What Really Happened

Happy New Fucking Year. I mean it.

Monday. I dragged my sorry carcass out and into the snow like some sort of pitiful lost lamb and made my way to the office, which was freezing, and depressing, and entirely devoid of sunlight - both the journey and the destination I'm talking about here - and the only thing going through my mind, honestly, was 'please let her be sane today... please...'

But no.

Fuck no.

I was greeted upon my arrival by this bastard thing:

Yessum.

Here's me : "What's that?"

The Boss : "A paper shredder."

Right then.

Our used paper goes to the recycling thingy. It doesn't need to be shredded. We do not deal with anything that needs to be shredded. If you've been reading, you know this. I'm too tired to elucidate too much right now. And at this time on the cold First Monday Of The New Fucking Year, I could surely not be bothered to get into this with The Boss.

So anyway I sat down morosely and set about tidying up. There is a certain amount of, let's call it shite, that you generate on a daily basis on this industry, because the paperwork involved would bore the shit out of any thinking person and anything that looks non-urgent and complicated tends to get re-shuffled to the bottom of the deck, sometimes for years, and so gradually these piles of documents expand and at quiet times, like now should be, I often spend a little time trying to reduce the amount of shite I'm surrounded by. I mean, I'm not too bad that way, I don't have too much. The Boss, as you can imagine, at this stage has spread her shite into every part of the room that is not my desk, and some of these pieces of paper have actually worked here longer than me.

Anyway.

I start tidying my shite and The Boss is sitting happily shredding paper with her new shreddy friend. I'm trying to concentrate and get into a flow with what I'm doing but I can't really quite achieve either because The Boss, having found her personal flow, commences with the questions.

The fucking questions.

The Boss, furiously shredding : "What weight is 1800?"

I merely grunt and continue to concentrate.

The Boss continues with her shredding. It has a button you have to hold down. She's like a cat with catnip.

The Boss : "What are parameters?"

Ah, but being away from her monitor is freeing up that which passes for the language-processing area of her brain, and so now she is just speaking every random thought that comes to mind. I find that I can actually negate a lot of BossCrazy by just totally ignoring her when she asks a question. It may sound rude but it doesn't take any longer than about thirty seconds for her to forget that she's asked me. It's hard to maintain though, that kind of thing.

The Boss : "Where do I get my unread e-mail?"

Here's me, not looking up : "inbox"

The Boss : "I looked in my inbox but they're not there. Did you fiddle with my x-box? outbox?"

Mr Shreddy : NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

Here's me : "guh"

The Boss : "What do you want for lunch?"

Here's me : "I... it's nine thirty?"

The Boss : "Do you think our server is down?"

Here's me, looking up : "You're... you're not even at the... gah...."

The Boss : "Just wondering. Can you send me what you've e-mailed me?"

NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

The Boss : "What's the exchange rate to dollars today? Euros. Pounds. Dollars?"

Then, without missing a beat, without even waiting to see if I'm going to try to answer -

"What's 'cushion's disease?'"

NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

Here's me : "What. The. Fuck."

The Boss : "Somebody was talking about it. How far advanced is India?"

Here's me, now giving up any pretence of trying to work.

"Look. Seriously. I'm trying to get some things cleared up here. Don't distract from this for a wee bit and I won't distract you from your hobby there."

NUNGNUNGNUNG

The Boss : "Have you got sars?"

Yeah, that's what I heard her say, I don't know either.

Here's me : "You are driving me up the wall. Seriously."

The Boss : "You should have had it done already."

Here's me : "Had what done? What? Hey? You don't even know what I'm doing over here. Really. For fuck's sake."

The Boss : "Well it's alright for you to sit there clearing things up as if you've no proper work to do."

NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

Here's me, biting : "I am trying to clear up things I could not get done over the last few weeks because I was very busy. If you would like to clear these things up, I will happily shred the fucking paper for you."

The Boss : "Well... if"

Here's me : "...and further I am trying to get some things done when I am really at a bit of a loss here. I'm trying to understand all this shit from Houston and half of these things I've never heard of before... I think I've got the rate filing sorted, the AMS filing, the ISF I sort of vaguely understand but I mean really what the hell is all this 'ten plus two filing' shit about and if you know anything about this I could really use some sensible fucking help because some of this stuff is scaring the shit out of me..."

The Boss : "Do you not know about 'ten plus two'?"

Here's me : "No, do you know about 'ten plus two'? What the fuck is 'ten plus two'?"

The Boss : "Filing."

NUNGNUNGNUNGNUNGNUNG

Here's me : "I'm gonna need a little more than that."

The Boss : "You should know."

Here's me : "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK"

I'm literally inches away from expensive channelled violence, and this is only the fucking beginning.

Here's me, a ranting dribbling mentalist : "Lunch. You said something about lunch. Granted it's not even ten o'fucking'clock yet but sure let's talk about lunch. What would you like for lunch?"

The Boss, furious : "It's too early to be thinking about lunch!"

NUNG