Boss Lee

There's a building across the street being renovated and as such it is filled with workmen. I can see them cracking up laughing several times each day when The Boss does her boxing-type moves. It's usually when she's standing waiting for a print-out, she'll say "put em up!" to no-one in particular then fire off a volley of punches at an imaginary foe.

This has been going on so long I don't even notice it any more, but the reaction of the workmen, who usually momentarily down tools to stare across into our office for these demonstrations, has reminded me that it must indeed look pretty hilarious.

They miss the best bit though, where she makes loud "SHOOP SHOOP" karate-movie style overdub sounds with each punch.

Otherwise Engaged

My desk is this large L-shaped sort of affair, with the computer and so on at the front end and a bit of space over to the right of me. When I've got my head buried in figures or whatever, I like to swivel my chair away from the screen and it's distractions and work at the bit of desk to my right hand side. This has the dual advantage that I then have my back to The Boss and therefore have a higher chance of concentrating.

I was in just such a position today, and very much lost in thought, when out of nowhere, and to my great shock, I felt something pressed against my left ear.

Now, The Boss, it is fair to say, does not normally move with catlike agility, and there is a reasonable distance between her desk and mine. I don't know how she covered the distance between the two without making a sound, except to suppose that she in some way employed the dark arts to cloak herself or perhaps somehow fold space.

Anyway, in a state of mild shock, I whirled about quickly, managing to strike myself quite squarely above the left eyebrow with the item she had snuck up behind me with and pressed against my left ear. The item in question, her mobile phone, clattered to the floor, and I recoiled in shock and a certain amount of horror at this unexpected proximity. The Boss in turn recoiled at my recoiling (um, recoilation?) and we were left then both staring at each other with the mobile phone lying on the floor between us.

Here's me, a bit shaky : "What the fuck are you doing?"

The Boss : "Is it engaged?"

Here's me : "What??"

The Boss : "My phone. I'm trying to phone Brazil. Do you think their engaged sound is the same as ours?"




Why does everything that happens in here have to be so... weird?

CenoBoss

Follows on from this.

There are days, y'know, when I think she's ok. And days when I think she's ok but just a bit mad, a bit ditzy, maybe a bit crazy even. And then other days, like today, when I'm pretty convinced she's something that took form in one of Stephen King's worst nightmares that was too dark for him to commit to paper and somehow crawled out his head and was then made flesh by Satan himself. She becomes inscrutable and emits this tangible wave of some species of horrific darkness that's hard to describe.

Anyway.

So I'm not big on 'filing', generally, partly because it's godawfully tedious and partly because I don't like our store-room. It's a horrible little messy, cold, dusty chamber down a corridor from the main office, and apart from that, it's usually in a state of utter chaos, so I tend to leave it alone as much as possible. Also, between you and me, I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I suspect that The Boss gets up to some sort of filthy arcane black magic type shit in here; strange occurrences that lead me to believe that this closet might in fact contain a few skeletons. In short, it gives me the creeps.

But today it has an air of sanctity about it, because anything beats sitting in there with that woman right now. She is fully batshit today. I could see the veins in her head from the far side of the room, and was pretty sure that she was clenching and unclenching her fists while talking to me in a manner that I do not like to see in supposedly civilized mammals.

I arrive into the dingy little store with my armload of files, and set about trying to figure out what goes where. In theory, this room should contain a year of files; that's the legal requirement. After that they just get boxed up and removed and taken who-cares-where. The files have an eight digit reference on each, the first four of which indicate month and year and the last four of which indicate job number within a given month. Easy, right?

You know better, by now, I'm sure.

I start looking through the filing cabinets. They look like this, for indeed this is they :

You'll notice she takes the ju-ju to a higher level out here, but never mind. My main problem, my main fucking problem here, is that I can't find a single folder that relates to anything about April 2009. They start at 2006 and run to early 2009.. And the cabinets are full. So where the fuck am I supposed to file these files, which comprise most of our work in the second half of 2009? Where? Bear in mind that to get it wrong is A PAINFUL DEATH, and that seemingly, there is no way to get it right.

Ah, shite. I'm going to have to go back out there and ask her. I can actually feel my testicles shrivelling up just thinking about this, but I have no choice.

Nervously, I return and look around the door. She's still sitting there, glaring like a boxer before a fight, bashing the keyboard like a lunatic.

Here's me : "Uh, ahem. I'm... trying to file these files, as requested. But I can't seem to find where 2009 should go?..."

The Boss : "IN WITH THE REST OF 2009!"

Oh my God I think her eyeballs are actually bulging. Really bulging. She's going to sprout hair from her forehead any minute now.

Here's me : "Well, I can't seem to find the second half of 2009... I can find 2006 through to then, but there is not a single folder labelled later than about April 2009, you see..."

I say this like I'm delivering news of a terminal illness or something. Or maybe like telling a really big, angry man with a gun that I've just got his daughter pregnant.

The Boss stops mashing the keyboard and looks at me with utter contempt and coldly states -

"They do not corrugate."

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss barks at me : "The folders do not corrugate to the files in them. You'll just have to look through to find them."

Again, today is no today to pick a fight, I can sense. So I quietly return to the store.

Now on most occasions, I'd be the one going fucking mental right now, but today, actually, this is ok. OK, so there are three filing cabinets full of mis-labelled files. OK, I am going to have to totally deconstruct and re-construct 12 drawers of files, and re-label them, and it is going to be very boring, very tedious, but most importantly - it is going to take me several hours. Alone.

So I set to work. There's a certain joy to be had in this, once it starts to come together; out of chaos, slowly, emerges order, and in this I find satisfaction, as I sit alone in here with a good dose of heavy music blasting through my earphones, writing wee white slips of card with JAN 09 and similar and putting everything in good, proper order. I imagine this sort of pleasure wears thin pretty quickly if this is what you do every day, but for now, it's a sweet mercy; it's relaxing. Not so bad, eh? She can sit in there, banging the hell out of the keys, with nowhere to direct her anger, because she's actually sent me in here, ha ha! This is all fine, this has played right into my furry wee hands and oh mother of fucking jesus she's now standing right behind me. 

I have to tell you it really did scare the shit out of me.






I remove the earphones and get to my feet.

The Boss, blocking the doorway : "Did you do his insurance?"

Here's me : "Whose insurance?"

The Boss : "Ronan Keating's."

I swear on my left fucking nut : I am not making this up.

I just stare.

The Boss says the man whose name has never been Ronan Keating's actual correct name after a very long pause.

Here's me, staring back, because this woman is neither just stupid nor crazy, she is plainly both, with a smattering of pure refined evil : "Well, no. Not from in here. There is neither phone nor computer in here. In here where I have been. As you can see. As you know. So obviously. No."

The Boss, her explosive anger all the more nerve-jangling because I'm now trapped in a tiny room with her blocking the doorway : "GET IT DONE YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE THINGS LYING DO HIS INSURANCE NOW AND STOP PLAYING ABOUT IN HERE!"




To be, sadly, continued, again.

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.

Koalatron

The Bloody Boss, Her Bloody Computer, The Bloody Photocopier, The Bloody Firewall. My favourite things, they are not, honestly.

OK. *sigh* In case you don't know already, our photocopier/scanner/fax machine links into the network and there are two folders set up on my computer for this, one in her name and one in mine, a shortcut on her desktop points to her folder on my computer and when you scan a document you select which of the folders you'd like to scan it to and it's very simple and very handy. In theory.

The Boss : "My scan folder has gone!"

Here's me : "Have you deleted it?"

The Boss : "No, it's just gone!"

Here's me, who can't be arsed to get up : "It hasn't. I can see it here on mine."

The Boss : "What's it doing on yours!"

Here's me : "It's... nevermind."

I go over and investigate and the shortcut to her 'scans' folder is right there, staring at me. I point this out.

The Boss : "But that's a shortcut! I don't want the shortcut! I want the proper folder!"

Here's me : "You've never had the proper folder. It's on my computer. Just go into that, it'll take you to your document."

The Boss : "BUT I HAD IT BEFORE!"

Here's me : "You did not. Just go into it through there."

The Boss : "I HAD IT BEFORE! YOU'VE CHANGED IT!"

Here's me *sigh* : "I haven't."

The Boss : "Put it back to the way it was before!"

Here's me : "I haven't fucking touched it! Just go into the shortcut! You couldn't possibly have been going into the folder direct because it is and always has been on my fucking computer!"

The Boss : "IT WASN'T! I went in through 'my network places' before and into it that way! I WANT TO DO IT THE WAY I ALWAYS DID IT AND NOT TAKE SHORTCUTS!"

Oh, for fuck's sake. I give up with this conversation, as of right now.

Here's me : "I cannot help."

The Boss : "Fix it."

Here's me, neutral : "I'm sorry, I don't know how."

The Boss : "Is it in the firewall?"

Here's me, I could get angry if this goes the wrong way : "We've talked about... that... word... before."

The Boss : "Would it be in my recycle bin?"

Here's me : "Yes, possibly, yes."

The Boss : "Which one?"

Here's me, reeled back in : "What, you have more than one?"

The Boss : "Yes of course!"

I look. She actually does. How the fuck she achieved that one I do not know.

So anyway I'm at something in the middle of the room. I need to be very specific here. I am not near her computer, I am not even near my fucking computer.

The Boss : "It's back now!"

Here's me, dully : "Brilliant."

The Boss : "YOU SNEAKED IT BACK IN THERE!"

Here's me : "I'M STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING ROOM DO YOU THINK I'M HACKING WITH YOU FUCKING MIND BULLETS!"

The Boss : "THAT WOULD BE JUST LIKE YOU!"

Fight The Power (Supply)

presenting

"Fight The Power (Supply)"

by SK and TB

being an comedic farce of errors 

featuring an cast of idiots

I got drunk last night. By accident. It happens. As a result, I went into work today with a belting red wine headache, not terminal in the hangover stakes but when combined with my daily existence certainly enough to make me wish that I could believe in a deity purely so that I could pray to the bastard in question for the sweet release of death.

The drama started almost immediately, when shortly after nine in the morning The Boss's computer died, with a terrible ratcheting sound. I spent a couple of reasonably pleasant and boring years back in the dark mists of time working in the field of computer repair, and while my knowledge of most things is now effectively useless, I can just about do a diagnostic in reasonably simple circumstances. The power supply was gone. Fan packed in. The terrible amount of fluff, human hair, shredded paper and bits of bacon trapped in it were my primary clues in my investigations.

Here's me : "No sweat. Fan has packed in on your power supply. There's that old PC in the storeroom, I'll just swap it over."

The Boss : "No."

Here's me : "Thought that."

I've given up trying to use "sense" and "logic", as you may have noticed. Five minutes or so passed, until The Boss realised that nothing was going to happen by itself.

The Boss : "EYE-TEE PROBLEMS ARE FOR THE EYE-TEE DEPARTMENT."

I mean, don't let that fucking Hewlett Packard certification on my CV, which presumably you did fucking read before you hired me, in any way make you think that I'm capable of taking out four screws and plugging a couple of cables in. Drown in it you harpy's bastard, drown.

The Boss, after several minutes of trying to figure out how to send an e-mail with a stapler or whatever : "Should I phone IT?"

Here's me, not feeling very helpful today : "I don't know."

If you are in any kind of dire straits, I have to tell you that's one of the most useful phrases in the English language.

The Boss phones the IT guy, who tells her to get me to swap the power supply. She denies him, in similar fashion, and insists that he must come to the office and fix it. She wants it done right. Why get me to swap the power supply in ten minutes when you could wait until next Thursday for him to fly over from Coventry?

The IT guy, commendably, must have told her in no uncertain terms to wise the fuck up, but still she is not having it, and instead of getting me to swap the power supply, insists instead that I fetch out this old PC from the store and set it up for her to use.

So I do, because I enjoy a laugh as much as the next marsupial.

I diligently do as instructed and set up this machine for her at a different desk. Rather disturbingly, it's one that sits opposite me, as opposed to her normal position to my far left; I don't really like having her in my field of vision, but even my depleted mental capacity can recognised that this whole fucking farce is going to be very short lived. To make this even more delicious, The Boss has also set up her phone at this desk, and has got reception to go in and mess about with patch cables in order to connect it up and so on.

The Boss : "Where do I get my files?"

Here's me, as innocent as a bairn : "Files?"

The Boss : "MY FILES!"

Here's me : "What files?"

The Boss : "MY FILES ON MY COMPUTER!"

Here's me, not quite yet wanting to live, but deciding that I don't want to die for at least another ten minutes : "They're on your computer."

The Boss : "So I can't get them from here?"

Here's me : "Oh, in theory, yes, you can."

The Boss : "HOW??!?"

Here's me : "Through the network."

The Boss : "HOW DO I DO THAT?!??"

Here's me : "You can't, without your own PC connected to the network."

The Boss is actually more confused than enraged. Fuck my head hurts.

The Boss : "IT SAYS ANTI VIRUS IS OUT OF DATE!"

I completely ignore this, and the ensuing five minutes of babbled panic as she boots up a PC that hasn't been turned on in a year and it displays various messages, warnings, alerts etc. Finally in a state of utter panic about these alien hack intrusions she phones IT again, talks so much shite I can't even be bothered to repeat it, and then covers the mouthpiece of the phone with her hand, looks at me with daggers coming out of her beady little eyes like I'm a mass murderer, and hisses "HE SAYS HE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU".

Much-put-upon-IT-guy asks me what the problem is and I tell him. He asks me can I fix it and I say yes, and pass him back to The Boss, and she is obviously incredibly pissed off about this but now tells me to fix it.

It is now about half ten in the morning and we have, as a company, achieved a level of fuck-all so immense in it's magnitude you'd need a fucking quantum physicist to work it out.

I take a look at this other PC and find out that the power supplies are in fact incompatible. I tell The Boss this, and she asks me where can she get the right power supply. I foolishly suggest a nearby shop that are both very good, and I am quite friendly with the staff of.

The Boss : "So what do I ask for?"

Here's me : "I'll write it down."

The Boss : "Just tell me!"

Here's me : "I'm writing it down."

I hand her a piece of paper upon which I have written "ATX POWER SUPPLY".

Here's me, because I'm nice : "Look. Do you want me to go and pick this up for you?"

The Boss : "You're just looking for an excuse to skive. I'll get it myself. I'm not stupid, you know, whatever you might think."

Here's me : "Fine."

The Boss : "OK, I'll be back in an hour."

Here's me : "Uh, it's five minutes away."

The Boss : "I have to get the car."

Here's me, thinking I should just grab my keys and my phone and run like buggery : "Wha?"

The Boss : "My phone is in the car."

Yeah. One of my favourite things about mobile phones is that they are mobile, but n'mind.

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss : "My phone is in the car and my pin number is in my phone."

Here's me : "Ok, whatever."

So The Boss ventures out and I sit there with glazed eyes and a throbbing head for an hour and a half trying to catch up on about two weeks of work; when she is out of the office is the only time I get to actually work, as you know.

She returns and demands that I perform this task immediately.

This, I do not do. I am mid-flow with an e-mail to a gentleman from Iraq who I am trying, very hard, to get cargo to. You will understand this has it's own difficulties.

Finishing this, I set about replacing her power supply, but find to my dismay that when I put the new one in, it's wrong. That long off-white plug that goes into the motherboard? Too long. I look at the side of the new power supply and see it says "BTX". This is a new one on me; I've been out of the IT loop for many years.

So I go mental.

"YOU could have saved TWO FUCKING HOURS if YOU had let me replace this FUCKING POWER SUPPLY when I SAID TO but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! You had to arse about! You had to FUCKING ARSE ABOUT! AND nooooooooooooooooow, now you come back with THE WRONG FUCKING POWER SUPPLY and what do we do now, eh? where do we go from here? What would you like me to do, because you're in-fucking-charge and this is BOLLOCKS."

The Boss, with a terrifying calmness : "You'll have to go to the shop and get it exchanged. Thanks to you I've already spent more time out of the office than I can afford today."

Here's me : "Fuck you."

Did I actually say that?

Oh fuck, I actually did.

There is something of a staring competition that goes on, and even while the veins in my head are pounding like pistons I am aware that this is probably on the wrong side of the line.

Here's me : "I'm sorry. I'm wound up. I'll go. I didn't mean to say that, but I'm very wound up, it's been a very bad week, my dog had to be put down (this is true, actually - poor wee fella) and I shouldn't have said that. I'll go and fix this."

So I stomped off through the streets and round to the computer shop, kind of vaguely wishing that someone would try and steal my wallet or something so that I could have an excuse for murdering a person, and entered the computer shop to be greeted by the fella I know quite well who works there.

Here's me : "My... fucking idiot... of a Boss, bought a power supply here an hour ago. She, predictably, bought the wrong one. Can you change this for me please?"

Computer Shop Guy : "Nah mate, she got the right one."

Here's me : "No, she didn't. She needs an ATX. This is something called a BTX."

CSG : "There's no such thing as a BTX."

Here's me, trying to stay upright, losing cabin pressure : "Look. The thingy into the motherboard is a totally different shape. Look."

CSG smirks at me, breaks off the little block at the end of this cable which now makes it the correct fit, and smirks again.

Here's me : "I'm sorry. I am the idiot. I am sorry for wasting your time."

I stomp back to the office, with a sort of red curtain in front of my eyes; I walk in and confess all, that I have made a stupid mistake and she got the right power supply. It's always better to admit when you are wrong; this is my firm policy. If someone will not admit when they are wrong, then why the fuck would you believe them when they insist they are right? and so on.

To The Boss, this is like blood in the water to a shark.

"I thought you said you knew all about this, I thought you knew everything, you think you're so smart" and variations on that theme - which continue, even as I crouch, sweating and feeling like I'm having a fucking aneurysm, underneath her desk replacing the power supply.

As I am down there, she comes over and sits in her chair and wheels it in close to the desk. So I am now under the desk with The Boss's legs, her feet are actually touching me. It's fucking revolting down here. Apart from the rest, there are several hundred ripped of scraps of paper and a pair of fucking shoes. I ask her to kindly fucking back off, and continue with my efforts, then poke my head out from under the desk - now within a physical proximity to The Boss I find incredibly fucking distressing - and say :

"I left the screws on your desk, can you pass them down to me?"

The Boss : "No you didn't."

Here's me : "Yes I did."

The Boss : "Well they're not here now."

I can't be arsed with this, so I emerge and go over to the other computer, and take the screws.

The Boss goes mental.

"You can't just... STEAL!... from one, to give to the other!"

Here's me : "Uh..."

The Boss : "You're just robbing Peter to pay Robin!"

Here's me : "Uh..."

I want nothing so much right now as to be in bed, with an overdose of anadin, and possibly a bucket of wine.

I decide the best course course is to ignore the fucking maniac and just proceed to put the fucking screws in, and the remainder of the day passed pretty much unmolested. Sorry, I know you want a better ending, but often in reality endings aren't all they're cracked up to be. Things are certainly coming to a head and I don't know what will happen, but hey, when it happens, I'll tell you.

Enjoy your weekend readers, I do enjoy having you around, and I do appreciate it. Thanks.

SK

Unaccountable

All was silent in the Halls of the Damned, when suddenly :

The Boss : "FUCK!"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD! God forgive me!"

Here's me : "God doesn't care. What's the problem?"

The Boss, screeching in her sudden panic : "I haven't sent off the accounts!"

Here's me : "Oh."

The Boss : "They were supposed to be with the accountants for yesterday latest!"

Here's me : "Oh."

The Boss : "Can you send them for me?"

Here's me : "Yes. What do you want me to send?"

The Boss : "November 09!"

Here's me : "Just November?"

The Boss, as if I'm stupid : "No, November through to October!"

Here's me, staring at her, eyebrow raised.

The Boss : "WHAT'S THE PROBLEM!?!?"

Here's me, veerrrry sloooowly : "You just said 'November through to October'. November 09 to October... what. Try again."

The Boss : "No, November before! A fullancial year! And I have to go early! I have a dentist's appointment!"

Here's me, ignoring that little pormanteau : "OK. Do you have their address handy, I'll post it to them tonight?"

By 'post it' I refer to posting one of the A4 hardbacked ledgers which I have previously mentioned constitutes our accounts system (along with the pencil and my still-missing shiny new fucking rubber)

The Boss : "You'll have to scan it!"

Sigh.

Here's me : "You want me to scan this whole book?"

The Boss : "YOU HAVE TO!"

Here's me : "If I scan this whole thing it'll be an e-mail the size of Manchester."

The Boss : "JUST DO IT!"

Here's me : "Gah. Give it here."

So I take it, and step up to the plate, and start tinkering with the much-hacked photocopier/scanner device. The book when opened is two sides of A4, naturally I want to set this on the scanner and just scan an A3 sized document each time, yeah? So I'm just checking this is all lining up correctly and so on, running a couple of test copies to check I'm scanning the appropriate area and such...


The Boss is outraged.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING PLAYING WITH THAT THING!"

Here's me, sadly shaking my head : "Never mind."

The Boss : "START SCANNING THEM!"

Here's me, still calm but only just : "Calm. Down. I am spending a couple of minutes setting this up in order to save about half an hour. Just leave me to it."

The Boss is momentarily placated. So I'm standing there at the scanner/photocopier thing, putting a hardback book on it and scanning each page, lifting it, turning the page, repeating this process, and generally wondering just where the fuck my fucking life started to go so badly wrong and thinking it was probably that time me and a friend drink a bottle of his mother's Bacardi one night when we were fourteen.

a reconstruction of the crime scene, for the reader's perusal

So, I race on through this process, and stop briefly to remove the few test copies I did from underneath, which I then drop into The Boss's bin, which regular readers shall know is just beside the copier. 


Mistake.


The Boss was previously merely "outraged", now it is fair to say she is fucking apoplectic.

"YOU CAN'T JUST PUT THOSE IN THE BIN THOSE ARE OUR ACCOUNTS!", she actually fucking yells at me, then reaches into the bin, pulls out the papers I have just deposited there, makes a great show of ripping them up and then actually fucking throws them down the side of the fucking bin.

not a reconstruction. actual scene. FML.

I'm pretty sure my mouth is hanging open and my fists are clenching in a manner that would make most people quietly walk away, there very well may be steam coming out of my ears actually.

The Boss's life and my employment here are both saved by the phone ringing. I return to my desk and froth quietly, and The Boss starts shouting inanities down the phone. The call ends a moment later when she slams the phone down.

"THE STUPID BASTARDS!"

I don't even look round.

"THEY'VE MOVED ME TO AN EARLIER APPOINTMENT BUT THEY PHONED DUBLIN TO TELL ME!"

Can't help myself now - "They phoned who in Dublin?"

The Boss screams our company name at me.

Here's me, once again a perfectly tranquil mask of calm hiding the murder that lies at the heart of me : "That is us."

The Boss : "THEY PHONED THE DUBLIN BRANCH!"

with which she seizes up her bags and runs to the door, leaving me now a bizarre mixture of confused, angry and amused. Not least because we don't have a Dublin branch.








EPILOGUE :

About ten minutes after leaving The Boss phoned me and, very bright, breezy and cheerful, said "I thought I'd just to give you something to do while I was away!" and proceeded to give me instructions on something she needs done which would make a funny entry in and of itself but I'm too utterly fucking pissed off to go there right now.


If you're looking for me, I'll be in the office here, kicking the shit out of everything in sight and screaming myself hoarse.

Exterminate! Exterminate!

The Boss : "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaawn. I'm so tired. I need to sleep. Something woke me at ten to four."

I look over and raise my eyebrow.

Here's me : "The dog?"

The Boss : "No, it slept in my room. This was downstairs. It's the mouse, it was jumping. Jumping up and down. Smashing about."

Here's me, cautiously : "Uh... big mouse, then?"

The Boss : "Must be."

Why?

It's a bit distressing and depressing but I have come in this morning to discover that The Boss has borrowed my shiny new rubber, drawn all over it with a blue pen and broken it in half. I don't know just why she has done this but it feels like some sort of threat.

Pencil Pusher

Note : Our 'accounts system' consists of a big hardback A4 book, in which we write down each job, the amount we charged out, and details of the invoices received against it. Being that it's not the 1970's anymore this bothers me a bit but I've long since given up caring about such things.

The Boss has been out somewhere at lunchtime and has returned to the office with an air of a person who has things on their mind. This, naturally, scares the shit out of me.

The Boss : "We need to keep better track of our accounts."

Here's me : "I... totally agree."

The Boss : "We need something that can give us what our current profit is likely to be."

Here's me, thinking yes, we're moving forward here : "I totally agree!"

The Boss : "And so we know what charges we're likely to expect against a job. What do you think?"

Here's me, actually quite excited about the prospect of finally dragging this operation kicking and screaming into the 1980's : "Definitely! Yeah, I don't know if it warrants something as comprehensive as Sage but there's probably similar but simpler programs out there, so let me take a look and see what..."

The Boss, coldly, with a deadly air of finality : "No."

Here's me, hitting the wall : "Wha?"

The Boss : "I don't want nothing fancy."

Oh Christ, I've been blind-sided here. Oh fuck. IT'S A TRAP.

Here's me, fucking terrified : "You haven't been in Excel have you?"

The Boss : "No. Because I don't want nothing fancy."

Here's me : "So, ah, uh, what are you thinking of?"

The Boss makes her way over to me and sets some small items on my desk. I stare at them, then at The Boss, then back at the items, trying to keep my expression completely neutral.

The Boss : "So when you put a job in the book, I want you to write in, in pencil, what charges you think will come in. Then when the real invoice comes in, rub it out, and fill it in with a pen."

Here's me : "Ha ha! Very good! Ha!"

The Boss is staring at me.


I can do nothing but stare back.

The Boss : "Understand?"

Here's me, now staring with naked horror at the 'new accounts system' : "Is this a fucking eyeliner pencil? Is this stump of a thing I am looking at on my desk here a fucking eyeliner pencil?"

The Boss : "NO! I went out and got those special."

Here's me : "Did it come, like that, already drawn on?"

The Boss : "Don't be smart with me."

Here's me : "Could you have got a proper grown-up sized pencil?"

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

It's true. There are. She reveals a handful of two inch long pencil stubs.

Here's me, with some nameless suspicion in the back of mind : "Where did you get these?"

The Boss : "It doesn't matter."

It does though, and in the back of my mind I think I'm starting to realise something important, some key familiarity here -

Here's me : "Did you steal these fucking pencils from fucking Argos?!"

The look on her face confirms that I am correct. Fuck.Ing.Hell.

CSI Bossville

So yeah we had a break in. The whole building, really. Two fellas climbed up via the car park out back in the middle of the night, and got in via a first floor window. They then went into every office in the building, smashing through the glass panels in the doors with a fire extinguisher to unlatch the doors by reaching through. Nothing much taken really, one company had four laptops taken but that was pretty much it. Our office was broken into but nothing taken, since there's pretty much nothing to take.

As I walked into work, reception were handing out those disposable surgical-type rubber gloves to everyone coming in, to wear while we opened doors and so on on the way into our offices. The Boss was already in the office so I came in, looked disgustedly at the pile of broken glass beside the door, and sat down thinking "Well, at least the little fuckers didn't trash the place, or start a fire."

So I started to work and The Boss shouts over "PUT THE RUBBER GLOVES BACK ON!"

Here's me : "Wha?"

The Boss is trying to type with rubber gloves on and seems to want me to do the same.

Here's me : "It's only for the door handles and that. I don't think your keyboard is going to matter too much."

The Boss : "But they could have used the keyboards!"

Here's me : "What, you think they interrupted the burgling operation to rattle off a few e-mails? Updated their facebook status while they were here, maybe?"

The Boss : "YOU NEVER KNOW!"

Oh well. Anyway, about an hour or so later, the fingerprints guy turned up, along with a suited type from CID to take a statement. CID guy has the wonderful job of interviewing The Boss but he's having difficulty holding her full attention because she's busy telling fingerprint-guy how to do his job.

CID Guy : "First of all, is there anything missing, that you're aware of?"

The Boss, talking past him : "Aren't you going to do the door latch? They would have had to touch the door-latch."

Fingerprint Guy : "We actually can't prints from that kind of surface."

I am, as usual, embarrassed by association. Only The Boss would think of telling forensics how to do their job.

CID Guy : "Ahem. Anything taken, that you're aware of?"

The Boss : "No, but things have been moved."

CID Guy : "Moved?"

The Boss : "The tin I keep my stamps in. It's at the other end of the desk."

CID Guy : "But nothing missing?"

The Boss, re-routing the conversation : "Aren't you going to take footprints?"

Fingerprints Guy and CID Guy both stare at her.

The Boss : "In the broken glass. They must have stepped in it, because look there, you can sort of see a shape of a foot."

CID Guy : "No, we don't take footprints."

The Boss : "Well I would have thought you should have at least taken footprints."

CID Guy, plainly rattled, turns to me : "Anything taken, that you're aware of?"

Here's me : "No, nothing at all has been taken."

CID Guy, visibly relieved : "OK, well if anything should come to light here is my card..."

The Boss, gabbling : "Well I would have thought you should at least, put up some tape...."

All three of us are now staring at her.

"... and, uh, secured the area, and, um, isolated.. a crime scene."

CID Guy Is Beautiful : "No ma'am. I think you've been watching too much CSI."

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful

And yet here I sit with my sleeves rolled up and the window open. I think it's somewhere in the region of about -4' C outside right now, and yet I am sitting here sweating like a priest in a Barney outfit. The Boss has one again attempted to exert control over the laws of thermodynamics and has turned the air conditioning up to 29' C before leaving last night. 


I question her on this as we sit slowly dying of heat exhaustion.

Here's me : "Why did you do this?"

The Boss : "It was set to 19. But 19 was too cold."

Here's me : "So what was wrong with, I dunno, 21 or something? I mean, 29 degrees?"

The Boss : "I set it to 23. But that was too warm."

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "23 was too warm. So I opened the windows. But then it was too cold, and I had to turn it up to 29. 29's just right when the windows are open."

I'm going to kill her, very soon.

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

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

(belatedly. sorry, etc.)

It even sounds better. Two-thousand-and-nine just doesn't roll off the tongue, and every time I heard someone refer to the decade as "the noughties", I felt like punching a clown. But TWENTY-TEN. Sounds impressive. Sounds dynamic. It's definitely the future, twenty-ten. I returned to work on Monday morning for once vital, and full of the joys and so on, and with definite aims in mind. I had a healthy breakfast and despite the cold, it was a crisp and beautiful morning.

I entered the office with purpose, made the formalities and then sat down opposite The Boss and produced a document from my pocket, which I laid upon the table. Allow me, sez I, to run you through this point by point; it is not a list of demands per se, but it may not do any harm for you to consider it as such.

1. When The Boss feels herself about to speak, The Boss is to stop, and think.
2. The Boss is to double check the thought produced in (1) and if it seems that my reaction will be 'wha?', The Boss is to not speak.
3. Even if The Boss is to speak, The Boss is to speak no more than is strictly necessary on the subject.
4. The Boss is to call all things, including but not limited to persons, places, currencies, and any other object, animate or inanimate, animal, vegetable or mineral, by their proper name. If The Boss does not know the thing in question's proper name, The Boss is to stop and find out it's proper name before continuing.
5. The Boss is not to say, under any circumstances, ever, the combination of syllables 'Ronan Keating'.
6. The Boss is not to sing La Cucharacha, neither wholly nor in part.
7. That line in 'Yellow Rose of Texas' should be sang as 'Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew', not 'Her eyes spar-kel like diamonds, they tinkle like a Jew'
8. The Boss is not to sing 'Yellow Rose of Texas', neither wholly nor in part.
9. The Boss is not to sing.
10. The Boss is not, not ever, ever again, to click her fingers at me to get my attention. I would also advise The Boss that if The Boss also perchance does that at waiters, The Boss deserves everything she gets.
11. The Boss is not to talk about, think about, use, consider, or in any other way whatsoever involve herself with spreadsheets.
12. The Boss will agree that no-one has ever tried to hack into us, nor ever will, and we shall not speak of it again.
13. The Boss is not to borrow my ruler for the purpose of scratching her back. If The Boss wishes to scratch her back in this way, she must order a new ruler to replace the ruler she previously broke while scratching her back.
14. Nine until twelve - "Good Morning, [company name]"; Twelve till five thirty - "Good Afternoon, [company name]"
15. The company name, once again, is (XXXXXX)

She read this document a few times through, at my insistence, and agreed that these points were all fair and reasonable, and that she had long been unfair and unreasonable, and that she had seen the error of her ways and would agree to my demands conditions and that she looked forward to moving forward in a forward-thinking manner.

I can't carry on this lie any longer, I've had The Week From Hell. From fucking HELL. Let me show you it.

Fucking Crazy Waste-Paper-Basket-Ju-Ju

- remains ongoing.

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.

The Satanic Bin

An update to this.

See here :

I fucking told you she was dabbling with the Occult.

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.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

This will probably be the death of me. I can barely contain my horror.

Allow me to elucidate.

Recently, in a moment of Great Success, we were appointed as Irish agents to a US-based company. This can be described as "very good". For a few weeks we've been going through all the details of what this actually involves, and part of it is that they have some kind of in-house system for tracking their cargo which we must now have access to.

This, already, spells Trouble.

Anyway, I came in on to the office to see an e-mail from our contact at said company, advising that their system was now up and running in our office and we would soon be expected to be entering bookings and so on to said system.

With a sensation I would describe as "dread", I sez to The Boss :

"Apparently their system is now installed here, but I can't see anything on my PC."

The Boss : "Oh, I got them to put it on my computer."

Ah, fuck.

I don't know quite how to politely say "That's fucking mental, you're a fucking disaster-waiting-to-happen around anything more technologically advanced than a lightbulb", so I try a lateral approach :

"Uh, would it not make more sense to have it on my PC, as I'm sure you'll probably not want to get bogged down in updating their system and so on?"

The Boss : "No, you'll be doing it. But I want to see everything that happens with it."

Uh...

Here's me : "So, uh, you want me to operate this system, whatever that might involve, from your desk?... uh, you don't think that might be.. inconvenient?"

Not to say "that might be SHEER FUCKING HELL ON EARTH THAT LEADS TO ME KILLING US BOTH".

The Boss : "No."

Oh, well that's cleared that up then.

So... I'm thinking, this is completely fucked. But it can't get any worse OH YES IT FUCKING WELL CAN!

The other company's IT person is going to phone us on Friday from New York and spend "around an hour" explaining how to use this system. And The Boss has laid down the law - she will be taking that phone call. She will spend an hour having the system that I am to use explained to her and then.. she will "explain" it to me.

THE HORROR.

I have considered my options; reasoning with her is out, of course, simply ridiculous; quitting in the current economic climate seems unwise; stabbing her to death with a pen seems potentially messy. I'm thinking I might try and get hit by a car on the way home tonight, maybe, if I can get one at just the right speed; I don't want to die, but I'm thinking probably having two broken legs and a bit of concussion seems like a reasonable way to get out of having her "explain" this system to me on Friday afternoon.

I cannot allow this to happen. Something must be done.

Mickey Fucking Mouse - pt II

Leaving a message for The Boss, transmitted by her favourite medium, the "post it note stuck to your monitor" method. I shall report on further developments as they occur.