Office Troll

High Alert

My Other Half is a compulsive DIY freak and lately he has been purchasing all sorts of tools to assist him with his latest project. He gets everything sent in my name to Rickety Properties, because at his workplace everything goes missing amongst the general confusion of hotel guests, change of shifts and general all-round lack of security.

So I’m at the office and when I sign for yet another parcel, a rather heavy but fairly small box, wrapped in black bin liner-like material. I put it behind my chair and carried on with what I was doing.

Then Darren comes in. He sees the box and freezes: “What’s in that box”? Immediately he puts his hand together in FBI-agent-pointing-at-suspicious-package-with-gun style. He takes a couple of steps sideways, gun still held up to the side of his head. “It’s some DIY tool that my other half ordered”, I explain wearily. “I thought you had already gone off being a Spook?”.  Darren shakes his head: “No it’s my training, you see. When I’m faced with danger, it’s an automatic reflex, even if I’m no longer technically a Spook.” 

“Well there’s nothing to detonate this time, I’m afraid” I tell him.

And so we go back to work.

Alternative Watercooler Conversations

After being asked yet another time by a work colleague if I have been watching Eastenders, I have decided to prepare myself with ammunition and come up with a selection of possible 'watercooler' conversations to fight back and confuse the hell ouf of my workies.

The Strategy

The idea is to intially stun the enemy with a conversation starter on a sujbject that they find pretty much incomprehensible, then go for the kill by enthusiastically going into the aforementioned unfathomable subject of conversation in great detail. When they finally start to beg for mercy, foaming at the mouth, eyeballs rotating in wildy diverging orbits, chuck-in a flippant comment such as 'Oh I know what I was going to mention, did you watch the X-Factor last night, damn I have to go back to my desk now!', which would be the office equivalent of desecrating their bodies.

This Is Where You Come In

I need your suggestions. A couple have already come in:

Catch the History of Horror Films that started last night on BBC4, and discuss why Universal horror was better than the rest [Snaptophobic]

Talk about your increasing empathy towards Reggie Perrin. [Hairydalek]

Post your comments below and may the battle begin.

The Commonwealth Games

I didn’t mention that, after he dives into the olympic-size pool, Darren, aka Donovan Marsh¹, Olympic Diving Champion, always performs a kind of rotating movements with his hands, something resembling a boxer punching an (equally imaginary) speedball.  As he punches the speedball, he bends forwards (remember: he’s plunging into the depths of the olympic-size pool) and the overall effect is that of a cartoonish figure of an unspecified, generic Arabic man, bowing and ceremoniously greeting in a sort of flamboyant and overelaborate As-Salamu Alaykum. He even then walks backwards, a little bit. This is where I always dread the possibility that Call-Me-Harry might appear right behind him, but so far, this hasn't happened.

A couple of days ago, during one of Darren's epic jumps, I asked him if he was going to take part in the Commonwealth Games. He said he wasn’t, because he wanted to give the other divers and swimmers a chance to do well and create a good team spirit - he was going to beat them at the next Olympics anyway.  I thought that was a noble idea. 

How lucky that he had decided not to go - I said to him this morning; apparently 15 swimmers have contracted a stomach bug in the not-so-clean waters of the Indian facilities.  Darren gave me a knowing look and then picked up the phone to organise yet another viewing of yet another remote industrial estate that nobody wants to take a lease on.

¹ This is the name of Darren’s diving alter ego. He came up with it, although later raised concerns over the American-sounding name. 

Spooks

Over the last few days, Darren, who is a fan of the BBC TV show ‘Spooks’, has been pretending to be a spy. I’m not quite sure as to how it started - he must have said something about working as a commercial estate agent just as a cover up - but it’s now as large a part of our daily office routine as his step-diving is.  Taking advantage of the fact that Call-me-Harry was out of the office, this week we spent a whole day behaving like spooks - which seems to consist mainly in standing behind doors holding an invisible gun, looking surreptitiously to the right and then to the left before bursting into the next room - more FBI than MI5 I guess, but you can’t be too specific.  At Darren’s mouthing of ‘Get down! Get down!’, I have to duck under my desk and seek cover - although I have taken the liberty of adding a gunfight-stile-down-and-roll-and-shoot move to my repertoire. I have been wearing trousers a lot this week primarily for this purpose.

The Spook needed a name, a nice punchy one, like Jason Bourne - and so McKenzie Grange was born. Now whenever I phone Darren from my desk, he answers ‘McKenzie Grange..?’. He signs off his dictation ‘McKenzie Grange’. And I’ve created a McKenzie Grange email account. 

So I get paid peanuts, but at least I can say that I work with a Spook.

Measuring Up

I come back from lunch to find Darren in bit of a state. Call-Me-Harry is away on a golfing trip to the Med with his buddies, and Darren has been saddled with a really complicated valuation. Basically the client handed him 4 A3 floor plans for a big office development and asked him to measure everything up and call him back that same afternoon with a price.

Only problem, Darren’s background is as a residential property estate agent and in ‘rezzie’, you don’t measure up and work out a price: you just MAKE IT UP.¹ He looks so panicked, pouring over the plans, with a scale ruler, asking me if I can help. I stare at the plans, a bit, too. I put him straight on what a centimetre is on the ruler, but neither of us is quite sure about what 1:100 stands for. My knowledge of geometry dates back to primary school. 

We need help. The two chartered surveyors from the professional department are both out of the office. Even George is out (although he would probably take great delight in humiliating Darren, so that’s for the best). 

I know. I’m going to call my Significant Other. 

S.O. - as some of you may remember - is a gym instructor. He does, however, have a degree in Marine Geography - which involved, at some point, reading maps and possibly technical drawings to scale. He also watches Mythbusters a lot, so I’m confident that he can help. 

I ring him at work, and, as expected, my S.O. delivers: there should be a key at the bottom of the drawer (yes, check), and on the key it should say what each unit stands for. (the units are 1 cm long, and it says 1m,  ergo, 1cm = 1m, so yes, check). I thank him profusely and hang up. ²

 

Darren and I then set out to measure the drawings, and twenty-or-so minutes later, we have fairly plausible figures for all floor areas and some equally plausible prices.

We then role-play Darren’s impending phone call to the client. “He’s totally going to buy it” - I reassure him.  And I mean it: he sounds absolutely confident and professional. Let’s face it - who would suspect that a senior negotiator from one of Mordor’s leading commercial estate agencies is totally out of his depth on the subject of commercial valuations and has enlisted the help of his secretary and - in turn - of her gym instructor-cum-cleaner boyfriend, and that together, the three have managed to concoct a valid proposal based on three possible rates of £ per sq ft, on a sliding scale of best to worst possible scenarios, and have just fed it to you?

Needless to say, the real phone call takes place and it goes swimmingly. Darren is very grateful for my help and I feel that I have at least done some good today by helping him. A fuzzy warm feeling pervades the office.

We both live to fight and, above all, sell commercial properties for another day.

¹ And this is why, my friends, we are now living under seriously fucked-up economic conditions, thanks to a housing marked based on joke prices conjured up by estate agents in dire need of a reality check.

² Had that option failed, Option 2 was to ring my cousin Umberto in Italy. He’s an architect, and I suspect that he still has some of my Asterix books from childhood, so let’s just say that he owes me a favour.

 

Diving

I never told you about Darren’s step-diving, which is strange, because it’s one of those regular worktime occurrences that I truly look forward to, brief flashes of happiness in my otherwise rather unsatisfying working life whereby I think, well, this can only happen in an office, and not any office, THIS office, I am so blessed and so utterly privileged for being right here, right now -

My office communicates to Call-me-Harry’s considerably smaller but considerably plusher wood panelled quarters through a door accessed via three small carpeted steps. It is on these very steps that Darren, to my constant utter delight, practices imaginary dives into an equally imaginary olympic-size pool. He stands on the middle step, bouncing slightly, arms outstretched out to his sides at 180 degrees¹, palms down, his gaze projected ahead, focused on infinity but by no means lost, in fact totally centred and mindful and gathered, in athletic contemplation. 

I watch Darren prepare for the dive and almost hold my breath when he is briefly distracted by the sound of Harry hanging up the phone (all of the above tends to happen in Harry’s absence or during one of Harry’s prolonged phone calls) - the inevitable relief follows as the sound of another telephone number being dialled signals that Harry is going to be engaged for a little while longer.

Then Darren jumps, and my office and all its rather rickety furniture shakes for a few seconds, as the athlete is catapulted towards the opposite door that leads into the corridor. The dive is over. 

Elation is brief. Sadness follows.

¹ Lately, Darren has branched out into a further category of athletic excellence, i.e, the paralympic dives. These jumps are performed by standing closer to the sides of the wall, thus preventing him from outstretching both arms. It’s a one-arm dive. I don’t know how often you will have seen one-armed swimmers diving into olympic size pools, but I get to witness this amazing athletic prodigy on most working days.  Hence the feeling of being blessed.

Crossroads

I’m kind of bored of writing about work, as you probably have sensed by now. The magic of the freak show of the days of The Company is impossible to re-create, and Rickety Properties, albeit also populated by truly freaky individuals, doesn’t seem to give me the same level of inspiration. I feel like writing about other stuff that I find amusing or irritating in life. The annoying women with hairy bushes I see in the changing rooms of the yoga studio; my dabbling in Mind Body & Spirit stuff and my encounter with workshop junkies and self-proclaimed spiritual masters. The inevitability of my next-door neighbours having the most frightening rows whenever I attempt to give my friend I. a Reiki treatment.

I don’t need to make a decision until March 2011, when my Typepad subscription will be up for renewal; and being a paid-for service, I won’t be paying for a blank screen. But maybe the inspiration will come back, who knows?

Introducing George

I waited so long to introduce George to you because I really didn’t know where to start - and I still don’t. There’s too much to say and I am not a good enough writer to transfer George from my mind to text. What follows is only a pathetic attempt. 

George. Over 1.90m tall, medium build, sparse blonde hair that is almost ginger, pale pinkish skin, thin framed glasses and slightly piggy-like features. 

George is annoying. Everyone thinks George is annoying, for different reasons and to different degrees, but I think that’s the general consensus. George speaks in bursts of words in a syncopated pattern that goes word-torrent- quick breath - word - torrent - quick breath, all of the above delivered in a booming voice which will inevitably drown whatever conversation one is attempting to conduct either on the phone or in person. Darren - who shares an office with him - can often be seen trying to talk to a client on the phone with a finger in his ear, desperately trying to shut out George’s braying. 

George will always has something to say on any given subject. In fact, he - or one of his chums - will have have had the most incredible and implausible experience on the above mentioned given subject. He has an anecdote filed away for every occasion, ready to be delivered to the unsuspecting victim, at any time, in any place, whatever the situation. 

George was told to lose some weight to help manage his diabetes. As a result, over the last four months he’s lost over a stone, which has prompted me to refer to him as ‘Slimmer of The Week’, a moniker he seems to rather like. He cycles daily into work, timing his journey with an iPhone GPS application and then gives me daily updates on his latest Personal Best. He also plays tennis - again, with a chum or another - and - wait for it - takes singing lessons. 

Yes, I said ‘singing lessons’. You see, George, who is in his late forties, has recently discovered a passion for performing. So he takes singing lessons, and then practices to a MP3 tracks given to him by his teacher. Sometimes, if Darren is out, he gets his iPhone and starts practising in the office. According to him, his office has great acoustics, which is why, occasionally in the early evening, when the only living creatures at Rickety Properties are the fish and the pigeons in the back patio, George stays behind and sings. He said that gives his next door neighbours a break too and it allows him to really belt the tunes out without feeling too self-conscious. 

At this point, I’ll let you into a secret. I kind of like George, although he irritates the hell out of me and often makes me want to hit him. But he’s a bit of a misfit, the kind of guy who says the wrong thing at the wrong time. He will then offer to make me cups of coffee as an apology. He’s not like Smaug. 

Anyway, stay tuned for more on George, now that the floodgates are open.

Grossout Of The Week

I happened to pick up the phone from Lisa's desk this morning and it reeked of fags!!! GROSS! 

And the phone in reception - which Lisa is often answering in the receptionist's abscence - also stunk of fags! And sometimes if I'm downstairs I have to answer it...totally revolting.

I took action. I snuk into reception earlier, armed with one of my antiseptic wipes, and I cleaned it. The entire phone was pretty much covered in grime. I cleaned it, if only for self-preservation. 

Mental note: do not, under any circumstances, pick up Lisa's phone ever again.

Skype-Me-Harry

It seems like yesterday when Darren was on holiday, but it is now Call-me-Harry’s turn to be away, and that means an entire month in his villa in the Mediterranean. I was expecting a few easy weeks ahead, a day spent blitzing the filing, maybe, but overall it was meant to be EASY.

I was wrong. Harry had left all the crap he didn’t want to deal with to Darren, and as a result, Darren has been producing more work than ever. I also get work from George - whom I have yet to introduce to you, and who deserves a separate post altogether (that’s not a good thing). And withTanya -Harry’s wife and receptionist on two days of the week -also being away, I have the added fun of having to answer the phones a lot more. 

Before leaving, Call-me-Harry kept saying that he would Skype in from his webcam and that we’d then go through the work a couple of days a week. My computer is therefore equipped with a webcam and a set of rather cheap, antiquated speakers. Apparently he got them for his previous P.A. the summer before, fully committed to conducting his business via Skype while sitting by the pool with a cocktail in his hand. Darren said he never used it once since buying it, though, and assured me that the holiday would come and go again without the webcam ever being mentioned. And so far, his prediction has been right. 

I was, in fact, expecting Harry to at least bombard me with emails, or to ring me daily demanding updates about deals and clients and properties. But so far - and he’s been away for three weeks now - he hasn’t rung ONCE. NOT ONCE! He emails once a day or less, mostly to ask for news about the fish we keep in a very large tank in reception. Are the fish ok? How are they coping with the hot weather? Is anyone checking the water temperature? Can someone go in on Saturday and feed them? 

If that’s all he’s worrying about, I think I like his style. I’m sick of those bosses who will email you from the Borneo jungle, or ring you from the Everest Base Camp because they can’t switch off from their ever so important work. This is the way to go. And on the day before he left for the Med, I even got a text from Harry that read:

 “ENJOY BEING THE M.D. FOR THE NEXT 4 WEEKS!”