Catch up

Hello strangers. How’s tricks? It’s been a long time I know, 3 months to the day coincidentally. It might be that you’ve all given up on me by now and this will never get read but I’ll chance it all the same. I’ve finally reached a point where I find myself bored and genuinely with nothing to do so I thought to myself “what do I do when I am in this situation?....What was it I used to do?....I’m sure there was something”. And there it was – the blog.

Good old trusty blog, a friend for many a month and my saviour in the madness. How I have neglected you – will you ever take me back?

I suppose there is 3 months of gossip and scandal to catch you up on? Where do I start?

Well CJ’s gone (start with a bombshell – get their attention). She’s upped and left and gawn to pastures with less of a commute. We all saw it coming, there were long periods of illness, she was signed off work for 2 weeks, a lot of “working from home” and then I’m back from my holidays to find she’s handed in her notice! “Oh the commute was just too much in the end”. Really? You never mentioned it before! Only took her about a year and a half to finally come to that conclusion. Personally I think there are other reasons she’s not letting on but we’ll never know as from last Thursday she no longer works in the nut house.

I couldn’t make the leaving drinks unfortunately. Actually quite a few people couldn’t make it and no one was around to sign the card and to be honest I don’t think many people were that bothered. Luthor’s goodbye and thank you speech was not very heart felt and genuine and a little cringey and CJ’s ‘thank you guys’ speech was even worse. Really emphasised how uncomfortable she is in social situations and what a weirdo she is. She spent the month of her resignation chasing me about asking what she should do for her leaving drinks. Eventually we just planned it for her and sent her an email.

So no more strapping her handbag to her side wherever she goes, no more excessive use of the “speech mark” sign in meetings, no more driving me nuts on a daily basis. Think I’m going to miss her!

Saffa has also moved on to pastures new, namely the 3^rd floor and the legal team. We still see her from time to time and she was about at lunch yesterday. Don’t think we’ll get rid of her that easily.

Loads and loads of new people have started. Only 3 months but a lot happens round here in that time! Ms Rigsby is back from her travels and is still alive amazingly enough. We’ve had 4 temps in her absence and 50% of them were feckin’ useless. We are now back with Ms R, a new boy who rubs his legs a lot in a rather strange fashion and we lost one for a while but she’s back next week after some travelling of her own. We have a new bald man with a very egg shaped head which fascinates me as well although he is very new so don’t know much about him yet.

I got to go to the Cape Town office finally which was all very exciting and travel business class which was possibly the most exciting bit of it all! Champagne? Don’t mind if I do… Gunner managed to wangle us a trip there and the boy certainly done well on that one! I’ll have to describe my 5 days in the Western Cape to you in more detail another time….

What else, what else? Managed to piss the head of finance off inadvertently so now I get evils in the corridor and may possibly never be done a favour by the accounts team again. Oh how we laughed at that one (once we’d stopped going “shit, shit shit!”). Celebrated my 3^rd hobbit birthday yesterday with Andre putting on a lovely spread once again. Yep number 3 - it’s 3 years next month. Jesus christ on a bike.

Speaking of bikes I saw a man cycle past me on a penny farthing at lunch time today just outside the office. Random.

Had a Team event at a very nice 5 star hotel which was badly run and made all the admin staff feel like worthless plebs (go team!) but on the upside the nibbles were nice, the free bar lovely and I managed to beat the boys 3 times over at pool and steal a bottle of red wine (Gunner’s idea honest) when the waiter’s back was turned.

Ginger’s about to pop and goes on maternity leave in 2 weeks (if she makes it that far) and the management have failed to get anyone in to cover her maternity leave. I know, they only had 7 months notice so it’s more than we could expect…. Currently boy rubbing trousers is due to step in with no experience whatsoever so basically that means when Ginger goes I will be left to train him and do all of the work as well. Don’t get me started on that one – that’s a whole weeks worth of blogs in the form of rants!

I think that is everything. Well a snapshot at any rate. I’ll try and go back and elaborate on the more interesting points another time.

So it’s still a nut house being run by a bunch of monkeys with the odd cake and celebratory LOTR day thrown in for good measure. On that level nothing changes and probably never will.

Right had better crack on. Wish you were here an all that.

The Ultimatum

So here’s the deal, as you may have gathered I’ve been a tad busy in the mad house the past 2 or 3…or 4? weeks. This new CrapBags role is all well and good but they seem to have neglected to address the fact I am also still doing my other job at the same time. This has in turn resulted in a large rise in work load, stress levels and the hours I am working.

Never thought you’d see the day did you? Nancy actually busy and earning her crust, busting her nutsack (if I had one) for the great corporation. No more dull days, hours spent on Facebook or finding ways to fill the hours as I ridicule my fellow work colleagues. That’s right, I’ve sold out! Fallen in with the rest of the rat race.

Ah don’t worry I haven’t totally sold out, I still check Facebook regularly, send personal emails, take the odd extended lunch break on a Friday and milk the work socials free bar for all I can. There will always be a touch of Clueless about the office, I’m not giving in completely.

Anyway, the point of this long winded yarn is that unfortunately one thing that has fallen foul is my dear blog, there just simply isn’t enough minutes in the day for me to set aside some time and tell you about the craziness that’s been occurring. And to be honest, now I’m so busy a lot of what I would blog about might end up being rants about work and eventually that gets boring (if it hasn’t done so already) and I would hate to become that of all things.

So I propose the following….

As I am still under the belief that it is only my mother and a small handful of people who are tuning into read I don’t think that there are many of you out there who have been pining away for the next Nancy instalment. I.e. You can go on living your day to day lives without me and are probably reading this now thinking “oh yeah…I think I remember she works with Hobbits right?” So if this blog shut up shop forever it would be a sad end to a fun journey but none the less the world would keep on turning. But if there are some die-hard fans out there who would like me to carry on blogging when I can (I was thinking once or twice a month – I’ll prioritise I promise!) then I shall do that.

So cast your vote. If you want to keep reading instalments about the freaks and me then please let me know by making a comment. If you don’t then I’ll assume its because you’ve given up reading a while back or have left me for another blogger. You blaggard you.

You have one week, then the final decision will be made. The fate of Resemblance to Real Persons rests in your hands.

Ireland

Well I had my lovely 17 days away from work and then as soon as I return I am whisked away to the Emerald Isle! Over to the offices in Ireland to help out the poor wee Paddy’s and their CrapBags issues, of which it appears there are many. Gunner managed to bag us the trip and so one afternoon I am booking the flights and then the next morning I am wandering around my bedroom at 4.30am bleary eyed and trying to finish packing for a 6.30am flight.

Now the idea of jetting off to Ireland for 3 days makes it sound like I have finally made it in this corporate lifestyle of mine. Next stop air miles and business class and long lunches paid for by the director of a big wig company. This could possibly be a misleading image as the trip actually consisted of an economy seat on a budget airline, a hotel on an industrial estate, an office on the same industrial estate, a dual carriageway, Thai restaurant and Spa supermarket. Hmmmm, not really what I had in mind.

The ridiculously early flight was so that we could be in the office by 9.30am. Entirely unnecessary but we have to look as though we’re not just going over for a jolly (really if I wanted a jolly there are other parts of Ireland I would have picked). Luckily the company at least paid for a cab to collect me at 5am and take me to the airport which played some Linkin Park for most of the way. The flight was pretty uneventful, during which I read the in-flight magazine and nodded off. A couple of times letting my head loll forward in quite an embarrassing manner. At least I didn’t drool.

The Ireland office is something out of an early 90’s Wall Street movie, a small space of rat run corridors and hideously green partitions. We managed to find a couple of spare desks which had been neglected and so half the gear sat there didn’t work. My VDU was fairly temperamental and if I picked up my coffee cup would sometimes fizz and switch off.

The people over there seemed nice enough, all very friendly. Although this was mixed with a certain amount of rage, frustration and madness over CrapBags. As expected we were there for people to vent at over the problems they had with the system but I did get the opportunity to actually help a few people. I think 3 days ma have been slightly over the top though, it all could have been done in a day. There was one woman in particular who I am now regretting being introduced to who is a very posh version of Andre. She says “orf” instead of “off”. That’s how posh she is. Not posh Irish, posh English. Not sure what a posh Irish person would sound like. But I digress… This posh Andre turned out to be a pain in the butt and at one point I was able to use the hideously green partitions to my advantage and hide from her while she was harassing Gunner. He got his own back later on though when she cornered me between the photocopier and watercooler.

The hotel was nice enough, a lot nicer than I expected actually as the outside makes it look like a mustard coloured council office. For some reason no one could explain to me there was a life sized model of a cow with a jockey on it in the reception area. The room was standard and boiling hot, as all hotel rooms in the UK are and I had a half nice view of the mountains.

When I said earlier that there was the hotel, office, Thai restaurant and Spa I wasn’t joking. That is all there is there. Oh sorry and a sandwich shop for lunch times. Therefore you have the option of the Thai or the hotel restaurant for dinner. Luckily me and Gunner were only there 2 nights so it was one and then the other (all on expenses of course) but I feel sorry for some of the guys who are there on a more permanent basis from the London office. Take one such gent who spends at least 3-4 days most weeks there. He comes in from the south coast every Monday and checks into the hotel and goes home on the Friday. Most of the time he’s the only one in the hotel from the company so he has no drinking buddies like me and Gunner for the few days we were there. His life consists of the following:

Check into hotel

Walk 1 minute to the office

Complete working day with optional visit to sandwich shop or Spa at lunchtime (20 second walk away)

Walk 1 minute back to hotel

Dine alone in Thai restaurant or hotel

Drink at bar / watch TV in room

Bed

Some days, if it is raining heavily then he walks through the hotel car park to the adjoining office car park so he doesn’t have to even go outside.

After 3 days I was depressed, I think if I was doing it more long term I might have grown a drinking problem, an addiction to bad Irish soap operas and aversion to Asian food. Poor sod.

So they ranted and they raved and they thanked us for our help and we returned on another budget airline and I managed to stay awake for that one. When I arrived at the airport there was a man with a sign with my name on and who kindly took my bag and carried it to the cab and dropped me at my door. That’s definitely a first for me. Next stop Cape Town….

War of the Roses was a walk in the park…

What a week, what a week. It’s been long and frustrating but there is light at the end of the tunnel and that light is in the form of 16 days (yes 16 – count them people) off of work!! Hurrah! Annual leave + bank holidays + Royal wedding = much time off for Nancy!

As from 5pm today I am officially outta here!

For not the first time I will be glad to see the back of this place, it’s not been the best week and the eejits here are driving me nuts. No one seems to have logged into any common sense this week and stupid questions are the theme of every day. Everything working arse about face and no one really knowing what’s going on.

Pretty normal then.

I’ve been trying to help out this poor new woman in one of the projects – Curly (it’s a play on her name and her hair…that sounds a little wrong…anyway…) as she hasn’t been given CrapBags access yet. She started 2 weeks ago and was told “you won’t get any training do the on-line stuff and then you’re on your own.” Brilliant. Welcome to our company we promise we do care about our staff but not enough to actually train you up properly or give you the tools to do this yourself.

So Curly has obediently done the on-line training and then called me. She needs help with doing some requisitions on the system. She’s nervous about it, 1^st time, CrapBags virgin and so needs some hand holding – fair do’s really. So me and the heavy breathing temp shadow head down to see her. Turns out she doesn’t even have access to the system yet. She’s been here 1 ½ weeks and nothing. It was requested last Tuesday. So now she has a pile of requisitions building up on her desk and her line manager is telling everyone with a problem or question on CrapBags to ask Curly for help. The poor woman is freaking out as she doesn’t know how to even log on yet.

You see if you want access to the holy grail of CB you need to go through a ‘system’. You apply in triplicate then they assess your application and 50 people have to tick a box, sign it, then its sent to pixies in Sherwood Forest to sprinkle magic dust on it, sent back here, shredded in case anyone might need it, started all over again and then stamped, sealed and signed. At this point access is given. Apparently this process can take a long time. It took us 3 weeks to get Shadow her access, Ms Rigsby took a month. I know for a fact it takes 2 minutes to set up. 2 minutes.

This place is a complete joke. Works in an arse about face way. Went round to bollock the CB layabouts and none of them were there. So sent an angry email. 2 days late they finally give Curly access and she is on flexi and as of 5pm today I am on holiday. Hurrah. Well done. Slow hand clap for you CB people.

What makes it even more infuriating is that in the week Gunner was processing an order to pay a certain company that shall remain nameless but lets just say you have heard of them and they are the geniuses who gave us CrapBags. It had all the consultants rates on it (i.e. the CB layabouts) we are paying a grand a day for some of those useless tossers!! One guy is £1,660 PER DAY!!! Per day! I know the consultants themselves don’t see the whole amount but I’d imagine it’s a fair chunk. Fucking hell– pay me £500 a day and I’ll do their job for you! They never do anything anyway, they just sit in meetings procrastinating all day – I can do that!!

Gunner is fuming, he just keeps muttering “a grand a day!” all the time.

As a complete role reversal I just found out that Ms Rigsby who works her arse off everyday and is here from 9am to 6.30pm most days is paid £7.50 an hour before tax.

What is the world coming to?

End of rant.

On a more positive note Andre made a cake yesterday in the shape of a castle. As one does. It’s for the War of the Roses apparently. She’s as nutty as a fruitcake but she makes a damn fine fruitcake. I missed the actual castle as I was in a flippin meeting and it had been cut up by the time I got out! Only one turret remaining. She says she has a photo so I am demanding to see it. Apparently it was very impressive. Impressive turrets. Fnar fnar.

I am drained, I am done, I am spent, I am all ranted out. Time for me to go sit in a Grecian bar and sip cocktails in the sunshine. I hope you survive a blog-free 16 days without me, I’m sure you will. You have 4 bank holidays and a Royal wedding to keep you occupied.

Until May…

Trapped

It’s all go here. Yesterday I had 4 meetings back to back between 1 and 5pm which in my opinion is pretty feckin’ ridiculous. I even had to write down on my meeting pad (yes I have actually started taking pen and paper to meetings now, this is how serious its getting) where each one was, what time, with who and what the hell it was about to stop me just wandering the corridors aimlessly looking for room MR4-2.99g or something. What also didn’t help was that at one point Kirstie, Ms Rigsby and I got stuck in a small corridor, well not a corridor really, that space you get between doors. You know? When you work in an office that deems it necessary to have a door from the main lifts foyer bit into another small space that then just leads you through more doors? Well we were stuck there. Some how we’d managed to get through the 1^st door but then none of the others would work and we couldn’t get back out the one we had just come through. Other people were trying to get to where we were with no luck as well.

At first this is all fairly hilarious and then you remember you were actually on your way to the vending machine for a coke and off to sit in the sun and suddenly it’s eating into your lunch break and it’s not so funny any more. We managed to mouth through the glass doors to someone that we were stuck (no shit Sherlock) and they scurried off to security. A security dwarf arrived (seriously, I can’t see him taking down any burly intruders unless he’s a bit of an ankle biter) and said that they were testing the locks on the doors so the more we swiped would actually delay things.

“How long is this going to take?”

“Some time”

“Er that’s not an answer, how long?”

“I’m not sure, you’ll have to hang on”

“Why?”

“Well they are testing the locks so the swipe passes won’t work”

“Did you think to tell anyone this? Perhaps an email warning people not to venture out?”

“Er, well…”

“Wow, so you thought that 1pm on a Thursday, in the middle of the working day when people have to actually get to places, thorough these doors would be a good time to test this?”

No answer

“How about you stop the testing so that we can actually escape this corridor and start it up again at the end of the day when most people have gone home?”

“Well I’m not sure….”

“Listen Shorty I for one do not intend to spend my afternoon stood here and so unless you let us out I will hit this fire alarm button here and have everyone leaving the building at the same time and you can deal with that instead ok?”

At this point he mumbles something we can’t quite hear through the glass and wanders off. A couple of minutes later the doors reactivate.

I mean honestly.

Pearls of wisdom

Hello one and all, and how are we on this drab and dreary late March afternoon? Personally I’m feckin’ knackered which is a combination of some late nights and the amount of training and meetings I have had to attend over the past 3 days which only looks set to continue tomorrow with a further 5+ hours of Crapbags training on the horizon. Listening to people really takes it out of you doesn’t it? It’s hard work absorbing information, now I know why students sleep for 14 hours of the day.

It’s all this new role thing I have going on. In order to become super efficient/confident in Crapbags it is required I ingest a rather large amount of knowledge in a short space of time. I’m enjoying it so far and actually finding it quite interesting (oh lord can you hear yourself Nancy?! What have you become?!) in a geeky kind of way but yesterday by 4.30pm I had to stop one particular meeting as I could feel my brain bulging close to capacity. The guy talking at the flip chart could have happily gone on for hours but alas my little grey cells could not. Plus it was coming up to home time and as dedicated as I am to the cause, it shall not interfere with the social life.

I feel a bit sorry for my new shadow, she started Monday and so far has been bombarded with stuff she doesn’t have the first scoobies about. Luckily she also seems to have more than 1 brain cell to rub together and is catching on and she came back yesterday and today so that’s always a good sign. We like the ones who come back again. Seems quite nice, very posh as Gunner said and although she is 24 seems to dress like an 80’s power hungry woman in her late 30’s. I’m assuming they are left over outfits from her law degree days when she was required to mix with people who would look down on anyone not wearing a dress suit with shoulder pads and pearls but I think she might learn that for this place it’s not necessary. Or maybe I’m just jealous as the majority of my work wardrobe comes from Primark and H&M? They don’t do shoulder pads at Primark…..unless they form part of a retro jumper/dress zebra print number. Hmmmmm…….

Of the 5 hours of training tomorrow Shadow is only required to attend 2 and I made that choice for her so as not to create yet more confusion in that young impressionable mind. Plus the morning training is with the HR team who are a bunch of numpties and she need not cotton on to the fact this place is littered with freaks, retards and inept monkey people just yet. She did get a small taster this morning though when we popped along to a Crapbags drop in session. The mad bint who mothers poor Ms Rigsby at every opportunity was in there shouting at one of the poor Crapbags people. I had a sudden look into my near future with this role and almost got cold feet. Whilst waiting to be seen I ferreted Shadow away to the kitchen for a coffee and explained that mad bint was a bit er….mad. “Well you always get some crazy people working in your office don’t you?” “Er, we have slightly more than most here…..”

As no one seems to have addressed the fact that I am still to carry on with my old job along side this other stuff I think that I might be a tad busy over the next few months. Just a hunch. Therefore I feel I should forewarn you that blog communication might fall (yes, even more so than it has already…). What I might attempt to do is give you a weekly update as I think this will be a bit more realistic and achievable. I will try my best, tis all I can be asked to do. Anything beyond that, consider yourself lucky.

Ring Day the Trilogy

Hurrah it’s Ring Day!! That means….caaaaaaake!

Friday, Ring Day, the sun is shining, what more could an over worked and underpaid minion ask for?! Well a pay rise and less work I suppose.

I discovered yesterday, whilst seated around the breakfast bar on my lunch that today would be Ring Day. Andre had a cheeky little grin on her face when she infor

med us and I couldn’t help but blurt out “does that mean Ring Cakes?!” “Of course!” “Yaaay!” and so on and so forth. It was the first thing I mentioned when I walked in the door this morning as well.

By 11am I was served my cake, solid and sturdy enough to destroy said ring (forget the pits of Mordor, just one battering with this confectionary and it’s bye bye big eye in the sky) and with the standard marzipan ring on top for décor. It’s a heavy duty cup cake I tell you, I wasn’t hungry again before 2pm. I took a photo so you could see the cake in question but only though to do this half way through devouring it so you have half a cake instead….but you get the idea.

There was also the standard get up Andre was wearing, the hand decorated trousers, flouncy white shirt with ruffles and frills and gold waistcoat. When she served the cakes she also wore her cape, as of course you would to mark such an occasion.

This is now my 3^rd year of Ring celebrations. That scares me slightly. Where has the year gone? It only seems like yesterday I was having to explain the concept of Ring Day to a baffled and slightly concerned Moon Monkey. This part of Ring Day I don’t like so much, the reminder that I am probably wasting away my youth in this glass mad house, eating cake and going madder every day….

But hey, it’s Friday, the sun is shining…. Ahem.

I also forgot just how many people we have had join the department this year and therefore how many baffled and confused looks Andre would be greeted with as she went round with plates and napkins. Most seem to have taken it in their stride, even the new Aussie girl whose response was “Cool! Well I’ll celebrate anything for an excuse to eat cake!” That’s the kind of attitude we like to see in this department, embrace the freaks and just go along for the ride. No point in fighting it is there? We all end up baking cakes to celebrate fictional events in the end.

Tonight Matthew I will be…

Its all change yet again for young Nancy. I wonder if my job now bears any relation to the original job description I was given when I went permy here? I doubt it very much as back then one of my key responsibilities was the database and look how often I check that nowadays (500 unread emails and counting…) and the other was filing.

Pulled into another meeting by Gunner who was being very evasive about what it was for and why they needed me. This would normally mean that he has a) inadvertently volunteered me for something or b) needs some back up on something. In this case it was answer ‘a’ although I’m not sure about it being an accident this time round… Seems that I am to be the chief helper and teacher of requisitions across this and the Dublin office in order to try and reduce the number of queries and shouting we get from the numpties who can’t do / won’t do. It’s a temporary thing, spanning 3 to 4 months or so they think but I guess that depends if the numpties want to play ball.

So I get to deal with all the old farts who didn’t want the Crapbags training because they fear change and would rather spend an hour standing there bitching and moaning about the system rather than ten minutes actually doing the requisition and therefore ending all their reason to moan. Gunner has angled it as me being a Florence Nightingale of the department and that people will be ‘pleased’ to see me, well that remains to be seen.

I also have a shadow following me about in the form of a 24 year old temp who seems to mainly have journalism and TV experience. Should be interesting. I’ve checked and she’s not Australian and isn’t obsessed with snow or ball gowns so that’s a start. The idea being this shadow will eventually take on this Florence role full time and let me get back to my old job.

Nothing has been mentioned about what will happen to my current workload seeing as this is going to take up roughly 50% of my time, I’m sure they’ll expect me just to carry on regardless but they might be slightly disappointed on that front. Ah well at least it will be some slightly different shat to deal with and it’ll mix things up a bit for me. Might even get to see more of this office and meet some shiny new people. Or crumbly old people who are new to me. Probably more of the latter.

I think this pushes me up to Super User status. I hope I get a cape and a utility belt. The belt could come in handy when I’m having to sedate the old men who are bursting a vein through their right temple ranting about crapbags. Perhaps a fazer gun or some mace? I could give them the option…

Requisition or mace? It’s your choice Granddad.

Wankers, wankers, wankers

1 ½ pints of Addlestones cider make Nancy a very sleepy worker…..

Worked out it’s the first Friday pub trip we have had since Christmas – that’s shocking! I put my foot down last week and demanded that if Friday was now out of the question (too many people taking flexi now they have all come over to the dark side) then it should be substituted with Thursday. Then yesterday after I had screamed “FOR FECKS SAKE!” at my computer for the 17^th time Gunner suggested we go today. I think everyone deserves a well earned drink at the moment.

We were trying to figure out why we had so sadly neglected this Friday institution and Kirstie pointed out the reason being we’ve all been too “frickin busy”. You know times are bad when work is stopping you getting to the boozer.

We made up for it though with a good hour and fifteen, nothing compared to the golden days of course but for us it was a small victory. I had planned to get some lunch afterwards but we had a bowl of chips and then I spent all my money on cider and well, it never happened. Since returning to my desk I have visited the ladies 4 times to pee and searched my draws and the office for things to line my stomach but it’s too little too late. I’m toying with the idea of going down to raid the vending machine but I’m also toying with the idea of leaving early which would be in 21 minutes so there has to be a choice made.

Well there’s no competition really, early home time wins every time. Plus I have sausage casserole lined up for later….along with more cider.

Sitting here in my fermented apple dazed state I have realised how tired I am at the moment of this place. Its wearing me down, and this week has only been a 3 day working week! I’m just fed up of stupid, lazy numpties who seem to spend their days planning on how to get me to waste my time running about doing pointless tasks for them. Plus mind reading. This is a skill I have yet to accomplish but still seems to be a pre-requisite for working with some of the wankers here.

“Have you not uploaded those contracts yet?”

“No because you never asked me to or sent me any information on them”

“So why aren’t they done yet?”

“Because you are a wanker and even when you do send me the list they will now go straight to the bottom of my priority list just to piss you off”

Petty? Maybe. Necessary? Yes.

And now to add to my annoyance someone in HR has just done a ‘reply all’ to a message sent round to the whole company about parking at the weekend. AND its grammatically poor.

Hi

I am to come in on Sunday 20Mar11. I will follow due process on arrival and as a heads up I will be driving in too.

Yours Sincerely

Twat from HR

Why do people do that? I don’t care if you’re coming, and neither do the 500 other people in this building! T hat’s one more email I have to delete now.

Oh hang on he’s tried to recall it. Too late loser.

Breathe Nancy, breathe.

Time to go me thinks. Sausage ahoy.

Interview skills fail

Note to self: when a senior member of staff springs an impromptu meeting to talk about your role in the company the answer to the question “where do you see yourself in 5 years time?” should not be “5 years?! Blimey that’s a long way off!”

In my defence it’s a stupid bloody question really. Who the hell nowadays knows what they will be doing in 5 years? I could still be here, I could be running the Hobbit department, I could have moved on to bigger and better things, or smaller and worse things, I might have won the lottery, I may have moved to Puerto Rico, I may be farming llamas in Italy, the world may have ended and I’ll be spinning out in space somewhere as a trillion tiny atoms, I maybe have joined a LoTR sect and sold all my personal possessions to fund the quest for the ring.

The most I’ve managed to stick it out in one job is about 3 years so if I was to go with the trend of my employment pattern then my answer would be “working somewhere else”. But that’s not what they want to hear is it? They want goals and aims and aspirations and enthusiasm and swashbuckle and get up and go! This is not something you will get from me in a meeting at 4.45pm on a Thursday during a week I have Friday off. Plus don’t spring it on me like that! Give me time to think up some appropriate bull shit so I can say what you want to hear and we can then part ways and forget about the whole thing an carry on as normal.

In the end I managed to talk myself into a butt load of work. And I’ve got to write a feckin’ proposal now – a proposal! Lord. Potentially it could be quite interesting, but equally it could result in me going slightly (more) insane and raising my stress levels. I don’t do work and stress, I don’t think the two should ever be combined and I avoid that kind of collision at all costs. Perhaps if the interesting and stress balance out I’ll be able to live with it, I guess we’ll see.

This of course is all pending on whether my proposal ever gets past Harley’s desk and anything is done about it. I did point out that I mentioned all of this in my annual review in December and what I was interested in doing. What objectives I would like if they ever get round to setting them…. Shant hold my breath. I’m sure this time next month I’ll be sitting here doing the same old stuff while they faff about with it all. God forbid anyone should make a decision on anything.

You know me, I’ll moan if I’m too busy and I’ll moan if they do nothing about it. I’ll moan regardless and you’ll love it.

Bin-gate

While I’m enjoying my new surroundings here in the office there are a couple of things that have begun to grate. Well you’re never happy are you? They could present us with gold plated desks and nubile virgins that serve coffee to you 24/7 and we’d still complain the desk wasn’t the right shade of gold or the coffee hot enough – you get used to a certain level of luxury and after a while you’re too acclimatised.

I overheard someone bitching about the new bike racks and lockers. They have created a room within the building for people to secure their bikes. Access only to employees with a bike, camera’s everywhere, state of the art bike racks and a free locker each. Plus company showers with hair dryers, a drying room for all your rain soaked kit and places to hang towels etc. This woman was moaning that the showers didn’t stay on long enough and the lockers were too small. Er excuse me, one month ago you parked your bike outside with all the other pikeys, had no locker at all and had to stick your head under the hand dryer to sort your hair out! Count yourself lucky, most people get changed in a mank toilet cubicle at work and fight to sort their hair in the one cracked mirror over the sink…tsk.

I myself am very happy with the bike rack arrangements, especially after purchasing a new expensive bike which I can now park at work in the knowledge that no thieving gypsy will be trying to hack saw their way through my D lock. I’m also fine with the showers and the drying room and my work colleagues are very happy now my stinky bike coat lives in a locker in the undercroft and not off the back of my chair.

However there are some changes I could do without. Everyone fears change (we learnt that lesson with Crapbags) but sometimes it’s the little things that can be the most annoying. Take bins for example. We now live in a bin-less office, well not completely of course that would be pretty disgusting, but we are not allowed bins at our desks. Instead we have 4 in the kitchen area: 1 for food waste, 2 for recyclables and 1 for non- recyclables. So the idea is when you have a piece of rubbish you walk to the kitchen and put it in the correct bin. Simples.

There is only so long one can go for with a pile of rubbish on their desk. While I’m not a lazy a-hole who can’t be bothered to walk to the kitchen, having to do so every ½ an hour can become fairly time consuming so it tends to build up. By the end of the morning the pile can be quite big and frankly looks feckin’ rank sat there amongst my post-it notes and files and when you pick it all up to take it to the kitchen of course you’re bound to lose a stray piece of orange peel or scrap of paper or old staple on the way….

We have started to combat this in Team Weird by fashioning our own mini bins out of every day office paraphernalia. I found a small cardboard box, as did Gunner, Kirstie was using a small bowl from the kitchen and some other people had been even more creative. The idea was to use this in the interim and then empty the contents at the end of the day. However this plan was thwarted when the cleaners started ‘cleaning away’ our makeshift bins. My box went missing (easy), then Kirstie lost her bowl and soon we were binless once again. I guess you can forgive the cleaners for thinking I might not want an old cardboard box any more so fair do’s, they didn’t know I’ll find something else.

Then we moved up a notch and people have started bringing in ‘designer bins’! Poundland jobbies, tuppaware, small swing bins, tin flower pots, the lot. I personally have a small, plastic basket sitting on top of my computer under my desk that does the job nicely. Tidy desk, rubbish recycled, everyone happy. But now the cleaners seem to be taking a stand and removing the designer bins and this is a step too far… Kirstie came in on Tuesday morning to discover her very pretty tiny multicoloured bucket bin had gone missing over night and unless we have some kind of bucket thief we think the cleaners have got to it. I think that might be taking the whole bin-nazi element a little too far but I suppose they are just trying to make a point. A complaint has been made but now we have taken to hiding our mini-bins in our cupboards at night. It’s getting to be a bit ridiculous now.

Harvey has gone one step further and managed to nab some contraband (or should that be contra-binned? Thank you, I’m here all week…) – an old bin from the other office! He keeps it in his desk cupboard at night in case he’s hauled up on charges of illegal dustbin smuggling.

So far my plastic basket is still safe and sound but I’m considering getting some kind of CTTV system set up just in case, perhaps an ink bomb I anyone tries to remove it or some mace spray disguised as a hole punch?

This is war.

Meetings – the dangers

Things are starting to calm down somewhat in Strangeways and so hopefully I’ll be transmitting on a more regular basis over the next few weeks. What with the meetings, fighting to stay awake in the meetings and the general day to day there has been scant time for doing anything else including filling you in on my many japes and jollies in the glass tower of weird.

Last week was particularly heavy on the meetings; in fact on the Wednesday it was what I would call “meeting-tastic”. One after the other, having to leave one meeting early (well technically on time its just that as we all know meetings do tend to run over as a rule – because of course we all have nothing better to do…) to get to the next and dashing for a loo break in between if time allowed. I’m making it sound like I have suddenly become some high flying whizz PA who has to attend all these very important meetings and say very important things. When the truth of it really is that I get invited along because I am loosely involved/attached some how and then spend most of it wondering what the heck they are all talking about and doodling on my pad (if I bother to take one).

It also appeared that every time I walked into a meeting room last week I also had the overwhelming urge to fall asleep. Partly down to bad timing (that dreaded 2.30-4pm slot where I’m slumping) and partly just down to lack of sleep on my part. I had one meeting with CJ and Tiny on Tuesday at 2.30pm (da da daaaaa!) in the smallest, warmest meeting room known to mankind where we were sat about a foot apart from each other round a small circular table. As soon as I sat down I knew it was going to be hard work but I was also confident in the thought it would be a quick meeting. I couldn’t physically keep my eyes open half the time and kept on pinching my left arm with such ferocity I now have a small bruise. Didn’t work, at one point I nodded off and my head fell off the hand that was supporting it and almost hit the table….I jumped awake and no one said anything but I was definitely clocked doing it, there’s no way I could have gotten away with that!

So with a big 2 hour meeting looming on the Wednesday, which potentially could be the most boring meeting of my full career in fact, I was doing a lot in preparation. While CJ and Replacement were busy printing out the power point presentation and listing questions they would ask I was drinking bucket loads of coffee and stripping off the layers. Keep cold, plenty of caffeine, a pen and pad to distract me, took my mobile in in case I needed further distraction, bottles of water for rehydration and splashing cold water on my face before hand.

All to no avail.

This meeting took place in one of the new swanky meeting rooms on the ground floor – dark mahogany everywhere, blinds closed, and a large rectangular table so everyone can see each other. What are you trying to do to me people?! You might as well hand me a camp bed and sleeping bag. The 2 hours ticked by at an alarmingly slow rate:

10.30am: Meeting begins with Luthor holding court; I have managed to sit myself opposite Moon Monkey unintentionally…. Oh and look yes the head of IT is sitting next to him, hurrah. I’m flanked by CJ and Replacement, both with pen and pads poised and at the ready. CJ has the PPP printed out so I have a quick flick through….. I will probably understand what they are talking about on page…3 and that’s it. How many pages to this? 15? I’m sorry – 15 slides? JTFC.

10.35am: Some confusion over the slides and how to work the overhead projector – yes even with 5 members of the IT department in the room.

10.40am: And we’re off! Oh god, there’s an American in the room…marvellous.

10.50am: Luthor is in full swing but Moon Monkey is intent on questioning every remark he makes, this could get tedious.

10.53am: I’m starting to feel sleepy – already?! Are you serious? Right, time to put plan A into action, commence with vigorous water drinking and arm pinching immediately.

10.58am: It doesn’t seem to be working, shit we’re only half an hour into the meeting, what am I going to do? Eyes closing…..must fight it…..fuck, I think someone just said my name? Oh god they did, they’re asking me a question, what was it?! Stay cool Nancy….

11.10am: Replacement seems to be scribbling notes on her pad at an alarming rate, perhaps she’s taking the minutes. Perhaps she’s just hoping that if she writes this all down it might have some semblance of meaning later?

11.14am: Still chugging down the water and pinching my arm, I find if I fidget every 30 seconds this helps but I think it is starting to irritate CJ and draw unwanted attention from MM….

11.18am: 1^st bottle of water has been drunk, moving on to the second.

11.25am: CJ is off on one so they are all looking in this direction, must look awake, must not look bored, lots of important people in the room…oh chirst she’s using the quotation marks with abundance again…I really want to break her fingers.

11.40am: MM has some interesting anecdotes for this meeting, I think he might just be trying to piss off Luthor (and I’m all for that). Apparently the NHS order in gloves from over 2,500 different companies and in America 2 million people have signed away their mortal souls to a company because they didn’t read the small print. A comment of “well they are American” from Harvey. Followed by a quick (half hearted) apology to the one sat in the room.

11.43am: 2^nd bottle of water is half way. Damn now I need the toilet, in my fight against the lethargy I have managed to add another nemesis in the shape of my bladder to the meeting battle zone! Curses.

11.45am: The American just actually used the phrase “Cowboy land” – I wonder if he was talking about his home town?

11.59am: Finally starting to wake up a bit now, the tiredness has lifted and I can stop focusing on keeping my eye lids open.

12:04pm: Now I can actually listen to some of what is being said….not that I really understand much of it. Apparently the IT spend over the next 3 years is close to $300m though – oh is that all?... What are you doing people? Buying diamond encrusted keyboards?!

12:15pm: My bladder is very full, I have a child’s bladder as it is and this is not going to last. A trip to the toilet will be needed shortly. Don’t want to look like a twat sneaking out though so will try and hold it.

12.25pm: Losing the will to live now, this meeting is beyond boring and none of these people will SHUT UP and let Luthor get on with his slides. We’re only on slide 7. Someone help me, set off the fire alarm, run in with some alarming news that breaks this cack up – maybe I could fake a heart attack?

12.27pm: The lights in the room just went out. Well at least that’s mildly interesting. Its one of those energy saving things where if it doesn’t detect movement it turns off. Everyone sits waving their arms about like some YMCA routine and eventually they come back on again.

12.32pm: OK so the meeting should have finished by now, why are people still talking? And only on slide 12 – ugh. Its no good my bladder is about to explode in some messy fashion all over this mahogany I need to make a run for it. I excuse myself and pelt it to the ladies.

12:33pm: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…..

12:36pm: I sneak back into the room. They’re still going and slide 12 is still up.

12:38pm: Uh oh, the 2^nd wave of sleepiness is upon me. Bam, there go the eye lids and I’m finding it hard to hold my pen and pretend to write…Water…no hang on we learnt our lesson last time with that – ok arm pinching it is then.

12:50pm: We have now been on slide 12 for 25 minutes, ok we get it, it’s a pretty slide with lots of words and colours and arrows and even some keys now move it on!

12:51pm: Lights have gone off again, more frantic waving. We must look like some bunch of crazies.

12:56pm: I have another meeting at 1pm, I am really going to have to go. Possibly via the toilet again (damn you child’s bladder!) and even around the pond once to try and wake up. Hurry up people.

12:59pm: Slide 12 is still on the board, feck this I’m off.

Luckily the 1pm meeting only lasts 20 minutes and it’s in a nice shiny bright, cold room with lots of non-important people saying lots of far more interesting and non-important things. When I get back to my desk they are only just returning from the 15 slide meeting and I bump into Replacement on the way.

“So how much longer did it go on for?”

“Oh about another 20 minutes? What did you think of it?”

“Possibly one of the most boring meetings I have attended in this company.”

OK so I didn’t say that….

“Yeah it was ok, a lot of it goes over my head but I suppose it’s good to get an overview…blah blah blah….You?”

“Yeah it was good, I especially thought….”

“ANYWAY I have to get going to er, another meeting……yeah”

With the toilet.

You still here?

Moody is back for one night only. Well 3 nights. Technically 3 days and perhaps less. I guess it depends on Luthor’s mood swings and how he sees it all going. I’m hedging my bets and giving him the wine and card tomorrow just in case.

We bumped into each other in the mini kitchen this morning, I had no idea he was back today and so was somewhat surprised to see him there struggling with the recycling bins. It was a nice surprise as CJ and I were none too sure if we would in fact see him again but it seems that Luthor finally gave into our demands. But now he is back he’s also back to really irritating the number two’s out of me again. I’d forgotten how used to and laid back I’d gotten to his lengthy rants and whinges as he perches on the side of your desk. He’s also managed to catch me twice while I’ve been eating today and interrupting Nancy and her food stuffs is always a bad move in anyones book. The first time my muesli got fairly soggy and the second time my jacket potato went cold.

Not just the timing but also the waffling. I’d forgotten how much he waffles. How could I forget in such a short period of time?! He’s only been gone about 3 weeks but yet so quickly these gripes about Crapbags and life in general are wiped from my mind. I suppose I needed room in there for far more interesting and useful information?

So there he is sat on my files and post-its asking questions about everything and anything and nothing at all and I realise that I haven’t really actually missed him at all. That sounds terrible doesn’t it? I mean I like the guy and his weird, quirky ways but when it comes to working he is actually a massive pain in the arse. It may also be that since he hasn’t been here it’s been more obvious how much he hasn’t done and I’ve even found myself feeling sorry for CJ on occasions.

What’s going on?!

Still, Moody keeps pressing the point that he doesn’t want to get involved in anything, that he’s not here long so there’s no point. This is a true and valid point so please keep away from me with any work matters thanking you please.

We have also had his replacement start and she has been here a week. Replacement is currently nameless as I haven’t spent enough time with her to form a full and rounded opinion or ideas for a nick name. There have been a couple of occasions where Ms Rigsby and I have sat with her at lunch and frankly struggled to make conversation. She does from initial impressions seem amazingly dull. Even her voice is quite dull. You know people who don’t really use a lot of emphasis in anything they say, not a lot of variation? Monotone. Eventually I gave up and Ms R heroically continued with the banter. When Replacement walked away we gave each other a look that said “that was flippin’ hard work” and have since avoided the mini kitchen when we see her reach for her tupperware.

The thing is with new people you have to bear in mind they are, well, new. So perhaps they are seeing how the land lies, judging what they can and can’t do/say in the work place, deciding how much of themselves they want to bring into the work place. I mean even I was very quiet when I started here (I know, hard to believe) and eventually started getting a bit more lively when I realised what a bunch of extroverts and weirdo’s I was working with. But then there is always a hint of what could possibly be and at the moment Replacement is giving me nothing. I’m not sure she’ll be joining in with any vagina jokes or looking at shoes on line with Kirstie and Ms R. Ah well, we can’t win them all.

So out with the moaner and in with the monotone. One freak replaces another. It’s the way things should be.

Lord of the kitchen

Today I spent my lunch break with Andre which is always an interesting and odd experience. I was late into the kitchen so by the time I was warming up my spaghetti hoops (in your face Facilities!!) there was only me and the Hobbit lover left. Ms Rigsby hung around for a while and left me with a copy of Grazia magazine which I tried in vein to be engrossed in but lets be honest I’m not a Grazia kind of girl so it was never going to happen. Some how we got talking about walk-in wardrobes which lead on to a discussion about the many outfits and costumes she owns and then there was the talk about Warwick Castle and trying to get her 10 year old nephew interested in working for a king in a reconstruction workshop (and failing) and the time she went to a convention and how odd it is heading back to your hotel room in the lift with Jar Jar Binks and Roj Blake.

You know the usual lunch time banter you have with people at work.

Part of me wants to inhale my hoops, burning my mouth, throat and all corresponding internal organs, throw my empty bowl at the sink and run back to my desk but the other part of me is always very fascinated by Andre and what makes her tick. She’s odd but she’s interesting. She’s got a bit of a strange set of priorities and outlook on life but she’s also very intelligent and can tell a funny story.

So I stayed and I listened and we talked about how she got drunk on some guys perfume in the other office because it was so strong. Literally, I’m not talking about the phrase I mean she says there was so much alcohol content in it she inhaled that and got tipsy. I really had no idea that was possible. She also told me about her friend who watched some historic film with her and they had children working on a ship and her friend asked why so Andre told her back then kids just worked so her mate asked “what about the heath and safety issues?” Andre had to then go on and point out that they didn’t exist in the 1500’s but flogging and scurvy did.

One day I would like to go to Andre’s house for tea and sit with her and her dear old Mum having an Earl Grey out of some bone china, sat on a sofa from the 60’s watching re-runs of Blake 7 and Dr Who. Then we’d eat some medieval feast for dinner and she’d show me her wardrobe and collection of lethal 16^th century weapons. I’d stay over in the spare room where she keeps her spare long staff and lie in a single bed with a Lord of the Rings duvet staring up at posters of Star Trek characters. Amazing. I’m itching for an invite, might have to drop a few hints over lunch.