What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

If you could create some kind of mood-measuring-machine and hook us up to it, I think it would represent the mood in the office currently as a sine wave. The up/down curves represent "The Boss is furious with me" and "I am furious with The Boss" respectively, and the centre line that it briefly crosses for an instant each day is the bit where we grudgingly cease hostilities and manage to speak civilly to each other for about five minutes.


It's not, really, very enjoyable. It tends to leave me arriving home, as I have just done, with this horrible burnt-out sort of feeling, and badly in need of a drink. Which I am now having.


Anyway, continuing yesterday's antics.


I returned to the office proper, sorted out what needed to be sorted out, and left The Boss investigating the filing cabinets. She returned visibly pissed off (yes, even more pissed off) but even for her it's very hard to start on somebody for taking a total messy fuckup and putting it into proper order. So instead she said nothing. Not a word. Not like I expected a 'thank you' or even any kind of acknowledgement.


So by now the sine wave is shifting and she is gradually realising that I am, in fact, both absolutely bloody livid, and am not talking to her any more than the absolute bare minimum necessary. So she commences, attempting to be coy or something, to undo some of this damage, but without actually acknowledging it. The standard technique here is to ask me questions, in the hope of prompting some sort of conversation, but at this stage I am just not fecking having it. Such things as :

The Boss : "Liverpool and New York... how far are they from Minnesota?"

Here's me : "I'm afraid I don't know."

or :

The Boss : "How low did the euro rate get this week?"

Here's me : "I don't know."

and :

The Boss : "What's happening with that one stuck in Lagos?"

Here's me : "I don't know."

The Boss : "Can you find out?"

Here's me : "I will try."

The Boss : "When."

Here's me : "When should I do it?"

The Boss, slightly nonplussed : "Um... whenever you're not busy."

Here's me : silence.

The Boss : "So when will you do it?"

Here's me : "Whenever you tell me to do it."

The Boss : "Will you do it now?"

Here's me : "Yes."

The Boss : "But not if you have other stuff to do."

Here's me : "Ok."

The Boss : "Do you?"

Here's me : "Do I what?"

and so on, because if I hadn't known how to act the cunt before, I'd surely have learned by now. So anyway this is far from an ideal way to spend the day, but at least that sine-wave was on the side where I'm not a nervous wreck, and in this fashion yesterday afternoon passed.


Of course, the nature of this balance, is that when I arrived in this morning....




...gah. To be, sadly, painfully, once again continued.