Archive for the 'work' Category

The Office Party

December 15th, 2009

There are many things I love to miss about working in an office, and one of the big ones is the Christmas Party.

I fucking hated them.

There was a bimbo in our office who used to fire up her party enthusiasm around July.  The day would come in the middle of summer when she would pipe up that it really was about time we started thinking about booking a venue.  Most of us would still be looking forward to our summer holidays, so this wasn’t well received.  The air would be thick with flying staplers, ashtrays and other assorted heavy objects, but unfortunately Bimbo was quite good at ducking.  And being a Bimbo, she didn’t realise that the missiles aimed in her direction had anything to do with her mention of Christmas.

Over the following months, skirmishes would break out.  On one side there would be the crowd who just wanted a quick meal to line the stomach for a good piss-up.  On the other would be the ones who wanted a leisurely meal followed by a disco or something.  By the time they had sorted their differences, all the venues would be booked up anyway so the whole thing was a bit academic.

Usually we ended up either having the do in some grotty back street restaurant, that no self respecting office party would touch, or we would hold that greatest of nightmares – an office party in the office.

There is nothing worse than holding a party in an office where you spend most of your working day.  There is fuck all festive about a computer monitor with a bit of bedraggled tinsel draped across the top.  There is nothing Christmassy about a twelve inch high plastic tree decorated with floppy disks.

Worst of all was the boss, who for 364 days in the year is an utter bollix and who suddenly decides that for one day we all have to be best friends with him. 

Inevitably at the start of the ‘party’ someone would announce that “this is a party, and no one is to mention work”.  That would lead to dead silence, as we had fuck all in common apart from work.  So the trick then was to consume as much cheap plonk as quickly as possible so that we could get around to the groping stage without the agonies of forced conversation.

The one advantage of holding the ‘party’ in the office was that we had control over the drinks.  Lacing the Bimbo’s fizzy orange with vodka was no problem, and The Boss used to get his beer nicely topped up in the Gents.  With the piss he normally drank, he couldn’t tell the difference.

Of course the party always ended in chaos.  Bimbo would end up staggering all over the place making a holy show of herself and slurring that the orange was tasting funny, and the Boss would usually end up puking his ring up all over the main desk.

The Office Party was not a time for celebration or enjoyment.

Oh no.

It was a time for revenge.

In a black hole

October 15th, 2009

When I left college back in ‘67, I wrote at random to six companies looking for a job.

One replied immediately, and I started working there the following Monday.

The week after, I got the sack, but in the meantime another of the six had offered me a job so I walked straight into that.

I was with that company for two years and thoroughly enjoyed it.  However, I had applied for yet another job which I took.

I stuck with my third company for nearly 30 years, but all good things must come to an end, and in 2001, I “took the Package”.

This is where things got very fucking complicated.  You see, the Package meant that I was still paid a salary by the company, even though I no longer worked for them,  But seeing as I get a salary, then technically I do still work for them, even though I am now contractually forbidden from doing any actual work.  They are literally paying me a salary to stay away from the place.  That’s fine by me as I was kind of pissed off with them anyway.

So there I was – sitting on my hole at home, receiving a salary and with nothing to do.

So I started my own business.

The situation now, was that I was technically employed by my old company, but was running my own business as well.

In the course of my business, I landed a contract with yet another company, and for reasons best known to themselves, I had to register there as an employee, even though I only worked for them for a few months a year.  This meant that I now had three employers – my original crowd who were paying me not to work; my new employer who only wanted me for a few months a year and my own business which filled in the gaps.

That was the year my accountant had a nervous breakdown trying to do my tax returns.

I have quit all that now, and have shut down my own business.  I now have only one employer, who is still happily paying me not to work.

So I am now, for the first time in my life unencumbered with work.  My days are my own.  I can do what I like.

Next year, I retire officially.

Presumably, as I then go onto a pension, the clause that stated that I can’t work for them is no longer in force, and they will probably insist that I go back and earn all the money they have paid me since 2001.

The problem in the meantime is what I put down as my occupation.

I’m not retired, as that doesn’t happen until next year.

I’m not working as it is contractually forbidden.

They don’t have a box on the forms that suggests “employed not to work”.

Life is so fucking confusing at times.

Well, here I am

August 3rd, 2009

Well it looks like the dust is beginning to settle.

I started at eight, yesterday morning.

“No bother,” says I.  “I have all day to copy a couple of sites.  How hard can that be?”

I had not allowed for the extremely weird control panel I had been presented with, for a start.  Whoever designed that did so with a logic that defies gravity.  Nothing is where you would expect it to be.  There is a myriad of menus that all lead around in circles and they all look the same but aren’t.  Have you ever been in Hampton Court Maze?  That’s what it was like.

After an hour or two, I managed to set up a blank area to take this site.  Great!  Now my problem was how to copy the old site across.  You see, you can’t just copy the old site onto a PC and then copy them up to the new one – it just doesn’t work.  The new site will just start looking for bits on the old server or something and will start crying. I hate that.

I had to create a new site from scratch and then just copy the relevant bits across.  But what are the relevant bits?

Then there is the database.  Fuck me, but it’s big.  And when the new site has a file limit of 5 Megathingies, it is too big.  So I had to chop the database into little chunks and copy them all across in little bits, and I had to be very careful to keep them in the right order.  Otherwise you would find your comments coming out your ears.

I managed it in the end.

Even then I had complaints from a few people that they could only see things up to last June, but I could see everything so it that a case of tough shit!

I think it’s all working now.  I don’t think I lost anything and I think everything is in the right order.

It actually seems a bit faster now, but that will doubtless change.

I still have a couple of minor details to fix.

And of course I still have a load of other sites to copy.

Bollox. 

Pissed off

August 1st, 2009

I am utterly, totally and completely pissed off with this site.

It is now on its new server, but for the life of me, I can’t get it to work right.

It won’t load any fucking images without my manually inserting then again.

The comments look completely different and messy.

I can’t upgrade anything.

I am PISSED OFF with it.

And I have three more sites to go.

Aaaaaaaaagh!!!

Minding your business

June 24th, 2009

When I took on this web hosting business, I thought it would be simple enough.

All I had to do was give people their little space on the Interweb and I could then sit back and rake in the readies.

Not so.

All those cretins that I euphemistically call ‘clients’ keep phoning me with their problems.

I usually hang up on the ones who are blaming me for their hard disk crashing or for the fact that their dog now has rabies, but one or two manage to sneak through my defences.

A hell of a lot of them seem to have problems with e-mails.

Why the fuck can’t they write a letter like the rest of us?

They phone me and complain that they can’t send e-mails or they can’t receive e-mails.  They complain that their mailbox is full, or that they are getting spam.

The ones who are getting spam give me a laugh.  Who doesn’t get spam?  I usually just laugh at them [and maybe if I’m feeling good, I’ll remove them from some of my mailing lists].

The ones who complain about their mailbox being full are simple.  I just go onto their server and delete all their mail.  For some reason, this annoys them despite the fact that I have solved their problem.  Some people are never satisfied.

The ones who complain they are not receiving mails are usually just sad fuckers who are blaming me for their lack of friends.

Oddly enough, I’m getting a lot of complaints from people who claim they can’t send mails.

I did a bit of investigating here as I was intrigued as to why these mails were so important.

One of my clients has just got married.  The horny fucker has been sending rather graphic mails to his new mother-in-law telling her how he has fallen in love with her [and what he would like to do with her].  I had a moral dilemma here, so I just redirected all his outgoing mails into his wife’s inbox.  They are all on the same server, so he stopped getting error messages and the problem was solved.

There is another bloke who has come up with a new business idea.  I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it has something to do with selling ice-cream on line.  He is trying to promote his idea by mailing every Tom Dick and Harry he can think of.  Fucking idiot.  I redirected his outgoing mail into a null account, so he is now happy.

One persistent bastard did some sleuthing of his own.  He claims that my mail server has been blacklisted on the Interweb for ‘spreading malicious material or spamming’.  He had a fucking nerve.  He should mind his own business, and let me get on with mine.

Anyone want any Viagra or an excellent watch?

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