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.