Pitfalls of Success

Yes!

It took me three hours of working at it, but I finally got that annoying nose hair. Now everybody thinks I have a serious bogey problem.

You Can’t Come to Work if You Have an Accident at Home

I received this memo this morning. I pass it along without comment:

Dear treasured employees,

Please take a moment out of your busy working day to reflect on the following cautionary tale about safety at home.

Technical Technician Barney Blatherton has a reason to be thankful but also a strong message about safety. “Having recently viewed the compulsory Health and Safety Initiative video You Can’t Come to Work if You Have an Accident at Home made me think about how fortunate my family have been following a recent accident at home.

Some time ago Barney’s wife was changing a lightbulb when the phone rang. Startled, she dropped the new lightbulb, costing the Blathertons a couple of dollars, but, more importantly, nearly so much more. “Well, anything could have happened really. She could have fallen off the chair she was standing on, and landed on the lightbulb shards, and severely cut herself, there might have been major contusions. In a worst case scenario, she might have died.”

Luckily, Mrs Blatherton didn’t fall from her chair, instead she stepped down, swept the broken lightbulb aside, and answered the phone. But the lessons have been learnt in the Blatherton household.

“My wife has assured me that she won’t be climbing up to change any more light bulbs, she’ll call a professional in instead. And if there’s some emergency, and she has to do it herself, she’ll climb up and remove the old bulb, then get down and fetch the new bulb instead of carrying two at once. And I’ve made her promise to take the phone off the hook while she does it. I fully understand Cosmodemonic’s You Can’t Come to Work if You Have an Accident safety policy and appreciate the ongoing education.”

So do we, Barney. So do we.

Near raise experience

My boss called me today. This is usually a cause for a feeling of great boding, but this time it’s all turned out ok(ish):

Lackey: [Sarcastic, obviously] Welcome to Cosmodemonic, how may I be of your assistance?
Lackey’s Boss: Oh, hello Lackey, nice phone manner there, very good, very good.
L: Oh, hello boss, yeah. Thanks.
LB: Not at all. Quite alright old chap. Now I’ve been hearing a story about you lately. Can it be true?
L: Um, possibly. But it was nothing, honestly. It’s all back to normal now, honestly. Honest.
LB: But for an entire week?
L: Um, yeah, pretty much a week, yeah.
LB: My God man, spending a full week at work without even leaving the building is inspiring stuff! I’m proud of you for once. I was even going to give you a raise, but you say everything’s back to normal now, so never mind. But just so you know the thought was there! That should keep you inspired!
L: Uh, yeah, thanks boss, I appreciate it, I sure will stay motivated and maybe even put in another week real soon, thanks for the thought anyway. You’re gone already aren’t you? You bastard. Shit.

Incident Report

Aright you motherfuckers, now just where did I put that nitro glycerine? Today I’ve finally had it – something’s gotta be done and I reckon I’m the guy to do it. Hell, this is one Lackey who’s finally had enough. There’s bits of the building still falling off and I’ve got the shakes worse than ever. There’s less and less sense being made here every day, and there wasn’t much to start with. I don’t think I can take it anymore and I definitely don’t want to! There’s a feeling in the air, a sense of revolution, and I know you feel it too. Join with me, let’s sing La Marseillaise and knock a few heads about. Cut some off and play soccer with them through the streets.

Um, hello everybody it’s the Cute Nurse here. Lackey has told me about this blog of his once or twice, in fact I think his exact words once were "Goddammit Cute Nurse, if you don’t open this door and give me more pills right now, I’m gonna post on my blog and tell the whole world how evil you are!!"

Anyway, I found this half-written post on his PC just now, and I thought anyone who does actually read this thing might want an update on what’s going on with Lackey. The poor man really can get himself worked up, as you probably know. And judging from what he’d written at the top of this post, he sure was worked up when he wrote that. And I guess he had a bit of an episode. Don’t worry I’m looking after him now. I’ve put him to bed down in the sick bay, and I’ll make sure he gets plenty of rest for a while. I’m sure he’ll be back to his old self in no time. Which is what worries me!

We’ve pieced together events as best we can between us all, and here’s what we think happened. Lackey was approaching the end of his tether, and probably needed to come down and see me for a sedative of some kind. It’s standard practice at cosmodemonic to sedate the staff as necessary, and Lackey takes advantage of this more than most. Management think it’s good that he uses the facilities as he thinks appropriate, I’m not so sure myself, but it’s my job, and I really do think it stops people from going off the deep end while they work here. I do feel some confliction regarding my job. Lackey is a special case though, and I sometimes have to give him aspirin and tell him it’s morphine.

It appears that just as Lackey was finally losing his cool, and no doubt that blue vein at the side of his forehead was starting to pulse again, he found a dead fly under his desk. He must have decided that it was the fly he once named Vodka-Legs and made friends with. And this seems to have transferred him from a psychopathic rage instantly into some kind of impotent, tragic self-pitying near coma.

It would appear that Lackey was curled in the fetal position, rocking slowly and muttering to himself for nearly a week. This is not an unusual sight at Cosmodemonic, although I am quite disappointed that nobody called me. It’s my job to take care of people in these situations. Anyway, Lackey doesn’t seem to be the most popular staff member here, sometimes he can actually be quite obnoxious, which I think is a shame, because I think he’s quite a nice boy underneath it all, and he was a long way under his desk, so I guess he was hard to spot there, rocking and muttering. Until this morning, that is, when one vigilant soul noticed that he wasn’t wearing his ID badge. They called Young Eddie from security, who usually sorts the ID cards out. Eddie’s lovely, a nice cheerful old Irishman with a red face and white hair. He knows everyone in the building and looks after us well. He always has a story to tell me when I stop by. He’s had a couple of run-ins with Lackey, and doesn’t seem to trust him, but he took one look at him under the desk, and called the Sick Room. I came straight up and found him pushing a dead fly around with a pencil, and saying "Vroooom! Vroooom!" like it was an airplane about to take off. "Fly Vodka-Legs, fly don’t die! Vroooom! Vroooom!" He seemed almost autistic at that point, and I was quite worried.

Eddie helped me carry Lackey to the elevator, and down to the sick room. I sedated him heavily, and we’ve left him to sleep it off. The last words he muttered as he was passing out were "Don’t die. Don’t ever die. You’re the only one who understands me vodka nurse angel wings." I took it as a compliment, and a request for refreshment. He’s got an I.V. drip in, as he was severely dehydrated and the only thing he’d eaten for a week was his ID card. He’ll have a new one waiting for him when he wakes up, let’s hope he doesn’t eat that one!

...

Jesus Christ, what’s going on around here?! Shit I take a blog hiatus for half a week, you’d think it was the end of the world. Well, let me tell you, if they want to keep me away, they’ll have to tie the restraints a lot tighter next time! Anyway, sorry I’ve been away for a bit, had some orgies to attend to, you know the drill, but I’m back now. Will keep you all updated, but I’ve got a bit of a headache at the moment, so I might just go for a lie down in the sick room. Cute Nurse was here before, on my PC, but I told her if she didn’t want to give me food or head, she could at least pop down and get me more morphine tablets. For once, she was agreeable (well, not about the head, but I’m working on it, don’t you worry). She is usually a formidable adversary, so something must be up. Will keep you all informed later, after I’ve had a rest.

Hunting and Gathering

Once again wisely taking its lead from the most powerful institution in the world, 21st Century Cosmodemonic has decided that all team building exercises for the year should be hunting trips.

There's one way that management here is in fact leaps and bounds ahead of the leaders of the free world, and that is credibility. Cheney, apparently, didn't tell anyone what happened because he thought noone would believe him. Up on the executive floor, while they fool around in their jacuzzis, management brazenly create their own reality every day. I don't think they care whether we believe it or not, the thing is not to say anything out loud. Voicing skepticism is grounds for instant dismissal.

A couple of days ago a memo came out specifying a new corporate wardrobe. Of course, the models were naked. None said anything. A couple of days later all but one of the group that drew up the memo were summarily sacked on grounds of indecency. They'd all ordered the uniform and were wearing it. The one who wasn't sacked was seconded to the executive floor. Of course, she was a little younger than the others, and she got a hefty raise.

Sometimes it's hard to know just who is fucking with whom.

Cosmodemonic's Valentine to its Staff

This is something I honestly didn't expect. Normally the management here at 21st Century Cosmodemonic do appalling things in a generally predictable manner. But today, this was sitting in every email inbox in the company:

Dear employee, thank you so much.
Without you our lives would be very tough.
You liven our days with your unceasing toil,
And grow our company like a flower from soil.

We’d like to take his opportunity to say
That on this, St Valentine’s Day,
Even though there are redundancies in the works,
We value your work just as much as it’s worth.

Yours, the Management.

I'm not sure which bit I appreciated the most, comparing my work to dirt, or rhyming much with tough. And I'm not sure if that last line was meant to be read as a threat or not...

Bugs!

It's when you actually see the bugs that things get bad.

When you just suspect they are there, you can put it down to alcohol induced paranoia, or some kind of flashback. But once you've seen them, you're on a whole different level. And now I've seen them, they're bloody everywhere. My desk is crawling with them, I even had to brush one off my shirt in the elevator. Freaked me right out. And it's really got me worried - after all when you're in a really bad way, physically and mentally wracked, these are the sorts of hallucinations that get at you. Day and night, looking in the shadows, seeing bugs everywhere. But it just seems so real, it can't be my mind, it just can't.

Either I've totally lost it, or Cosmodemonic's new Staff Security initiative is even more invasive than I ever expected. And for once, I'm backing my sanity.

Two Types of Rudeness

It’s extremely rude to tell a man that his girlfriend looks just like her father, has her father’s eyes or, well lets just say hinting at any resemblance is not nice. Sure, it might be there, it might be obvious, but for crying out, there ain’t no need to point it out and leave the poor bastard trying like hell not to think of an old man of questionable wit and smell every time he looks into his lover’s eyes.

But apparently it is also rude to tell a girl you’re leaving her because she looks like her dad and it’s freaking you out when you shag.

So: don’t tell him, and if you get told, don’t tell her. Just say you have six months to live and would rather spend it reading some good books.

Bad sign?

I take it as a bad sign for building maintenance when pieces of glass rain from the top floor of the building on to the street below.

On the other hand, the top level is executive territory, so the alternative possibility is clear. The executives, in their boundles wisdom, have decided they are not getting enough productivity out of us lackey's, and so they have decided a shower of glass splinters resulting in an anouncement that no employees can leave the building is just what the doctor ordered. Along with the martini and the supermodel sandwich.

So in retrospect, it is probably a great sign for building maintenance that they were able to produce this rain of glass on request. Nice work guys!

Rules of Office Etiquette V

It is unacceptable to let a door swing closed behind you when there is someone following directly behind you to go through the same door. It's rude. I know you're at work, and probably preoccupied with finding a Costanza venue or worried they know about the hipflask (don't worry - they know) but just be slightly human and look around for other poor humans stuck in the same boat, and don't close the door in my face!

It is, however, perfectly acceptable to walk straight into the door so closed on you, and bang against it repeatedly, pretending to be retarded and not understand how such a barrier could suddenly be there where it wasn't a second ago. And, if the door is glass, feel free to blowfish away to your heart's content. The people on the other side of the door, if they think it's weird, are clearly not au fait with modern office etiquette.

Emotion modulation

How to cheer up: Spend a couple of minutes rating everybody a one out of ten at hotornot.com.

How to cheer right back down again: Spend more than a couple of minutes.

What's up, doc?

Hi kids.

Your pal the Lackey had a little chat with his boss today. It was brilliant. First, he called me up from whichever remote holiday destination his latest conference is being held in (we were going to wait until he was in town, but realized that that is in infinity weeks, so better to go ahead now) . Then I answered the phone with my best Daffy Duck voice, which went down remarkably well. This was suspicious, as I am not officially supposed to answer the phone with my Daffy Duck voice. We've had discussions on the topic before. I had to use my Porky Pig voice in those discussions, but he stammers a lot so I don't know if I ever really got my point across. Anyhow, so it's a bit like this:

Lackey: Welcome to 21tthht Thentury Cothmodemonialand, how may I be of aththithtanththththh?
Lackey's Boss: Lackey, is that [unintelligible off phone noise and laughter] is that you?
L: W-w-w-w-w- yes...
LB: Listen [giggling] listen, I need you to fill in two requisition forms for me, ok? And drop them in the mail today, because we're running low.
L: Ah certainly sir, no problem at all. What shall I order for you?
LB: Eh? Oh, Jesus, what are you some lind of a moron? Don't name the stuff, that's ridiculous. Idiot. Just say my usual, and on the other one just say my other usual. The guys in Supplies'll know. [Off phone chatter] No sweetheart, don't put that there, ow! [Wild giggling] Can you do that?
L: Are you talking to me?
LB: What? Yes of course I'm talking to you, fool.
L: Sorry sir, yes of course I can do that, I'll do it right away.
LB: Good man, hey do that voice again, that's hilarious!
L:Thuffering Thuckatath!
LB: [Manic laughter, followed by a clunk and a popping sound] Brilliant! Just brilliant! Ha!
L: Thanks! I'm here all day, and week, and...
LB: You know what, this is crazy but what the hell. You deserve a pay rise, yep I'm gonna give you a raise next time I'm there. Just for that voice! Whaddya say? How do you like that - oooohhh! - I'm gonna give you a raise! Oh baby don't stop No I didn't mean don't stop, I meant Don't! Stop! Do you want me to get electrocuted? How do you like that?
L: Me? Sir, thanks a lot! But ah how about processing it now, rather than when you get here? Just might be easier is all...
LB: What? Nope, don't be silly. It's just as easy from there, and I want to able to shake your hand when you get it ok?
L: Ah.. thanks, sir...
[Wild giggling, snorting noises and strange seventies jazzis heard]
[The phone line dies]