Archive for December 21st, 2007
Festive greetings!!
I will be back in the new year, but in the meantime, as a special present to you, here is the inaugural I Am Livid podcast…
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There is a new guy at work who talks a lot. And I do mean an awful lot. I swear I now know more about him than I do about any other members of the team, even though I do not really like him very much. He endeared himself to me shortly after joining us.
He has this annoying habit of finishing any phone call with a flourish and then saying something like, “Well, that’s not very helpful is it!” whilst looking for eye contact with anyone foolish enough to engage him in conversation. If you do happen to get caught, he will then spend the next twenty minutes explaining why that phone call was wasn’t very helpful.
“Honestly, the mobile phone companies are so unhelpful!”
“Hmmm. Yes.” I agreed, whilst temporarily stood near his desk. Before the final ‘yes’ had even left my lips I realised I had made a mistake of epic proportions and that he was soon to star in my blog again.
“I’ve got to change you see, the reception where I live is pretty poor with Orange so I need to move to another provider, which is a lot more difficult than you’d imagine. I need to move because my mother is quite old you see, and if she rings me at home I need to be in a position to answer it, what with me being her first point of call and all that.”
“Uh huh.” I continued, whilst scouring the office for something plausible to call me away from the imminent aural torture.
“I mean, she does the best she can but she is in her 80’s now, and we’re having to look at potential homes for her, but as I’ve still not got power of attorney it is just about impossible to do anything. I’ve tried, of course, and I only want what’s best for her, but it really does seem like the system is geared towards making things difficult for me.
“Right.”
The whiteboard on the other side of the office that needed cleaning suddenly began to draw me in, even though cleaning a whiteboard is normally way beneath me. Unless I have sworn on it and forgotten to disguise my writing, again.
“It shouldn’t be a surprise I suppose, I did a lot of work with civil servants in my last job, and they really don’t seem to know what they are doing half of the time. I blame the Government. That Tony Blair has got a lot to answer for, and God knows what’ll happen now we’ve got his mate in his place. This country is going to the dogs.”
At this point, I finally made my escape, by running to the fax machine and pretending it was about to fall off the desk.
“Woah! That was a close one!”
I was desperate, OK?
I have never met anyone with ability to segue so effortlessly from one painfully dull subject to another at such wild tangents. I honestly believe that in his fifty plus years on this planet he has yet to utter a single sentence of any interest to anyone, anywhere.
Still, I haven’t told him to fuck off yet, so I am dealing with it quite well I think.
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