Tuesday, 12 May 2009

Sandra

I work with a girl who we’ll call Sandra. Sadly, Sandra has a mental disability of sorts. She has an illness called Rose-Tinted Fuck-The-Last-Decade Everything-Was-Much-Better-In-The-Nineties Regret-Ridden Myopia. Despite its long comedic name, it’s a very serious ailment to suffer from. Unfortunately, although she’s the one who suffers from this rare condition, it tends to be a lot more painful for those around her. What happens is, when Sandra wakes up in the morning, her fragile, demented mind immediately goes back in time about ten years or so. So - for example - when she wakes up in 2009, she forgets the last 10 years and only remembers things from 1999 and prior. You wouldn’t know it just to look at her, but when you speak to her it becomes only too apparent that she is living firmly in the past…

DREW
“Morning Sandra, how are you?”

SANDRA
“My ex used to say that…”

DREW
“Your ex used to say what?”

SANDRA
“What you just said.”

DREW
“Oh, erm, OK. Well, how’s that TPS report coming along?”

SANDRA
“Well, it was much easier at my last company…”

[Fade to the sound of Drew bludgeoning himself to death with a pile of unfinished TPS reports whilst maniacally humming ‘All By Myself’]


Either way, I think you get the general gist of this debilitating disease. There’s even a possibility that you may know someone like this. If you do, then you have my sincerest and deepest sympathies. Even though they might wail on as if they’re constantly trying to remove a painfully awkward stick from their ass, I understand that it is you that is experiencing the genuine torment.

Here are a few pointers on how to identify a sufferer of Jesus-Christ-I-Hate-My-Life-So-Bad-I-Wish-I-Could-Go-Back-Ten-Years-And-Do-It-All-Over-Again-Differently Hateful Regret Syndrome:

Let’s take the broad subject of Life In General and split it into three simple categories: your Love Life, your Work Life, and your Home Life. That pretty much covers an average day in the life of most people who are employed (and not in prison for moaning people to death with a depressive nasal twang that could be bottled and used to stun grizzly bears).

LOVE LIFE:

Your love life could cover a wide spectrum of possibilities, but for now let’s just assume that you are either a) involved with someone, or b) wishing to be involved with someone. Regardless of whichever situation you happen to be in, an inflexible rule of any relationship (or potential relationship) is to keep any mention of your ex-partner to a minimum. Not for any other reason that courtesy to your current (would be) partner, as nobody really likes to hear about an ex. However, to a sufferer of Everyone-Else-Is-To-Blame-For-My-Bitter-And-Twisted-Outlook-On-Life-Holy-Bejeesus-I-Hate-Everything Gloom Flu the opposite is true. If your general outlook on life is that the grass was a lot greener on the side you just came from, then obviously barreling on about your ex-partner is going to be a pre-requisite. Needless to say, her day consists of producing a steady stream of replies to innocuous questions with the prefix “my ex…”. “My ex” this, and “my ex” that, all pissing day long. “Hey Sandra, what are you doing for lunch?” “Well, my ex used to have cheese & pickle sandwiches for lunch…” And all this despite her current boyfriend sitting right there in the very same department as her, miserably taking each “my ex” like a wet red mullet delivered squarely to the face. It’s every boyfriend’s nightmare. Especially if you’re allergic to fish.

WORK LIFE:

When she isn’t beginning every sentence that dribbles out of her trap with “My ex…”, then she’s beginning it with “At my last company…”. Now, I’m not saying it’s odd to regret leaving a job. We’ve all been there before. It’s not even odd to remark upon it once in a while. You might be in the midst of a pay freeze and comment upon the heady days back at your previous employers when a Christmas bonus was all but guaranteed. Or the fact that your previous boss might have been a bit of a prick, but not as much as the odious, fat bastard you work for now. That sort of thing. But if you are reading this in an office, the chances are pretty fricken’ high that you’ll encounter someone with the same affliction as Sandra, as offices tend to attract the sort of people who reply to every good idea you ever have with a negative sentence beginning “Well, at my last company…”. Understandably, it can be very hard to resist the temptation to say “Wow, Sandra. If it was so great at your last company then why did you ever leave? And why don’t you fuck off back there?” Comments like that are usually hardest to resist saying when she is using her George Michael (also last popular at least a decade ago) calendar to count the days since she gleefully walked out on her wonderful, amazing job-of-a-lifetime.

HOME LIFE:

Most people have hobbies to fill the time when they’re not either at work or hanging out with their significant other halves. Mine is writing unadulterated crap like this and watching movies. Yours might be anything from playing computer games in the nude to collecting the lingerie sections of old Littlewoods catalogues to “think about” later (definitely not another two of mine, no matter what anyone tells you). Perhaps even going out dancing is your sort of thing? You might remember back when people started going to salsa dance lessons after the criminally-awful “Macarena” song came out? Well, guess what? It was just over ten years ago. The perfect hobby for someone with Piss-And-Whinge-My-Pathetic-Excuse-For-An-Existance-Away Misery Thrombosis. No prizes for guessing what Sandra does in her spare time…





If you successfully identify a sufferer of I’m-Going-To-Make-Your-Life-Hell-For-My-Life-Being-A-Big-Bag-Of-Shitty-Failure Regret Disorder like the ferociously awful bog-horror that I encounter on a daily basis, then it’s probably for the best that you quit your job and move country. Sod it, it works for me.

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Workplace Irritations No. 3,742: The Jovial Jaw-Flapping Sandwich Saboteur

Picture the scene: it’s 2pm, you’re in the office and you’ve had the morning from hell. People are buying when they should be selling, profits are down and your blood pressure is up. All of a sudden, your stomach lets out a low growl and you get the feeling that if you don’t eat something in the next 10 minutes you’re going to bite your own hands off. So you head out and grab yourself a sandwich from the local deli. You know, a really nice one with all the crusts cut off (if you’re into that sort of thing). You return to your desk, you delicately unwrap your freshly prepared sarnie and you pause to consider its beauty for a second. “By Jebus, that’s going to taste pretty fricken’ good!” you think to yourself, before you raise it up to your gaping maw. The wondrous aroma floods your nostrils as you bite into it, and the flavours and smells combine to caress your face like a sopping wet flannel dripping with pure loveliness. Joy unbound…until:

“So, what have you got there?”

The dozy bastard at the desk next to you decides to engage you in conversation right at the very point when your chops couldn’t be any more packed full of the delicious sandwich you’ve just this second bitten into. Does he see that you are unable to speak due to having a large culinary explosion going off in your oral cavity? No, of course he doesn’t. He just sits there expectantly waiting for an answer. “A sandwich, you great big moron” comes out as an unintelligible “mmmmmmmfhrrr”, almost as if you’re trying to talk through a pillow. You chew through the mouthful as quickly as you possibly can and swallow a ball of half-chewed sandwich the same size and shape as a ripe Granny Smith just to confirm in clear, concise English words that you are – surprisingly enough – eating a sandwich. Just to demonstrate the action of consuming the aforementioned sandwich, you take a hearty bite and turn back to your PC screen. Big mistake.

“Looks nice. Where did you get it from?”

Is it on purpose, or just bad timing? Who the hell cares? All you know is it’s seriously bloody annoying. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could just express how bloody aggravating that is but – again – the only audible sound you can produce is an excited “hmmmmmmmrf” like a demented hamster with enough food in its cheeks to last it an entire winter. Again he sits there in anticipation of an answer, blissfully unaware that you’d quite happily bite his head off if you weren’t already trying to ingest a cranium-sized globe of semi-masticated sandwich. The fury subsides enough for you to be able to point out the bag sitting on your desk between you and him which quite clearly states ‘John’s Sandwich Shop, corner of Goodge Street and Berners Street’. Just for clarity, you point out that this isn’t just a random sandwich bag you keep on your desk for decoration. It is in fact the very place that the sandwich you are holding, the one that you are doing your utmost to try and enjoy, actually came from.

This last comment seems to satisfy his curiosity, and he turns back to his screen seemingly content. You pause for a few seconds, trying not to glare too angrily at him. You linger there for a few seconds, just to see if another question is forthcoming. This time: zilch, nada, nothing. He just sits there lifelessly staring into a spreadsheet and dribbling into his keyboard. The coast is clear, so you chance another bite of your sandwich. A small bite though, just in case of another (un)timely interruption. You finally get to enjoy the sandwich of your dreams, albeit one tiny bird-bite at a time. The sweet sound of silence continues for a while, and lulls you into a sense of security. You absent-mindedly dive in for a big bite of your sandwich when…

“Where is that shop? I think I’ll go buy myself one of those…”

You can help it. The rage boils over and you emit a muffled cry of “Frrrk uffff, uh fhhrrkng brrrrstrd!”.

“What was that?”

He takes your stifled screams to mean “hold on right there, let me just consume this mouthful and then I can explain in great detail exactly where the sandwich shop is using these pens as markers and this desk as a rudimentary map”. In actual fact you’re screaming “hold on right there, let me just consume this mouthful and then I can explain in great detail exactly how I’m going to disembowel you using these pens as surgical implements and this desk as a rudimentary operating table.



He then remembers that you have; a) already given him the directions and b) they’re also on a bag right in front of his stupid flapping jaw. He pats you on the back as he walks off, sending you into a coughing fit as a piece of your part-chomped sandwich flies down the wrong tube.

Thank you oh Jovial Jaw-Flapping Sandwich Saboteur, and may your sandwich give you the worst case of the shits ever seen this century.