Good After-Morning!

Coda

2010-03-19T22:30:00.001Z

Well then, my friends, here we are. This is definitely it, because I gotta disassemble and pack the computer tonight.

It's been a strange week. Strange 'good', really. The Noob started on Monday. Don't ask me for any details because I won't divulge any. And yes, the Noob was hired before I told y'all about it, because I couldn't risk somebody being crazysmart. And make no mistake, this worries me; some of the comments, you're making me a little nervous. Let's get this out of the way now. Please don't try to find out who I am or where I work. Talk to me personally via the available channels if you want to, I'm amenable to that, but please don't try to be 'smart'. This is my life we're talking about here, please don't fuck with it. Just read and enjoy.

The other side : Wow. Are you guys bored with me thanking y'all yet? Once more, with feeling. I'm blown away by you people. It's beautiful. I haven't managed to get time to say even 10% of the things I wanted to say to you, but I have read all your comments, and I have smiled so many times. Jesus, I don't know how to say what I want to say. You have been the best audience ever.

So hey, the Noob started on Monday and has been doing damn well, and The Boss has been being pretty sane, pretty together. She has made the effort. I've been a goddamn nervous wreck, but sometimes that's when I'm at my best. I've been solely left with the task of training the Noob, while also doing my job, while also already doing my new job from here, and then going home to try and sort out moving my whole life to a different place. Hectic. Insanely so. But that sort of works for me, in a way; I'm always scared that I'm only a few inches away from being an asshole when I'm bored, but when I get going, I guess - if I may say so - I can make things happen, I can deliver. Whatever that's worth. I don't know. But that's what I do.

So here we are, my personal possessions leave on Sunday, and I leave in one week; in one week from now I'll be in my new apartment. I think I've got it more or less sorted; clothes and furniture and stuff are easy to pack but computers and musical equipment and instruments are a motherfucker to sort out, mostly because as a person who works in the freight industry I'm scared shitless about all the things that might happen to my stuff; Christ, I see related horror stories every day, and now I must entrust everything I possess to this insane system. But hey. I've done all I can do, and now it's up to Lady Luck. Please, Lady, let my instruments all arrive in the same condition in which they departed. If I had a god, I'd pray. As you must know by now, of course, I have neither religion nor much by way of politics; in place of these, I have Coughlin's Law and Hanlon's Razor.

Ah, fuck, I've stressed enough this week. I've fixed everything I could fix, and am trying really hard to chill out now.

This, I suppose, may seem harsh to you, if you work in, uh, let's call it a "gentle" occupation; and us, we, the shipping guys, sometimes we take ourselves quite seriously this way, because we deal in success and results and "did you fucking get it sorted!??", only. Shit must happen. Shit must arrive. I know there are many occupations that take this attitude, but hey, this one is mine. So yeah, all arrangements for moving my entire life at short notice were left to me to arrange, naturally, because if I couldn't arrange that then why the fuck would I have this job? So it's ok. I'll make it work. It's what I do.

So.

May I open up a little?

Ah, it's a crazy time for me, the now, as you can imagine. How the hell did I get to be here?

I wanted to be a writer, when I was in my mid-teens I guess, for years; I remember one of those moments now, the things that we cringe about in retrospect; when as a fourteen year old my mother found me writing short stories instead of doing my homework and I angrily retorted "I AM doing my homework - I'm doing the homework for MY FUTURE CAREER!". Red face now, when I remember it. But then I discovered music and it's great many associated pleasures and follies, and abandoned the idea of further education in favour of being a rock star, and that lasted until only a few years ago, and somewhere in the middle of all this I accidentally became 'a guy who works in shipping'. And then in the last year, 'a blogger'.

And now.. it's good. I feel open minded about the future, younger than I did five years ago; things are good, people, it's all ok. Maybe when I get settled over there I'll spend some evenings playing some tunes, or maybe I'll write some stories - whatever the hell I feel like doing, really, that's what I'll do. Life has a way of beating our dreams out of us and we know in our hearts that eventually it will always win, but it is vital, fucking vital, that you still dream, because life is short and pain is long and if you aren't willing to dream then you might as well go home right now.

On those who have most kindly complimented me on my writing - thank you - I write some serious things, which the greater public knows nothing of; I guess I maybe fancy trying to write something serious, or to even let the greater public read some of the things I've written. Or maybe I won't. But it doesn't matter so much any more.

I get scared about the future, in brief moments, usually at two a.m. when I'm unable to sleep; but hey, it's just life. Let's see what it holds, and let's see what we can do with it. But I get excited too, and the line between excited and scared is nothing more than the briefest flicker in the angle of incidence.

So... yeah, I'm losing the thread. You still reading? ;)

It's been a funny week. And I've been running around like a madman, but I like that. So my worldly possessions are leaving at the weekend, and I'm leaving on Friday next week. I have a few good friends who have helped, and a really good long-time buddy who is going to fly over with me for the weekend and help me pack. This man was my tour manager back in the day and knows how to make shit happen, and will be invaluable. So anyway today it came down to the stage of booking flights.

So today, busy as hell, I also had to try and get The Boss to arrange flights.

This was even more difficult than usual due to the fact that our internet connection in the office was playing sillybuggers, and I was trying to do three jobs, and some arseholes planted bombs all over the country - ok, politics aside, if you plant a bomb or generate a bomb scare you are nothing more than a fucking arsehole - which makes my job quite interesting as I often must rely on having a functioning intrastructure in the country to achieve things - and also I'm trying to make calls to sort out my personal arrangements in between. I actually have a red sore on my left ear from where the phone has been firmly pressed against it. Seriously. And wishing like hell I had time to deal with my actual personal life, and hoping like hell the people involved in same will understand.

So - good. The Boss managed to book me on the right flight. First time. Excellent.

Bad - instead of booking my friend on it too, she booked me on it twice.

Then the internet bit the dust completely.

So I just said fuck it. It'll work out. It'll be ok. I went and had a couple of beers after work with The Boss and The Noob, and went home, and a while ago The Boss phoned me to tell me she had made the correction to the flight details, at whatever cost. And I said, hold on a fucking minute, I told you he needed the nine PM return flight on Sunday, not the nine fucking AM return flight. And she went, and she fixed it, at a cost of a further £56, and now it's sorted.

If it was a different time, I'd be annoyed or frustrated by this, but now, what's the point? The Boss?

Kids, The Boss is crazy.

But.... The Boss is, in many ways, alright.

When I told her I'd got this job, to answer a question many of you have asked - "what happened? what did she say?"

I'll tell you, and I'll tell you the pure truth. Her words to me when I broke the news that I had got it, verbatim -

- ' I got it' -

"I'd'a been amazed if you hadn't".

I'll leave you with that.

This is the Silent Koala - not sayin' goodnight. Just sayin'.

Love you.

x

'goodbye' is such an ugly word. I prefer au 'revoir'.

End of Level Boss

2010-03-14T20:50:00.001Z

Ah kids, chums, buddies.

Friends, Romans, Cunts.

Fetch y'selves up a drink and sit the fuck down.

Here it is.

I don't quite know how to do this one.

OK. Drink, breathe, etc.

Right then.

The question has often been asked round these parts - "why the fuck do you still do this?"

I've deflected it, mostly, but in essence - Well, because it's a good company to work for. A fucking great company to work for. I like the company, and I like the work itself.

Alright then, where are we.

An opportunity arose. A big one. A big job, high level job. I took a stab at it - with the encouragement of a small pocketful of close friends. This was a couple of months ago. I didn't tell you, yeah. Apart from other reasons, I didn't think I had any real chance at getting the job.

Those of you that pay close attention to my farcebook will have noticed that I've been spending a lot of my weekends jetting over to England lately.

I got the word, people, I got it. I got the word and the word says I got the job. I'm being shifted out of my position, to go and do some serious hardcore kind of shit; I'm fifteen years younger than everybody else that is doing this kind of shit, it's that fucking serious. It's serious. It has paid off; it is the jackpot. It's fucking brilliant, it is fucking excellent, can you dig this? Your Koala just got the BIG JOB. He's going to join the A-Team.My head is spinning. EXECUTIVE FUCKING KOALA. And it's all happening very quickly. Very quickly. I not only have the job to think about, but I have to move from my native island to that strange foreign land known as England, and not only that, but I have to do this fifteen days from today. This is nuts, crazy, mad fuck shit nuts.

It's great. It's sad. I'm drunk, now, when I write this; I've been in a drunk condition for writing many of these posts, but now I'm drunk. But I gotta tell y'all. Coz I owe ya. Listen.

I started writing this just as a development of emailing three close friends every day to tell them how nuts my boss was; and mostly, I just did it for stress relief, and to make my friends laugh. It's fucking nuts to me that so many people are reading it; that so many people give a shit. You guys don't even love me, you love the fucking Boss - meditate upon that, my friends, consider it.

This is trippy. For me. I guess it's funny, this blog, some people have suggested to me that it's funny. OK, this is real. This is my real life. It's funny to me, too, a lot of the time; or sometimes it's just fucking lunacy. Doesn't matter. I have won, kids. For now, I have won. I stuck with it, and I knew the right opportunity would come along in this company, and I waited, and when the opportune fucking moment arrived, I took it. Allow me a moment of standing here on the pedestal with my dick in my hand, would ye?

It's over, then. This blog thing. It's been... wow. Where the fuck did y'all appear from, Jesus fucking Christ like. I didn't ask for this. (tongue in cheek kids, tongue in cheek)

Ah, shit, my friends, this is weird shit. I couldn't have done this without you. That is not a platitude. I could not have done this without you. I really could not. I would'a quit. I've been so close to it so many times, really. But I knew I had to hang in there, to get the Big Job. I'd buy each and every one of you a drink for your help, your support, your shared tales of your own workplace insanities.(mind you I'd prefer it if you paced it, and didn't all arrive at the bar together) - I would have quit, without this outlet, without you people. I know some of you are gonna be sad about this. Don't. Just don't. I'm so glad this whole fucking thing has some kind of happy ending. It's been like having virtual-workmates. Hesus. How emotional do you want met to get:? I fucking love you, and I fucking owe you.

Madness.

I'd name names except that I'd fear for leaving some out. If you feel like I'm gioving you a salute here, you're probably right.

Ah, come on. Nothing lasts for ever. This is good, this is wild and crazy. I have won, friends, I have won. This is it and that is that and that's all she wrote. Somewhere in the middle of the Boss lady singing, the fat lady sang. I owe an apology of sorts to some of the readers that I know IRL that are just hearing this news now - fuck, folks, it's been a crazy couple of months, with minimum personal headspace. Phone me. We'll talk.

Shit, that's it. That's it. that's it and that's all, folks. I am happy. My future looks bright. What else can I say?

Thank you. A big, fucking serious, heartfelt THANK YOU.

He who laughs last, my friends.

xxx

What's In Your Drawers?

2010-03-12T12:18:00.000Z

Tell you what, I've just had a look through mine, and from a detached perspective, some of it's a bit weird. My inventory of just one of my desk drawers is as follows :

6 lighters
1 tube of toothpaste
1 toothbrush
1 pair of nail clippers
1 packet of nicotine-replacement gum
2 packets of KFC salt
1 packet of brown sauce
1 packet of Bachelor's "Chicken & Country Vegetable" soup
1 mostly new box of co-codamol
1 packet of anadin
2 novelty shotglasses
1 copy of Metal Hammer, January 2001 edition
1 bottle of covonia cough syrup
2 packets of filters
1 packet of ibruprofen 400 mgs
2 Damanta gig flyers
1 bag of small pebbles
1 small bottle of ouzo
1 sheet of blue carbon paper (what century is this?)
1 canister of deodorant
1 almost depleted box of Turkish Delight
1 copy of "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre
1 broken section of shatterproof ruler
1 stapled collection of receipts, various
4 packets of rizlas in various states of usage
1 plastic spork
1 packet moist wipes
2 rolls of surgical tape
1 CD containing jpeg artwork for a comedy t-shirt
1 ancient lemsip
1 packet of marbles
2 pairs of sunglasses

Feel free to share yours with me. Is everybody like this? I want to know.

Your Panic Is Not My Emergency

2010-03-12T01:24:00.005Z

Ah, it's a fucking great line, but I wish it was true.

OK. So I arrived into work this morning and discovered, pleasingly, that the office facility has installed an espresso machine. I availed myself of this facility and proceeded up to my office, at the outside I was an absolute of 25 minutes late.

The Boss was in a bit of a mood. Not with me, but obviously under pressure. I sat down and commenced to work ferociously, and about ten minutes into this was interrupted.

The Boss : "26035428"

Here's me : "Brilliant."

The Boss : "Well?"

Here's me : "Well.. fuck... what?"

Yes, well-spotted, I have a very very slight hangover. Don't fucking judge me. I've had a lot of coffee too, so actually, just get the fuck out of my face you fucking fucknut.

The Boss : "Fill in the blanks."

Here's me : "Wha? You fill in the blanks."

The Boss : "The blanks in the accounts."

Here's me, getting it : "Ah. Remind me of what two six whatever actually is, would ye?"

The Boss : "Jude. Nigel."

Listen, I am resident in this crazy mental country now, I speako del fucking lingo at this stage, truly to fuck.

Here's me : "Yes. I know it now. OK. What's the problem?"

The Boss : "You need to bring the accounts up to date."

Alright, so here is what is happening here - The Boss has been going through the handwritten accounts ledger and has found some job from the past in which the accounts of profits and loss do not look complete, and she is asking me to rectify this.

Here's me : "No sweat."

The Boss : "Now."

Here's me : "No."

The Boss, escalating slightly : "I need it done now."

Here's me : "I'm right in the middle of something here. It's urgent."

This is no lie.

The Boss, making ein Critical Error : "NOW. I was supposed to have these figures sent by yesterday and I need this done now."

Further info - ok, I had no idea she was working on figures for HEAD OFFICE, and there is this old kind of maxim in this time-sensitive industry involving the concept of how if you have fucked up by a whole day you can surely wait another five minutes for my help.

So I finish my current business and she's by now wound up to a very high number of revs per minute, but is not actually being directly nasty to me and besides I'm too wrecked, tired and shitty feeling lately to be overly sensitive about this kind of shit. So I announced that, having finished my urgent tasks, I am going to once again avail myself of a fine doppio and also smoke a feg. This goes down every bit as badly as you would imagine it might, but nonetheless, this coffee is quite fucking delicious and I fully intend to drink what we quantify here as "a fucking shitload" of it.

I carry out the next step in my masterplan, i.e. I have a double espresso and a fucking cigarette, and then I return with the intention of submitting myself to being a slave of The Boss's insane whim for an hour or so before proceeding with the serious business of being an insane capitalist wanker for fun and profit. Whom's fun and whom's profit, exactly, remains to be determined, but I'm hardly alone in that sort of existential discomfort, so let us proceed unhindered.

So I sez, give me the job number again, and I'll fix it all up. And she does, and I do. However.

As I am sitting working on these figures, I become aware of the fact that The Boss is staring at me, watching me closely as she spoons yoghurt into her mouth, checking that I am actually Doing What She Has Demanded.

Anyway, I study the entry in question, and it's a big mess of scrawls and pencil lines (some of these scrawls are mine, ok) and so I go the storeroom, which in my huffy mood last week I totally sorted out, and find the relevant file and set about making it accountable-for in the ledger.

Now, what unfolds before your eyes next is a cunning smoke-and-mirrors trick, and you must watch closely.

Here's me, coy : "Do you have a rubber?"

The Boss, scaling it like Richter : "I GAVE YOU A RUBBER WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT?"

Here's me, smug : "I threw it in the fucking bin."

The Boss is at Defcon 4 : "WHY!?!?!?!?"

Here's me : "Because you drew all over the fucking thing and broke it in half."

The Boss : "SO HOW HAVE YOU BEEN KEEPING YOUR ACCOUNTS UP TO DATE?!?"

Here's me, getting into it : "I haven't."

She actually threw the empty yoghurt pot behind her. Seriously. It hit the wall right over and behind the much-maligned Bin. I meant to check but I forgot, but there's probably yoghurt on the wall.

The Boss : "WELL GET THEM ALL SORTED, NOW!"

(keep it in your mind. she is referring to sorting the accounts which she is supposed to sort and which she was supposed to have sorted by yesterday)

Here's me, happy, having fun : "I would bring the accounts up to date.. But I haven't got a fucking rubber."

The Boss rummages for a few seconds, then whips something out and hurls it in my direction.

My mind spins. It spins. It becomes relativity; it becomes the Large Hadron Collider; it becomes Schrödinger's cat; I am become unto Dave Bowman, I am Koalavatarotron, destroyer of worlds and bars;

It lands a few feet in front of me.

I stare at it for a while, and then I make a move, and pick it up.

It cannot be.

Yet... it is.

Yes it is.

It is my Shiny New Fucking Rubber.

I examine it for a moment with mixed feelings. It is somewhat frayed around the edges and so on but otherwise in much better condition than I expected.

Until I turn it over and see that she has actually, actually, actually, taken my Shiny New Fucking Rubber, and taken a pen, and has written her name, in ink, thus staking her claim, marking her territory, no seriously fuck me how old are we both, she has actually written her fucking name on the back of what-used-to-be-shiny-new-fucking-rubber. Her name, her first name, she has actually inscribed it in large blue ink block capitals upon MY FUCKING SHINY NEW FUCKING RUBBER.

Thou shalt reap the whirlwind of my vengeance.

Bad Rudolph Rising

2010-03-10T19:02:00.001Z

All week, The Boss has been singing the first line of Bad Moon Rising. This annoys me a bit more than her usual medleys, mostly because on this occasion she's butchering a song that I really really like.

Today it stepped up a gear when she sang :

"Don't go out tonite -
- making spirits bright"

The tune was approximately correct for the first line and veered off key a bit for the second.

She then proceeded to sing this sporadically for the rest of the day but slowly the tune morphed until finally she was, actually, singing lines from Bad Moon Rising to the tune of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Have pity.

Boss Lee

2010-03-10T10:14:00.008Z

There's a building across the street being renovated and as such it is filled with workmen. I can see them cracking up laughing several times each day when The Boss does her boxing-type moves. It's usually when she's standing waiting for a print-out, she'll say "put em up!" to no-one in particular then fire off a volley of punches at an imaginary foe.

This has been going on so long I don't even notice it any more, but the reaction of the workmen, who usually momentarily down tools to stare across into our office for these demonstrations, has reminded me that it must indeed look pretty hilarious.

They miss the best bit though, where she makes loud "SHOOP SHOOP" karate-movie style overdub sounds with each punch.

Otherwise Engaged

2010-03-09T20:22:00.002Z

My desk is this large L-shaped sort of affair, with the computer and so on at the front end and a bit of space over to the right of me. When I've got my head buried in figures or whatever, I like to swivel my chair away from the screen and it's distractions and work at the bit of desk to my right hand side. This has the dual advantage that I then have my back to The Boss and therefore have a higher chance of concentrating.

I was in just such a position today, and very much lost in thought, when out of nowhere, and to my great shock, I felt something pressed against my left ear.

Now, The Boss, it is fair to say, does not normally move with catlike agility, and there is a reasonable distance between her desk and mine. I don't know how she covered the distance between the two without making a sound, except to suppose that she in some way employed the dark arts to cloak herself or perhaps somehow fold space.

Anyway, in a state of mild shock, I whirled about quickly, managing to strike myself quite squarely above the left eyebrow with the item she had snuck up behind me with and pressed against my left ear. The item in question, her mobile phone, clattered to the floor, and I recoiled in shock and a certain amount of horror at this unexpected proximity. The Boss in turn recoiled at my recoiling (um, recoilation?) and we were left then both staring at each other with the mobile phone lying on the floor between us.

Here's me, a bit shaky : "What the fuck are you doing?"

The Boss : "Is it engaged?"

Here's me : "What??"

The Boss : "My phone. I'm trying to phone Brazil. Do you think their engaged sound is the same as ours?"

Why does everything that happens in here have to be so... weird?

FFS

2010-03-03T21:03:00.001Z

I'm sick. Bleh.

I knew something was vaguely wrong last week when I awoke to discover my vulva had swollen to enormous proportions. I just assumed whatever was wrong would go away by itself but it hasn't and now I have tonsils like golf balls, can't swallow, and my temperature is so stupidly high it feels like the perpetual drizzle of the green land is evaporating a few inches above my head.

(I'm shit at being sick. Really poor at it. It doesn't happen very often but in the last few months I seem to have had more than my fair share, which pisses me off. Possibly I am stressed, possibly my body is attempting to tell me that I'm not 18 anymore, the cop-out lightweight bastard that it is.)

So anyway, yeah, I'm still going to work through all of this because it's too busy with various things at the minute not to, but I'm pretty much coming home and collapsing into bed at the end of each day then lying there twitching until it's time to go back in; nothing feels like it's worth blogging about anyway, partly because I'm quite spaced out and partly because I can't even really speak so it's hard to get into a row.

I've finally admitted that I might need some sort of outside assistance and booked a bloody doctor's appointment, which I always feel in some way guilty about - Ferris Bueller I am not - and hopefully will feel less shit shortly.

Mainly I am pissed off about feeling absolutely bloody starving while having to live on thin soup. I am compiling a mental fantasy list of things I am going to eat once I can swallow again. It's going to be obscene and brilliant.

Payday Payback

2010-02-26T18:56:00.000Z

Well chums.

Today passed pretty much peacefully and uneventfully. Fuck am I glad. Good spirits.

I feel honour-bound to relate the following conversation to y'all.

The Boss : "When do we get paid?"

Here's me : "Monday."

The Boss : "Is it not today?"

Here's me : "Nope. Definitely not till Monday."

The Boss : "But today's the 26th?"

Here's me : "Yeah? So payday is Monday. The 29th... aahhaa fuck!"

We laughed. I hope you do too. Have a great weekend folks, and thank you for your continued support and commentary. Thanks also for nominating me for the Irish Blog Awards - much appreciated!

So anyway despite me being obviously a dunce in the area of knowing the number of days in February, that means I just got paid, and it's Friday, and I'm gonna hit the town.

Hope you all have a great one. I mean it.

Unintended Consequences

2010-02-25T20:02:00.000Z

So yes, today. I went to work feeling like a condemned man, absolutely bloody dreading it. Just before entering into the office I decided that it was in the interests of my sanity to attempt to broker some sort of peace here; there's only so much you can take, especially when you can't win.

So I sat down and busied myself and when The Boss arrived in I was all "Good morning! How are you today? Take the dog for a walk this morning?" and all this shit. To little effect.

The Boss turns to me and says "I see you tidied the store."

This moment is precarious; it could go either way.

Here's me : "Yes."

The Boss : "Glad to see you did something useful while you were out there huffing."

Nine past eleven, peace talks disintegrated, ceasefire in tatters.

And so it went on. Bitching, silence, general WOE. At around eleven in the morning, The Boss developed A Problem.

The Boss : "The printer isn't printing!"

I look dully at it.

"No. It isn't."

The Boss : "WHYYYYYYYY!???"

Here's me : "I don't know."

I do know though. I've just looked in the print queue and there's 6500 page document jamming it. How in the fuck she managed that I do not know. I remain silent.

So The Boss phoned the IT guy, but he wasn't available. I quietly slipped out and went to lunch, and returned to find The Boss in a state of misery. Which I must admit, did not entirely displease me.

The Boss : "IT'S STILL NOT WORKING?!?? WHAT DO I DO I NEED TO PRINT!??"

Here's me : "dunno"

The Boss : "Can you do something?"

Here's me : "no"

The Boss : "I can't get (the IT guy)"

Here's me : "meh"

The Boss : "Should I phone Thurston!??"

Here's me, suddenly alive : "YES!"

And indeed she did. She phone him and she kept him on the phone for a full half hour, and the snippets of conversation I heard contained such amazing statements as :

"Should I reboot my container?"
"Blocker unblocker keep blocking... Are you ignoring me?"
"Turn it off at the power or at the internet?"

and so on. Stefathurston/Thurstefan, the poor guy, is some sort of credit to his profession and the human race, for despite it being absolutely sweet fuck all to do with him he actually ended up fixing the printer.

Somehow, bizarrely, in the midst of all this, The Boss's mood changed completely, and she emerged from it... changed... once again. She then once again tried to initiate conversations throughout the day and after about an hour or so of this I cracked and by close of business we had both ceased hostilities and even managed to finally go through our joint effort of checking last weekend's lottery numbers.

(We didn't win anything)

So it was ok. Less stressful that I thought it was going to be. And tomorrow's Friday, so fuck it. Why worry.

And It's Ending, One Minute At A Time

2010-02-25T19:15:00.000Z

So yes. The rest of yesterday.

We finally managed to stop dancing around it and had a HUGE BLOODY ROW.

This might get a bit technical, bear with me.

About six months ago, one of the shipping lines we do business with started a new procedure. One of the many things we do here is ship various pieces of machinery. When the machinery is delivered to the docks, the shipping line would measure it, and charge us according to the measurements. To save much time and effort, they requested that for any machine we book, we provide a manufacturer's diagram with the booking. This makes sense; they're easy enough to obtain, and then we often ship the same types of machine week after week and so we would then only have to send the diagram once for each type of machine and it would save much costly man-hours of fucking about with measuring equipment.

I suggested, at this point, that we needed to keep a record of which machines we had sent diagrams for. The Boss, natch, said NO. I said, and I remember saying it very clearly, that this will be a really good thing to do, because if some issue should come up at a future stage, it will make it very easy for us to ascertain what's happening, whereas if we leave it for a few months and try to back-track it will be impossible. The Boss said NO THAT IS A WASTE OF TIME DO NOT DO IT. We had an argument about it at the time and the more persuasive, reasoned arguments I gave for keeping this data, the more she dug in and basically just told me not to be stupid.

So, naturally, yesterday we had an issue, a dispute with the shipping line of over the measurements of an item; a potentially very costly dispute. For the sake of a placeholder, let's call the machine in question an X1

The Boss : "Have we sent a diagram for an X1?"

Here's me, knowing it's all about to kick off : "I don't know."

The Boss : "WHY DO YOU NOT KNOW!??"

Here's me : "Because, if you recall -" and I quite tensely recount the conversation from six months ago during which I was told in no uncertain terms not to keep this information.

The Boss : "YOU SHOULD REMEMBER!"

Here's me : "We ship about thirty things like a month. This has been going on for six months. You expect me to remember which units I've shipped, by memory alone, out of a couple of hundred random serial numbers?"

The Boss : "YOU SHOULD BE TAKING NOTE OF THIS!"

Here's me : "As discussed a moment ago, you explicitly instructed me not to keep notes on this."

The Boss : "MENTAL NOTES!"

Here's me : "I CANNOT POSSIBLY DO THAT I WOULD HAVE HAD THIS INFORMATION IF YOU HAD LET ME BLOODY STORE IT!"

and so on, for quite some time. It got very heated and got to the stage where I had to leave the room and go for a cigarette lest I trail her down the street by the throat, and I returned, not much calmer but a little -

- and of course it all kicks off again. And I get to the stage where it's pointless arguing, and instead just end up saying things to the effect of "I cannot fucking believe that you cannot just turn round and say 'maybe you had a point there', I honestly cannot fucking believe that you are not capable of doing that when you are so very clearly totally fucking wrong."

And The Boss just continues to insist that firstly I should have programmed this information into my memory, and then further that I trawl through six months of e-mails to discover if this unit has previously had it's spec sheet sent. Which as it turns out, it hadn't, anyway.

And of course, therefore, we spent the rest of the day once again not speaking to each other in an atmosphere of utter, total bloody awfulness.

Total, utter fucking shite.

DON'T PANIC!!!

2010-02-24T19:07:00.000Z

So around the middle of the day, The Boss has a PANIC.

She yelps aloud : "MY COMPUTER'S GONE MAD!"

I am thinking, I don't fucking blame it.

She squawks : "IT'S GONE CRAZY!"

I am thinking, ha ha.

She cries : "HELP?!??" so desperately that I am moved to lower my metal weapons and go over to investigate.

Yes, it has indeed gone mental. She moves the mouse slightly, and windows ping open and shut all over the show. Interesting. My first thought is that she is once again leaning on the keyboard, but she doesn't seem to be; I take the controls and quickly come to the conclusion that something in the keyboard has gone awry. A look at said keyboard confirms my suspicions. Basically, some keys appear to be knackered. So the machine is getting endless "returns" and "escapes" or something. If you've ever accidentally leant on your keyboard, you know what I mean.

Here's me : "Your keyboard is fucked."

The Boss : "What? No! How??!"

Here's me : "As in, some of the keys are damaged. The springs or whatever have gone. That's all. You need a new keyboard."

The Boss suffers from this kind of terror about these things.

"HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?!??"

I stroke my little beard pseudo-thoughtfully and then calmly say :

"Probably.. at a guess, just a guess now... when you were beating the living shite out of it yesterday."

The Boss, a mixture of angry, indignant, confused and terrified : "I WASN'T!!!"

Here's me, pleasantly : "OK"

And I go and sit back down.

So she wrestles with this in her mind and then asks me what to do. Naturally, I respond :

"I don't know."

In the hope that the IT guy has to come over from England to replace a keyboard.

So this amused the balls of me, really, as you can imagine I was practically in tears with the laughter. Until I came back from lunch, and went over to more closely investigate the much-abused keyboard. And this is what I saw.

Now sadly a phone photograph does not do this justice. The lettering is not just worn away, if you look closely, you will see :

The keys are very deeply scored with a series of scratches that look a bit like photos of cliff erosion. The photo, as I say, does not really convey this. This looks like she has actually been sitting using the keyboard like a cat a scratching post, repeatedly digging her nails into held-down keys.

BE AFRAID

The Downward Spiral

2010-02-24T18:48:00.000Z

So I arrived in this morning full of, shall we say, utter fucking dread. But it is the nature of this industry that the unexpected can and does happen all the time.

In my inbox was another tasty, delicious, horrific bollocking from the United States. Honestly, I grow weary of these, but having it in e-mail is preferable to being alternately patronised and shouted at on the phone for twenty minutes, at least. However, very helpfully, these documents were copied into myself, The Boss, some of our collective superiors and a bunch of other people in various U.S. Departments of Bureaucracy.

Because it's always great fun to be publicly made an arsehole of.

These terse e-mails concerned documents. Jesus, these people love their documents. Mostly it concerned how the documents sent on the 3rd February were, in laymans terms, a fucking abortion.

And when I looked at these, there was not a doubt, not one doubt in my mind, that I had absolutely fuck all to do with creating these documents. The immediate giveaway, a dead ringer, was this habit of coming off the shift key a fraction too late and writing things like BEst regards. Regularly. I don't do this. I do not.

But I know someone who does.

So, sez I : "I didn't write these documents."

The Boss : "Well your names all over the e-mails!"

Here's me : "Yes. But I didn't send these."

The Boss : "Well you must have done!"

Even as I'm speaking, I'm looking at the calendar, and then flipping to my diary, and slowly becoming incredibly, unbelievably calm. Yes.

I did not send these, because on the day when they were sent, I was in London.

Now, let me condense what has happened here. I usually send these docs each week, but on the day/week in question, I was in London. So The Boss had to send them. And, for whatever reasons, you may speculate freely, the utterly half-assed (I mean, really, seriously badly half-assed) attempts at said documents, she sent them from my e-mail address, on my computer.

So I very calmly, probably smiling a little, replied to this effect :

"Dear all,
Apologies for any inconvenience caused but I must advise that there appears to be some error here; at the time of sending of these documents I was out of the country on business and so can only assume some mistake has been made. Please advise if I can assist further."

Yes, "reply-to-all", of course.

And then I watched, with a certain amount of enjoyment, The Boss's jaw hit the desk about thirty seconds later.

So I acted very innocent and pointed no fingers, and The Boss hurriedly then replied-to-all to explain that she had made an oversight and had worked at my desk briefly and e-mailed said documents from there for convenience, apologies all round.

None of these people are stupid, bear that in mind.

Anyway. Naturally this turned about as wise as painting a big day-glo bullseye on my forehead, but hey, I think those involved will remember this little episode for a while.

The curve is headed now to the median point and this could be considered the highlight of my day.

What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

2010-02-24T18:26:00.001Z

If you could create some kind of mood-measuring-machine and hook us up to it, I think it would represent the mood in the office currently as a sine wave. The up/down curves represent "The Boss is furious with me" and "I am furious with The Boss" respectively, and the centre line that it briefly crosses for an instant each day is the bit where we grudgingly cease hostilities and manage to speak civilly to each other for about five minutes.

It's not, really, very enjoyable. It tends to leave me arriving home, as I have just done, with this horrible burnt-out sort of feeling, and badly in need of a drink. Which I am now having.

Anyway, continuing yesterday's antics.

I returned to the office proper, sorted out what needed to be sorted out, and left The Boss investigating the filing cabinets. She returned visibly pissed off (yes, even more pissed off) but even for her it's very hard to start on somebody for taking a total messy fuckup and putting it into proper order. So instead she said nothing. Not a word. Not like I expected a 'thank you' or even any kind of acknowledgement.

So by now the sine wave is shifting and she is gradually realising that I am, in fact, both absolutely bloody livid, and am not talking to her any more than the absolute bare minimum necessary. So she commences, attempting to be coy or something, to undo some of this damage, but without actually acknowledging it. The standard technique here is to ask me questions, in the hope of prompting some sort of conversation, but at this stage I am just not fecking having it. Such things as :

The Boss : "Liverpool and New York... how far are they from Minnesota?"

Here's me : "I'm afraid I don't know."

or :

The Boss : "How low did the euro rate get this week?"

Here's me : "I don't know."

and :

The Boss : "What's happening with that one stuck in Lagos?"

Here's me : "I don't know."

The Boss : "Can you find out?"

Here's me : "I will try."

The Boss : "When."

Here's me : "When should I do it?"

The Boss, slightly nonplussed : "Um... whenever you're not busy."

Here's me : silence.

The Boss : "So when will you do it?"

Here's me : "Whenever you tell me to do it."

The Boss : "Will you do it now?"

Here's me : "Yes."

The Boss : "But not if you have other stuff to do."

Here's me : "Ok."

The Boss : "Do you?"

Here's me : "Do I what?"

and so on, because if I hadn't known how to act the cunt before, I'd surely have learned by now. So anyway this is far from an ideal way to spend the day, but at least that sine-wave was on the side where I'm not a nervous wreck, and in this fashion yesterday afternoon passed.

Of course, the nature of this balance, is that when I arrived in this morning....

...gah. To be, sadly, painfully, once again continued.

CenoBoss

2010-02-23T20:38:00.002Z

Follows on from this.

There are days, y'know, when I think she's ok. And days when I think she's ok but just a bit mad, a bit ditzy, maybe a bit crazy even. And then other days, like today, when I'm pretty convinced she's something that took form in one of Stephen King's worst nightmares that was too dark for him to commit to paper and somehow crawled out his head and was then made flesh by Satan himself. She becomes inscrutable and emits this tangible wave of some species of horrific darkness that's hard to describe.

Anyway.

So I'm not big on 'filing', generally, partly because it's godawfully tedious and partly because I don't like our store-room. It's a horrible little messy, cold, dusty chamber down a corridor from the main office, and apart from that, it's usually in a state of utter chaos, so I tend to leave it alone as much as possible. Also, between you and me, I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I suspect that The Boss gets up to some sort of filthy arcane black magic type shit in here; strange occurrences that lead me to believe that this closet might in fact contain a few skeletons. In short, it gives me the creeps.

But today it has an air of sanctity about it, because anything beats sitting in there with that woman right now. She is fully batshit today. I could see the veins in her head from the far side of the room, and was pretty sure that she was clenching and unclenching her fists while talking to me in a manner that I do not like to see in supposedly civilized mammals.

I arrive into the dingy little store with my armload of files, and set about trying to figure out what goes where. In theory, this room should contain a year of files; that's the legal requirement. After that they just get boxed up and removed and taken who-cares-where. The files have an eight digit reference on each, the first four of which indicate month and year and the last four of which indicate job number within a given month. Easy, right?

You know better, by now, I'm sure.

I start looking through the filing cabinets. They look like this, for indeed this is they :

You'll notice she takes the ju-ju to a higher level out here, but never mind. My main problem, my main fucking problem here, is that I can't find a single folder that relates to anything about April 2009. They start at 2006 and run to early 2009.. And the cabinets are full. So where the fuck am I supposed to file these files, which comprise most of our work in the second half of 2009? Where? Bear in mind that to get it wrong is A PAINFUL DEATH, and that seemingly, there is no way to get it right.

Ah, shite. I'm going to have to go back out there and ask her. I can actually feel my testicles shrivelling up just thinking about this, but I have no choice.

Nervously, I return and look around the door. She's still sitting there, glaring like a boxer before a fight, bashing the keyboard like a lunatic.

Here's me : "Uh, ahem. I'm... trying to file these files, as requested. But I can't seem to find where 2009 should go?..."

The Boss : "IN WITH THE REST OF 2009!"

Oh my God I think her eyeballs are actually bulging. Really bulging. She's going to sprout hair from her forehead any minute now.

Here's me : "Well, I can't seem to find the second half of 2009... I can find 2006 through to then, but there is not a single folder labelled later than about April 2009, you see..."

I say this like I'm delivering news of a terminal illness or something. Or maybe like telling a really big, angry man with a gun that I've just got his daughter pregnant.

The Boss stops mashing the keyboard and looks at me with utter contempt and coldly states -

"They do not corrugate."

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss barks at me : "The folders do not corrugate to the files in them. You'll just have to look through to find them."

Again, today is no today to pick a fight, I can sense. So I quietly return to the store.

Now on most occasions, I'd be the one going fucking mental right now, but today, actually, this is ok. OK, so there are three filing cabinets full of mis-labelled files. OK, I am going to have to totally deconstruct and re-construct 12 drawers of files, and re-label them, and it is going to be very boring, very tedious, but most importantly - it is going to take me several hours. Alone.

So I set to work. There's a certain joy to be had in this, once it starts to come together; out of chaos, slowly, emerges order, and in this I find satisfaction, as I sit alone in here with a good dose of heavy music blasting through my earphones, writing wee white slips of card with JAN 09 and similar and putting everything in good, proper order. I imagine this sort of pleasure wears thin pretty quickly if this is what you do every day, but for now, it's a sweet mercy; it's relaxing. Not so bad, eh? She can sit in there, banging the hell out of the keys, with nowhere to direct her anger, because she's actually sent me in here, ha ha! This is all fine, this has played right into my furry wee hands and oh mother of fucking jesus she's now standing right behind me.

I have to tell you it really did scare the shit out of me.

I remove the earphones and get to my feet.

The Boss, blocking the doorway : "Did you do his insurance?"

Here's me : "Whose insurance?"

The Boss : "Ronan Keating's."

I swear on my left fucking nut : I am not making this up.

I just stare.

The Boss says the man whose name has never been Ronan Keating's actual correct name after a very long pause.

Here's me, staring back, because this woman is neither just stupid nor crazy, she is plainly both, with a smattering of pure refined evil : "Well, no. Not from in here. There is neither phone nor computer in here. In here where I have been. As you can see. As you know. So obviously. No."

The Boss, her explosive anger all the more nerve-jangling because I'm now trapped in a tiny room with her blocking the doorway : "GET IT DONE YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE THINGS LYING DO HIS INSURANCE NOW AND STOP PLAYING ABOUT IN HERE!"

To be, sadly, continued, again.

The Boss is Coming - Look Busy

2010-02-23T19:04:00.001Z

I knew something was wrong quite early on today. I have a nose for these things, at this stage I think I'd have met with tragedy by now if I didn't.

There was, shall we say, an Atmosphere.

It's hard to say just why, subtle little things, but one of the main giveaways is the way The Boss types when She has a Problem. She pounds away at the keyboard will all of the aggression and total lack of any kind of grace of a very bad drunken teenage death-metal drummer. Who has maybe just been dumped by his girlfriend or something. Anyway, I detected this vibe, and not feeling really up to this today, was trying to just keep my head down and lay low.

But no, despite not wanting trouble, trouble plainly wanted me.

The Boss : "Did you send those bills to Caroline today?"

Here's me : "What, more today?"

The Boss : "SHE ASKED YOU TO SEND THEM THIS MORNING!"

Here's me : "Uh, no, she asked me yesterday morning, and I did send them at that stage. Uh, you were copied in..."

The Boss : "SHE ASKED TODAY!"

Here's me : "I didn't get asked for any more today, honestly."

The Boss : "NO."

Boss Says No, then. I do intend to tell her right before I leave here that it's not as useful a multi-purpose word as "awayandfuckyourselfyoubatshitcrazyoldbastard".

I wait.

The Boss, barely scaling down from the summit of Mt. Angry : "The ones she asked for yesterday!"

Here's me : "You said... nevermind."

About a year ago, I'd probably have argued this. Then I'd probably have asked her what the hell her problem was and asked her kindly that whatever the fuck it was not to take it out on me. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Such is the WAY OF PAIN.

Here's me : "I sent them yesterday?"

The Boss is obviously wrestling with some sort of blood clot in the brain. I try to look too intensely busy to be spoken to. It is very nearly the truth. It does not, however, work.

The Boss : "AND HAVE YOU PUT AWAY THOSE FILES YET!"

Here's me, looking at the files which she is indicating, which are sitting on the desk between us, totally unable to help myself : "Those files? Yeah."

The Boss : "DON'T BE SMARK WITH IT!"

Plainly the woman is actually about to have a meltdown, and also the prospect of spending a while in the store-room out back right now seems, for once, rather attractive, so I seize up the files and my iPod and head on out to the store-room, fully intending to try to make this last the rest of the day if I can.

To be continued.

Catch 22

2010-02-19T02:01:00.002Z

Yeah. Jesus. The United States Customs & Border Protection Agency honestly do not fuck about, when it gets down to it. There is not really very much of the whole give-and-take with them. They are, I must advise, Quite Fucking Serious People.

So I spent most of today trying to complete a number of documents to their requirements. I don't really enjoy this sort of shit; I wasn't born into this world with the soul of a clerk, and I don't really get a hard-on from being shouted at, therefore Me and They do not mix all that well.

Anyway. I'll spare you the unutterably fucking boring details, but suffice to say I'm having a diseased dog's rancid cock of a day. I think, I hope, that I have finally got these manifold documents into some sort of condition whereby I won't end up in Guantanamo or wherever it is They put people that make mistakes on official documents, and I am now missing only one vital piece of information.

Here's me : "What's our contract number?"

The Boss : "You should have it."

Here's me, tetchy : "If you recall, you wouldn't tell me it, because after three and a half years, you still don't trust me."

The Boss, slightly cowed : "I'll look it up"

Some time passes, during which I work my bollocks off in a state that is honestly rapidly approaching abject terror while she watches Meatloaf videos on Youtube with the sound off - true story - anyway - an hour later the threat of late delivery of documents looms over me like a starry stripey eagle with rabies -

Here's me : "Did you find that contract number? I can't send these documents until I have it and the deadline is approaching in terms of minutes."

This is my life.

The Boss : "I told you it."

Here's me, rising : "You did not."

The Boss : "I did so. I said it out loud."

And it's ending one minute at a time.

In the middle of an hour of random mutterings, questions, bizarre expletives, I actually believe she probably did say it, too, in the midst of this, but seriously, in the middle of this lunatic stream of conciousness, I am expected to both recognise and remember a particular four-digit-number, bearing in mind The Boss has not really grasped the concept of "tone of voice" as it relates to "context of conversation"? Get fucked, hey? What do you reckon?

Here's me : "I must have missed it. Can you tell me again?"

The Boss : "I TOLD YOU ALREADY!"

Here's me : "And yet I do not know. Please tell me."

The Boss : "I'M NOT TELLING YOU AGAIN!"

Here's me : "Very well. They will fine us a huge amount if I don't submit this before open-of-business at Houston."

The Boss : "YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME!"

Here's me, with an internal fucking rupture happening : "If you don't tell me this reference right now we are fucked."

The Boss : "YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THE SAME INFORMATION AS ME!"

Boom.

Here's me : "I COULD SAY THE SAME FUCKING THING EVERY TIME YOU ASK ME FOR A SPEC OR AN EXCHANGE RATE OR DIMENSIONS OR THE MEANING OF A GODDAMN WORD I MEAN I swear to fuck information? Inforfuckingmation? The fucking google is available on your fucking computer just as fucking much as on mine and I spend half of my fucking life trying to fucking help you out and now I ask for one goddamn fucking number and it's a problem? This is FUCKED! Our relationship is FUCKED! WE ARE FUCKED! THIS IS A FUCKING FUCK UP! WE ARE A FUCKING UNEQUAL YOLK, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

And now she is not talking to me, again, and the atmosphere in here is absolutely fucking stinking, but I have to go to England on business once again in the morning so she can frankly just fucking sit there and stew.

See y'all when I get back.

FUCK.

I Don't Rate It

2010-02-19T00:52:00.000Z

The Boss : "I don't like the way you do your rates."

Here's me, internally : Oh My Fucking God What Now Woman.

Here's me, out loud : "Eh.. how so?"

The Boss : "Because you don't show your working."

I'm having flashbacks to second-year statistics class now.

Here's me : "Uh.. I thought they were pretty well laid out...."

The Boss : "No. You need to stop letting these.. spreadsheets..." - she almost spits the words out - "do all the work for you."

Let me explain this to you. The rates for shipping cargo are based upon, by and large, the size of the cargo. A rate might then be X amount per cubic metre, plus certain flat-rate surcharges, with some currency conversions involved. It's not exactly fucking calculus, like. It's quite simple. You could, honestly, do it with a calculator, if you so desired, but if you sat at a computer doing several hundred of these a day, you'd probably at some stage get tempted to take the odd fucking shortcut, if you were halfway sane. I do. Of course I do. My rate calculations look a bit like this - actual example -

I use this standard little template I have set up for myself in Excel, and change the details, and it takes me about nine fucking Earth seconds to work out a rate, as compare to TB's hour-per-shot. OK? Got it? Yeah? OK? You're smart people, I know you understand.

OK.

O-Fucking-K.

I am being told I shouldn't do this, because it doesn't 'show my working', unlike The Boss's calculations, which look like this (actual, fucking, fuck me, fuck my life, christfucking example) :

Alright, so this is fundamentally the same process with the same results, except that it takes me about thirty minutes a day to process all of my rate requests and it takes her several hours to do the same, but hers, somehow, show her fucking working in a way which mine do not. Because apparently writing out the same shite each time and punching it into a massive 1970s speak-n-spell-lookin' calculator is somehow more fucking valid than my 'fancy' approach that takes ten times less time.

Have yourself a little scream, if you wish; I'm having one over here.

Starburst

2010-02-19T00:25:00.000Z

The Boss : "What's a starfish?"

Here's me : "Uh..."

I mean, wha?

The Boss : "Starflush."

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss : "Starfresh."

Here's me : "Context. Please. Context."

The Boss : "It's some sort of container."

I hit up the google. Everyone should know how to do so, at this point in human history, surely?

Here's me : "It's some kind of fridge container, used for fresh fruit or something, 'starfresh' is what Maersk are calling their new frozen fruit or veg containers. Why?"

The Boss : "Yeah... that's where I read about it. Why can't you ever give me a straight answer?"

D'oh

2010-02-15T20:16:00.000Z

Just reading blogging chum Manuel's latest entry about his failure to win the lottery, and have realised that I am very, very stupid.

The Boss and myself have been playing the national lottery for a couple of years. Yes yes, I'm aware that it's a tax on people who are bad at maths and so on; I wouldn't bother but it's something mildly entertaining to do in work, ok? And anyway, on the off-chance I became a multi-millionaire, I'd probably rather like it. To hell with these people who say "Ah, but you'd be bored" or "You wouldn't know how to spend it" - they seriously lack imagination.

Anyway, in two years or so, we have not won. Not once. Not anything. Not so much as the bare minimum three numbers that nets you a tenner. And now my mind turns to this, and I think : this is, at this stage, in defiance of the law of averages. Every week, we play. And never have we won anything. Most people will win the bare-minimum-keep-you-playing-tenner one time in ten tries, maybe. A couple of hundred goes, and nothing.

Each Monday, when we remember, we check the results, which is to say, I look them up online, and shout them across to The Boss, who checks them against the ticket, and invariably announces that we have failed yet again. It is a brief moment of camaraderie in the office, as week after week we continue to be statistic-buggeringly unlucky.

I've only just realised the major logical flaw in this whole operation.

D'oh.

Edge of Darkness

2010-02-15T18:40:00.000Z

The Boss : "How would I get an out-of-gauge piece from Dublin..."

Here's me : "Yes?"

The Boss : "To Dublin?"

Here's me : "No no no NO NO NO. To where? It's not from Dublin to fucking Dublin, so from Dublin to where? To Felixestowe? To New York? Rotterdam? The North Pole? To Russia, maybe? To fucking Xing-Gang?!?"

There might well be spittle hanging from my mouth here. Enough is enough.

There is a tense stand-off. Our eyes meet. Mine are probably still swivelling slightly. Her own are a terrifying dead-calm. What is she thinking, in these seconds? What machinations is her brain conceiving, what terrible revenge? What shall she say, to punish my outburst and the sin of losing my fucking rag over being asked yet again a fucking nonsense question? I can't bear it. The seconds seem to stretch away into hours. Still we stare at each other, and her features betray no emotion; her eyes are the abyss Nietzsche spoke of, into which I have gazed for far too long, now gazing back at me.

The Boss, now smiling, breaks into song : "Xing-Gang-Ging, Gooly-Gooly-Gooly, Xing-Gang-Ging, Xing-Gang-Ging, Xing-Gang-Ging, Gooly-Gooly-Gooly, Xing-Gang-Ging, Xing-Gang-Ging, Xing-Gang-Ging!"

..and, now very happily singing this, she seemingly forgets all about the above exchange and turns back to her computer.

Search And Destroy

2010-02-12T19:14:00.001Z

The Boss : "Did you book reference KLU0014?"

Here's me : "Hang on, I'll check."

I type this into the 'find' box and start rolling a cigarette.

The Boss : "What are you doing? You said you'd look for that reference!"

Here's me : "The computer is looking for the reference."

This shuts her up for all of three seconds.

The Boss : "You should know yourself if you booked it!"

Here's me : "I tend not to commit a couple of hundred strings of digits to memory each week, ta. The computer will find it, if I've booked it."

The Boss : "Look for it yourself!"

Here's me : "Quite frankly, no. Be patient."

Outlook finds the reference but only in a mail from The Boss to someone else that I was cc'd on.

Here's me : "You booked that reference. The search has just pulled up an e-mail from you."

The Boss : "YOU NEED TO STAY ON TOP OF YOUR FILES! YOU CANNOT JUST USE THE COMPUTER!"

At this point, having had an odd week, I stood up from the chair and laid my upper body across my desk. After a few seconds I was, quite fairly really, denounced as a cheeky bastard, and went over to The Boss and explained the situation.

The Boss : "How do you know?"

Here's me, the sarky little shit : "The computer told me..."

Her face says to me that this will not be a good way to proceed.

Here's me : "...so if you take a look, I assure you, you will find details of KLU0014 in your e-mail."

The Boss stares at the screen for a few seconds and then looks at me and says : "But that'll take ages!"

I guess it maybe takes the edge off this a bit but in the interests of fairness I must report that she both asked me how to get Outlook to find the relevant e-mails and also did apologise.

Enjoy your weekend folks.
x

Koalatron

2010-02-12T19:07:00.002Z

The Bloody Boss, Her Bloody Computer, The Bloody Photocopier, The Bloody Firewall. My favourite things, they are not, honestly.

OK. *sigh* In case you don't know already, our photocopier/scanner/fax machine links into the network and there are two folders set up on my computer for this, one in her name and one in mine, a shortcut on her desktop points to her folder on my computer and when you scan a document you select which of the folders you'd like to scan it to and it's very simple and very handy. In theory.

The Boss : "My scan folder has gone!"

Here's me : "Have you deleted it?"

The Boss : "No, it's just gone!"

Here's me, who can't be arsed to get up : "It hasn't. I can see it here on mine."

The Boss : "What's it doing on yours!"

Here's me : "It's... nevermind."

I go over and investigate and the shortcut to her 'scans' folder is right there, staring at me. I point this out.

The Boss : "But that's a shortcut! I don't want the shortcut! I want the proper folder!"

Here's me : "You've never had the proper folder. It's on my computer. Just go into that, it'll take you to your document."

The Boss : "BUT I HAD IT BEFORE!"

Here's me : "You did not. Just go into it through there."

The Boss : "I HAD IT BEFORE! YOU'VE CHANGED IT!"

Here's me *sigh* : "I haven't."

The Boss : "Put it back to the way it was before!"

Here's me : "I haven't fucking touched it! Just go into the shortcut! You couldn't possibly have been going into the folder direct because it is and always has been on my fucking computer!"

The Boss : "IT WASN'T! I went in through 'my network places' before and into it that way! I WANT TO DO IT THE WAY I ALWAYS DID IT AND NOT TAKE SHORTCUTS!"

Oh, for fuck's sake. I give up with this conversation, as of right now.

Here's me : "I cannot help."

The Boss : "Fix it."

Here's me, neutral : "I'm sorry, I don't know how."

The Boss : "Is it in the firewall?"

Here's me, I could get angry if this goes the wrong way : "We've talked about... that... word... before."

The Boss : "Would it be in my recycle bin?"

Here's me : "Yes, possibly, yes."

The Boss : "Which one?"

Here's me, reeled back in : "What, you have more than one?"

The Boss : "Yes of course!"

I look. She actually does. How the fuck she achieved that one I do not know.

So anyway I'm at something in the middle of the room. I need to be very specific here. I am not near her computer, I am not even near my fucking computer.

The Boss : "It's back now!"

Here's me, dully : "Brilliant."

The Boss : "YOU SNEAKED IT BACK IN THERE!"

Here's me : "I'M STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING ROOM DO YOU THINK I'M HACKING WITH YOU FUCKING MIND BULLETS!"

The Boss : "THAT WOULD BE JUST LIKE YOU!"

Clocking In

2010-02-12T19:03:00.000Z

Hello chums.

Sorry for the lack of posting, I was away for a couple of days then managed to contract the godawful bastard of a thing which is the "Winter Vomiting Bug". Jesus. Talk about sick. I still feel pretty run down now but am at least on solids again. Although I'd really like some liquids, hey.

But anyway. Have since returned to work and The Boss has of course went even madder in my absence, which I have a certain amount of sympathy for because it's not that easy when your only other colleague is missing unexpectedly. Pleasingly it's been more the amusing end of mad rather than the "I'm going to end up beating you with a hammer" kind of mad, which is good because I think the latter would have killed me in my weakened condition.

Sit back, I'll tell ye.

Fight The Power (Supply)

2010-01-29T20:49:00.003Z

presenting

"Fight The Power (Supply)"

by SK and TB

being an comedic farce of errors

featuring an cast of idiots

I got drunk last night. By accident. It happens. As a result, I went into work today with a belting red wine headache, not terminal in the hangover stakes but when combined with my daily existence certainly enough to make me wish that I could believe in a deity purely so that I could pray to the bastard in question for the sweet release of death.

The drama started almost immediately, when shortly after nine in the morning The Boss's computer died, with a terrible ratcheting sound. I spent a couple of reasonably pleasant and boring years back in the dark mists of time working in the field of computer repair, and while my knowledge of most things is now effectively useless, I can just about do a diagnostic in reasonably simple circumstances. The power supply was gone. Fan packed in. The terrible amount of fluff, human hair, shredded paper and bits of bacon trapped in it were my primary clues in my investigations.

Here's me : "No sweat. Fan has packed in on your power supply. There's that old PC in the storeroom, I'll just swap it over."

The Boss : "No."

Here's me : "Thought that."

I've given up trying to use "sense" and "logic", as you may have noticed. Five minutes or so passed, until The Boss realised that nothing was going to happen by itself.

The Boss : "EYE-TEE PROBLEMS ARE FOR THE EYE-TEE DEPARTMENT."

I mean, don't let that fucking Hewlett Packard certification on my CV, which presumably you did fucking read before you hired me, in any way make you think that I'm capable of taking out four screws and plugging a couple of cables in. Drown in it you harpy's bastard, drown.

The Boss, after several minutes of trying to figure out how to send an e-mail with a stapler or whatever : "Should I phone IT?"

Here's me, not feeling very helpful today : "I don't know."

If you are in any kind of dire straits, I have to tell you that's one of the most useful phrases in the English language.

The Boss phones the IT guy, who tells her to get me to swap the power supply. She denies him, in similar fashion, and insists that he must come to the office and fix it. She wants it done right. Why get me to swap the power supply in ten minutes when you could wait until next Thursday for him to fly over from Coventry?

The IT guy, commendably, must have told her in no uncertain terms to wise the fuck up, but still she is not having it, and instead of getting me to swap the power supply, insists instead that I fetch out this old PC from the store and set it up for her to use.

So I do, because I enjoy a laugh as much as the next marsupial.

I diligently do as instructed and set up this machine for her at a different desk. Rather disturbingly, it's one that sits opposite me, as opposed to her normal position to my far left; I don't really like having her in my field of vision, but even my depleted mental capacity can recognised that this whole fucking farce is going to be very short lived. To make this even more delicious, The Boss has also set up her phone at this desk, and has got reception to go in and mess about with patch cables in order to connect it up and so on.

The Boss : "Where do I get my files?"

Here's me, as innocent as a bairn : "Files?"

The Boss : "MY FILES!"

Here's me : "What files?"

The Boss : "MY FILES ON MY COMPUTER!"

Here's me, not quite yet wanting to live, but deciding that I don't want to die for at least another ten minutes : "They're on your computer."

The Boss : "So I can't get them from here?"

Here's me : "Oh, in theory, yes, you can."

The Boss : "HOW??!?"

Here's me : "Through the network."

The Boss : "HOW DO I DO THAT?!??"

Here's me : "You can't, without your own PC connected to the network."

The Boss is actually more confused than enraged. Fuck my head hurts.

The Boss : "IT SAYS ANTI VIRUS IS OUT OF DATE!"

I completely ignore this, and the ensuing five minutes of babbled panic as she boots up a PC that hasn't been turned on in a year and it displays various messages, warnings, alerts etc. Finally in a state of utter panic about these alien hack intrusions she phones IT again, talks so much shite I can't even be bothered to repeat it, and then covers the mouthpiece of the phone with her hand, looks at me with daggers coming out of her beady little eyes like I'm a mass murderer, and hisses "HE SAYS HE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU".

Much-put-upon-IT-guy asks me what the problem is and I tell him. He asks me can I fix it and I say yes, and pass him back to The Boss, and she is obviously incredibly pissed off about this but now tells me to fix it.

It is now about half ten in the morning and we have, as a company, achieved a level of fuck-all so immense in it's magnitude you'd need a fucking quantum physicist to work it out.

I take a look at this other PC and find out that the power supplies are in fact incompatible. I tell The Boss this, and she asks me where can she get the right power supply. I foolishly suggest a nearby shop that are both very good, and I am quite friendly with the staff of.

The Boss : "So what do I ask for?"

Here's me : "I'll write it down."

The Boss : "Just tell me!"

Here's me : "I'm writing it down."

I hand her a piece of paper upon which I have written "ATX POWER SUPPLY".

Here's me, because I'm nice : "Look. Do you want me to go and pick this up for you?"

The Boss : "You're just looking for an excuse to skive. I'll get it myself. I'm not stupid, you know, whatever you might think."

Here's me : "Fine."

The Boss : "OK, I'll be back in an hour."

Here's me : "Uh, it's five minutes away."

The Boss : "I have to get the car."

Here's me, thinking I should just grab my keys and my phone and run like buggery : "Wha?"

The Boss : "My phone is in the car."

Yeah. One of my favourite things about mobile phones is that they are mobile, but n'mind.

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss : "My phone is in the car and my pin number is in my phone."

Here's me : "Ok, whatever."

So The Boss ventures out and I sit there with glazed eyes and a throbbing head for an hour and a half trying to catch up on about two weeks of work; when she is out of the office is the only time I get to actually work, as you know.

She returns and demands that I perform this task immediately.

This, I do not do. I am mid-flow with an e-mail to a gentleman from Iraq who I am trying, very hard, to get cargo to. You will understand this has it's own difficulties.

Finishing this, I set about replacing her power supply, but find to my dismay that when I put the new one in, it's wrong. That long off-white plug that goes into the motherboard? Too long. I look at the side of the new power supply and see it says "BTX". This is a new one on me; I've been out of the IT loop for many years.

So I go mental.

"YOU could have saved TWO FUCKING HOURS if YOU had let me replace this FUCKING POWER SUPPLY when I SAID TO but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! You had to arse about! You had to FUCKING ARSE ABOUT! AND nooooooooooooooooow, now you come back with THE WRONG FUCKING POWER SUPPLY and what do we do now, eh? where do we go from here? What would you like me to do, because you're in-fucking-charge and this is BOLLOCKS."

The Boss, with a terrifying calmness : "You'll have to go to the shop and get it exchanged. Thanks to you I've already spent more time out of the office than I can afford today."

Here's me : "Fuck you."

Did I actually say that?

Oh fuck, I actually did.

There is something of a staring competition that goes on, and even while the veins in my head are pounding like pistons I am aware that this is probably on the wrong side of the line.

Here's me : "I'm sorry. I'm wound up. I'll go. I didn't mean to say that, but I'm very wound up, it's been a very bad week, my dog had to be put down (this is true, actually - poor wee fella) and I shouldn't have said that. I'll go and fix this."

So I stomped off through the streets and round to the computer shop, kind of vaguely wishing that someone would try and steal my wallet or something so that I could have an excuse for murdering a person, and entered the computer shop to be greeted by the fella I know quite well who works there.

Here's me : "My... fucking idiot... of a Boss, bought a power supply here an hour ago. She, predictably, bought the wrong one. Can you change this for me please?"

Computer Shop Guy : "Nah mate, she got the right one."

Here's me : "No, she didn't. She needs an ATX. This is something called a BTX."

CSG : "There's no such thing as a BTX."

Here's me, trying to stay upright, losing cabin pressure : "Look. The thingy into the motherboard is a totally different shape. Look."

CSG smirks at me, breaks off the little block at the end of this cable which now makes it the correct fit, and smirks again.

Here's me : "I'm sorry. I am the idiot. I am sorry for wasting your time."

I stomp back to the office, with a sort of red curtain in front of my eyes; I walk in and confess all, that I have made a stupid mistake and she got the right power supply. It's always better to admit when you are wrong; this is my firm policy. If someone will not admit when they are wrong, then why the fuck would you believe them when they insist they are right? and so on.

To The Boss, this is like blood in the water to a shark.

"I thought you said you knew all about this, I thought you knew everything, you think you're so smart" and variations on that theme - which continue, even as I crouch, sweating and feeling like I'm having a fucking aneurysm, underneath her desk replacing the power supply.

As I am down there, she comes over and sits in her chair and wheels it in close to the desk. So I am now under the desk with The Boss's legs, her feet are actually touching me. It's fucking revolting down here. Apart from the rest, there are several hundred ripped of scraps of paper and a pair of fucking shoes. I ask her to kindly fucking back off, and continue with my efforts, then poke my head out from under the desk - now within a physical proximity to The Boss I find incredibly fucking distressing - and say :

"I left the screws on your desk, can you pass them down to me?"

The Boss : "No you didn't."

Here's me : "Yes I did."

The Boss : "Well they're not here now."

I can't be arsed with this, so I emerge and go over to the other computer, and take the screws.

The Boss goes mental.

"You can't just... STEAL!... from one, to give to the other!"

Here's me : "Uh..."

The Boss : "You're just robbing Peter to pay Robin!"

Here's me : "Uh..."

I want nothing so much right now as to be in bed, with an overdose of anadin, and possibly a bucket of wine.

I decide the best course course is to ignore the fucking maniac and just proceed to put the fucking screws in, and the remainder of the day passed pretty much unmolested. Sorry, I know you want a better ending, but often in reality endings aren't all they're cracked up to be. Things are certainly coming to a head and I don't know what will happen, but hey, when it happens, I'll tell you.

Enjoy your weekend readers, I do enjoy having you around, and I do appreciate it. Thanks.

SK

Hostility Towards The Opposition

2010-01-28T23:02:00.003Z

Ah, Jesus, I'm tired.

I'm a horrible bastard when I'm tired. Y'know, when you're tired in the brain, just? When you're just worn down? When it feels and sounds and tastes like your brain is just this fucking full of white noise that's screaming at you?

Oh aye, I'm fucking Drama Central when I'm tired.

Ah. Anyway.

There's a scene in the movie Fight Club in which the narrator character remarks something to the effect of how hard it is to start a fight when you're actively looking for one. It's quite true, on any level you care to take it. People can smell it off you and nine times out of ten just decide to leave well enough alone. I was in this kind of a form all day yesterday, as a result of the scanning episode. Viewed from a certain perspective, you could say I was being a bit of a shit; I was waiting for The Boss to ask me about it, specifically waiting for her to say "Did you scan that stuff through to the accountants?" so that I could become a glorious human Vesuvius. But by three in the afternoon, it still hadn't happened; plainly she knew something was wrong, as she was staying out of my way as much as possible.

So by around this time, the atmosphere in the office was one of palpable tension. I'm starting to think, all this fucking shit yesterday - I don't know if it seems like a big deal, but this is a time-based industry and wasting time is the cardinal sin herein - every stupid question, every bit of wrong-footing; this creates more work for me. I spend about four hours of my day doing anything that approaches something productive, if that; the rest of the time I spend dealing with mentalism and acting as a peripheral equivalent of memory and processing power for The Boss's demented fucking brain - this fucks me off. It fucks me right off.

Royally.

So, yes, I derailed myself there - like I said, I'm tired - but, so, yes, I'm starting to think that she's actually fucking forgotten about it. I am ready to give her ten bells of hell over this issue and it has slipped through one of the myriad cracks in her demented fucking skull. She has wasted yet more of my rapidly dwindling mortal lifespan, made me look like an utter fucking knobhead yet a-fucking-gain, and worst of all, been as usual a cheeky bastard about the whole thing, and now when I am just dying to get into a full on fucking row, she cannot even remember the conversation we had yesterday afternoon which I want to have a row about.

So I'm pacing around the office like a total and utter arsehole caged animal, generally being even more terse and sarcastic than usual, and I'm trying to find paper to put in the photocopier. In all corners of the office there are boxes and packets and so on that look as if they should contain paper, but upon inspection all of them are found to be empty husks. So I start gathering these up, with, I now realise, rather more flourish than is strictly necessary, and start putting them all in The Boss's waste-paper basket. Yes THE fucking waste-paper basket. After a few minutes it is full, and still I continue to lift these empty cardboard boxes and empty packets and start piling them around and on top of the Boss's bin. I am vaguely aware of both that I now have her full attention, and also that I am behaving oddly.

The wastepaper basket is now full and piled up roughly four feet in height and radius with the shite I have collected from all around the office in my hunt for virgin paper. Finally, she cracks.

The Boss : "Are you in a bad mood?"

Here's me, still throwing things around her bin : "Yes."

The Boss : "Why?"

Here's me : "Because I got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning."

The Boss knows me well enough by now to know I do not normally give this kind of answer to any question, and I can perceive that she is now very on edge, but still she will not actually give me the feed line I require to get started on this. This is how I operate, in work. Possibly in life too, but if I start thinking about that right now I'm going to get into very dark territory very quickly, so I shan't.

Here's me : "Is there any fucking paper in here? Or just empty packets? Do you know where your fucking bin is? Can you see it? Do you put empty milk bottles back in the fridge? Yes, you do. Where is the fucking paper?"

The Boss, theoretically, would be within her rights to pull the I Am The Boss card round about now, but doesn't - you can speculate upon thy whys and why nots of this for yourself if you so desire because I'm not going to - instead she just quietly tells me that there's paper in the third drawer down of a desk at the far end of the room. I angrily stomp over and fetch it and ram it into the photocopier, again, yes, I am fully aware that this is utterly arsehole-ish childish behaviour.

I start (angrily) copying whatever it was, and it arrives.

"Oh, did you scan the book?"

Here's me, quietly : "Yes."

The Boss : "Did you send it through?"

Here's me : "No."

The Boss, now warming up the pilot light of her own anger : "Why not!"

Here's me : "read the fkn e-mail"

The Boss : "IT SAYS TO SCAN IT!"

Here's me : "read the fkin e-mail"

The Boss, after a brief pause : "oh"

And right then, do you know what I did?

Absolutely fuck all.

Yes, that's correct. Well what the fuck was I supposed to do? Seriously, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Stand there and scream at and belittle a person? I mean, I wouldn't say I wouldn't do that, but not unless somebody really deserves it. The Boss isn't actually what you'd call a 'bad' person, she's just a total and utter fucking arsehole; there's a difference. She is kind to children and small animals, for example; do you want me to make her cry, seriously? For fuck's sake. It wouldn't make me feel very fucking good about myself, would it now?

Basically, the woman is out of her depth, but it's just the particular cocktail that this makes when combined with certain other attributes. 'Stupid' people can be more dangerous than 'bad' people sometimes - actually, stupid people are regularly fucking lethal. Even very smart 'bad' people at least won't act outside of their own self-interest so therefore the way to deal with them is already mapped out for you - dealing with people who are offensively fucking stupid is nigh-on-im-fucking-possible, as anyone who's ever somehow gotten into an argument with a fundie or a hardcore racist or some other kind of dicksplat-made-flesh will know. Agh, what the fuck am I gibbering about now? I don't know, and it's late and I'm tired.

If you could call my not stabbing her in both eyes right there and then a good deed, then you could invoke the cliché that it did most certainly fucking not go unpunished.

To be continued.

Song Of The Day

2010-01-27T14:17:00.000Z

The Boss is singing, approximately to the tune of Copacabana :

"My name is Lu-KA!
Se-cond floor show-GIRL!"

There's something intensely disturbing about that.

All other issues remain floating and unresolved. In the meantime, if you haven't already, feel free to add your Koala on facebook.Further, feel absolutely free to nominate me for this, if you feel like doing so.

I'm trying very hard not to just walk out of here today as the depths of bullshit in which I am sinking are, um, deep. Hopefully I will get clear of this and attempt to be funny or entertaining or something again at some point.

English? Do you speak it?

2010-01-27T10:22:00.000Z

The resolution of the scan farce has not yet happened as I haven't yet been asked "Did you get that done?", and certainly I am going to wait until I am asked, certainly, and then I am going to go fully fucking batshit.

Currently The Boss is blethering on about a booking from someone called Hercules going to Mantovani.

I can't bear to listen to much more of this shit, seriously.

Fuck. Everything. Immediately.

2010-01-26T16:49:00.002Z

Oh fuck me.

So further to last. If you haven't read that, read it first.

I realised that I have now scanned this whole thing and I have no idea where to send it. So I called head office and told them, hey, I've scanned in the years accounts, where do you want me to send this all?

The lady in head office I spoke to was both confused and bemused. She forwarded me an e-mail which was the one from which The Boss had gleaned her instructions to me, which I shall now reproduce part of.

The accounts are progressing nicely with our year end audit.

I have been asked to provide a total of missing invoices on all files.

Can you please scan through your accounts books and let me have details of any missing invoices not received from suppliers.

Do you see? Do you see what has happened? Do you understand? Fucking DO YOU??

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGH

AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH

Unaccountable

2010-01-26T16:28:00.003Z

All was silent in the Halls of the Damned, when suddenly :

The Boss : "FUCK!"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD! God forgive me!"

Here's me : "God doesn't care. What's the problem?"

The Boss, screeching in her sudden panic : "I haven't sent off the accounts!"

Here's me : "Oh."

The Boss : "They were supposed to be with the accountants for yesterday latest!"

Here's me : "Oh."

The Boss : "Can you send them for me?"

Here's me : "Yes. What do you want me to send?"

The Boss : "November 09!"

Here's me : "Just November?"

The Boss, as if I'm stupid : "No, November through to October!"

Here's me, staring at her, eyebrow raised.

The Boss : "WHAT'S THE PROBLEM!?!?"

Here's me, veerrrry sloooowly : "You just said 'November through to October'. November 09 to October... what. Try again."

The Boss : "No, November before! A fullancial year! And I have to go early! I have a dentist's appointment!"

Here's me, ignoring that little pormanteau : "OK. Do you have their address handy, I'll post it to them tonight?"

By 'post it' I refer to posting one of the A4 hardbacked ledgers which I have previously mentioned constitutes our accounts system (along with the pencil and my still-missing shiny new fucking rubber)

The Boss : "You'll have to scan it!"

Sigh.

Here's me : "You want me to scan this whole book?"

The Boss : "YOU HAVE TO!"

Here's me : "If I scan this whole thing it'll be an e-mail the size of Manchester."

The Boss : "JUST DO IT!"

Here's me : "Gah. Give it here."

So I take it, and step up to the plate, and start tinkering with the much-hacked photocopier/scanner device. The book when opened is two sides of A4, naturally I want to set this on the scanner and just scan an A3 sized document each time, yeah? So I'm just checking this is all lining up correctly and so on, running a couple of test copies to check I'm scanning the appropriate area and such...

The Boss is outraged.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING PLAYING WITH THAT THING!"

Here's me, sadly shaking my head : "Never mind."

The Boss : "START SCANNING THEM!"

Here's me, still calm but only just : "Calm. Down. I am spending a couple of minutes setting this up in order to save about half an hour. Just leave me to it."

The Boss is momentarily placated. So I'm standing there at the scanner/photocopier thing, putting a hardback book on it and scanning each page, lifting it, turning the page, repeating this process, and generally wondering just where the fuck my fucking life started to go so badly wrong and thinking it was probably that time me and a friend drink a bottle of his mother's Bacardi one night when we were fourteen.

a reconstruction of the crime scene, for the reader's perusal

So, I race on through this process, and stop briefly to remove the few test copies I did from underneath, which I then drop into The Boss's bin, which regular readers shall know is just beside the copier.

Mistake.

The Boss was previously merely "outraged", now it is fair to say she is fucking apoplectic.

"YOU CAN'T JUST PUT THOSE IN THE BIN THOSE ARE OUR ACCOUNTS!", she actually fucking yells at me, then reaches into the bin, pulls out the papers I have just deposited there, makes a great show of ripping them up and then actually fucking throws them down the side of the fucking bin.

not a reconstruction. actual scene. FML.

I'm pretty sure my mouth is hanging open and my fists are clenching in a manner that would make most people quietly walk away, there very well may be steam coming out of my ears actually.

The Boss's life and my employment here are both saved by the phone ringing. I return to my desk and froth quietly, and The Boss starts shouting inanities down the phone. The call ends a moment later when she slams the phone down.

"THE STUPID BASTARDS!"

I don't even look round.

"THEY'VE MOVED ME TO AN EARLIER APPOINTMENT BUT THEY PHONED DUBLIN TO TELL ME!"

Can't help myself now - "They phoned who in Dublin?"

The Boss screams our company name at me.

Here's me, once again a perfectly tranquil mask of calm hiding the murder that lies at the heart of me : "That is us."

The Boss : "THEY PHONED THE DUBLIN BRANCH!"

with which she seizes up her bags and runs to the door, leaving me now a bizarre mixture of confused, angry and amused. Not least because we don't have a Dublin branch.

EPILOGUE :

About ten minutes after leaving The Boss phoned me and, very bright, breezy and cheerful, said "I thought I'd just to give you something to do while I was away!" and proceeded to give me instructions on something she needs done which would make a funny entry in and of itself but I'm too utterly fucking pissed off to go there right now.

If you're looking for me, I'll be in the office here, kicking the shit out of everything in sight and screaming myself hoarse.

Get Me The Internet On Line One

2010-01-25T15:18:00.001Z

The Boss : "There's too much on the internet."

Sigh.

Here's me : "What are you looking for?"

The Boss : "The dimensions for a New Ford 88880."

Here's me : "Google 'New Ford 88880 dimensions'".

The Boss : "But there's lots of them."

Here's me : "Just pick one."

The Boss : "How do I know which one?"

Here's me : "Just pick one of the first results."

The Boss : "Why are there so many?"

I have no idea how to answer that sensibly, so didn't bother trying.

Here's me : "It's just the way it is. Just pick one."

The Boss : "It would be better if they just had one answer, for each thing."

Gulp. Take a breath.

Here's me : "You should tell them that."

The Boss : "Should I tell I.T.?"

Here's me : "No, tell the internet."

The Boss : "Who are they?"

Here's me : "Google them."

Doesn't Scan

2010-01-22T13:02:00.000Z

The Boss : "How many columns of scans do you have in your inbox?"

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss : "In your network."

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss : "In your folder?"

Here's me : "What's the question?"

The Boss : "I have seven."

Exterminate! Exterminate!

2010-01-21T11:54:00.000Z

The Boss : "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaawn. I'm so tired. I need to sleep. Something woke me at ten to four."

I look over and raise my eyebrow.

Here's me : "The dog?"

The Boss : "No, it slept in my room. This was downstairs. It's the mouse, it was jumping. Jumping up and down. Smashing about."

Here's me, cautiously : "Uh... big mouse, then?"

The Boss : "Must be."

Do Not Ask For Credit

2010-01-20T20:57:00.002Z

Often when The Boss is having a day off, she likes to spend some time the day before making a list of things for me to do while she's away. I don't really understand why the fuck she doesn't just do them, rather than sending me lengthy cryptic e-mails, but hey.

This morning that pile was refreshingly absent. One thing only - some documents to be sent out, special delivery, the customer needs them by tomorrow. Excellent, sez I, and carries on with my day, as happy as a dog with two danglers in my Boss-Free-Zone.

It was all going pretty well till round about lunchtime when a different customer phones me in a mad panic. He is having a major problem. Uh.. how to explain this. If you don't know what a "Bill of Lading" or a "Letter of Credit" are - actually don't worry about it, it's boring as fuck and knowing won't enrich your life any. The two need to match up, where they both exist, and if they don't people start to get very edge about often very large sums of money. And this customer, his don't match up, and he's just realised, and he has to lodge these documents with the bank before close of business tomorrow.

It's a tiny mistake. There's a six digit number missing from one of the documents. These documents are always checked and re-checked because mistakes in them are so costly, but on this occasion a mistake was made - and thank fuck, not by me.

So anyway I need to find the original document, to find this six figure number, and I have no idea where the hell the Boss might have put it, so rather than look through the huge, teetering piles of documents, files, folders and what have you that are both all over her desk and the floor for a good few metres all around it, I phoned her to ask her. I'm not exaggerating, it looks a troop of chimpanzees had an orgy in a stationery shop over there.

Here's me : "Where are the documents for that Bahrain shipment?

The Boss : "In the file."

Here's me : "Yes. Which file, and where is that file?"

The Boss : "On my desk."

Here's me, looking over at her desk forlornly : "It's fair to say that your desk looks like a fucking bomb site."

The Boss : "Don't worry. Just phone Martin. He'll give you the reference."

Here's me : "Who's Martin?"

The Boss : "Tom."

Here's me : "Oh, fuck."

The Boss : "Just phone him! His number's in the file!"

Well that's a big fucking help, thank you.

About an hour later, in between trying to find off the customer who by now sounds like he's having some kind of embolism, I found the file. Inside is a good half inch of paper. It has been stapled together maybe fifty times, and not just in one corner, just randomly all round the fucking edges, so when you try to actually turn a page it turns into this madly fucking clever origami concertina.

a fucking paperclip would be better

Just what the fuck is all this stuff, I wonder. My files are about ten pages or so. How the hell has she got half a ream of paper worth of information on one job? I look through and the answer becomes clear. Imagine you get an e-mail from a customer, a booking. You print it, and open a file. You reply, then print your reply - which of course prints the customer's original e-mail in the file - and then put all of that in the file, too. You do this over the days and weeks that a booking runs for, until the file itself contains page 1-18 of an email exchange, followed by pages 2-18 of the same exchange, and so on.

Fuck.

Me.

So finally in the midst of all this I found the bloody thing, placated the customer and got the necessary corrections sorted out and everything is mostly ok. It took all bloody afternoon but it's mostly ok.

On the way home I was thinking to myself, y'know, there's a certain tact you should use when you're dealing with situations like this, I've found, because nobody likes to have serious fuck-ups thrust in their face, so it's better to be fairly helpful about the whole thing wherever possible. Anyway. It was sorted, at least, and hopefully The Boss would in some way appreciate this tomorrow rather than trying to nail me on some charge real or imagined purely so the focus is not on her.

Round about this stage was when I realised that I'd forgot to post her other fucking documents.

I'm considering just doing a runner.

p.s cheers Stewart ;)

Happy Hump Day

2010-01-20T10:09:00.000Z

So, yes. The Boss is away collecting Pomegranate, the air-conditioning is at a reasonable level, some pleasing music has been put on and the office is my oyster, so to speak. I intend to spend a pleasant and productive day clearing up some shite, making the odd sale here and there, generally pushing gently wherever possible in attempt to get this ship on some sort of even keel and last but certainly not least finding my fucking shiny new fucking rubber.

More news as it breaks.

Brilliant Spam

2010-01-19T23:10:00.000Z

Class bit of spam I just got here :

To Whom It May Concern,

The H1N1 virus has drowned out the noise of the Mad Cow Disease, but that did not make it disappear. Here, at Disease.com (a non profit website), we are dedicated to spreading the awareness of disease preventions and treatments. After I read through your website, it is clear that your organization shares the same passion, that we do about Mad Cow awareness. If you could, please list us as a resource or host our social book mark button, it would be much appreciated. I hope to hear from you soon, we can expand minds; while changing the medical landscape.

--
Lisa Hope
Editor/Writer
Disease.com

The Only Gay In The Village

2010-01-19T22:08:00.001Z

Some things you should know :

1. Ireland is, in many ways, a cultural backwater.

2. The Boss is from a town which it's fair to say much of Ireland would consider to be a cultural backwater, which for the sake of establishing a placeholder name I shall refer to as 'Ballybackofbeyond'.

3. What passes for 'politics' in Northern Ireland has recently experienced a (totally fucking delicious, brilliant, life-affirming) sex-scandal which, (possibly) apart from the possibility of collapse of what passes for 'Government' in the North as a result, is absolute unadulterated pure and refined epic fucking WIN.

So anyway we were talking about this last item, me specifically in light of my 'Ha hah fucking ha, slap it up the hypocritical cunt' stance on this, and off the back of it came this conversation :

The Boss, seriously : "There's a gay fella in Ballybackofbeyond."

Here's me, sarky : "What, just the one?"

The Boss : "Yeah, he comes into the bar on a Saturday night. I feel a bit sorry for him."

Here's me : "Uh, why?"

The Boss : "Well he had a... partner, years ago. But he died. So now there's no-one for him to really... pair off with."

Here's me, mocking, slightly, I'm only human : "So, eh, is he like, the only gay in the village?"

The Boss, seriously : "Yeah."

Here's me : "I seriously doubt that, y'know."

The Boss : "No, he is."

Here's me : "Are you being serious?"

The Boss : "Yeah."

Here's me : "I guarantee you there's a fair few gay men in Ballybackofbeyond, Jesus like, come on!"

The Boss : "No, really. I'd know."

Here's me : "You'd know?"

The Boss : "I'd've heard. He's the only one."

Here's me : "Get a grip. I wouldn't put money on the exact figures but if you took a figure of 2% of the locals being gay as a very fucking conservative estimate, then there's about twenty gay men in the village. Come on."

The Boss, looking a bit nonplussed : "Really?"

Here's me : "Yes, Jesus. Jesus, like, Boss, seriously."

The Boss : "Ha ha. You seem to know a lot about this. Are you one?"

Here's me : "No. What, wait - what? Am I one? What? You know it's the twenty first century, yeah?"

The Boss, indignant : "I have nothing against them."

Here's me : "OK. The 'them' bit - you need to work on that. But ok. Look, the law of averages suggests there are probably a few thousand gay men living in a ten mile radius of where you live, ok?"

The Boss is silent for a second. I cannot fathom what she might be thinking.

"Then..."

I look on, and wait.

"...I...."

And further, I hope that she is not about to say something, y'know, really bad.

"Really?"

I nod solemnly.

And then she smiles. Beams, actually, seemingly genuinely pleased.

"I have to tell him! Where would he go to meet them?!"

Why?

2010-01-19T09:57:00.000Z

It's a bit distressing and depressing but I have come in this morning to discover that The Boss has borrowed my shiny new rubber, drawn all over it with a blue pen and broken it in half. I don't know just why she has done this but it feels like some sort of threat.

Pencil Pusher

2010-01-18T20:32:00.001Z

Note : Our 'accounts system' consists of a big hardback A4 book, in which we write down each job, the amount we charged out, and details of the invoices received against it. Being that it's not the 1970's anymore this bothers me a bit but I've long since given up caring about such things.

The Boss has been out somewhere at lunchtime and has returned to the office with an air of a person who has things on their mind. This, naturally, scares the shit out of me.

The Boss : "We need to keep better track of our accounts."

Here's me : "I... totally agree."

The Boss : "We need something that can give us what our current profit is likely to be."

Here's me, thinking yes, we're moving forward here : "I totally agree!"

The Boss : "And so we know what charges we're likely to expect against a job. What do you think?"

Here's me, actually quite excited about the prospect of finally dragging this operation kicking and screaming into the 1980's : "Definitely! Yeah, I don't know if it warrants something as comprehensive as Sage but there's probably similar but simpler programs out there, so let me take a look and see what..."

The Boss, coldly, with a deadly air of finality : "No."

Here's me, hitting the wall : "Wha?"

The Boss : "I don't want nothing fancy."

Oh Christ, I've been blind-sided here. Oh fuck. IT'S A TRAP.

Here's me, fucking terrified : "You haven't been in Excel have you?"

The Boss : "No. Because I don't want nothing fancy."

Here's me : "So, ah, uh, what are you thinking of?"

The Boss makes her way over to me and sets some small items on my desk. I stare at them, then at The Boss, then back at the items, trying to keep my expression completely neutral.

The Boss : "So when you put a job in the book, I want you to write in, in pencil, what charges you think will come in. Then when the real invoice comes in, rub it out, and fill it in with a pen."

Here's me : "Ha ha! Very good! Ha!"

The Boss is staring at me.

I can do nothing but stare back.

The Boss : "Understand?"

Here's me, now staring with naked horror at the 'new accounts system' : "Is this a fucking eyeliner pencil? Is this stump of a thing I am looking at on my desk here a fucking eyeliner pencil?"

The Boss : "NO! I went out and got those special."

Here's me : "Did it come, like that, already drawn on?"

The Boss : "Don't be smart with me."

Here's me : "Could you have got a proper grown-up sized pencil?"

The Boss : "But there's lots of them."

It's true. There are. She reveals a handful of two inch long pencil stubs.

Here's me, with some nameless suspicion in the back of mind : "Where did you get these?"

The Boss : "It doesn't matter."

It does though, and in the back of my mind I think I'm starting to realise something important, some key familiarity here -

Here's me : "Did you steal these fucking pencils from fucking Argos?!"

The look on her face confirms that I am correct. Fuck.Ing.Hell.

Say What?

2010-01-18T16:05:00.000Z

The Boss : "Where is the Middle East, for imports?"

Here's me : "Uh, what?"

The Boss : "If you're importing to the Middle East, is that westbound or eastbound?"

Here's me : "From where?"

The Boss : "From the east. West. Eastbound imports?"

Here's me : "Stop. Wait. What's the question again?"

The Boss : "Where's the Middle East from here?"

Here's me : "East."

The Boss : "So if it's from the Middle East, where's here?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "So it's 27%?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "Do you not read your e-mails?"

Here's me, lost, adrift : "What? I mean, what?"

The Boss : "Oh never mind. I haven't sent it yet."

What?

Because All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

2010-01-18T13:05:00.001Z

I've only been and gone and created myself a farcebook profile. I may or may not bother to sporadically update this with reports Live from the Lunacy here. Work away.

Damned If You Do

2010-01-18T11:30:00.000Z

In a reversal of the usual state of affairs for a Monday morning, I was in work on time today and The Boss was late. Almost half an hour late, which is quite unusual for The Boss - oftentimes when I arrive in here (normally between five and ten minutes late), I get the distinct impression that The Boss has been here all night.

The Boss : "Sorry I'm late."

Here's me : "Hey, it happens. And you don't really need to apologise to me for being late anyway, you know."

The Boss, snidely : "I take it you were late too?"

Here's me : "No."

The Boss : "Because I was phoning you."

Here's me getting defensive : "Oh really now?"

The Boss : "I was, and you didn't answer. So you must have been late."

Here's me : "The phone has not rung."

The Boss : "Only because I couldn't remember your number."

Here's me : "Wha?"

Happy Monday.

Hickory Dickory Dock...

2010-01-16T18:00:00.000Z

The Boss : "Where would I get mousetraps?"

Here's me : "Uh, dunno exactly. For the house is this?"

The Boss : "Yeah. Haven't seen them but I know they're there."

Here's me : "Been finding wee poos everywhere?"

The Boss : "Noooo....."

Here's me : "Seen one then?"

The Boss : "Noooo...."

Here's me : "How do you know you've got mice then? Things nibbled?"

The Boss : "Noooo...."

Here's me, with trepidation : "You're being strange about this..."

The Boss : "I have an old clock on the mantelpiece. The sort with a... thing... that hangs..."

Here's me : "A pendulum?"

The Boss : "Yeah. It hasn't worked for years but in the middle of the night it starts up and I can hear it banging from side to side..."

Here's me : "Uh, sure it wasn't just, I don't know, a breeze or something?"

The Boss : "No, it happens at the same time every night, about two in the morning. The pendulum starts banging off the side of the clock like crazy, just for a few minutes then stops. They must live in it."

Here's me : "Uh, like in the nursery rhyme?"

The Boss : "Yeah."

Here's me : "How long has this been going on for?"

The Boss : "A few months. Every night at two a.m."

Here's me : "How do you know it's mice?"

The Boss : "I just know."

Now is it just me or there is something not right here?

CSI Bossville

2010-01-16T14:28:00.000Z

So yeah we had a break in. The whole building, really. Two fellas climbed up via the car park out back in the middle of the night, and got in via a first floor window. They then went into every office in the building, smashing through the glass panels in the doors with a fire extinguisher to unlatch the doors by reaching through. Nothing much taken really, one company had four laptops taken but that was pretty much it. Our office was broken into but nothing taken, since there's pretty much nothing to take.

As I walked into work, reception were handing out those disposable surgical-type rubber gloves to everyone coming in, to wear while we opened doors and so on on the way into our offices. The Boss was already in the office so I came in, looked disgustedly at the pile of broken glass beside the door, and sat down thinking "Well, at least the little fuckers didn't trash the place, or start a fire."

So I started to work and The Boss shouts over "PUT THE RUBBER GLOVES BACK ON!"

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss is trying to type with rubber gloves on and seems to want me to do the same.

Here's me : "It's only for the door handles and that. I don't think your keyboard is going to matter too much."

The Boss : "But they could have used the keyboards!"

Here's me : "What, you think they interrupted the burgling operation to rattle off a few e-mails? Updated their facebook status while they were here, maybe?"

The Boss : "YOU NEVER KNOW!"

Oh well. Anyway, about an hour or so later, the fingerprints guy turned up, along with a suited type from CID to take a statement. CID guy has the wonderful job of interviewing The Boss but he's having difficulty holding her full attention because she's busy telling fingerprint-guy how to do his job.

CID Guy : "First of all, is there anything missing, that you're aware of?"

The Boss, talking past him : "Aren't you going to do the door latch? They would have had to touch the door-latch."

Fingerprint Guy : "We actually can't prints from that kind of surface."

I am, as usual, embarrassed by association. Only The Boss would think of telling forensics how to do their job.

CID Guy : "Ahem. Anything taken, that you're aware of?"

The Boss : "No, but things have been moved."

CID Guy : "Moved?"

The Boss : "The tin I keep my stamps in. It's at the other end of the desk."

CID Guy : "But nothing missing?"

The Boss, re-routing the conversation : "Aren't you going to take footprints?"

Fingerprints Guy and CID Guy both stare at her.

The Boss : "In the broken glass. They must have stepped in it, because look there, you can sort of see a shape of a foot."

CID Guy : "No, we don't take footprints."

The Boss : "Well I would have thought you should have at least taken footprints."

CID Guy, plainly rattled, turns to me : "Anything taken, that you're aware of?"

Here's me : "No, nothing at all has been taken."

CID Guy, visibly relieved : "OK, well if anything should come to light here is my card..."

The Boss, gabbling : "Well I would have thought you should at least, put up some tape...."

All three of us are now staring at her.

"... and, uh, secured the area, and, um, isolated.. a crime scene."

CID Guy Is Beautiful : "No ma'am. I think you've been watching too much CSI."

Best/Worst Ever

2010-01-15T21:07:00.000Z

This is probably the best/worst thing the Boss has ever said to me. I really didn't know where to look.

So in the middle of all this I finally went to see a doctor about this sleep-related problem I've had for some time. Specifically, it seems that I have fairly severe sleep apnea, which apart from the long-term health risks means that I generally feel quite tired and shitty a lot of the time, as I spend my sleeping hours trying to murder myself by asphyxiation - so anyway the doctor told me this was unusual in people who aren't overweight (I'm closer to the skinnier end of the range, hey) and took a look into my throat and reckons the problem probably lies therein. I have big tonsils and what's called a double uvula, crazy mutant freak that I am, apparently this is the root of the problem. The doctor told me that this is probably a case for surgery. Great. So anyway :

The Boss : "So what did the Doctor say?"

Here's me : "Well, apparently it's going to need surgery. Problem is in my throat, I have what's called a double uvula and for starters that's going to need surgically trimmed..."

The Boss, doubtfully : "Oovuuula?"

Here's me : "Yeah, you know that dangly bit that hangs down at the back of your throat?"

Doctor Boss, scornfully : "It's called a vulva."

-

I couldn't even speak one word in reply. Think I nearly swallowed my own tongue.

10+2

2010-01-15T20:57:00.001Z

Just what is 10+2 filing?

A HUGE BLOODY ROW, is what it is.

Unable to get anything approaching sense or information from The Boss, I made some enquiries. The enquiries I made led to me making an utter dick out of myself, which is not the sort of thing that I really enjoy. Occasional bollockings from customers are par for the course but bollockings from the United States Customs And Border Protection Agency are frankly no fucking fun whatsoever.

10+2 filing is yet another part of the ongoing system of mind-melting bureaucracy very stringent security requirements from US Customs. To spell this out for you, the United States is the single most complicated country in the world to ship anything into, by a long stretch. Complicated, difficult, and immensely powerful in this sense - the US reserve the right to turn an entire ship out of it's coastal waters if there's a single piece of cargo in a single container on board that hasn't had every necessary document completed in good order. No-one is really mad keen to be the person who costs a shipping line a few million because they didn't send the right number of copies of the right forms, hey what? A quiet word with a chap I'm friendly with on the far side told me the bones of what I need to know, or more specifically what I needed to know about a year ago. This system can into place in January 2009 but no penalties were being issued for a grace period of one year from then, from which point on the intention of the powers that be is to hammer the life out of any transgressor, both with fines and an attempt to physically bury the guilty party in paperwork.

As with nearly every piece of new legislation in the freight industry this century, if you ask anyone "but why?" the answer is generally the short and far from simple : "Nine-eleven.". The global transport industry has taken nine years just to decide what forms need to be filled in as a result, think about that in your own time if you want to.

Anyway, I digress. It won't happen again, in fact I didn't really want it to happen at all but hey. Exports to the United States more or less account for our existence here in this company, and as such You Do Not Fuck About With Them.

I can't even type this out in a funny or amusing way, I'm trying to put a spin on it but it's not happening; basically, all the rules just changed and the World has had a year to get used to it, and I didn't know. Why didn't I know? Because, quite simply, we are a fucking shambles. We may be doing ok financially but in terms of being organized we are an utter fucking bollocks.

Three days of trying to understand while playing some sort of weird, inverted game of cat and mouse over the whole fucking thing.

Here's me : "So wait, do you actually understand this stuff?"

The Boss : "You should."

Here's me : "Well I only fucking found about it last week, I mean when the fuck did you find out?"

The Boss : "I told you about this."

Here's me : "Bollocks. Fucking. Bull. Fucking. Shit."

That's not a verbatim conversation because I've forgotten the details of this three-day-long-argument and the above is certainly toned down but suffice to say we both absolutely lost the fucking plot and our respective rags and as this is just too bloody serious to let go head office have become involved and we have both been summoned to go to a meeting with the upper echelons, which promises to be interesting I'm sure. Having to fly back home together afterwards should be a fucking riot, apart from anything else. This is very fucking serious indeed and I am not going down for this utterly fucking calamitous fuck-up.

I don't think I've managed to convey what's happening at all, but so much of it is technical and the conversations around it were disastrous. By coincidence or whatever I ended up getting sick and took a few days off to recover, during which I still managed to have arguments with The Boss via telephone while I was lying there in bed, and these are not our usual to-and-fro stuff, it's been full on bloody warfare. So something may happen in the not-too-distant and what that all means I can't even really think because I'm still not feeling the best and I'm stressed to the fucking neck over the whole thing. More news as it breaks.

Who You Gonna Call?

2010-01-15T20:28:00.000Z

As you can imagine, various conversations have been had in the industry in recent weeks concerning the knock-on implications of some arsehole blowing up his underpants. There is a very definite chain of events that occurs after any security-related event, a chain which more or less amounts to 'if this ever happens again you can be damn sure we'll know exactly who to blame for letting it happen'. Yes, I'm flippant about this, and I think in a lot of ways that's the correct position, but that's a different story.

Airport security. I have not since nor probably never will again see airport security like we had here in the 1980's. We were doing "terr*rism" here long before it started really selling and getting to number 1 in the charts and stuff, doncherknow. Forget putting your toothpaste in a wee polythene bag, you had to pull into a lay-by with a sort of army checkpoint thing going on a couple of miles down the road from the airport itself to get your car searched, for starters, and were then body-searched for the first time before you even got inside the airport building itself. It was a bit of a o_O moment for me the first time I walked into an airport somewhere else and realised it was just a case of walking in straight off the street, with the same ease as one would walk into a shopping centre. Actually at that time the shopping centres here probably body-searched you on the way in - I can't remember for sure, I was only wee.

Anyway, there isn't really a point to this other than a vague anecdote I thought I'd share because some light relief is in order for me before I finish telling you about the terrible shit-fest that this last week or two has been. I've been staring at the same draft for a couple of days, it's just too bloody miserable.

It was, I'm pretty sure, round about 1984, which would place me at six years old or thereabouts. Several very very important things were happening in quick succession - you may at first not see why they are related - firstly, I was taking my first trip 'abroad' with the family, on a holiday to Spain; secondly, I had received for Christmas that year a Meccano set, and finally I had recently seen Ghostbusters.

As any child was at this time, I was Ghostbusters mad, and had pretty much decided that this was my future career right there and then. The other great god in my life at this stage was the Meccano set, which I was utterly obsessed with. Being an enterprising sort of a child, I had decided that it seemed like a simple enough matter to construct my own ghost-catching-ray-gun from the humble Meccano set. Easy because I tell you what it was a magically brilliant Meccano set and apart from all the wee nuts and bolts and girders it also ONLY HAD A FRIGGIN MOTOR IN IT.

Anyway. I had discovered, because I was that kind of child, that just attaching the one provided AA battery was absolutely not where the money was. Instead, you could fashion an ARRAY of POWER for your ghost-hunting device by sellotaping a long string of AA batteries end to end, and the motor then went absolutely dip shit and if you were lucky screamed and whined and emitted smoke.

With this technology I fashioned my ghost-capturing weapon from little metal rivets and girders. And I loved it, naturally, for however many days or weeks my ghosthunting career lasted - it was so cool that the other kids let me be Venkman for a while, and I was a serious nerd - this was like winning the lottery, you understand.

Happy days. So the whole Spain holiday thing loomed and while I'm sure it seemed at least vaguely interesting it didn't really compete in the interest stakes when put alongside my fledgling paranormal containment and disposal service, so I was actually quite bummed I guess about having to down tools on this front for two whole weeks.

But I had a fucking great idea, I did.

If the young Koala had to go to Spain, then he would tackle their ghosts.

At the last minute, once the bags were packed, I furtively crept up to where my parents packed suitcases were stored, and slipped into one of them my protonic-ghost-capturing-equipment. Consisting of a block of various bits of metal, wires and so on, and a bunch of taped batteries. Then happy as dog with two danglers a couple of hours later we all trotted off to the airport with this in one of our suitcases.

Apparently the resulting partial-evacuation episode in the airport was pretty impressive. My dad ended up getting questioned by the army and everything. Brilliant.

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful

2010-01-15T19:34:00.000Z

And yet here I sit with my sleeves rolled up and the window open. I think it's somewhere in the region of about -4' C outside right now, and yet I am sitting here sweating like a priest in a Barney outfit. The Boss has one again attempted to exert control over the laws of thermodynamics and has turned the air conditioning up to 29' C before leaving last night.

I question her on this as we sit slowly dying of heat exhaustion.

Here's me : "Why did you do this?"

The Boss : "It was set to 19. But 19 was too cold."

Here's me : "So what was wrong with, I dunno, 21 or something? I mean, 29 degrees?"

The Boss : "I set it to 23. But that was too warm."

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "23 was too warm. So I opened the windows. But then it was too cold, and I had to turn it up to 29. 29's just right when the windows are open."

I'm going to kill her, very soon.

Nods and Winks

2010-01-14T21:56:00.000Z

Oh, it's going to get worse. Honestly. Seriously. I'm going to have to wait to tomorrow night and have a drink on hand before I tell you the rest.

Anyway, I must mention the following. Manuel the Waiter, firstly, is back from hiatus. Manuel is frankly beyond fucking brilliant and is probably one of the main original inspirations to start blogging this bollocks. You'll love it, seriously.

Longtime friend, former bandmate and generally top chap Marty is doing this interesting and worthwhile thing of being sober for a year and abstaining from anything stronger than caffeine for the duration. Donations are accepted on behalf of mental health charity SANE and if mental health or issues with substances is something that interests or affects you for whatever reason then you should take a look.

Back shortly :)

What Really Happened

2010-01-14T17:18:00.004Z

Happy New Fucking Year. I mean it.

Monday. I dragged my sorry carcass out and into the snow like some sort of pitiful lost lamb and made my way to the office, which was freezing, and depressing, and entirely devoid of sunlight - both the journey and the destination I'm talking about here - and the only thing going through my mind, honestly, was 'please let her be sane today... please...'

But no.

Fuck no.

I was greeted upon my arrival by this bastard thing:

Yessum.

Here's me : "What's that?"

The Boss : "A paper shredder."

Right then.

Our used paper goes to the recycling thingy. It doesn't need to be shredded. We do not deal with anything that needs to be shredded. If you've been reading, you know this. I'm too tired to elucidate too much right now. And at this time on the cold First Monday Of The New Fucking Year, I could surely not be bothered to get into this with The Boss.

So anyway I sat down morosely and set about tidying up. There is a certain amount of, let's call it shite, that you generate on a daily basis on this industry, because the paperwork involved would bore the shit out of any thinking person and anything that looks non-urgent and complicated tends to get re-shuffled to the bottom of the deck, sometimes for years, and so gradually these piles of documents expand and at quiet times, like now should be, I often spend a little time trying to reduce the amount of shite I'm surrounded by. I mean, I'm not too bad that way, I don't have too much. The Boss, as you can imagine, at this stage has spread her shite into every part of the room that is not my desk, and some of these pieces of paper have actually worked here longer than me.

Anyway.

I start tidying my shite and The Boss is sitting happily shredding paper with her new shreddy friend. I'm trying to concentrate and get into a flow with what I'm doing but I can't really quite achieve either because The Boss, having found her personal flow, commences with the questions.

The fucking questions.

The Boss, furiously shredding : "What weight is 1800?"

I merely grunt and continue to concentrate.

The Boss continues with her shredding. It has a button you have to hold down. She's like a cat with catnip.

The Boss : "What are parameters?"

Ah, but being away from her monitor is freeing up that which passes for the language-processing area of her brain, and so now she is just speaking every random thought that comes to mind. I find that I can actually negate a lot of BossCrazy by just totally ignoring her when she asks a question. It may sound rude but it doesn't take any longer than about thirty seconds for her to forget that she's asked me. It's hard to maintain though, that kind of thing.

The Boss : "Where do I get my unread e-mail?"

Here's me, not looking up : "inbox"

The Boss : "I looked in my inbox but they're not there. Did you fiddle with my x-box? outbox?"

Mr Shreddy : NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

Here's me : "guh"

The Boss : "What do you want for lunch?"

Here's me : "I... it's nine thirty?"

The Boss : "Do you think our server is down?"

Here's me, looking up : "You're... you're not even at the... gah...."

The Boss : "Just wondering. Can you send me what you've e-mailed me?"

NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

The Boss : "What's the exchange rate to dollars today? Euros. Pounds. Dollars?"

Then, without missing a beat, without even waiting to see if I'm going to try to answer -

"What's 'cushion's disease?'"

NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

Here's me : "What. The. Fuck."

The Boss : "Somebody was talking about it. How far advanced is India?"

Here's me, now giving up any pretence of trying to work.

"Look. Seriously. I'm trying to get some things cleared up here. Don't distract from this for a wee bit and I won't distract you from your hobby there."

NUNGNUNGNUNG

The Boss : "Have you got sars?"

Yeah, that's what I heard her say, I don't know either.

Here's me : "You are driving me up the wall. Seriously."

The Boss : "You should have had it done already."

Here's me : "Had what done? What? Hey? You don't even know what I'm doing over here. Really. For fuck's sake."

The Boss : "Well it's alright for you to sit there clearing things up as if you've no proper work to do."

NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

Here's me, biting : "I am trying to clear up things I could not get done over the last few weeks because I was very busy. If you would like to clear these things up, I will happily shred the fucking paper for you."

The Boss : "Well... if"

Here's me : "...and further I am trying to get some things done when I am really at a bit of a loss here. I'm trying to understand all this shit from Houston and half of these things I've never heard of before... I think I've got the rate filing sorted, the AMS filing, the ISF I sort of vaguely understand but I mean really what the hell is all this 'ten plus two filing' shit about and if you know anything about this I could really use some sensible fucking help because some of this stuff is scaring the shit out of me..."

The Boss : "Do you not know about 'ten plus two'?"

Here's me : "No, do you know about 'ten plus two'? What the fuck is 'ten plus two'?"

The Boss : "Filing."

NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

Here's me : "I'm gonna need a little more than that."

The Boss : "You should know."

Here's me : "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK"

I'm literally inches away from expensive channelled violence, and this is only the fucking beginning.

Here's me, a ranting dribbling mentalist : "Lunch. You said something about lunch. Granted it's not even ten o'fucking'clock yet but sure let's talk about lunch. What would you like for lunch?"

The Boss, furious : "It's too early to be thinking about lunch!"

NUNG

Happy New Year!

2010-01-14T17:08:00.000Z

Happy New Year!

(belatedly. sorry, etc.)

It even sounds better. Two-thousand-and-nine just doesn't roll off the tongue, and every time I heard someone refer to the decade as "the noughties", I felt like punching a clown. But TWENTY-TEN. Sounds impressive. Sounds dynamic. It's definitely the future, twenty-ten. I returned to work on Monday morning for once vital, and full of the joys and so on, and with definite aims in mind. I had a healthy breakfast and despite the cold, it was a crisp and beautiful morning.

I entered the office with purpose, made the formalities and then sat down opposite The Boss and produced a document from my pocket, which I laid upon the table. Allow me, sez I, to run you through this point by point; it is not a list of demands per se, but it may not do any harm for you to consider it as such.

When The Boss feels herself about to speak, The Boss is to stop, and think.
The Boss is to double check the thought produced in (1) and if it seems that my reaction will be 'wha?', The Boss is to not speak.
Even if The Boss is to speak, The Boss is to speak no more than is strictly necessary on the subject.
The Boss is to call all things, including but not limited to persons, places, currencies, and any other object, animate or inanimate, animal, vegetable or mineral, by their proper name. If The Boss does not know the thing in question's proper name, The Boss is to stop and find out it's proper name before continuing.
The Boss is not to say, under any circumstances, ever, the combination of syllables 'Ronan Keating'.
The Boss is not to sing La Cucharacha, neither wholly nor in part.
That line in 'Yellow Rose of Texas' should be sang as 'Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew', not 'Her eyes spar-kel like diamonds, they tinkle like a Jew'
The Boss is not to sing 'Yellow Rose of Texas', neither wholly nor in part.
The Boss is not to sing.
The Boss is not, not ever, ever again, to click her fingers at me to get my attention. I would also advise The Boss that if The Boss also perchance does that at waiters, The Boss deserves everything she gets.
The Boss is not to talk about, think about, use, consider, or in any other way whatsoever involve herself with spreadsheets.
The Boss will agree that no-one has ever tried to hack into us, nor ever will, and we shall not speak of it again.
The Boss is not to borrow my ruler for the purpose of scratching her back. If The Boss wishes to scratch her back in this way, she must order a new ruler to replace the ruler she previously broke while scratching her back.
Nine until twelve - "Good Morning, [company name]"; Twelve till five thirty - "Good Afternoon, [company name]"
The company name, once again, is (XXXXXX)

She read this document a few times through, at my insistence, and agreed that these points were all fair and reasonable, and that she had long been unfair and unreasonable, and that she had seen the error of her ways and would agree to my demands conditions and that she looked forward to moving forward in a forward-thinking manner.

I can't carry on this lie any longer, I've had The Week From Hell. From fucking HELL. Let me show you it.

He Shoots, He Scores, It Is Probably An Own Goal

2009-12-30T15:30:00.001Z

The upshot of this last communication, it turns out, is that we have a shipment arriving into Dublin today and the charges on it, some several thousand dollars, have to be paid before we can release it to the customer, who of course needs it urgently. The Boss is panicking because at this time of year a bank transfer could take until next week, and so the shipment would be delayed, the customer upset, and so on.

Now that I have figured out, after much ado, what in the flying fuck is going on, I have just rectified this entire panic attack by calling someone I know in the shipping line's local branch and asking very nicely "Hey, could you sort this out with your Dublin people for us please, so we have a credit account and can just pay for this in January?" to which the reply was "No bother mate, I'll sort that out for you, Happy New Year".

So some sort of GODAWFUL END OF THE WORLD BOSS PANIC is resolved by a simple friendly phone call, the downside of this being that when she comes in tomorrow, I already know in advance that she's going to be furious about me having done this in the quick, efficient and friendly way. She will, I already know, take great exception to this. Arse-biscuits. Honestly, I've had her on the bloody phone all day and "nails down the blackboard" doesn't even begin to cover it, it's the conversational equivalent of having my scrotum trapped inside a dot-matrix printer.

Santamas

2009-12-30T14:13:00.002Z

Good after-morning!

I hope you had a pleasant break and such, if you did indeed have one. I had a quiet one myself, but quite nice.

So anyway I'm alone in here today, The Boss had some days off left to use (a fact which I find highly suspicious, but never mind) and so is sitting at home sticking bits of newspaper clippings to the walls or whatever it might be that she gets up to on her days off. Several things will happen, pretty much without fail, when The Boss is off. The first is that she will phone me at around 9.05 in the morning, largely I suspect to check that I'm in the office (fair enough) - she will ask me if everything is alright, and I will try to get her off the phone as quickly as possible. She will then call back at around ten in the morning as she remembers various things that she 'needs done'. This could be almost anything, and it's kind of like a game; the tasks will be hidden at various locations around her desk and the office itself - I mean, my desk is ok, occasionally it has a few more rizla packets lying on it than is strictly professional but for the most part it's quite tidy, but The Boss's desk, as you can imagine, is this scene of unmitigated horror, it's Project Fucking Mayhem over there -

The Boss : "Can you do a rate for Martin. Mark. Keenan. Ronan. To Piraeus, Limassol. From Portbury. Southampton. Tilbury. Dublin. Can you get it from Cork. It's in the file, but not in the file. Not in the file itself. See if you can get it."

This is how arguments start, y'know.

Here's me : "Uh, seriously, I have no idea what you're talking about, just so you know; I mean, if you come in here tomorrow and ask me why I haven't done this, it's because I haven't a single fucking clue what you're on about."

The Boss : "I sent you an e-mail about it last week!"

Here's me : "Did you?!? When?!?"

The Boss : "Before we left on Christmas Eve."

Can you dig this. We were both sitting here on Christmas Eve and The Boss at some stage that day e-mails me about something she'll need done on 30th December; I mean, apart from the obvious 'why didn't you just do it yourself, instead of e-mailing me?' there's also the fucking crazy notion of e-mailing someone who sits across the room from you to tell them to do some work for you next week... ok, never mind, anyway -

Here's me, looking through my e-mail, and I can't see anything that seems to be instructions from The Boss. There is one titled "SANTA", but I assumed this was just some sort of Christmas-spam-bollocks-wank of the type that The Boss loves to forward, you know, the sort of e-mail that goes around in Comic Sans and tells you to spread the joy and goodwill or else your knob will fall off, so I sez : "I can't see anything from you except some 'Santa' e-mail?"

The Boss : "That's it!"

Here's me : "-"

Indeed, on closer inspection, the innocuously titled 'SANTA' e-mail, sent on Christmas Eve, is actually a lengthy missive of instructions from The Boss, which she has sat and typed to me while we were in the office together on Christmas Eve, and I now paste for your perusal :

--------
Sorry about this

The middle file on my desk is all the Shipments. Can you please look at
the following 2 urgently at least

Vessel : Santa something????
Shipment due in around 30/01/09 is arranging customs / delivering Bill of Lading. Can you please ask (Number inside of file) to let us have delivery notification / invoice. Charges are written inside of file as we dont have credit please ask to forward payment. Also raise an invoice to forwarding - no release until Bill of Lading / Payment has been received/ Please also ask Umesh for details again.

Dublin -

Container arriving in around 30th / 31st December. Ask Dublin for
invoice or at least rate of exchange. Raise an invoice to name
on file. I have also sent her an email with charges. Again check and see
if we have credit - if not please ask to pay this one asap as well.

Thanks and
all being well, see you Thursday

--------

I mean, I feel stupid now. I should have known that a 'SANTA' e-mail sent on Christmas Eve referred to a vessel (the 'Santa Catalina', I have since found out, should you care) and not the fat God-lookalike in the red suit. If anyone, anyone, can tell me, even approximately, just what the hell I should be doing, I will buy you a large drink. Yes, the above makes no more sense to me than it will to you, which is to say it makes not one fucking iota of sense at all.

On another note, thank y'all very much for the many comments & kind wishes and so on - you rock.

The Appropriate Response

2009-12-15T22:23:00.010Z

"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane"

Philip K. Dick

I'm sitting here with my brain running out of my ears. Honestly. I'm pretty sure that's a liquefied part of my temporal lobe I can feel coming out of my right ear, just now. If it really is, and seriously, I fucking think it is too, it'll diminish my perceived enjoyment of music, I'm almost certain.

So anyway, I'm trying to operate this fucking wankstick whoredog of a system which I may previously have described as, uh, intuitive and well laid out or some other optimistic bullshit, and it probably just seems so difficult and time-consuming because I'm new to it and so on, yes, this must be the case but fuck me this would all be so much easier if The Boss would please, pretty please, just shut the fuck up, just for a few minutes, please PLEASE PLEASE JUST FUCKING SHUT THE FUCKING FUCK UP. FUCK.

I've withstood 'La Cucharach-A!, La Cucharach-A!, doop dee dooby dooby doo', for most of the day, I've witnessed another escalation in her fucking crazy waste-paper-basket-Ju-Ju, I've suffered the inane questions and random statements without (much) complaint, I've told her what fucking date it is at least three fucking times, I've refrained from smashing the fucking office up when a short while ago she calmly asked 'are you busy?' but I swear, I swear I FECKING SWEAR TAE FECKING FECK, one more fucking attempt at a fucking helpful fucking suggestion and I am fetching the fucking fire axe.

The Boss, hovering behind me : "Click that."

Here's me : "Look. I'm working through it, ok?"

The Boss : "What are you trying to do?"

Here's me : "Add an empty container."

The Boss : "Click there."

Here's me : "Where?"

The Boss : "There" - jabs finger - "where it says 'add empty'".

Here's me : "That says 'add entry'. That is to add a whole new consignment."

The Boss : "That's close enough, isn't it?"

Well fuck me, you've only just gone and revolutionized fucking computing with one fell fucking swoop.

Here's me : "Look. I need to concentrate. Give my head peace."

The Boss : "You should have been listening to Thurston."

Here's me, I think I actually just bit part of my own tongue off : "Fuuuuuuckkkkkkkkk....."

The Boss : "Call him and ask him."

Here's me : "Pleeeeease. Just. Please. Leave me alone. For five minutes. Please. I'll work it out."

The Boss : "Well, you'd better."

Here's me, suddenly actually listening to the woman, you understand this is not delivered as a question, it is a warning shot, a chance to recant : "what"

The Boss : "You'd better be sure you understand everything about this."

Here's me : "whatdidyousay"

The Boss : "Well I hope you do, because as soon as I have a booking to put on you'll have to show me how!"

The endtimes are surely upon us.

(actually probably just upon me, no need for alarm)

(fuck)

Fucking Crazy Waste-Paper-Basket-Ju-Ju

2009-12-15T22:14:00.000Z

- remains ongoing.

I Wouldn't

2009-12-15T22:13:00.000Z

picture is not entirely unrelated

The Boss : "Stella... Wang."

Here's me : "Uh... no?"

The Boss : "She says machine fourteen is..."

Here's me, I'm losing it today : "Wait. Wait now. Who the fuck is Stella Wang? Wang? Is that what you're saying, Wang? Wink, wing, when, what, wang? What?"

The Boss : "Yes. I just got an e-mail from her. It says machine is fourteen, blah blah blah is it possible to pick up from Armagh?"

Clarification : I am not putting the 'blah blah blah' in just for jollies. The Boss actually said 'blah blah blah'. The Boss has recently taken to just filling in parts of her own sentences with 'blah blah blah' instead of actual words. I mean, fuck. Fuck. What the fuck. Fuck me. Help. Send help. I take it all back. Send help now.

Here's me : "Fuck."

The Boss : "Theres a link, do i click on it?"

Here's me : "Fuck. Fuck. What?"

The Boss : "CGI Ebay?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "What happens if its something thats going to kick into this? Kick us into this? Should I click it?"

Fuck.

Continuity Error

2009-12-15T14:12:00.000Z

(Yes, yes, I know what I said. But I'll go mad alone in here, mad I tell you)

The Boss : "Was last year after Christmas or before it?"

Wha?

THE (CONFERENCE) CALL OF BOSSTHULHU

2009-12-14T23:14:00.008Z

Follow-up to this.

Now. This may take some telling, so please, fetch yourself up a drink (preferably a strong one, unless it's earlier than 11 a.m. at your current location, in which case a beer is better for the constitution) and make yourself comfortable.

The time was 3.50. Everything was in place. I had the system up and running and proudly displaying on my monitor, and the number and access codes for the conference call on hand, ready to join in at 4. I had spent some time earlier today having a look inside this system, and to my pleasant surprise, found it to look quite simple, cleanly laid out and seemingly intuitive. Now. For about twenty minutes The Boss had been telling me "Now make sure you're ready for this! We can't mess this up!". Woman - I have never been more ready. I have two notepads beside me, one for my notes on operating this system, and a second, which I now relate to you from - notes on you, Crazy Boss Woman, on YOU.

I have been, yet again, sorely tried this day, and thus these are my intentions :

1. I am going to emerge from this knowing how to operate this system.
2. If The Boss begins to drown and/or make a fool of herself, I am not going to interfere.
3. To facilitate maximum entry of knowledge to my brain with minimum fuss, and in the interests of being carefully unhelpful to The Boss, I am going to say the absolute bare fucking minimum that I can get away with saying.

OfficeTime : 15:55

The Boss, obviously stressed, shouts over from her desk : "It's went into my deletes!"

Here's me : "What has went into your deletes?"

The Boss : "The container number!"

Here's me, quietly chuckling : "The container number?"

Of course I know what she means. So do you by now, I imagine.

The Boss : "The con... the conference number! The number we have to call Thurston on!"

Here's me : "Stefan. Not Thurston. Stefan. Here's the number."

I call it out to her.

The Boss : "And do we need a password? Or do we have to change the password? But I don't know the password! It's went into my deletes!"

Here's me : "Your del-ee-ted iiii-tems. And things don't just 'go in there' by themselves. Look, just follow my lead, ok? Dial this number - " - I repeat it again - "then, when prompted, enter this code"..

The Boss : "PROMPTED?!?"

Here's me : *sigh* "When it asks you for your code, enter this code."

OfficeTime : 16:00

We dial out to the conference number. We enter our codes. An automated voice instructs me to press the 'pound sign' after entering my code; I consult my inner dictionary and remember that this is what we on stage right of the Atlantic call the 'hash key'.

Brace yourself.

I glance around and see The Boss frantically stabbing at her computer keyboard and looking at me with such an expression of abject terror and misery that I cannot help myself breaking Directive #2 immediately. Honestly, she looks like a battered and hungry puppy and is so utterly forlorn that I feel if I didn't set her straight I think I'd be the biggest bastard in the world. I cover the mouthpiece and direct her accordingly.

Stefan greets us. He is confident, well-spoken and very friendly.

Stefan : "Hi guys, how are we all doing today?"

Here's me : "Hi Stefan, very well thanks, how are you?"

The Boss : "Hello... Thurston."

Facepalm.

Stefan : "So what are your first impressions of the system?"

Here's me : "Well a lot of seems fairly straightforward, I'm..."

The Boss, seizing the reins : "I take it we have to change our password?"

Stefan is easy like Sunday morning : "Not just yet, that'll come later. First of all I'd like to ask one of you to read me out your status code, which will show to the bottom right of your screens."

The Boss : "It goes.. blahdy blahdy blah status."

I need to check myself. I need to be sure that the language-processing centres of my brain have not finally caved in, folded up and died, and that I have actually just heard The Boss read a number off the screen as "Blahdy Blahdy Blah."

Stefan : "Ha ha.. yeah, I will need that code in full."

I look around to The Boss. From the far side of the room, I can actually see that she is shaking. Her knuckles are white upon the phone receiver. I fill in the blanks, quickly; this is just too embarassing.

Here's me : "L I, E X, 299133009, PUBLIC."

Stefan : "OK, the first part of that code means that you're..."

The Boss : "Does public mean that anyone can see this?"

Stefan : "Yes ma'am, any live user in the system can see your input, which is what the first part of that code.."

It's hard to be certain from this range but it looks like she's sweating. My god, she's holding that phone so tightly to her head I'm thinking she might injure herself.

OfficeTime : 16:30

We have moved through into the tutorial on how to actually enter data into this system; in this case, a name and an address. Stefan's easy and confident manner is starting to slip. He's holding up well, still the epitome of polite professionalism, up to a point, but I can sense it; there's a little too much by way of nervous laughter on his part. Due to the way this call is being conducted, with Stefan remotely accessing our network, only of us can be the 'operator' - of course it is The Boss. I wouldn't want it any other way at this stage.

Stefan : "OK, that's good, but we prefer to use proper case."

The Boss looks at me, stricken. I look back, beatifically blank.
I can hear Stefan's nerves twanging in the silence.

The Boss places her hand over the mouthpiece yet again, and hisses at me : "Proper Case? What does he mean?"

Here's me, mostly speaking to the wall : "He means caps lock is not cruise control for cool..."

The boss : "What?"

Here's me, sort of feeling pleased and vindicated that she might finally believe that this is not the done thing : "Stop typing everything in block capitals!"

The address is re-entered.

Stefan : "And, uh, because the name field is what we call the matchcode, which everyone else will search by, we, uh, we, we like to make it look as nice as possible."

Silence. I savour it.

Stefan : "By which, uh, I mean to say, without the random spaces in the name."

Towards the bottom of the address boxes we are looking at is a field marked "STATE". At this stage the conversation is unfolding akin to a very complex Mandelbrot-like equation; one tiny little flaw could send it spiralling into the abyss in a most ugly fashion. This "STATE" field is just such a flaw.

The Boss : "There is no states. I.. we don't have states."

Stefan : "That's fine, very few countries outside of the US use this field, so we just..."

The Boss has missile lock : "We don't have states."

Stefan : "That's ok, we just move on to.."

The Boss has missile lock on her own exhaust : "Only the states have states. In... in the U.S."

The woman is breaking down right before my eyes. This is painful.

OfficeTime : 16:45

Stefan has moved through 'confused' and into 'irritable'. There is a slight tremor in his voice when he speaks. He has my sympathy. Apart from interrupting him every time he tries to speak, The Boss is also now randomly jabbing keys and moving the mouse as he tries to remotely control the system. I can sense his nerves fraying like the cables on a badly-made suspension bridge during an earthquake.

Stefan : "Now we need to enter the route..."

The Boss, hand over mouthpiece, frantic, to me : "Route?"

Here's me, I mean do you not own a TV or something? : "Root. Route, Route, Root, Route."

The Boss tries to re-assert some authority : "Raaaut is destination."

Not a question - just a bold and lethally fucking madly incorrect and irrelevant statement, just like that, hey.

Stefan : "Uh...

... I guess."

He is broken. I can sense it.

OfficeTime : 17:10

At this stage, Stefan's mind is almost certainly looking for the easiest raut, root or route out of here and he's probably very close to breaking down and confessing that he is Thurston, or at least would seriously like to be Thurston right now, whoever the fuck Thurston may be. He is audibly upset and is starting to sound quite angry.

At this stage he is explaining some part of the accounting end of things to us, and says :

"Now, the system has a limitation here where it's only possible to work in a maximum of four different currencies. But not too many people meet this limitation, I mean, do you use more than four different currencies?"

The Boss, instantly, confidently, stunningly incorrectly : "Yes."

Stefan : "Uh, really? How many do you use?"

The Boss : "Three."

A beautiful thing happens. For just a brief moment, Stefan's (surely world-class) professionalism slips, along with his pleasant but neutral accent, and he drops straight into classic New York, which is surely one of the most ruggedly beautiful accents on the planet :

"Say WHAT?!"

I cannot bear this, it is too much suffering for such young eyes as mine. It's not much, but I have to throw him a frikkin' bone here - just the bare bones of a bone, but goddammit could you sit and watch this without running to help? I AM NOT A MONSTER! -

"We use a maximum of three currencies Stefan."

In this moment, I know it, Stefan loves me. His love will pass as the fear subsides, down to a more realistic 'I'd like to buy that guy a drink' kind of feeling , but I can actually hear his relief from here. Probably lots of people can. Probably right this moment a ray of fantastically fucking beautiful sunlight just cut through a despair-laden black cloud somewhere over NYC. Might have happened, you never know. He regained his composure enough to be able to simply and calmly reply "In my experience many Asian people prefer to be identified by their specific country of nationality" some moments later when The Boss referred to the entire Asian continent as 'India', at least - I mean, many people would have just started crying at this stage.

OfficeTime : 17:15

"Thurston, to my mind 'public' means that 'everyone' has full access. I'm not happy with 'everyone'."

Realisation: I'm out of my fucking depth here. In this job. In life. This woman is neither stupid nor crazy, this woman is some sort of Mad Savant of the Beyond, she is Lovecraft's Azathoth; I am not only out of my depth, I am out of my fucking gourd for working here. She entered this bumbling like a lost lamb and is emerging from the far side triumphant, a seething dark mass, having leeched he-who-was-known-as-Stefan's very essence and spat him out, half-digested, a withered husk of a man, she has absorbed him, sucked out his life-force and filled him full of her own special distilled blend of fucking mental and oh for fuck's sake is this nearly over yet, I am, I shit you not, going to chew my own fucking leg off if I don't get a drink VERY fucking soon.

OfficeTime : 17:40

Stefan is done. Stefan has had enough. All understanding has broken down. At one stage The Boss actually threw the mouse away, and then had to meekly retrieve it by pulling the cable back towards her. I imagine Stefan has probably crushed a cup of coffee in his hand by now, an enamel one. He should get the rest of the day off, for sure.

He terminates the call in wonderful fashion. He cuts across The Boss mid-sentence, and raps out the words, all politeness gone, showing his exasperation - the following, I can tell you, It Made My Day :

"Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd.... and a bunch of other stuff goes down below. That's probably all we can do today, I think we need to end this call."

And signs off in short order.

And that's all. I wish I had some kind of dramatic epilogue, some fantastic closing statement from The Boss, some coup de grâce with which to finish. But I don't. Sometimes reality just doesn't deliver the narrative needs, and on this occasion it failed to.

The Boss looks at me at the end of the call. Her face is unreadable.

Here's me : "Well."

...

Here's me : "Well. That seems alright then. Have a nice weekend, see ya on Monday."

Folks, with being, as a result of this and the time of year, very busy over the next couple of weeks, I might not be around much; I should probably knuckle down and so on, and, uh, possibly spend some time thinking about my life. Till then.

Tell Me No More

2009-12-14T21:29:00.001Z

We have been extremely busy today and as a result The Boss's brain is almost totally seizing up. I'm expecting to see broken springs and bits of rusty wire explode from her head any moment now. I hope you don't think me cruel if I tell you - I have never in all my bloody life heard one person talk so much utter shite in one day. I swear her gob is like a fucking busted u-bend this day. As I was making to leave, like literally half way to the door with my coat on, she did this thing that annoys the hell out of me - it would annoy the hell out of any right-thinking person, I hope - she's talking (shite) to someone on the phone and snaps her fingers at me to get my attention. Yes, actually. She actually raises an arm in the air and snaps her fucking fingers several times while glaring at me as if she had ordered the foie gras but I've just set a plate of steaming fresh turds in front of her.

Here's me, I can't even dignify this with words : "-"

The Boss : "Speak to Simon. Ast him. I don't know. Pre-advice. Pre-manifest. I need you to... " she slows, falters... "I need... I don't know. I give up."

You and me both.

Good Craic

2009-12-14T21:17:00.000Z

The Boss : "Where can I get crack data?"

I've had my suspicions for a while...

Here's me : "Wha?!"

The Boss : "Where can I get trawler crack data?"

Here's me : "Aye, whatever."

("Crawler Track data" - I'm sure you could figure that out by now)

Just About

2009-12-14T21:16:00.000Z

The Boss : "Will I fit into two 40-foot containers?"

Here's me, smiling despite myself : "You'd probably only need one."

The Boss twigs and sez : "Smart ass. Would I fit this machine into a 40-foot container?"

Here's me, weary : "What machine?"

The Boss : "A twenty foot."

Here's me : "A what? A twenty foot what?"

The Boss : "A twenty foot forty foot?"

If you want to know what this conversation was actually about, I'm sorry, I still have no idea.

You Don't Need A Map To Work Here (But It Helps)

2009-12-14T21:12:00.000Z

The Boss : "How do I get to Lipsig?"

Here's me : "Leipzig?"

The Boss : "Yeah."

Here's me : "It's fairly central. It doesn't make much difference which port you go through, similar distance from either Hamburg or Rotterdam area."

The Boss : "Is Antwerp ok?"

Here's me : "Yeah.

The Boss : "Is Rotterdam ok?"

Here's me : "Yes. Antwerp or Rotterdam are fine."

The Boss : "Zeeburger?"

Here's me, wincing slightly : "Yes."

The Boss : "What, it's the same distance from all of them?"

Here's me, feeling my life slipping away : "Yes. Rotterdam, Antwerp, Zeebroooooge, they're all pretty close together."

The Boss : "I thought they were in different countries?"

Silence Is Golden

2009-12-11T13:12:00.000Z

Ever had one of those moments in life when you walk into a room and just know in your gut that something is just not right?

Gah.

Such a moment greeted me this morning.

In a sauntered from the mist and drizzle, not exactly full of the joys but certainly in pretty reasonable form, with that "hey it's Friday!" thing going on. I smiled at The Boss and chirped "Morning!", but even as I said it I knew something was amiss.

No greeting was returned, merely an icy stare.

Ohhhh-kaaaaay then.

I stare back. I've got this general-purpose stare that I use in such circumstances, it's more or less a completely blank look, I think. The Boss cracks first :

"You haven't booked Statesville."

Minimalism works for me in these situations.

"Correct."

The Boss : "WHY NOT?"

Here's me : "Because I knew nothing about it."

The Boss : "I told you before I left here on Wednesday morning to book it!"

Here's me : "Firstly, that was yesterday. Thursday morning. Secondly, you said something about 'Lakeville', which is in Minnesota, and mentioned nothing about 'Statesville', which is in North Carolina. I did provisionally book Lakeville."

The Boss is enraged.

"I KNOW WHAT I SAID! I NEEDED THAT BOOKED AND YOU HAVEN'T DONE IT!"

Here's me : "Respectfully. Sometimes what you think you're saying and what is actually coming out of your mouth bear very little relation. Sometimes in fact.."

The Boss is now livid and screams at me to interrupt me : "GERRY!"

I must at this juncture advise you, the reader, that my name is not, in fact, Gerry. I remain silent and stare at the mentalist while waiting for her ears and brain to process what has just happened.

Not to be derailed, she storms over to me.

"I saw you write this down as I was saying it! GIVE ME YOUR DIARY!"

It's true. I write in a large A4 desk diary key details from pretty much every conversation I have either in the office or on the phone. It's a handy habit I got into many years ago. She seizes up my diary and flicks to yesterday, where indeed I have written what she actually said, pretty much verbatim. There is an edifying moment when her eyes widen, presumably taking in not only my attention to detail but also just how insane the instructions I have apparently failed to act on were.

So now she is sulking and refusing to talk to me. Which, if I can get past the fact that you could cut the atmosphere in here with a knife, sort of works for me.

The Satanic Bin

2009-12-10T16:19:00.001Z

An update to this.

See here :

I fucking told you she was dabbling with the Occult.

You Are Entering : The Boss Zone

2009-12-10T11:16:00.001Z

The Boss is going out today to deliver some Christmas gifts to customers. The on-going process of organizing this quite frankly melts my fucking head. It's this kind of token, corporate gesture that ultimately nobody gives all that much of a shit about, but a right-thinking person could have the whole process organized in about twenty minutes or so. The Company says : Give 30 bottles of wine to customers. You take your list of clients, and issue 30 bottles of wine amongst the people you have done most business with. Simple, yes? No, of course it fucking isn't.

For weeks now, The Boss has been deciding, un-deciding, re-deciding and generally dithering over this. We could have just bought the thirty bottles of wine direct from a wholesaler, thrown them into some gift bags and left them in the boot of The Boss's car, but NO, that would obviously be TOO FUCKING EASY. At this stage I'm frankly just utterly fucking sick of hearing about it; stop changing your bloody mind twice a day and it'll all be easy for the love of all that is holy woman!

Instead, in the interests of saving the company about £3 and losing a day or three due to sheer buggering about, the wine was got from a supermarket in the city centre that is inaccessible by car and led to The Boss then going into the shop with a suitcase (with the Koala in tow) and then wheeling the suitcase of wine across the city to the office; if you were in D****s Stores a couple of weeks ago when a crazy lady with a suitcase full of wine got stopped by the security guards amidst the ringing of alarms (the checkout attendant, obviously under the great pressure that a first meeting with The Boss can generate, forgot to take the security tags off some of the wine) while a bemused and embarassed marsupial stood nearby wishing the ground would open up and swallow him, that was us.

Anyway, today is delivery day; I rather helpfully planned out The Boss's route last night, taking into account various factors, and left on her desk last night maps and directions from each point to the next. She announced that Google Maps' chosen routes were foolish; I cannot be bothered to argue this at this stage. I offered to help take the wine to her car last night, which went something like this :

Here's me : "Why don't we put all the wine in your boot tonight, then you can just head straight out to the customers from the house tomorrow?"

The Boss : "I don't want to do that."

Here's me : "Why? It makes more sense then coming in here first then going back the other way?"

The Boss : "I don't want to leave it in the car overnight."

Here's me : "So when you get home tonight, take it out of the car and put it in the house?"

The Boss : "That's too complicated."

Here's me : *sheesh*

Anyway, so The Boss arrives in here this morning at 9 AM in a state of total and utter panic, and Panic brings out the Very Worst in The Boss - she warbles :

The Boss : "Right, I need to get moving right now or I won't get round everyone! Help me take the wine to the car!"

Here's me, leaping up from my chair "Right! Where are you parked?"

The Boss : "Right outside!"

Here's me, seizing up armfuls of wine : "Alrighty then!"

The Boss : "No wait!"

Here's me, setting down armfuls of wine : "Why!?!?"

The Boss : "I need to run through some things with you first!"

Here's me, sitting back down : "Oh jesus."

The next half an hour consisted of one long monologue from The Boss, in which she started to tell me about god knows how many different things but never got more than one or two sentences into each before interrupting herself with the next item, a la -

The Boss : "I need you to phone him and ast* him when his containers will be back on quay..."

Here's me : "Wait, phone who?"

The Boss : "..phone Raster, Rast.. Restoration charges, there will be restoration charges. It's going to Adelaide, Papua New Guinea... from Lakeville. Lake Worth. Fort Worth. Phone..." - and, quite terrifyingly, instructs me to phone myself - "and revert. Restore. There'll be... wait, have you... have you... can you pick me up a jiffy bag?"

Here's me, staring on like I'm watching a car crash : "Uh... a jiffy bag?"

The Boss : "Yes, get me a jiffy bag, and send it out."

Here's me : "Uh, send it out? To who? Containing what?"

The Boss : "I need to get a jiffy bag to send out an envelope."

I don't even want to know.

The Boss : "And phone Lassie. Lanzarote."

I actually even know what that means, I've been dealing with a lady called Lyndsay Lazotti recently, but The Boss then, I mean FUCKING SERIOUSLY, phones someone, I know not whom, and leaves a message on their voicemail presumably, FOR ME TO CALL HER. I'm watching this with mounting horror from my side of the office. This is no car crash, this is a goddamn train-wreck. This is a high speed train carrying raw sewage that has broken free of the tracks and is now ploughing down the hillside towards a small farming village.

At around half nine my nerves were twanging like banjo strings, so I stood up and said "Look, if this is going to take you a while to, uh, organize your thoughts, I'm just going to grab a coffee, ok?"

The Boss : "NO! I NEED TO GET MOVING RIGHT NOW I'M ALREADY LATE DON'T GO ANYWHERE!"

Here's me, cracking up : "Well ALFUCKINGRIGHT THEN."

"Right now" of course being "almost an hour later", anyway, The Boss finally managed to get up and move towards the door, left and came back because she had forgotten the directions I printed out last night, left again, came back again because she had forgotten her "Phone Book" - yes, she keeps her phone numbers in a book, yes, I've told her that one of the many functions of the mobile phone is that it will store these for her - and finally now at around half ten in the morning has managed to get out the door and on the road.

But in the midst of all this chaos, this strife, there is VICTORY :

"...and call Thurston. Roy. Thurston Moore. No, Stefan. In Antwerp. Hamburg. New York! Thurston in New York!" she almost screams in the apparent triumph of having been able to scrape together a quorum of neurons - "Call New York, and find out what they want to do about this call tomorrow!"

Oh yes. I shall indeed.

THERE IS HOPE!

* The Boss cannot pronounce the word "ask", it comes out "ast". Bugs the shit out of me. I'm petty like that.

Multitasking : You -Can't-. Give It Up.

2009-12-10T09:17:00.002Z

The Boss : "Would I be right in saying...."

(stares distractedly at monitor)

"... that I..."

...

that you what? WHAT?

...

..."Am I right to assume...."

...

oh, i seriously doubt it..

...

... "...did I close the door?"

?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

2009-12-09T19:23:00.002Z

This will probably be the death of me. I can barely contain my horror.

Allow me to elucidate.

Recently, in a moment of Great Success, we were appointed as Irish agents to a US-based company. This can be described as "very good". For a few weeks we've been going through all the details of what this actually involves, and part of it is that they have some kind of in-house system for tracking their cargo which we must now have access to.

This, already, spells Trouble.

Anyway, I came in on to the office to see an e-mail from our contact at said company, advising that their system was now up and running in our office and we would soon be expected to be entering bookings and so on to said system.

With a sensation I would describe as "dread", I sez to The Boss :

"Apparently their system is now installed here, but I can't see anything on my PC."

The Boss : "Oh, I got them to put it on my computer."

Ah, fuck.

I don't know quite how to politely say "That's fucking mental, you're a fucking disaster-waiting-to-happen around anything more technologically advanced than a lightbulb", so I try a lateral approach :

"Uh, would it not make more sense to have it on my PC, as I'm sure you'll probably not want to get bogged down in updating their system and so on?"

The Boss : "No, you'll be doing it. But I want to see everything that happens with it."

Uh...

Here's me : "So, uh, you want me to operate this system, whatever that might involve, from your desk?... uh, you don't think that might be.. inconvenient?"

Not to say "that might be SHEER FUCKING HELL ON EARTH THAT LEADS TO ME KILLING US BOTH".

The Boss : "No."

Oh, well that's cleared that up then.

So... I'm thinking, this is completely fucked. But it can't get any worse OH YES IT FUCKING WELL CAN!

The other company's IT person is going to phone us on Friday from New York and spend "around an hour" explaining how to use this system. And The Boss has laid down the law - she will be taking that phone call. She will spend an hour having the system that I am to use explained to her and then.. she will "explain" it to me.

THE HORROR.

I have considered my options; reasoning with her is out, of course, simply ridiculous; quitting in the current economic climate seems unwise; stabbing her to death with a pen seems potentially messy. I'm thinking I might try and get hit by a car on the way home tonight, maybe, if I can get one at just the right speed; I don't want to die, but I'm thinking probably having two broken legs and a bit of concussion seems like a reasonable way to get out of having her "explain" this system to me on Friday afternoon.

I cannot allow this to happen. Something must be done.

Checkpoint Total Charlie

2009-12-09T14:40:00.002Z

The Boss : "Where's the checkpoint?"

Here's me : "The checkpoint?"

The Boss : "The euro checkpoint?"

Here's me : "I have no idea what you're talking about."

The Boss : "The checkpoint going from UK to euro."

Here's me : "Uh, what?"

The Boss : "Is it near the City Hall?"

Here's me, sinking into the mire : "What? What the fuck? What?"

Sometimes it feels like I'm drowning, you know.

(Turns out she was asking me "Where can I find a Euro-dispensing ATM?")

Mickey Fucking Mouse - pt II

2009-12-09T12:43:00.000Z

Leaving a message for The Boss, transmitted by her favourite medium, the "post it note stuck to your monitor" method. I shall report on further developments as they occur.

Mickey Fucking Mouse

2009-12-09T12:05:00.002Z

The Boss : “Will you have a price for Nicola today?”

Here’s me : “I did it on Monday.”

The Boss : “And?”

Here’s me : “It was too expensive. I offered her £1800, she says she’s getting it for £1500. Our costs are £1600. I’m looking at other ways of getting it there.”

The Boss : “You should look at other ways of getting it there.”

Here’s me : *sigh* “I am looking at other ways of getting it there. Doing it direct with a haulier seems to be the best way.”

The Boss : “She’s probably doing it direct with a haulier. You should look into that.”

Here’s me : *sigh* “I am looking into that.”

The Boss : “She’s probably using Mickey Mouse.”*

I’m just picturing this for a second.

Here’s me : “Mickey. Fucking. Mouse.”

The Boss : “Morris Rice. Reese. She’s probably using Morris Reese.”

* This happens all the fucking time. You may be familiar with the usage of “Mickey Mouse” to refer to a small or amateurish business operation – you know, as in “They’re a Mickey Mouse outfit” – this has always struck me as slightly bizarre usage in any context, for the obvious reasons – I mean “They’re a Mickey Mouse outfit” – what, so they’re an internationally recognisable multi-billion-dollar global franchise? That’s not what you mean, I’m sure. But anyway, with The Boss, this phrase has entered her lexicon and she now believes it is acceptable to use “Mickey Mouse” to refer to any company she can’t currently remember the name of.

Ah, SHIT! I can’t believe I didn’t include "Mickey Mouse" in the Wankword Bingo. Dammit.

Aye

2009-12-09T10:24:00.000Z

I mean, I've only been in work for an hour today. I'm so going to win.

Thermodynamics, Debunked

2009-12-09T09:38:00.000Z

The Boss : "Can I open the door?"

Here's me : "Uh.... I would guess you probably can?..."

The Boss : "To let some of the heat out."

Here's me : "Just turn the heating off?"

The Boss : "But I don't want the heat to escape."

Here's me : "Um, just turn the heating off."

The Boss : "It'll still be too warm."

Here's me : "Turn the heating off and open the window?"

The Boss : "No. I'll just open the door. I don't want the heat to escape."

BINGO

2009-12-08T21:58:00.002Z

Tomorrow I shall be playing a special game of wankword bingo. I will give myself a small prize when I win.

Screw The Changes, We'll Fake It

2009-12-08T21:45:00.000Z

Ah, Jesus, the things you start doing to keep your marbles.

Y'know, if you work with any more than about ten people, there's probably at least one of them that is totally batshit-crazy and a further four or five that are pretty fairly unhinged, and assuming you're not one of the afflicted you'll probably just try to keep your dealings with the unhinged and the batshit-crazy to a minimum as much as possible.

This is the big Axis of Mental in here; there is nowhere to go, no way to avoid, and perhaps worst of all, no-one sane to talk to so I tend to spend a lot of my week having batshit-crazy conversations. Not all of it, you understand. A bit more than I tell you about and a bit less than you might think. I mean, it's a 45-hour week. Many hours of it are either silent or comparitively sane. But a fair amount of it, let's say 20%, is pretty much batshit-crazy, and a good amount of the rest is certainly letting air in.

I mean, for three and a half years, like.

Anyway, I try to deal with this in various ways; I've tried acting completely stupid - like -

The Boss : "Do you need customs for Egypt?"
Here's me : "Don't know."

The Boss : "Oh, yeah, you do."

Here's me : "Wouldn't know."

But there's only so long you can keep that up for. I went through a phase for a few weeks there of just making up answers at random, and actually it worked quite seamlessly for a couple of days -

The Boss : "Where is Lemon Refresher?"

Here's me : "Lemon Refresher isn't a place, per se, it's an autonomous city-state. It's in Tanzania."

The Boss : "What's the nearest port?"

Here's me : "Antwerp, although Liverpool is closer by 8 miles but technically Antwerp. Did you know that in Lemon Refresher, musicians don't have to pay income tax?"

But it started to get old quite quickly when it had no effect at all.

I've even, and this is fucking desperate, tried to mentally fill in the blanks in the conversation, think them through quickly and try my best to give correct and helpful answers - sick, yes, I know - but even that has a habit of backfiring completely.

The Boss : "How much.. Immingham or Liverpool?"

Here's me, thinking quickly : "Of the two, Liverpool is closest to us."

The Boss, breaking my heart again : "No, from Rotterdam?"

Honestly, I've tried all sorts of approaches. I'd speak exclusively in Bulgarian for an entire week if I only knew how, it wouldn't make a difference. There is nothing that makes any difference. The Boss is in some bizarre way utterly formidable. She cannot be stopped. She cannot be reasoned with. She is Juggernaut.

I even hid her bloody bin today, and she didn't even notice, just ripped up the paper and threw it round where the bin used to be.

We're onto A4 envelopes now, with the ripping.

The Madness of King Boss (may be contagious)

2009-12-07T20:26:00.010Z

I have been observing this saga unfold for some time and documenting it for your perusal, but in truth I have no idea what the bloody hell it's all about. If you have a theory, do share it.

Our story opens some weeks ago when I happened to look over and see that there was a pile of ripped up paper scattered around The Boss's waste-paper basket. I didn't think much of this at the time, just put it down to her being a bit messy.

The following day, I noticed that the same thing had happened again, and casually remarked to The Boss that her aim was a bit off when throwing stuff in the bin. So far this is all still within the realms of the sane, yeah?

But... again. And again. After observing a few days of this I remarked that she might want to try hitting the bin as the cleaning lady would probably not relish having to pick this up each morning. The Boss assures me that she gathers up all the little bits and puts them all the bin herself before she goes home, and you know, I actually do believe her.

So it's got to the stage where I have to say something. Why, I ask, do you not just put the paper in the bin? I don't know why this is bugging me so much but it's really starting to get on my nerves. The Boss complains that the bin is too far away. Here is the chair-to-bin scenario :

I feel that this is not an unreasonable distance to travel, and yet every day, I see this happening again.

I could hold my water no longer. I tried asking why The Boss was ripping pieces of paper into tiny little bits before binning it, every bloody day, but received no clear answer and her manner, I can confirm, was decidedly evasive. Try to follow the elusive white logic rabbit here :

Here's me : "OK. Why are you scattering paper round the bin every day?"
The Boss : "Because I can't reach the bin"
Here's me : "So move the bin closer?"
The Boss : "I don't like it closer."

Here's me : "Okkkkkayy why not just put the paper in the bin without ripping it up?"

The Boss : "I don't like putting whole sheets of paper in the bin."

Here's me : "Why not?"

The Boss : "Because it's a waste of paper."

And so on. Anyway, by this stage I had become morbidly fascinated by this process.

The part of this that is really fucking with me is that I never once have seen the paper either being shredded or being thrown. Which leads me to believe this is happening while I'm not in the office.

So while my back is turned, The Boss is conducting The Ripping Up And Scattering Around The Bin Of Papers ritual, and her devotion to it appears to be reaching frenzied heights.

I mean look. Actually none of it is going in the bin. It's just right there, every day, right beside the bin, and it's slowly driving me completely bleedin' mental for reasons I don't fully understand.

THIS IS JUST NOT RIGHT says a voice in the back of my mind. Who sits ripping every piece of paper they use in the office up into tiny wee bits before scattering it around the bin? WHOM DOES THIS!! WHAT KIND OF OCCULT RITE IS TAKING PLACE IN MY FUCKING OFFICE ON A DAILY BASIS! It's got to the stage where I can see The Boss in my mind's eye, sitting there when I go out for lunch, her eyes narrowing and staring into the beyond as she hears voices only she can hear, and as she tears the paper again and again, I wonder, does she hear it scream as she rips it...

... such thoughts will rouse me from my sleep some night, drenched in sweat and shaking like a shitting dog, of this you can be sure.

Look you here, in the orgiastic abandon of the paper-ripping-and-throwing-ceremony this particular set of shredded bits actually somehow got launched about a metre through the air and wound up behind the photocopier:

Now it's getting quite artistic, as in addition to the paper, she is now branching out into other media, specifically any old bit of rubbish going :

I call this "Urban Decay & Capri Sun" :

Now with empty KFC chip packet in foreground. Classy. It's like a fucking Banksy or something :

Now who does this, every day, while their colleague is out for lunch, then tidies it again that evening after the colleague has left? WHO DOES THIS?

Brace yourself before looking -

- yes, that object in the lower right area of the picture above actually is a human fingernail clipping.

And this is apparently all building up to some kind of crescendo, as it intensifies, but where it ends I cannot guess. Is she trying to see if she can actually completely wall herself in with crap during the course of my lunch-hour?

Now plainly at least one of us actually is a bona-fide lunatic. The worrying part is I've just spent two weeks furtively photographing a bin so I think it's probably me.

I Don't Like Mondays

2009-12-07T14:59:00.010Z

I fucking hate Mondays. I really do. I hate Mondays so much it actually ruins Sundays for me because I spend the entire day pre-emptively hating Monday. This massive tsunami of loathing often causes me to get drunk on a Sunday evening thereby making my Monday morning this crawling horror of an affair, as I stagger into work feeling a pint of hammered dog snot.

Even worse, at this time of year the streets are festooned with an endless parade of gormless twats hell-bent on buying every piece of useless shit their tiny little monkey-hands can carry.

I hate Mondays and I hate Christmas and right now I hate my life and I want to die.

Along with the lurching parade of utter ass-hats trying to break my ankles with ballistic pram-pushing or grimly determined maniacs trying remove some skin from my head with the corners of their ridiculously sized umbrellas (someone is going to end up needing surgery to remove their umbrella from their intestinal tract round here, any day now), as the mass frenzy of consumerism blinds everyone to their fellow human beings, my passage through the streets of the city is further hindered by no fewer than seventy seperate attempts per minute to part me from my money. I was crossing the road earlier today and this grinning fuckwit leapt out in front of me, shook a collection jar in my face and barked "Suicide please?" at me. I came very close to saying "Yes please, how much?".

And I forgot my ipod, in my frantic dash to drag my aching frame out of the house; one of the few coping strategies for my general daily penance in here is to listen to blisteringly loud rawk as I stomp around the city like a small angry furry bullet. But today, no, there is no relief for me, as I heap suffering upon myself with some sort of masochistic frenzy.

Yes, in case it's not clear, I really do quite dislike Mondays.

The Boss : "Have you done Ronan Keating?"

Consider if you will the possible implications of this sentence.

Here's me, dully, not even questioning, just stating it : "Ronan fucking Keating."

The Boss : "Kielty."

Here's me, in a bit of a delirious haze, shaking my head sadly : "Ronan fucking Keating."

The Boss : "Gary Kielty."

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "Have you done him?"

Here's me : "Have I done him? What do you mean have I 'done' him? What?"

The Boss : "Have you done his rate to Setubal."

Here's me : "Yes."

The Boss : "No you didn't."

Here's me : "I bloody did. I copied you in on the e-mail."

The Boss : "You did Lisbon."

Here's me : "Ah. Yeah. There was no service into Setubal itself, it goes into Lisbon at the moment. It's pretty much the same place, they're just opposite sides of the river."

The Boss : "If Ronan Keating asked for Setubal you should..."

And some tiny part of my brain snaps.

"Stop! Fucking stop already! Stop with this Ronan Keating shit! His names not even fucking Keating! KIELTY! KI-EL-TY! GARY FUCKING KIEL-FUCKING-TY! And I haven't given him a rate to Setubal because there's no fucking boat going to fucking Setubal! It goes to Lisbon! Setubal is practically in fucking Lisbon! Look at the fucking map!"

The Boss is utterly unruffled by my fit of pique.

"Not necessarily."

I am sort of bulging in the eyes now, possibly panting slightly, certainly red in the face.

"What the fuck do you mean 'not necessarily'?"

The Boss : "It isn't always."

Here's me : "What, so Setubal is right next door to Lisbon Mondays through Fridays but then buggers off to the Algarve for the weekends, what the fuck are you saying?!?"

The Boss : "Ronan Keating says..."

Here's me : "STOP IT! STOP CALLING HIM RONAN BLOODY KEATING! WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING HIM RONAN BLOODY KEATING?!? WHY?!?"

The Boss, with uncharacteristic perception and calm : "Do you have a hangover?"

I stop, take a deep breath and compose myself.

Here's me : "Yes. Yes I do."

The Boss : "I thought you did."

The Boss holds up a tenner.

"Go to the shop and get bacon sandwiches."

So sensible and reasonable is this suggestion that I am utterly taken aback; totally and utterly derailed.

I have now had a bacon sandwich and the urge to beat myself to death with the telephone receiver has subsided. Somewhat, anyway. It's the little things in life that make or break us.

The Boss, staring at the map : "Is Lisboa near Lisbon?"

...it's the little things.

I'm With Stupid

2009-12-04T16:15:00.000Z

Whenever I am plagued by doubt and uncertainty, I try to keep a hold of this one unassailable fact - people are often bloody stupid. Hanlon's Razor is about as close as I get to having a religion or all-encompassing philosophy on life.

I was in Nottingham a couple of months ago with a couple of friends, went to see the very excellent Masters of Reality at the Rescue Rooms. Nice place, by sheer good fortune the day we were there also happened to be an ale festival at Nottingham Castle, which was nice. So anyway we went to the show, had a good time, swanned about the town and got absolutely stinking drunk, as you do. Managed all this without being stabbed or shot at, not even once, so either we're incredibly lucky or the Daily Mail is just a BIG FAT SMELLY SHEET OF DIRTY FUCKING LIES FOR REACTIONARY FUCKWITS. In fact I think they could actually change the name of the paper to that without affecting the readership figures at all.

Anyway, I digress. The next morning, slightly the worse for wear, the three of us made our way back to Nottingham airport for the flight home, and at the terminal gate were boarded onto one of those big runway-bound bus affairs. This process took about twenty minutes, by the time a bunch of human specimens managed to drag themselves in, remembered to seize the children, generally faffed about, etc. - the big bus then pulled off, drove about twenty yards forward, and stopped beside the plane.

As we got off the bus and wandered up the aircraft stairs through the thick hangover-fog one of my friends wondered aloud "Why in the hell is it necessary to put us on a bus to go fifty feet across this empty stretch of tarmac to the plane?" and the answer came to my lips with no pause for thought at all :

"Because we're stupid. Because we are so fundamentally fucking stupid as a species, that in all likelihood this sixty-person group of us could not manage to walk the 30-second long journey from there to there without at least two fatalities. We are only allowed to walk the ten feet from the bus to the aircraft because any further we are simply too fucking stupid to manage." (That may seem a bit negative, admittedly I was the person getting on a plane with a head that felt like it had been stood on by a hippo)

My misanthropic musings were interrupted by the sound of a man tripping and going arse-over-tit over the single large and luminous bright orange traffic cone that had been set to indicate "this is a jet engine, stay the fuck away from it, stupid".

Because we're stupid. We're very clever, sometimes, certainly, yes, but we're definitely quite bloody stupid in any given cross-section.

And I'm probably stupider than that again.

So anyway, I must give a shout to the very fantastic spEak You're bRanes which sort of corrals up stupidity and displays it for the amusement of others. By analyzing our stupids in great depth, perhaps we may becomes less more stupider than we was. And hey, it's Friday. Have a bloody great weekend. I'm away for a drink.

Baker Taker Milly Over The Moon

2009-12-04T09:38:00.005Z

So it turns out that this actually does have a grain of reason buried (alive) deep within it; The Boss was supposed to attend a conference on the day in question, arranged by the accountants (Baker Taker Milly Maker Moon Raker Moore, or STHG), regarding imminent changes to the VAT laws. I only gained knowledge of this when I received a mail from them just now questioning the lack of attendance.

This is unusual, that The Boss would arrange to attend such an event herself - normally, tedious shit of this nature is saved for me; however it appears that it was an all day thing at a nice hotel involving a couple of free meals, therefore I knew nothing about it.

So at some point it must have flickered like the light upon the head of a tiny lone senile pilot fish, swimming forlornly through the whirling maelstrom of The Boss's conciousness, but like so many such fragile little thoughts it never managed to break the surface of the murky waters therein, and sank instead into the depths.

I believe the appropriate term is "D'oh!".

I don't know as yet whether she made it to the movie though...

Lawnmower Boss

2009-12-02T10:14:00.004Z

Right, here's the deal. We have one of those photocopier/printer/scanner/fax machine jobs that plugs into a network point in here. Because the whole building is on a shared network of some kind, occasionally something happens that leads to, for reasons I don't really understand, the scanner function not being able to see the network. It appears to happen just randomly sometimes and I have neither any clue as to why nor any inclination to try and figure it out. I'm pretty sure no-one is actively trying to hack the photocopier, at least.

So anyway I went for a smoke, and upon my return am greeted with hostility and accusation, thusly :

The Boss : "Are you turning the photocopier off whenever you go out?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "Are you messing about?"

Here's me : (sigh) "What are you talking about? What? Just what can it possibly be?"

The Boss : "Every time you go out the scanner stops working."

Here's me, slowly, deliberately. I'm chewing this idea over in my mind : "Every time I go out, the scanner stops working. You think that the scanner stopping working is somehow linked to me leaving the room. That is what you're saying to me, right?"

The Boss, verging on manic : "Are you doing something to it!?"

Here's me, steadily ascending in volume, steadily losing my grip : "Yes! Yes I am! I have this... little... fucking... fucking remote control button, in my pocket, and every time I go for a cigarette I push it so the scanner stops working! Ha! HA HA!"

The Boss : "Well if it's not you what is it?"

Here's me : "Well fuck me, you've got me there. You're like Sherlock Bloody Holmes, ruling out the impossible first. Brilliant."

The Boss, possibly realising that this is epic lunacy, retreats somewhat : "Well have you any idea what the problem might be?"

Here's me : "I think... and it's just a theory... that someone in the conference room is using a machine for whatever, and whenever it gets turned on, for some reason it either hogs that network point, or it's an IP address thing, and somehow boots our scanner off the network, so it can't see our shared drive anymore when we try to scan. But I don't know for sure, ok? It's just a thought."

The Boss sits down at her desk and telephones reception, and more or less screams "Koala says your conference machine is disappearing our scanner!"

I am holding my head in both hands, trying not to hyperventilate.

The Boss replaces the telephone handset and turns to me once more.

"They want us to send theme a description of the problem by e-mail so they can forward it to the IT guy."

Here's me : "No sweat, I'll do that now."

The Boss : "No, I want to do it."

Here's me : "Oh fuckkkkkkk...."

The Boss : "Well?"

Here's me : "Well what?"

The Boss : "What should I say to them?"

Here's me : "Just let me send them the e-mail."

The Boss : "NO."

OH MY FUCKING GOD WHY MUST YOU BE SUCH AN ARSEHOLE.

Here's me : "Riiiiiight. OK. Tell them, uh... that we recently installed a new printer and scanner unit that connects via network point six"

The Boss, typing, speaking aloud : "INSTALLED.PRINT.SCANNER.CONNECTS.TO.SIX.NETWORKS."

Here's me : "Oh, gawd, no, I mean it connects to network point number six. The point in the wall."

The Boss : "CONNECTS.TO.NETWORK.FIREWALL."

Worth mentioning, The Boss writes all her e-mails like this, in block capitals with no pronouns in sight; they pretty much all read like war-time telegrams. I'm serious, fuck Neo, if The Boss had been plugged into The Matrix the machines would have released the humans and slunk off to be subservient but untroubled pocket calculators and iPods instead.

Here's me, pretty much giving up : "And... at various points through the day, randomly, the machine can't see the network. Not the firewall. Forget the firewall. The network."

The Boss : "RANDOM. MACHINE. CAN'T. SEE. FIREWALL. FIREWORKS. um NETWORKS."

...

Here's me : "Just so, yes."

Glint in my eye.

Here's me, and I'm not joking when I say I deserve a fucking Oscar for how I deliver this : "You should let him know it happens every time I leave the room, too. In case it's anything to do with my phone."

If I can get a hold of the response from the IT guy I'll certainly share it with you.

Moonbeam

2009-12-02T10:00:00.005Z

The Boss : "Have you got Baker Taker Milly Moon?"

OK. I can take a wild stab in the dark at this - I'm guessing it refers to Baker Tilly Mooney Moore, our accountants. As to what the question itself means, your guess is as good as mine I'm sure.

Here's me : "Have I got them? What do you mean have I got them? Have I got their number, is that what you're asking me?"

The Boss : "Have you seen them? Seen it?"

Here's me, slowly : "Uh, what? Have I seen the accountants? Um, yes. During the last audit, I think?"

The Boss : "I'm going to see it tonight."

Here's me : "What? You're going to see the accountants?"

The Boss : "The moon."

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "It's... full moon... tonight. Going to see it."

Here's me : "Are you on something?"

The Boss : "New Moon. I'm going to see New Moon in the cinema tonight."

I Mean What.The.Fuck

2009-11-27T19:40:00.004Z

The Boss : "Give me Ken's email."

Here's me : "Ken who?"

The Boss : "Ken... key.. Keating."

Here's me : "Who is Ken Keating?"

Is this shit getting as old for you, the reader, as it is for me?

The Boss : "Ronan Keating."

Here's me : "Ronan fucking Keating is the fucking singer from fucking Boyzone. Please. Sort your head out."

The Boss : "Gary Kielty."

Here's me : "Fuck. My. Life."

The Boss : "Read me out his e-mail?"

Here's me : "What, I mean fucking what??"

The Boss : "Read me out Gary Kielty's e-mail."

Here's me, probably spitting : "What? What? I don't even have an e-mail from Gary Kielty! Who the fuck is Gary Fucking Kielty?"

The Boss : "I'll forward it to you."

Just what the fuck. What the fuck. What the fucking fuck.

So, I Can Leave At 9.20 Today?

2009-11-27T13:03:00.007Z

There are few things as likely to strike dread into the heart of the average office worker as walking into the office of a morning to see The Boss rummaging around at your desk. This was the sight that greeted me this morning.

Here's me : "Something I can help you with?"

The Boss : "I can't find your Russian rate."

Here's me : "What Russian rate?"

The Boss : "To Alexandria."

Here's me : "Probably because Alexandria is in Egypt?"

The Boss : "No, a rate for Alexander."

Here's me : "What rate for Alexander?"

The Boss : "Peter."

Here's me : "Wha? Who is Peter?"

The Boss : "St. Petersburg."

Here's me, broken already at the start of the working day : "It's in the file. Under 'St. Petersburg', oddly enough."

The Boss, frantic : "Well I need to send it to Alexander! And I promised I'd have it through before the end of the day! Now get it sorted! If he doesn't get it by the end of the day we're in trouble!"

Here's me : "Please. Get a hold of yourself. It is ten past nine. I think I can probably fax that piece of paper before five thirty this evening, in fact, almost certainly, I am going to manage to do that."

The Boss : "But the day's already half over!"

Ah, God.

2009-11-26T21:01:00.004Z

I swear. It's got to the stage when from twenty feet away, I can hear her take a breath in a certain manner that suggests that she's just about to speak, and in this microsecond, my very fucking soul cringes.

Dick! Mary! Jim! Jesus!

2009-11-26T20:52:00.004Z

The Boss : "Phone Richard."

Here's me : "Richard who?"

The Boss, disgusted : "You had a meeting with her last month, do you not pay attention to anything?"

Here's me, a bit slow today : "I had a meeting with a woman called Richard last month?"

The Boss : "Richard Mary."

Here's me : "I had a meeting with a woman called Richard Mary last month? I'm sure I would have remembered this..."

The Boss, hostile : "Fax Mary!"

Here's me : "Fax yourself! What the fax are you talking about?"

The Boss : "There's an e-mail here from Mary for you."*

* The Boss still hasn't grasped the notion that when an e-mail is sent, to both of us, I can see it too - there are many of these, we have a general e-mail address for the office, and she insists upon telling me about each and every one of them. It's a tangent, yes, but I'm just getting it off my chest, ok?

Invent Your Own Witty Title For This One, I Can't Be Arsed

2009-11-26T19:59:00.007Z

Ah, yes. I'm sorry for the wait. It's all been grinding me down somewhat, but I do have a few tales of mirth for you all, and this one is rather special. I'd apologise in advance for the language contained herein but I was having a shitty day when it happened and I had a rancid fuckrag of a day today, so anyway -

The Boss had to travel over to our head office there, which I imagine was a barrel of fucking laughs for everyone involved. It's never easy, as you must know by now. It commenced when The Boss was trying to book flights. I mean, bear in mind, the company is paying for these, so within reasonable margins, who really gives a shit? But no. The simple act of booking a return domestic flight was, of course, a total headfuck. Instead of just doing the obvious and booking a return flight with one of the airlines that flew to her destination, from either of the two airports in and around this city, which are twenty miles apart - remember this, it might be important - she decided it was important to shop around between low cost airlines for the best part of a day, while complaining about how complicated it all was. Your standard fully-functioning human being can book a domestic return flight in around six minutes, I'm fairly sure, but not The Boss. Oh no. I mean, I did offer to do this for her, but no, I am not to be trusted with such important tasks.

The Boss : "I think I've finally decided."

Here's me, with my head in my hands after a full eight hours of this shit : "Oh, magic."

The Boss : "I'm going to fly out with Easyjet, and back with Ryan Kernoghan."

Here's me : "Who the fuck is Ryan Kernoghan?"

The Boss : "Kernoghan."

Here's me, weakly : "What?"

The Boss : "Ryanair."

Here's me : sigh

The Boss : "It works out eight pound cheaper."

Here's me, more or less demented : "That's fucking great. Fucking great. Really. I'm sure the company will be glad that you spent the entire fucking day fucking around to save them eight fucking quid. Fuck this 'time is money' bullshit, eh?"

The Boss, oblivious : "Only thing is it says you should check in online."

Here's me : "Well.. yeah?"

The Boss : "I don't like that."

Oh sweet suffering fuck.

Here's me : "WHY?"

The Boss : "I don't like giving out information over the internet."

Here's me : "You've already booked the bloody flight over the bloody internet. Confirming that you're going to be turning up is hardly going to lead to the feds finally tracking you down or whatever the hell it is you're worried about this time, is it?"

The Boss, as so often happens, changes tack at this point.

"What if you couldn't check in online?"

Here's me : "In this day and age, who the hell can't check in online?"

You must appreciate, at this stage my head is about three inches from the desk, I'm speaking in slurred tones and probably drooling slightly.

The Boss : "Old people. People with no computers."

Here's me : "OK. OK. I'm prepared to believe such people may exist. Tell me, please, exactly how the fuck such people would manage to book flights online?"

The Boss : "They could have got someone else to book it for them."

Here's me : "Well if they got someone else to book the flights then why wouldn't they just get that person to check them in too oh fuck never mind tell you what have a nice flight, eh?"

So anyway. The Boss went, and quietly, privately, there was much rejoicing. I entered the office and sat down with my coffee, looking forward to a day of relative sanity.

Around 14 minutes after doing so, the peace was shattered by a call from The Boss.

The Boss, indignant, outraged : "They're charging me fifteen pounds to check in!"

Here's me : "Yes. There is a charge for not checking in online."

The Boss : "Well what would happen if I didn't have fifteen pound?"

Here's me : "My day would get much worse."

The Boss : "What?"

Here's me : "I don't know. Do you have fifteen pounds?"

The Boss : "Yes."

Sigh.

So, she did whatever it was she had to do over in England, and I enjoyed a brief respite from the madness. As I was almost certain would happen, the next phone call from Her Madness came in around ten minutes after her return flight was due to land.

The Boss : "Is there a bus from Dublin to Dublin?"

Here's me : "I'm sorry, what?"

The Boss : "Is there a bus from Dublin to Dublin?"

Here's me : "OK, I heard it correctly. Er, are you sure you're asking the right question?"

The Boss is getting irritable now.

The Boss : "Don't be smart with me. I just want to know if I can get a bus from Dublin to Dublin."

Here's me, very slowly : "OooooKaayyyy... you would need to tell me from what part of Dublin, tooooooo what other part of Dublin, mmmmmmmmmkay?"

The Boss is now outright angry.

"Just tell me if I can get a bus from Dublin to Dublin and stop being cheeky."

Take a deep breath and try not to put your head through the monitor young Koala.

Here's me, little lights going on in my head : "Where are you?"

The Boss : "At the airport."

Here's me : "Which airport?"

The Boss : "The City Airport."

Here's me : "And where do you want to go?"

The Boss, after a pause : "The airport."

I'm starting to understand, but I'll be buggered backwards with a brown bread roll if you think I'm going to make life easy for her at this stage : "You're at the airport. You do not need a bus. You are at your destination. No further transport is required."

The Boss : "No, the other airport."

Here's me : "The International Airport?"

The Boss, who is now very small, while I am the very, very big Koala, oh yes : "yes"

Here's me : "Just to confirm, do you need to get a bus from the City Airport to the International Airport?"

The Boss : "yes"

Here's me, oiled, glistening : "Can you not just drive there?"

The Boss : "no"

Here's me : "Is your car at the other airport?"

The Boss : "yes"

Here's me : "Did you, in fact, book your return flight back to the wrong airport?"

The Boss : "BUT IT WAS EIGHT POUNDS CHEAPER!"

Less the fifteen pound check in fee and the tenner for the bus, o'course.

Send help, immediately, I'm losing my fucking mind in here.

The Day Draweth Near

2009-11-04T10:09:00.007Z

Chanced across this on an unoccupied desk in the office. The Boss has scribbled on a pad which lies on the desk - it reads : "Every day it's getting closer going faster than a RoRo"

If I hear or see the words "Helter Skelter" in here, I'm going to the job centre, k?

Post-Modern

2009-11-03T10:57:00.003Z

I've just collected the post from reception and handed it to The Boss. It's worth mentioning, as a complete aside, that The Boss does not trust me to open the mail by myself. I mean, I can see why. Obviously.

Anyway.

The Boss, head down in the post : "Head office are getting very stingy with the haulage."

Here's me : "Uh, what?"

The Boss : "There's no haulage on this."

Here's me : "On what?"

The Boss : "This stamp."

Here's me : "Uh, you lost me round about 'head office'?"

The Boss : "There's no haulage on this envelope."

Here's me : "Are you telling me there's no postage on the envelope?"

The Boss : "That's what I said."

I need another holiday already.

Incontinental

2009-11-03T10:26:00.003Z

Well, I'm back after a relaxing few days off, and can report that The Boss still has an airlock in the brain chamber.

The Boss : "What would Florida come under?"

I'm tempted to say 'Georgia' but it's a bit early in the day for this shit.

Here's me : "In what sense?"

The Boss : "Would it be East Coast Service?"

Here's me : "Well it's hardly bloody West Coast is it?"

The Boss : "No, but I mean would it be on the East Coast Service or the South America Service?"

Here's me, goggling slightly : "South America? Florida? Are you fucking serious?"

The Boss : "Well it is in the south..."

Eh?

2009-10-29T14:27:00.002Z

I've just overheard The Boss on the phone repeatedly telling someone who is undoubtedly as baffled as I usually am that the destination is "The States, U.S.".

OK. I sincerely hope that's all I have to report for today. See you next Tuesday.

Licence To...

2009-10-29T13:28:00.001Z

Spoke to soon, didn't I?

A short while ago The Boss was messing about with the fax machine. I mean messing about, y'know, jabbing every button on the thing and suchlike. Being a kindly sort of a soul, I enquired as to whether I could help, but was told in no uncertain terms to mind my own business, and The Boss did this curious (and after all this time, I'll admit it, somewhat endearing) manoeuvre whereby she tries to hide whatever it she's doing with parts of her body. If you ever tried to stop another kid copying your work in school when you were around six years old you'll know exactly what I mean.

Anyway, I decided to just let that go, because really, life's too short, but just now a run of the mill phone call appeared to get somewhat heated.

The Boss, speaking into the phone.

"No, I won't."

"No, I've faxed it three times and I'm not going to e-mail it."

"I've darkened it, I've lightened it, and you still can't read it. I'll fax it again."

"NO I am NOT going to e-mail it."

"Because I'm not happy doing that."

"Because it's not secure."

"I just think it's not secure."

Intrigued? I was.

"I don't care how secure you say it is, I don't trust it."

She is by now visibly upset.

"I WILL NOT E-MAIL IT I DO NOT TRUST E-MAIL YOU HEAR ABOUT THESE THINGS."

and slams the phone down, then screams "FUCK!".

This is uncharacteristic for The Boss, plainly someone has really ruffled her feathers here.

Cautiously, here's me : "Uh, having problems?"

The Boss, fuming : "He wants me to e-mail my licence."

Here's me : "He who?"

The Boss : "Ford." (the Boss is in the process of buying a new car)

Here's me, sidling up to it : "Why does he want that?"

The Boss : "For the finance company."

Here's me (I am Good Cop) : "And it won't go through on fax?"

The Boss : "He says he can't read it."

Here's me : "So, uh, why don't you scan and e-mail it?"

The Boss : "It's not secure."

Here's me : "Uh, what?"

The Boss : "I wouldn't put my driving licence through on an e-mail. Sure you hear about all these things..."

Here's me (I am Bad Cop) : "But... you know if you fax it to him, that he's going to scan it in and e-mail it to the finance company?"

I'm enjoying myself a wee bit. I'm a bad Koala.

The Boss looks deeply perturbed for a few seconds, although I suspect it's more at being derailed than anything else.

The Boss : "It's our e-mail in here I don't trust."

Here's me, innocently : "Why?"

The Boss : "Because it goes through downstairs..."

I raise an eyebrow...

The Boss : "... and they.. keep..."

Oh come on come on, tell me, woman, I'm sure it's bloody brilliant.

"... hacking into our photocopier and stuff."

Deliverance.

I could probably have gotten so much more lunacy out of this conversation but to be honest I started to feel a bit sorry for the woman and decided just to let it go.

Trick Questions

2009-10-29T11:50:00.000Z

It is with some relief that I can report that there is nothing too insane happening this last couple of days, no major dark plots being uncovered. I shall therefore regale you with some snippets of conversations from the last couple of days, questions of sorts, the answers to which would defeat many a Zen master.

--------------------------------

The Boss : "That man, is that... the man?"

Here's me : "What man?"

The Boss : "Don't know his name."

--------------------------------

The Boss : "What do you call Walter Graham?"

--------------------------------

The Boss : "Do you know anything about mars... marsey... marseybuh... meh.. buh.. na... Marsey Shannon?"

Here's me : "What?! Who?!"

The Boss : "Equipment Texas. Do you know anything about Equipment Texas?"

--------------------------------

Anyway. I'm taking a few days off. Happy Hallowe'en folks, see ya next week.

Izzit?

2009-10-27T10:10:00.000Z

The Boss : "P&O Freight Ferries is just basically..."

She waves her hand vaguely in the air, as if it finishes the sentence. It sounds like a question, but I'm not sure what the question is. I wait.

The Boss : "Isn't it?"

Here's me : "Isn't it what?"

The Boss : "Except we don't have it."

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "The address."

Here's me, through the throbbing pain developing in my head : "Are you asking me for the address for P&O Freight Ferries?"

The Boss : "Yes..."

Here's me : "OK! Now we're getting somewhere! Now, which branch of P&O Freight Ferries would you like the address for?"

The Boss, staring at the screen : "Uh... King George Dock, Hedon Road, Hull."

Here's me : "aaaaaaaaaAAAaaaghhh......"

How Many Waiters To The Dollar?

2009-10-26T13:16:00.001Z

The Boss : "How many diners do you get?"

Here's me : "Is this a joke? Are you sure you're telling it right?"

The Boss : "Don't be funny."

Here's me : "OK."

The Boss : "So?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "How many diners do you get to the pound?"

The penny should have dropped for me by now, but I'm very tired.

Here's me : "I wish. Just for once. That I knew. What in the flying blue fuck you were talking about."

The Boss : "How many Arabby Diners?"

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss : "Durham?"

Here's me : "Wha?"

I'll spare you the rest of this exchange but it turns out the question I was being asked was "What is the exchange rate of (United Arab Emirates Dirhams) to Pounds Sterling". For fuck's sake, like.