Red Letter Day

Friday: I thought I'd got a reasonable Friday arranged for myself. If my in-box were a swimming pool it would most definitely be the shallow end*. I have no conference calls scheduled and all I need to do is complete a few on-line training courses before a civilised finish at five o'clock. How could you improve on that without taking a day's holiday?

Basically this was one of those days where I was eating the apple and expecting to find the worm at any point. At lunchtime I was halfway through a slice of toast when my Manager** pinged me on the Instant Messenger ...

... "Oh Shit" I thought, rapidly followed by "what does this twat want" and finishing with "I'm about to get dumped on". I grudging agreed to taking his call pointing out that I was free, if being half way through a sandwich fell in to his definition of free. I did but a smiley face on the end but was, in fact, being sarcastic***. Apparently being half way through lunch is free and I am of a mind to start some tests to see how formal the meal has to be before he doesn't call ....

Manager:   bad man, are you free for a call?

bad man:    I'm carving a roast swan for the Queen

Manager:   That's fine, it will only take a couple of minutes

bad man:    Sorry Maj, I'll get rid of this dick and then I'll dish up the roast potatoes.

Apologies for wandering off the point, I took the call and was somewhat amazed to find that I had been granted a Service Excellence Award and would be receiving the princely sum of $500 in my next salary payment. I was obviously chuffed with this but I STILL THINK THAT HE IS A COMPLETE COCK and he proved that by putting his usual tarnish on everything he touches.

Manager:   remember that that is dollars not pounds

bad man:    yep, got that

Manager:   and that it is subject to tax and national insurance deductions

bad man:    shut up before we reach the point where I owe you money!

So all in all my working day looked good at the start and actually improved. I am now slightly worried that I may have actually entered an alternative reality because I am fairly sure that there is a Natural Law that states that an easy day at work can only get worse, much worse.

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* I think that this is a great analogy, even down to the fact that it has used plasters floating in it i.e. things you neither need or want to see.
** I refuse to call him my Boss on the grounds that suggests a degree of familiarity or even conviviality between us
*** unusual for me, I know.