Abby Normal

The Boss : "Abbydabby?"

Here's me : "Abu Dhabi?"

The Boss : "No, dabs?"

Here's me : "...oh for fuck's sake. What?"

The Boss : "Have we any?"

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss : "For the phone."

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss : "Have we any phone wipes?"

Here's me : "Seriously. What is 'abbydabby'? And how does this relate to phone wipes?"

The Boss : "I've sneezed on my phone and I need some wee... abbydabby... thingy... phone wipes. I couldn't remember the word."

Strongly Considering Wearing A Facemask To Work

As previously mentioned, The Boss is currently suffering from some kind of abominable lurgy, and The Boss never suffers alone.

The Boss : "*coff* I need my printer *coff* fixed."

Here's me : "Why?"

The Boss : "*coff* it's coming out all *coff* dirty *spleutch*"

Here's me : "What it actually needs, then, is cleaned."

The Boss : "How do *coff* we *achoo* clean it? *blllleeeeeuch*"

Here's me : "Open it up and clean the gunk out of it, for starters. Clean the rollers. Generally wipe the accumulated filth out of it."

The Boss is not big on cleanliness, tidyness, and so on. This can be evidenced by the empty coke cans and food wrappers that festoon her desk, or by her habit of collecting rotting fruit in her desk drawers. But bravely she decided to tackle the issue of the dirty printer - by opening the front of it, licking her finger, wiping the roller with her lurgy-bearing finger, then re-licking said finger and repeating this process until the rollers were free from fluff and toner but now covered in germ-infested saliva.

I am fully going to barf.

You Might Ask Yourself

It's days like this, folks, when I have to ask myself serious questions.

The Boss is loaded with the flu, genuinely loaded, and appears to be determined to spread as much suffering around as possible. I've been here but 17 minutes today and already I want to quit. I'm just sitting here having mindless instructions barked at me by someone who refuses to so much as cover their mouth when coughing or wait till they've stopped chewing before spewing out inanities, today served in a special coating of germs and food particles.

It's been turning my mind for some time, as you may know, and now it's turning my stomach too.

I find myself wondering if this is worth it, or how much more of it I can take.

On a lighter note I see my fledgling blog has acquired now seven followers. Hello, welcome, and thank you. Feel free to comment folks, to pass remarks at will or to ask questions if you so desire.

love,
Koala.

Gas Panic

Our story opens about two weeks ago, with a seemingly innocent enough beginning.

The Boss : "I can smell gas."

Here's me : "Er... I can't?"

The Boss : "I definitely can smell gas."

Here's me : "I really can't."

I'm trying to make "I really can't" come out sounding like "You've got a serious fucking problem with your brain".

Cut to about one week ago.

The Boss: "I can smell gas again."

Here's me : (I take my lighter out of pocket and flick it alight and wave it around for a second - from my point of view both possible outcomes are fine in this scenario) "No you can't."

Cut to just now.

The Boss : "I can definitely smell gas."

Here's me : "RIGHT." (walks over to bosses desk) "What the fuck is it that you're smelling, there's no gas in... hang on a sec I can smell something too, what the fuck is that?"

The Boss : "It's coming from the boiler."

Here's me : "It's not coming from the boiler. It's coming from your desk."

The Boss : "It's GAS."

Here's me : "It's NOT."

So using my amazingly well developed sense of smell (for a fella who smokes about fifty a day), I try to pin down this mysterious odour.

A short time later the mysterious gas emanation that has been troubling us for weeks has been tracked down to a mouldy orange in the bosses' desk drawer.