Edge of Darkness

The Boss : "How would I get an out-of-gauge piece from Dublin..."

Here's me : "Yes?"

The Boss : "To Dublin?"

Here's me : "No no no NO NO NO. To where? It's not from Dublin to fucking Dublin, so from Dublin to where? To Felixestowe? To New York? Rotterdam? The North Pole? To Russia, maybe? To fucking Xing-Gang?!?"

There might well be spittle hanging from my mouth here. Enough is enough.

There is a tense stand-off. Our eyes meet. Mine are probably still swivelling slightly. Her own are a terrifying dead-calm. What is she thinking, in these seconds? What machinations is her brain conceiving, what terrible revenge? What shall she say, to punish my outburst and the sin of losing my fucking rag over being asked yet again a fucking nonsense question? I can't bear it. The seconds seem to stretch away into hours. Still we stare at each other, and her features betray no emotion; her eyes are the abyss Nietzsche spoke of, into which I have gazed for far too long, now gazing back at me.

The Boss, now smiling, breaks into song : "Xing-Gang-Ging, Gooly-Gooly-Gooly, Xing-Gang-Ging, Xing-Gang-Ging, Xing-Gang-Ging, Gooly-Gooly-Gooly, Xing-Gang-Ging, Xing-Gang-Ging, Xing-Gang-Ging!"


..and, now very happily singing this, she seemingly forgets all about the above exchange and turns back to her computer.

Get Me The Internet On Line One

The Boss : "There's too much on the internet."

Sigh.

Here's me : "What are you looking for?"

The Boss : "The dimensions for a New Ford 88880."

Here's me : "Google 'New Ford 88880 dimensions'".

The Boss : "But there's lots of them."

Here's me : "Just pick one."

The Boss : "How do I know which one?"

Here's me : "Just pick one of the first results."

The Boss : "Why are there so many?"

I have no idea how to answer that sensibly, so didn't bother trying.

Here's me : "It's just the way it is. Just pick one."

The Boss : "It would be better if they just had one answer, for each thing."

Gulp. Take a breath.

Here's me : "You should tell them that."

The Boss : "Should I tell I.T.?"

Here's me : "No, tell the internet."

The Boss : "Who are they?"

Here's me : "Google them."

The Only Gay In The Village

Some things you should know :


1. Ireland is, in many ways, a cultural backwater.


2. The Boss is from a town which it's fair to say much of Ireland would consider to be a cultural backwater, which for the sake of establishing a placeholder name I shall refer to as 'Ballybackofbeyond'.


3. What passes for 'politics' in Northern Ireland has recently experienced a (totally fucking delicious, brilliant, life-affirming) sex-scandal which, (possibly) apart from the possibility of collapse of what passes for 'Government' in the North as a result, is absolute unadulterated pure and refined epic fucking WIN.


So anyway we were talking about this last item, me specifically in light of my 'Ha hah fucking ha, slap it up the hypocritical cunt' stance on this, and off the back of it came this conversation :

The Boss, seriously : "There's a gay fella in Ballybackofbeyond."

Here's me, sarky : "What, just the one?"

The Boss : "Yeah, he comes into the bar on a Saturday night. I feel a bit sorry for him."

Here's me : "Uh, why?"

The Boss : "Well he had a... partner, years ago. But he died. So now there's no-one for him to really... pair off with."

Here's me, mocking, slightly, I'm only human : "So, eh, is he like, the only gay in the village?"

The Boss, seriously : "Yeah."

Here's me : "I seriously doubt that, y'know."

The Boss : "No, he is."

Here's me : "Are you being serious?"

The Boss : "Yeah."

Here's me : "I guarantee you there's a fair few gay men in Ballybackofbeyond, Jesus like, come on!"

The Boss : "No, really. I'd know."

Here's me : "You'd know?"

The Boss : "I'd've heard. He's the only one."

Here's me : "Get a grip. I wouldn't put money on the exact figures but if you took a figure of 2% of the locals being gay as a very fucking conservative estimate, then there's about twenty gay men in the village. Come on."

The Boss, looking a bit nonplussed : "Really?"

Here's me : "Yes, Jesus. Jesus, like, Boss, seriously."

The Boss : "Ha ha. You seem to know a lot about this. Are you one?"

Here's me : "No. What, wait - what? Am I one? What? You know it's the twenty first century, yeah?"

The Boss, indignant : "I have nothing against them."

Here's me : "OK. The 'them' bit - you need to work on that. But ok. Look, the law of averages suggests there are probably a few thousand gay men living in a ten mile radius of where you live, ok?"

The Boss is silent for a second. I cannot fathom what she might be thinking.

"Then..."

I look on, and wait.

"...I...."

And further, I hope that she is not about to say something, y'know, really bad.

"Really?"

I nod solemnly.


And then she smiles. Beams, actually, seemingly genuinely pleased.

"I have to tell him! Where would he go to meet them?!"

Say What?

The Boss : "Where is the Middle East, for imports?"

Here's me : "Uh, what?"

The Boss : "If you're importing to the Middle East, is that westbound or eastbound?"

Here's me : "From where?"

The Boss : "From the east. West. Eastbound imports?"

Here's me : "Stop. Wait. What's the question again?"

The Boss : "Where's the Middle East from here?"

Here's me : "East."

The Boss : "So if it's from the Middle East, where's here?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "So it's 27%?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "Do you not read your e-mails?"

Here's me, lost, adrift : "What? I mean, what?"

The Boss : "Oh never mind. I haven't sent it yet."

What? 

Damned If You Do

In a reversal of the usual state of affairs for a Monday morning, I was in work on time today and The Boss was late. Almost half an hour late, which is quite unusual for The Boss - oftentimes when I arrive in here (normally between five and ten minutes late), I get the distinct impression that The Boss has been here all night.

The Boss : "Sorry I'm late."

Here's me : "Hey, it happens. And you don't really need to apologise to me for being late anyway, you know."

The Boss, snidely : "I take it you were late too?"

Here's me : "No."

The Boss : "Because I was phoning you."

Here's me getting defensive : "Oh really now?"

The Boss : "I was, and you didn't answer. So you must have been late."

Here's me : "The phone has not rung."

The Boss : "Only because I couldn't remember your number."

Here's me : "Wha?"


Happy Monday.

Hickory Dickory Dock...

The Boss : "Where would I get mousetraps?"

Here's me : "Uh, dunno exactly. For the house is this?"

The Boss : "Yeah. Haven't seen them but I know they're there."

Here's me : "Been finding wee poos everywhere?"

The Boss : "Noooo....."

Here's me : "Seen one then?"

The Boss : "Noooo...."

Here's me : "How do you know you've got mice then? Things nibbled?"

The Boss : "Noooo...."

Here's me, with trepidation : "You're being strange about this..."

The Boss : "I have an old clock on the mantelpiece. The sort with a... thing... that hangs..."

Here's me : "A pendulum?"

The Boss : "Yeah. It hasn't worked for years but in the middle of the night it starts up and I can hear it banging from side to side..."

Here's me : "Uh, sure it wasn't just, I don't know, a breeze or something?"

The Boss : "No, it happens at the same time every night, about two in the morning. The pendulum starts banging off the side of the clock like crazy, just for a few minutes then stops. They must live in it."

Here's me : "Uh, like in the nursery rhyme?"

The Boss : "Yeah."

Here's me : "How long has this been going on for?"

The Boss : "A few months. Every night at two a.m."

Here's me : "How do you know it's mice?"

The Boss : "I just know."


Now is it just me or there is something not right here?

Santamas

Good after-morning!

I hope you had a pleasant break and such, if you did indeed have one. I had a quiet one myself, but quite nice.

So anyway I'm alone in here today, The Boss had some days off left to use (a fact which I find highly suspicious, but never mind) and so is sitting at home sticking bits of newspaper clippings to the walls or whatever it might be that she gets up to on her days off. Several things will happen, pretty much without fail, when The Boss is off. The first is that she will phone me at around 9.05 in the morning, largely I suspect to check that I'm in the office (fair enough) - she will ask me if everything is alright, and I will try to get her off the phone as quickly as possible. She will then call back at around ten in the morning as she remembers various things that she 'needs done'. This could be almost anything, and it's kind of like a game; the tasks will be hidden at various locations around her desk and the office itself - I mean, my desk is ok, occasionally it has a few more rizla packets lying on it than is strictly professional but for the most part it's quite tidy, but The Boss's desk, as you can imagine, is this scene of unmitigated horror, it's Project Fucking Mayhem over there -

The Boss : "Can you do a rate for Martin. Mark. Keenan. Ronan. To Piraeus, Limassol. From Portbury. Southampton. Tilbury. Dublin. Can you get it from Cork. It's in the file, but not in the file. Not in the file itself. See if you can get it."

This is how arguments start, y'know.

Here's me : "Uh, seriously, I have no idea what you're talking about, just so you know; I mean, if you come in here tomorrow and ask me why I haven't done this, it's because I haven't a single fucking clue what you're on about."

The Boss : "I sent you an e-mail about it last week!"

Here's me : "Did you?!? When?!?"

The Boss : "Before we left on Christmas Eve."

Can you dig this. We were both sitting here on Christmas Eve and The Boss at some stage that day e-mails me about something she'll need done on 30th December; I mean, apart from the obvious 'why didn't you just do it yourself, instead of e-mailing me?' there's also the fucking crazy notion of e-mailing someone who sits across the room from you to tell them to do some work for you next week... ok, never mind, anyway -

Here's me, looking through my e-mail, and I can't see anything that seems to be instructions from The Boss. There is one titled "SANTA", but I assumed this was just some sort of Christmas-spam-bollocks-wank of the type that The Boss loves to forward, you know, the sort of e-mail that goes around in Comic Sans and tells you to spread the joy and goodwill or else your knob will fall off, so I sez : "I can't see anything from you except some 'Santa' e-mail?"

The Boss : "That's it!"

Here's me : "-"

Indeed, on closer inspection, the innocuously titled 'SANTA' e-mail, sent on Christmas Eve, is actually a lengthy missive of instructions from The Boss, which she has sat and typed to me while we were in the office together on Christmas Eve, and I now paste for your perusal :

--------
Sorry about this


The middle file on my desk is all the Shipments. Can you please look at
the following 2 urgently at least


Vessel : Santa something????
Shipment due in around 30/01/09 is arranging customs / delivering Bill of Lading. Can you please ask (Number inside of file) to let us have delivery notification / invoice. Charges are written inside of file as we dont have credit please ask to forward payment. Also raise an invoice to forwarding - no release until Bill of Lading / Payment has been received/ Please also ask Umesh for details again.


Dublin - 


Container arriving in around 30th / 31st December. Ask Dublin for
invoice or at least rate of exchange. Raise an invoice to name
on file. I have also sent her an email with charges. Again check and see
if we have credit - if not please ask to pay this one asap as well.


Thanks and
all being well, see you Thursday


--------

I mean, I feel stupid now. I should have known that a 'SANTA' e-mail sent on Christmas Eve referred to a vessel (the 'Santa Catalina', I have since found out, should you care) and not the fat God-lookalike in the red suit. If anyone, anyone, can tell me, even approximately, just what the hell I should be doing, I will buy you a large drink. Yes, the above makes no more sense to me than it will to you, which is to say it makes not one fucking iota of sense at all.


On another note, thank y'all very much for the many comments & kind wishes and so on - you rock.

The Appropriate Response

"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane"

Philip K. Dick

I'm sitting here with my brain running out of my ears. Honestly. I'm pretty sure that's a liquefied part of my temporal lobe I can feel coming out of my right ear, just now. If it really is, and seriously, I fucking think it is too, it'll diminish my perceived enjoyment of music, I'm almost certain.

So anyway, I'm trying to operate this fucking wankstick whoredog of a system which I may previously have described as, uh, intuitive and well laid out or some other optimistic bullshit, and it probably just seems so difficult and time-consuming because I'm new to it and so on, yes, this must be the case but fuck me this would all be so much easier if The Boss would please, pretty please, just shut the fuck up, just for a few minutes, please PLEASE PLEASE JUST FUCKING SHUT THE FUCKING FUCK UP. FUCK.

I've withstood 'La Cucharach-A!, La Cucharach-A!, doop dee dooby dooby doo', for most of the day, I've witnessed another escalation in her fucking crazy waste-paper-basket-Ju-Ju, I've suffered the inane questions and random statements without (much) complaint, I've told her what fucking date it is at least three fucking times, I've refrained from smashing the fucking office up when a short while ago she calmly asked 'are you busy?' but I swear, I swear I FECKING SWEAR TAE FECKING FECK, one more fucking attempt at a fucking helpful fucking suggestion and I am fetching the fucking fire axe.

The Boss, hovering behind me : "Click that."

Here's me : "Look. I'm working through it, ok?"

The Boss : "What are you trying to do?"

Here's me : "Add an empty container."

The Boss : "Click there."

Here's me : "Where?"

The Boss : "There" - jabs finger - "where it says 'add empty'".

Here's me : "That says 'add entry'. That is to add a whole new consignment."

The Boss : "That's close enough, isn't it?"

Well fuck me, you've only just gone and revolutionized fucking computing with one fell fucking swoop.

Here's me : "Look. I need to concentrate. Give my head peace."

The Boss : "You should have been listening to Thurston."

Here's me, I think I actually just bit part of my own tongue off : "Fuuuuuuckkkkkkkkk....."

The Boss : "Call him and ask him."

Here's me : "Pleeeeease. Just. Please. Leave me alone. For five minutes. Please. I'll work it out."

The Boss : "Well, you'd better."

Here's me, suddenly actually listening to the woman, you understand this is not delivered as a question, it is a warning shot, a chance to recant : "what"

The Boss : "You'd better be sure you understand everything about this."

Here's me : "whatdidyousay"

The Boss : "Well I hope you do, because as soon as I have a booking to put on you'll have to show me how!"

The endtimes are surely upon us.

(actually probably just upon me, no need for alarm)

(fuck)

I Wouldn't

picture is not entirely unrelated

The Boss : "Stella... Wang."

Here's me : "Uh... no?"

The Boss : "She says machine fourteen is..."

Here's me, I'm losing it today : "Wait. Wait now. Who the fuck is Stella Wang? Wang? Is that what you're saying, Wang? Wink, wing, when, what, wang? What?"

The Boss : "Yes. I just got an e-mail from her. It says machine is fourteen, blah blah blah is it possible to pick up from Armagh?"

Clarification : I am not putting the 'blah blah blah' in just for jollies. The Boss actually said 'blah blah blah'. The Boss has recently taken to just filling in parts of her own sentences with 'blah blah blah' instead of actual words. I mean, fuck. Fuck. What the fuck. Fuck me. Help. Send help. I take it all back. Send help now.

Here's me : "Fuck."

The Boss : "Theres a link, do i click on it?"

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

The Boss : "CGI Ebay?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "What happens if its something thats going to kick into this? Kick us into this? Should I click it?"

Fuck.

Continuity Error

(Yes, yes, I know what I said. But I'll go mad alone in here, mad I tell you)

The Boss : "Was last year after Christmas or before it?"

Wha?

Tell Me No More

We have been extremely busy today and as a result The Boss's brain is almost totally seizing up. I'm expecting to see broken springs and bits of rusty wire explode from her head any moment now. I hope you don't think me cruel if I tell you - I have never in all my bloody life heard one person talk so much utter shite in one day. I swear her gob is like a fucking busted u-bend this day. As I was making to leave, like literally half way to the door with my coat on, she did this thing that annoys the hell out of me - it would annoy the hell out of any right-thinking person, I hope - she's talking (shite) to someone on the phone and snaps her fingers at me to get my attention. Yes, actually. She actually raises an arm in the air and snaps her fucking fingers several times while glaring at me as if she had ordered the foie gras but I've just set a plate of steaming fresh turds in front of her.

Here's me, I can't even dignify this with words : "-"

The Boss : "Speak to Simon. Ast him. I don't know. Pre-advice. Pre-manifest. I need you to... " she slows, falters... "I need... I don't know. I give up."

You and me both.

Just About

The Boss : "Will I fit into two 40-foot containers?"

Here's me, smiling despite myself : "You'd probably only need one."

The Boss twigs and sez : "Smart ass. Would I fit this machine into a 40-foot container?"

Here's me, weary : "What machine?"

The Boss : "A twenty foot."

Here's me : "A what? A twenty foot what?"

The Boss : "A twenty foot forty foot?"

If you want to know what this conversation was actually about, I'm sorry, I still have no idea.

Silence Is Golden

Ever had one of those moments in life when you walk into a room and just know in your gut that something is just not right?

Gah.

Such a moment greeted me this morning.

In a sauntered from the mist and drizzle, not exactly full of the joys but certainly in pretty reasonable form, with that "hey it's Friday!" thing going on. I smiled at The Boss and chirped "Morning!", but even as I said it I knew something was amiss.

No greeting was returned, merely an icy stare.

Ohhhh-kaaaaay then.

I stare back. I've got this general-purpose stare that I use in such circumstances, it's more or less a completely blank look, I think. The Boss cracks first :

"You haven't booked Statesville."

Minimalism works for me in these situations.

"Correct."

The Boss : "WHY NOT?"

Here's me : "Because I knew nothing about it."

The Boss : "I told you before I left here on Wednesday morning to book it!"

Here's me : "Firstly, that was yesterday. Thursday morning. Secondly, you said something about 'Lakeville', which is in Minnesota, and mentioned nothing about 'Statesville', which is in North Carolina. I did provisionally book Lakeville."

The Boss is enraged.

"I KNOW WHAT I SAID! I NEEDED THAT BOOKED AND YOU HAVEN'T DONE IT!"

Here's me : "Respectfully. Sometimes what you think you're saying and what is actually coming out of your mouth bear very little relation. Sometimes in fact.."

The Boss is now livid and screams at me to interrupt me : "GERRY!"

I must at this juncture advise you, the reader, that my name is not, in fact, Gerry. I remain silent and stare at the mentalist while waiting for her ears and brain to process what has just happened.

Not to be derailed, she storms over to me.

"I saw you write this down as I was saying it! GIVE ME YOUR DIARY!"

It's true. I write in a large A4 desk diary key details from pretty much every conversation I have either in the office or on the phone. It's a handy habit I got into many years ago. She seizes up my diary and flicks to yesterday, where indeed I have written what she actually said, pretty much verbatim. There is an edifying moment when her eyes widen, presumably taking in not only my attention to detail but also just how insane the instructions I have apparently failed to act on were.

So now she is sulking and refusing to talk to me. Which, if I can get past the fact that you could cut the atmosphere in here with a knife, sort of works for me.

You Are Entering : The Boss Zone

The Boss is going out today to deliver some Christmas gifts to customers. The on-going process of organizing this quite frankly melts my fucking head. It's this kind of token, corporate gesture that ultimately nobody gives all that much of a shit about, but a right-thinking person could have the whole process organized in about twenty minutes or so. The Company says : Give 30 bottles of wine to customers. You take your list of clients, and issue 30 bottles of wine amongst the people you have done most business with. Simple, yes? No, of course it fucking isn't.

For weeks now, The Boss has been deciding, un-deciding, re-deciding and generally dithering over this. We could have just bought the thirty bottles of wine direct from a wholesaler, thrown them into some gift bags and left them in the boot of The Boss's car, but NO, that would obviously be TOO FUCKING EASY. At this stage I'm frankly just utterly fucking sick of hearing about it; stop changing your bloody mind twice a day and it'll all be easy for the love of all that is holy woman!

Instead, in the interests of saving the company about £3 and losing a day or three due to sheer buggering about, the wine was got from a supermarket in the city centre that is inaccessible by car and led to The Boss then going into the shop with a suitcase (with the Koala in tow) and then wheeling the suitcase of wine across the city to the office; if you were in D****s Stores a couple of weeks ago when a crazy lady with a suitcase full of wine got stopped by the security guards amidst the ringing of alarms (the checkout attendant, obviously under the great pressure that a first meeting with The Boss can generate, forgot to take the security tags off some of the wine) while a bemused and embarassed marsupial stood nearby wishing the ground would open up and swallow him, that was us.

Anyway, today is delivery day; I rather helpfully planned out The Boss's route last night, taking into account various factors, and left on her desk last night maps and directions from each point to the next. She announced that Google Maps' chosen routes were foolish; I cannot be bothered to argue this at this stage. I offered to help take the wine to her car last night, which went something like this :

Here's me : "Why don't we put all the wine in your boot tonight, then you can just head straight out to the customers from the house tomorrow?"

The Boss : "I don't want to do that."

Here's me : "Why? It makes more sense then coming in here first then going back the other way?"

The Boss : "I don't want to leave it in the car overnight."

Here's me : "So when you get home tonight, take it out of the car and put it in the house?"

The Boss : "That's too complicated."

Here's me : *sheesh*

Anyway, so The Boss arrives in here this morning at 9 AM in a state of total and utter panic, and Panic brings out the Very Worst in The Boss - she warbles :

The Boss : "Right, I need to get moving right now or I won't get round everyone! Help me take the wine to the car!"

Here's me, leaping up from my chair "Right! Where are you parked?"

The Boss : "Right outside!"

Here's me, seizing up armfuls of wine : "Alrighty then!"

The Boss : "No wait!"

Here's me, setting down armfuls of wine : "Why!?!?"

The Boss : "I need to run through some things with you first!"

Here's me, sitting back down : "Oh jesus."

The next half an hour consisted of one long monologue from The Boss, in which she started to tell me about god knows how many different things but never got more than one or two sentences into each before interrupting herself with the next item, a la -

The Boss : "I need you to phone him and ast* him when his containers will be back on quay..."

Here's me : "Wait, phone who?"

The Boss : "..phone Raster, Rast.. Restoration charges, there will be restoration charges. It's going to Adelaide, Papua New Guinea... from Lakeville. Lake Worth. Fort Worth. Phone..." - and, quite terrifyingly, instructs me to phone myself - "and revert. Restore. There'll be... wait, have you... have you... can you pick me up a jiffy bag?"

Here's me, staring on like I'm watching a car crash : "Uh... a jiffy bag?"

The Boss : "Yes, get me a jiffy bag, and send it out."

Here's me : "Uh, send it out? To who? Containing what?"

The Boss : "I need to get a jiffy bag to send out an envelope."

I don't even want to know.

The Boss : "And phone Lassie. Lanzarote."

I actually even know what that means, I've been dealing with a lady called Lyndsay Lazotti recently, but The Boss then, I mean FUCKING SERIOUSLY, phones someone, I know not whom, and leaves a message on their voicemail presumably, FOR ME TO CALL HER. I'm watching this with mounting horror from my side of the office. This is no car crash, this is a goddamn train-wreck. This is a high speed train carrying raw sewage that has broken free of the tracks and is now ploughing down the hillside towards a small farming village.

At around half nine my nerves were twanging like banjo strings, so I stood up and said "Look, if this is going to take you a while to, uh, organize your thoughts, I'm just going to grab a coffee, ok?"

The Boss : "NO! I NEED TO GET MOVING RIGHT NOW I'M ALREADY LATE DON'T GO ANYWHERE!"

Here's me, cracking up : "Well ALFUCKINGRIGHT THEN."

"Right now" of course being "almost an hour later", anyway, The Boss finally managed to get up and move towards the door, left and came back because she had forgotten the directions I printed out last night, left again, came back again because she had forgotten her "Phone Book" - yes, she keeps her phone numbers in a book, yes, I've told her that one of the many functions of the mobile phone is that it will store these for her - and finally now at around half ten in the morning has managed to get out the door and on the road.

But in the midst of all this chaos, this strife, there is VICTORY :

"...and call Thurston. Roy. Thurston Moore. No, Stefan. In Antwerp. Hamburg. New York! Thurston in New York!" she almost screams in the apparent triumph of having been able to scrape together a quorum of neurons - "Call New York, and find out what they want to do about this call tomorrow!"

Oh yes. I shall indeed.


THERE IS HOPE!






* The Boss cannot pronounce the word "ask", it comes out "ast". Bugs the shit out of me. I'm petty like that.

Multitasking : You -Can't-. Give It Up.

The Boss : "Would I be right in saying...."

(stares distractedly at monitor)

"... that I..."

...

that you what? WHAT?

...

..."Am I right to assume...."

...

oh, i seriously doubt it..


...

... "...did I close the door?"




?

Checkpoint Total Charlie

The Boss : "Where's the checkpoint?"

Here's me : "The checkpoint?"

The Boss : "The euro checkpoint?"

Here's me : "I have no idea what you're talking about."

The Boss : "The checkpoint going from UK to euro."

Here's me : "Uh, what?"

The Boss : "Is it near the City Hall?"

Here's me, sinking into the mire : "What? What the fuck? What?"

Sometimes it feels like I'm drowning, you know.


(Turns out she was asking me "Where can I find a Euro-dispensing ATM?")

Mickey Fucking Mouse

The Boss : “Will you have a price for Nicola today?”

Here’s me : “I did it on Monday.”

The Boss : “And?”

Here’s me : “It was too expensive. I offered her £1800, she says she’s getting it for £1500. Our costs are £1600. I’m looking at other ways of getting it there.”

The Boss : “You should look at other ways of getting it there.”

Here’s me : *sigh* “I am looking at other ways of getting it there. Doing it direct with a haulier seems to be the best way.”

The Boss : “She’s probably doing it direct with a haulier. You should look into that.”

Here’s me : *sigh* “I am looking into that.”

The Boss : “She’s probably using Mickey Mouse.”*

I’m just picturing this for a second.

Here’s me : “Mickey. Fucking. Mouse.”

The Boss : “Morris Rice. Reese. She’s probably using Morris Reese.”

* This happens all the fucking time. You may be familiar with the usage of “Mickey Mouse” to refer to a small or amateurish business operation – you know, as in “They’re a Mickey Mouse outfit” – this has always struck me as slightly bizarre usage in any context, for the obvious reasons – I mean “They’re a Mickey Mouse outfit” – what, so they’re an internationally recognisable multi-billion-dollar global franchise? That’s not what you mean, I’m sure. But anyway, with The Boss, this phrase has entered her lexicon and she now believes it is acceptable to use “Mickey Mouse” to refer to any company she can’t currently remember the name of.


Ah, SHIT! I can’t believe I didn’t include "Mickey Mouse" in the Wankword Bingo. Dammit.

Thermodynamics, Debunked

The Boss : "Can I open the door?"

Here's me : "Uh.... I would guess you probably can?..."

The Boss : "To let some of the heat out."

Here's me : "Just turn the heating off?"

The Boss : "But I don't want the heat to escape."

Here's me : "Um, just turn the heating off."

The Boss : "It'll still be too warm."

Here's me : "Turn the heating off and open the window?"

The Boss : "No. I'll just open the door. I don't want the heat to escape."

Baker Taker Milly Over The Moon

So it turns out that this actually does have a grain of reason buried (alive) deep within it; The Boss was supposed to attend a conference on the day in question, arranged by the accountants (Baker Taker Milly Maker Moon Raker Moore, or STHG), regarding imminent changes to the VAT laws. I only gained knowledge of this when I received a mail from them just now questioning the lack of attendance.

This is unusual, that The Boss would arrange to attend such an event herself - normally, tedious shit of this nature is saved for me; however it appears that it was an all day thing at a nice hotel involving a couple of free meals, therefore I knew nothing about it.

So at some point it must have flickered like the light upon the head of a tiny lone senile pilot fish, swimming forlornly through the whirling maelstrom of The Boss's conciousness, but like so many such fragile little thoughts it never managed to break the surface of the murky waters therein, and sank instead into the depths.

I believe the appropriate term is "D'oh!".

I don't know as yet whether she made it to the movie though...

Lawnmower Boss

Right, here's the deal. We have one of those photocopier/printer/scanner/fax machine jobs that plugs into a network point in here. Because the whole building is on a shared network of some kind, occasionally something happens that leads to, for reasons I don't really understand, the scanner function not being able to see the network. It appears to happen just randomly sometimes and I have neither any clue as to why nor any inclination to try and figure it out. I'm pretty sure no-one is actively trying to hack the photocopier, at least.

So anyway I went for a smoke, and upon my return am greeted with hostility and accusation, thusly :

The Boss : "Are you turning the photocopier off whenever you go out?"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "Are you messing about?"

Here's me : (sigh) "What are you talking about? What? Just what can it possibly be?"

The Boss : "Every time you go out the scanner stops working."

Here's me, slowly, deliberately. I'm chewing this idea over in my mind : "Every time I go out, the scanner stops working. You think that the scanner stopping working is somehow linked to me leaving the room. That is what you're saying to me, right?"

The Boss, verging on manic : "Are you doing something to it!?"

Here's me, steadily ascending in volume, steadily losing my grip : "Yes! Yes I am! I have this... little... fucking... fucking remote control button, in my pocket, and every time I go for a cigarette I push it so the scanner stops working! Ha! HA HA!"

The Boss : "Well if it's not you what is it?"

Here's me : "Well fuck me, you've got me there. You're like Sherlock Bloody Holmes, ruling out the impossible first. Brilliant."

The Boss, possibly realising that this is epic lunacy, retreats somewhat : "Well have you any idea what the problem might be?"

Here's me : "I think... and it's just a theory... that someone in the conference room is using a machine for whatever, and whenever it gets turned on, for some reason it either hogs that network point, or it's an IP address thing, and somehow boots our scanner off the network, so it can't see our shared drive anymore when we try to scan. But I don't know for sure, ok? It's just a thought."

The Boss sits down at her desk and telephones reception, and more or less screams "Koala says your conference machine is disappearing our scanner!"

I am holding my head in both hands, trying not to hyperventilate.

The Boss replaces the telephone handset and turns to me once more.

"They want us to send theme a description of the problem by e-mail so they can forward it to the IT guy."

Here's me : "No sweat, I'll do that now."

The Boss : "No, I want to do it."

Here's me : "Oh fuckkkkkkk...."

The Boss : "Well?"

Here's me : "Well what?"

The Boss : "What should I say to them?"

Here's me : "Just let me send them the e-mail."

The Boss : "NO."

OH MY FUCKING GOD WHY MUST YOU BE SUCH AN ARSEHOLE.

Here's me : "Riiiiiight. OK. Tell them, uh... that we recently installed a new printer and scanner unit that connects via network point six"

The Boss, typing, speaking aloud : "INSTALLED.PRINT.SCANNER.CONNECTS.TO.SIX.NETWORKS."

Here's me : "Oh, gawd, no, I mean it connects to network point number six. The point in the wall."

The Boss : "CONNECTS.TO.NETWORK.FIREWALL."

Worth mentioning, The Boss writes all her e-mails like this, in block capitals with no pronouns in sight; they pretty much all read like war-time telegrams. I'm serious, fuck Neo, if The Boss had been plugged into The Matrix the machines would have released the humans and slunk off to be subservient but untroubled pocket calculators and iPods instead.

Here's me, pretty much giving up : "And... at various points through the day, randomly, the machine can't see the network. Not the firewall. Forget the firewall. The network."

The Boss : "RANDOM. MACHINE. CAN'T. SEE. FIREWALL. FIREWORKS. um NETWORKS."

.

..

...

Here's me : "Just so, yes."

Glint in my eye.

Here's me, and I'm not joking when I say I deserve a fucking Oscar for how I deliver this : "You should let him know it happens every time I leave the room, too. In case it's anything to do with my phone."

If I can get a hold of the response from the IT guy I'll certainly share it with you.