It’s not all work, work, work

Posted on Aug 30, 2013 by headinablender

A woman gets on the train with her friend. They natter for a bit and then the conversation stops as the woman gets out her laptop and starts typing furiously.

A lot of people do work on the train; I see it every day. Excel, PowerPoint, Word, emails…. it’s never ending.

I wonder what she’s working on. I can’t see properly because of the sunshine glaring on her screen. Whatever it is it must be important; she has a serious look on her face and her fingers are a blur on the keyboard.

Suddenly we enter a tunnel and the glare is taken away.

Facebook.

Dan hates a really arrogant man….

Posted on Jan 28, 2013 by headinablender

I haven’t done a proper blog entry in a while, and I suppose a lot of that is down to procrastination and a lack of interesting things to comment on.

To be honest though, today is not much different.

Having said that, I’m in a particularly shitty mood right now. Shall I share? Oh alright then.

There will always be those individuals who we can’t stand working with, from the depressing mood hoovers to the arrogant sociopaths who sit at the next desk scowling at the world. It’s my job to train, coach and develop these people to be better sales/customer service people.

Actually it’s a challenge to get most of them to be nice to their own mothers to be honest.

As part of my job it’s vital that I remain upbeat, positive and friendly; but on occasion I want to walk over to their desk and punch them square in the chops, the arrogant sour faced bastards.

Today I got quite frustrated because my need to choke the shit out of some arrogant turd had to be suppressed to the point of bursting a blood vessel. In fact I had to go out for a walk in the cool January air just to prevent any actual violence taking place. Luckily for me it started to rain which you thought would’ve made matters worse, but it was still preferable to being within throttling distance from the arsebiscuit who had made my knuckles itch because of the way he’d spoken to a customer.

I had this overwhelming desire to poke his eyes out and replace them with his own testicles so he resembled some sort of bollock-eyed goblin, but my professionalism and desire to evade prison prevented me from doing so.

I’m not an angry man by nature, but when I’m starting to form weapons in my mind from office supplies, alarm bells start ringing.

(slowly puts his stapler in his drawer)

So what do I do now?

I’ve still got half the day to go and I’m ready to destroy someone with a finely sharpened sellotape dispenser.

Can you digit?

Posted on Jan 25, 2013 by headinablender

Another tedious day at work with idle hands…never a good combination.

Ain’t they cute though?

Senseless violence…

Posted on Jan 24, 2013 by headinablender

When a morning at work is this bad it’s probably best not to have blu tac lying around!

Something dark is brewing

Posted on Dec 28, 2012 by headinablender

I’ve worked for my employer now for around 10 months, and in that time I’ve seen, and been responsible for, a lot of change.

In fact, one of my reasons for being here is to change the culture and working practices to be more customer focused.

So imagine my horror this morning when one of the customer service team slowly turned his chair to face me, looked me dead in the eyes and said, with a face of dread, that things are starting to ‘revert back to the dark ages’.

My heart sank.

The ‘dark ages’ is clearly a reference to the old management regime that caused so much grief and misery. A regime that was responsible for tears, blood and the undercurrent of mutiny I felt when I first walked through the door almost a year ago.

But that regime ended months ago! How could we be slipping back? What could have possibly happened? I’ve worked so hard to maintain a level of motivation and joy in the business and I can’t believe it’s starting to fall apart like an over-dunked custard cream. This is disastrous!

I muster the strength and courage to ask the unaskable question; the question I feared the answer to the most in the world at this moment in time. The only question I could ever ask….

“What do you mean?”

The world goes silent. There’s only he and I now. I can hear my own heartbeat and breath, which sounds to me like Darth Vader after a brisk jog.

I wait for his answer; an answer I dread to hear but I know I must hear.
An eternity passes.

He looks me deep in the eyes now, his face contorted with apprehension. This could potentially ruin my upcoming new year celebrations.

He clears his throat and opens his mouth to speak. Here is comes…here comes the moment of truth.

“This may need to come from you rather than anyone else Dan”, he continues, delaying the moment.

Oh no, it’s serious. It’s so serious that I’m going to have to be the one responsible for managing the consequential impact on the entire business.

“What is it Brandon?” I ask, holding back a mix of emotions.

He opens his mouth to speak again. He we go….

…

“There are coffee granules starting to reappear in the sugar”