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.