Office Troll

Another Year Over....(almost)

And so this is Christmas....and what have I done? 
I've spent a year at The Institute, working for a wanker who never gave me the time of the day, stuck in the fields in the middle of nowhere, away from civilisation and from Starbucks, away from life and music and the sea and anything remotely interesting.

You probably guessed that working at The Institute completely killed my inspiration. I couldn't think of anything funny or interesting to post. It's been a creative disaster. It's also been a physical disaster too, with the appearance of a mysterious condition that makes me feel as if I have a dagger stuck halfway between my throat and my chest pretty much all the time. Having a camera stuck down my gullet didn't reveal anything, and neither did swallowing a nice cup of barium gunk before standing in front of an x-ray machine that looked exactly like the Star Trek simulator they have in Vegas. So after losing about a stone in weight thinking that not eating might be the problem, I realised that being stuck all day working in the middle of nowhere probably was the problem. (I've since put the weight back on. I was worried that my boobs were beginning to shrink, and that's an expensive thing to rectify).

The good is that it's now OVER. It's over, over, over. The Professor didn't even really acknowledge it, but rather left a bottle of red wine on my desk, with a sellotaped note on a scrp of red paper (no envelope) thanking me for making his life 'a lot easier' in 2009 and for my 'general rock'n'rollness'. 

Everybody knows I hate red wine.

But nevermind. Let's forget The Institute, the mudfest, The Professor, the ethnic hats and the lack of decent food and coffee.  Rage Against The Machine are at No.1 in the U.K. Charts and who knows, we might even have a white Christmas.

So guys, thank you for sticking with me even amidst my 2009 creative drought. As Arnie said....well, you know what he said. Merry Christmas everybody xxx

Bug Attack

Every now and then I forget of where I am - that I am stuck in the outskirts of town, in a dreary campus, surrounded by fields and hills but flanked by a busy dual carriageway permanently blocked up with traffic.

I also occasionally forget about the wild beasts that infest this place: not just the students, but the insects, too. I was brutally reminded of my plight yesterday, when I decided to spend half an hour of my lunch break sitting outside one of the campus 'cafes'. The only seats available were these kind of very basic benches built around some of the trees. Within seconds, I felt something crawling up my back, under my top. I kept trying to brush them off but more would come. Then I realised I was pretty much being attacked by ladybirds; even my handbag was covered in them. A seat became free on one of the 'proper' benches so I moved: but there was a spider on the back of the seat. I made my way towards some steps instead, sat down, but I was attacked again, this time by tiny green flying bugs.

And that was it. I was defeated. I took my cup of tea and my newspapers and made my way back towards the safety of my office, where the pests are human-sized.

More Wardrobe Malfunctions

I had another wardrobe malfunction yesterday.

I have a dress I really like but which, unfortunately, is very low cut. The dress came with its own black slip, presumably because a fashion graduate intern at some stage realised that the garment was pretty much unwearable to those outside the sex industry without some sort of modesty aid. Anyway, the slip is not actually a very well cut one, but all the others I own were in the washing and so I put that on, under the dress, and off I went to work.

Well, within minutes of arriving in the office I realised that the slip kept...well, slipping, and my cleavage was conspicuosly spilling out of the dress. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable I felt all day; one thing is to flash a bit of flesh when you're out and about, or when you're trying to get someone to do something for you (yes I admit to that). But in the workplace it's a fine line between looking good and looking like the office tramp.

Thankfully, I had a black scarf tied around my neck, the sort of chiffon scarf that French women wear in their own inimitable way. Well I had to tie it in a bow under my neck with the resulting effect of looking like an easter egg - hardly a triumph of style, but in the absence of a full islamic abaya, that really had to do.

Oh, and of course, I had to spend most of the day avoiding The Builder.

In Search of Inspiration

I've now been at The Institute for nearly 10 months, and it's clear from the dwindling numbers of my posts that the place is certainly not providing me with much inspiration. Nothing worthy of mention ever seems to happen here; it's rarely terrible but equally, there is never anything particularly funny going on. I have pretty much given up trying to find an 'angle'.

So what am I going to do? I am not prepared to shut Office Troll down after years of hard work. Besides, I am not planning to be here forever, so what happens if my next employer turns out to be another Captain? Or Smaug II: Revenge of the Moron?

The only solution I can think of is to just post about everything else. Boobs always seem to be popular; fetish footwear may also stimulate a decent amount of interest.

If you have any suggestions, post a comment below.

The Lady of the Mothballs

Term has started again and The Institute is once again seething
with hapless post-graduate students from places like Washington and Toronto who wear ethnic clothing in an attempt to look more credible.

For some reason, a distinct smell of mothballs accompanies them. One of my colleagues theorises that because the students have travelled far to get here, they clothes might have been shipped in advance and their concerned parents would have strategically placed mothballs in the boxes. That's entirely possible.

But the smell is not limited to students. One academic who has an office on my corridor is the biggest culprit: every time she opens her door, a horrid smell of mothballs mixed with mould wafts out, making me retch. I have a very sharp sense of smell - and it's unfortunately becoming more so with age. So whilst nobody else seems to notice the vapours that escape from the Lady of the Mothballs, it's absolutely unbearable for me.

So I have taken to counter-attack with a rather noxious jasmine scented 'room fragrance' spray that I bought a while ago, in an attempt to get the smell of Nag Champa incense in the office without infringing every single Healh & Safety Law in the country. 

I bought the spray on eBay and it was guaranteed to be a liquid version of the incense. Only it's not - it smells of jasmine and the kind of chemicals you would find in the Poundstretcher range of toiletries.

 

But she keeps opening her door so I keep spraying. Immediately after my counter-attack I hear people repeatedly sneezing at the other end of the corridor. I chuckle to myself, thinking revenge is sweet.

The Team Meeting

We had our fortnightly Team Meeting this morning. I braced myself for an hour of unintelligible corporate drivel and resigned myself to the fact that another slice of my life would be mercilessly taken from me.

It didn't seem too bad at first. I thought, maybe we'll be done in half an hour. But of course, that wasn't to be. Almost an hour later, as the agony was eventually coming to an end, the subject turned to our departmental "retreat", i.e. a team meeting that lasts HALF A DAY. I was asked to find a date that everybody could do and, as I mentally cursed the day I was born, one of the usual suspect piped up : 'Can I say one more thing?'
'WHAT', I thought. What more can you possibly add to this sick celebration of tedium.
'After the retreat', she continued, 'can we all go out to DINNER?'
And it was at that point that my soul finally died.

My Summer of Squalor

August is the quietest month of the year at The Institute. The academics all go off for several weeks to places like France and Cornwall. The rest of the staff all seem to have children, so they also disappear. And so I have been left pretty much on my own, save for a couple of stray colleagues, wondering along these corridors of doom, staring blankly at the trees outside my window, dreaming of the time when I worked in the middle of the city and saw life around me (as well as lots of tramps, if you remember my old posts).

This campus is slowly killing me. It's so dull and depressing that I don't even stray away from my building anymore: I fear that the dreariness might overwhelm me and I might be found dead of boredom, covered in dust, bits of foliage and old copies of The Guardian.

Occasionally, I drag myself to a nearby "cafe" (please note the quotes). I make my way through herds of squealy Japanese girls who seem to take delight in queuing from the wrong side of the counter while I try to make myself look incospicous to the blatant stares of workers from the local water company sporting high-visibility jackets. And then, every time I try to sit there in peace with my salad and a book, a very aggressive, annoying, stubborn WASP always arrives and start attacking me and my food. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Just how much does this place suck, that you get chased by wasps even when you are indoors?

I can't bear it for much longer. I need to get the hell out of here...

Writer's Block

Hi folks. I'm sorry for the lack of updates recently. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that not much worth writing about happens in this wretched place. The people here don't seem to actually do anything, not even anything particularly obnoxious. And if they do, how would I know - we're all scattered around the building in our little shoebox offices, staring into space. I even miss Smaug.

Last time I posted, I was telling you about the preparation for my boss's 50th birthday. Well, wasn't that a disappointment! It started well, and I could see that he was rather touched by the gesture - and impressed by the personalised gifts, the Clash soundtrack and the home-baked goodies that myself and two other colleagues had produced in his honour.

Unfortunately, the party was quickly hijacked by this crazy old academic that my line manager had somehow decided to invite at the last minute. This man is the original Nutty Professor. Tall, spindly legged, crazy grey hair all over the place, about 105 years old and with holes in his shirts, apparently he's a real legend in the Institute and of aristocratic origins. Whatever. None of this mattered when he decided to turn the party into an impromptu meeting, ranting away at how the placed had changed since the 'good old days', clearly using his opportunity to vent all that could be vented to my boss.

I was fuming. It was bad enough that we had to host the soiree' in one of the meeting rooms, with the result that we were all trapped behind a massive boardroom-style table, making it impossible to properly mingle. But as the Nutty Professor ranted away, gradually people started sitting down around the table, to the sound of my iPod blasting away the Clash and the Dead Kennedies, with the incongrous effect you can only imagine.

Oh, and just as the last straw, my sugar cookies were practically ignored, even if they were perfect. They all scoffed the Welsh cakes instead. The philistines! I had even gone through the trouble of icing them and decorating them.

So that was my last attempt to bond with these people. I am done. It's all in vain, they are not human. From now on, my reports will be from the perspective of a human being surrounded by aliens.

Print Jobs

My boss often forwards me emails with attachments for me to print. But I don't think he was paying much attention when he forwarded me something this morning, and asked me to print the content of a link. Only thing, the link was to a video. Nothing dubious, just some boring speech.

This has happened before when there are links involved; he just doesn't read the emails properly. What I find particularly amusinig is the reply that he gives to the sender: 'Thanks X/Y/Z, this looks really interesting, I'll check it out' - when he clearly hasn't even bothered clicking on the link...

The Birthday Planner

Everything has been quiet at The Institute after then fun and frolics that followed the Bored Meeting. This week, The Professor was dragged away on a city break by his wife for a very special celebration: his 50th birthday. As a result, I've been getting hardly any emails, save for the odd one that he manages to sneakily send from his Blackberry (his wife cunningly booked a holiday where the G3 signal is patchy at the best of times).

In typical - actually, stereotypical - secretary fashion, I have therefore made it a personal mission to organise a belated birthday celebration on his return. Out of sheer desperation for some frivolous behaviour, I started to plan this two weeks in advance. I researched what kind of stuff he's into, blocked time in the diary for the gift-giving gathering, scoured the internet for cool presents that don't involve anything remotely ethnic, or fair-trade, or eco-friendly. In the end, I opted for this  since The Professor is a self-defined 'music freak' and a Clash mug - apparently he sometimes joins the 'house band' to sing Clash covers.

But my greatest effort has been the creation of the ultimate birthday card: using my rudimentary Photoshop skills, I've managed to paste the Professor's head onto Wayne Rooney's body in a mock football magazine cover, so that the charismatic academic is forever immortalised as the captain of his favourite team.

The workies seem a little bit taken aback by my sudden enthusiasm: I am one step away from the full-blown J-Lo Wedding Planner type of stuff, complete with Blootooth headset, clipboard and snappy attitude. But what they don't realise is that I am absolutely starved for a bit of fun and work stupidity, something that I used to get a lot of at The Company. Here it's all about saving the world, starving children, starving farmers and women with droopy tits. I need to rock this place. This place needs ME.

The chances are that tomorrow will be a Big Disappointment

™ and that the boss will probably end up booking a meeting for the slot I reserved instead. At least, I will have tried. They will not get a second chance.