with an "Important Update!" message. If it's being that much of a pain in the arse and not even blocking viruses properly, it definitely needs to go to the naughty step. Meanhwile, all the files relating to my electronic invoices have disappeared so I don't know where to send them out to. Which means a lot of angry customers pretty soon - although I guess it keeps me from having to come into the office on Sunday to do it. Well, have to look at the bright side!
Mar. 4th, 2008 @ 09:18 pm Going clip-clippety-clop on the stair
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Current Music: The Thrills, "Whatever Happened to Corey Haim?"
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I was talking to someone in the office this morning when what did I see out of the corner of my eye?



That'll be the mouse that was crawling around in one of the light fittings in the main office. Jo didn't actually jump onto a table and scream (in fairness that would only have got her closer to the mouse) but she was scared of it, Karen started cooing and saying how lovely it was, Wendy suggested switching the light on and nuking it, and Chris, who was sitting right underneath it, just kept on working as if nothing was going on.

Fearless Leader came in and made lots of pronouncements about catching it with a humane trap and white chocolate, while Karen kept repeating "if you kill it, I'll kill you." I think all the excitement might have got to the mouse, who did a piss in the light casing.

Sadly I don't have a big exciting finale for this story 'cause I had to go make a completely pointless visit to our other office near London Bridge, and by the time I got back FL had caught the mouse in a box and let it out the back door. I was assured it had been alive at the time which is just as well because Karen hardly needs another reason to kill Fearless Leader.

Now how long before the mouse finds its way back onto the roof, and through the hole in the ceiling where it got into the light fitting in the first place?
Feb. 15th, 2008 @ 01:39 pm It's the ambiguous name that's causing the confusion
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Current Mood: at the end of my tether
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The show I went to see last night, La Cage Aux Folles, was on at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Granted, this could be an arty choice of name for a venue, but if I tell you that the building used to be something else before it was an arts complex, I like to think my readers are bright enough to have an educated guess what that was without having to Google it. Sadly, the same can't be said for the people I work with. When I said I needed to get away from work on time yesterday 'cause I was going to the theatre near London Bridge, Martin asked me which theatre.

"It's the Menier Chocolate Factory, on Southwark Street."
"Oh I think I know that, has it been there a long time?"
"No, it's only a few years old, it used to be a chocolate factory."
"It used to be a pub, didn't it?"
"No, it used to be a chocolate factory."
"The Globe, wasn't it?"
"No, it used to be a chocolate factory."
"The Globe was a pub that had a theatre, it was very good."
"It's a theatre now, but it used to be a chocolate factory."
"Some of those pub theatres are quite good!"
"It's a theatre, a restaurant and an art gallery now. It wasn't a pub or a theatre before that though. It. Was. A. Chocolate. Factory."

While I've been typing this, he's been nattering incessantly at me (he knows I'm on lunch) about a mistake with the labels, desperately trying to come up with a solution. He eventually decided on how we can fix it - a solution I told him about ten minutes ago.

*head explodes*