One of the problems with keeping a blog with my own name on
it is that I have to be very cautious about mentioning real people, or pissing
off real people. I didn’t mention, for example, the friend who blah blah blah.
Nor have I shared my opinions on the recent trend for short pencil skirts, for
fear off the repercussions that might emanate from my girlf.*
I find myself in an unusual position at this present moment.
I’ve started a new job, and nobody there knows that I e-scribble. I can,
therefore, let rip fearlessly, like a man with Irritable Bowel Syndrome at a
deaf convention. So...
Unfortunately, the downside of this is that I don’t really
know anyone well enough to have formed anything other than a fleeting
impression. First impressions are that everyone is essentially superficially
pleasant, tending towards the conservative side of life, and a bit mumsy. The younger
staff look like embryonic versions of the old staff, and it’s all a bit Midwich
Cuckoos. I hope I’m wrong, and beneath the still surface there is world of
filth, vice and excitement, otherwise I may get bored. I suspect I’m going to
be yawning and looking at my watch a lot.
The thing about the workplace for me is that I generally
resent the entire concept of getting up and having to do what I’m told so I can
afford to drink, smoke and make contributions to a sensible pension fund. I suspect it stems from watching
Jeeves and Wooster as a teenager and
wanting that carefree, work free life, and realising that, as I wasn’t born on
an absolute pile, the life of an idle and feckless drone wasn’t really an option.
Gutted.
To counter this
simmering black-hearted resentment I’ve always relied on a workplace which is as
equally social as requiring of actual productive work. And, when I first entered the world of paid
employment, this is what mostly I encountered.
Mostly because I was indentured in a call-centre wishing swift death on
the public, with a bunch of other graduates who had also failed to look for a
proper job and were similarly under a mental and emotional apocalypse. The one perk of hating your job is that it
drives you to drink, and many evenings were spent pissing away the pittance of
a wage, drowning the dawning sense of the futility of life. Well that, and
trying to pull anyone who’d have me.
I’ve had some exceptional experiences through work, and I’ve
made some great friends. I once bonded
with a supervisor after explaining to him I’d be a little off form as I’d had a
little too much party the night before.
He was very sympathetic to my predicament and sniffing as, he admitted,
he too had spent the night being similarly careless with the party favours. My
girlfriend was originally a workmate, a first year teacher in a school in New
Zealand. I miss my workmates from last
year, with whom the day would disappear amidst teaching, filthy jokes and
casually cutting insults.
However, in these times of Economic Uncertainty**, as the
BBC calls our financial predicament, such luxuries are not always
available. For now, at least, Work is a place
of work, a place where everything is pleasant but serious, and I have no outlet
for scathing cynicism about the world in which live.
Until I work out how to break the firewall and get on
Facebook. And if you see me there, and if I seem more vitriolic that usual, you
know why. You fuckers.
*I’ve dropped this in to see if she really does read this.
If I get an earful about pencil skirts, and accusing her of being capable of
giving me an earful, I’ll know she’s read it. That’s all this is, my love. A
cunning trap.
** Why don’t they just say the economy is double plus bad.
We live times of economic fuckedness, and the Tories are making it worse. For once I’d love to hear on the news ‘In these times of
oh-my-god-the-country-is-in-the-hands-a-gaggle-of-fuckwit-incompetents-and-we’re-all-going-to-die’.
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