Friday is Going to Fucking Punch Someone in a Minute
One drink, home early, not staying out, want to take it easy tonight… it’s just never going to bloody happen, is it. Pure fantasy.
Last night’s escapades mean that I had far too little sleep last night, and something of a hangover this morning. This puts me in no fucking mood to piss about with my cunting colleagues, who seem to have decided that answering the fucking phone is beneath them. Our receptionist is off today, which means that we all have to take turns answering the phone, but apparently ‘taking turns’ needs to be explained in really big letters, and preferably with pictorial aids. Apprently some people simply don’t hear and some people ‘have a deadline’.
To put you in the picture, there are only about twenty of us in our office in the first place, and we are a consultancy – every single fucking one of us is working to a fucking deadline, because that’s what our damn clients pay us for: to do their panicking for them. I actually had to reach over some cunt’s desk this morning in order to answer the incoming call on his fucking phone.
“Hi, SuperdesignCo… yes just a moment, who’s speaking please… yes I’ll put you through.” Hardly enormously time consuming or intellectually fucking challenging you would fucking well think. It reminds me of those cunts who are forever boasting about how many emails they bloody well have. Yes, don’t worry, we all know how jolly clever and important you are. There’s time for a chat, time for a coffee, time to fanny about pissing and moaning about how fucking busy they are, but not enough time to spend a minute answering the fucking telephone.
So for the rest of the day, I am far too busy and have decided that I am going to be pointedly too important to answer the damn phone. Fuck it, it isn’t going to be for me anyway, so if anyone wants me I am going to be having a nap in the loo.
1. Name the worst violation of workplace etiquette which regularly gets your goat at your job.
2. And confess to the one you are most guilty of yourself.
3. Which office charicature is most prevalent in your place of work.
4. You have one bullet, and the world has promised to turn a blind eye… who’s for the chop?
5. How many hours of actual work do you tend to accomplish on hangover days?
The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning
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Clem Snide – Don’t Be Afraid of Your Anger
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The Divine Comedy – A Drinking Song
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The Notwist – Pick Up the Phone
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1. i hate the fuckers that dunno how to use the simplest bit’s of IT, such as printers and just press whatever fucking button there is and screw it up for everyone else then just stand there pretending that they dunno what the screaming fuck has just happened, over reacting, yes, but just leave the fucking thing alone….bitch!
2. stealing others milk, tea bags, and coffee
3. that they all try to be each others friends then slag each other off all too eagerly down the pub.
4. Nick Griffin, and i’d shoot him up the bum
5. so far, about 7mins
fucking first you fuckers
what the lazy people don’t understand is that answering the phone is actually one of the best ways to be lazy….cos it looks like you’re doing something.
1. The phone. The fucking phone. It’s just a fucking telephone, and I am not your fucking secretary, FUCKING WELL ANSWER THE CUNTING THING.
2. Erm, me? I’m perfect, me.
3. Swiss Tony, and this video is perfect.
http://www.funny-videos.co.uk/videoswisstonyvideoclip3.html
4. I may leave this in the hands of the legendary Half Man Half Biscuit: “Oh help me Mrs Meddlicot, I don’t know what to do/ I’ve only got three bullets and there’s four of Motley Crue”. If that’s not allowed David Cameron – the world’s most asinine, substance-free politician, even counting Boris Johnson – would be very close.
5. Maybe one and a half if I’m feeling brave.
1. those emails about not having luck for the rest of your life if you dont send to 100 colleagues…i.e. ‘stand on your head for 30 minutes whilst masturbating and writing a sonnet in addition to making a korma and blowing bubbles out of your arsehole…then take a picture. send to 100 of your friends. if you dont do this you will die……alone’
2. laughing so loudly and frequently that i annoy most of the office on a regular basis. my laugh is shit to some apprently. yeah ok go fuck yourself you miserable cunt.
3. moobs.
4. The perverted 40 something year old arsehole with the long finger nails that instead of talking to my face has to talk into my chest. HELLLLOOOOO I am up here! Saying that though if I do make eye contact the bottom of my stomach flexes and the last meal of the day feels the need to pop up and say hello. If he ever puts one finger print on me I will chop his prawn off and roast it in front of his face.
5. Usually sweet fuck all that is why I am off the sauce. Well, that and the fact that my phone has become a playground of embarrassment when I look at it the next day. STEP AWAY FROM THE BLACKBERRY WHEN DRUNK HALINA.
Chutters, that’s Three-post Mentalism, that is.
Actually I think that one prick in particular is not answering the phone because he has decided that he is too senior to answer the phone.
He thinks this because he is a cunt.
1. We have that ignoring the phone thing too. Some people are just TOO IMPORTANT. It’s usually the same people who are too important to rinse their own mugs.
There’s also the singing along – not proper singing along, I might point out, but sort of vague, slightly melodious mumbling when people don’t really know the words or don’t want to make out like they’re, y’know, ACTUALLY singing along – which has become worryingly prevalent along with the arrival of some new people of late…
2. Clearly I’m the perfect co-worker. I bake cakes for no reason and bring them in. Sure-fire way to increase your office popularity.
3. Probably the I’m-so-important-and-busy-and-no-one-can-possibly-have-more-work-than-me one.
4. Meh, no-one I actually work with. Just over-zealous PR people in general. I don’t mind which one. Ridding the world of just one maker of pointless, falsely enthusiastic, timewasting phonecalls would be an improvement.
5. About 4?
I love picking up the phone to ‘Hi, this is a free message…’
*click*
1. The poop throwing. It really needs to stop.
2. See #1.
3. The harried working Mom.
4. I come in peace.
5. Do they have official “hangover days” in Scotland? Here they’re called Saturday and Sunday. No work.
1. I know it’s veering from the point somewhat, and I know it’s a hugely irrational reaction to something quite inoffensive – but it’s not people that can’t use technology that annoy me, it’s people that can’t use the internet. I know it’s silly, and I’m aware that it’s because I spend most of my waking life on there, but really.
People that double click on a link. Really, why? Why would you do that? Why? Every time I see it happen I want to rip their fingers off. As explaining in full detail exactly why they don’t need to do it clearly has no effect.
People that type into the browser address bar to try and search for something. Stop it. Please. You’re not doing yourself any favours. Alternatively, just download google chrome, and set it as your default internet browser. (If you require assistance, just ask any four year old child.)
Once I sent a guy a link in an e-mail. He phoned me to say that the website wasn’t opening properly, so I had to stop what I was doing, go up the stairs to his office, only to watch in absolute horror as he copied the link from his e-mail, then pasted it INTO GOOGLE and SEARCHED FOR THE URL.
It’s the internet, people. It’s really not that complicated.
2. Probably my unlimited supply of coffee breaks, which in turn leads to an unlimited supply of trips to the bathroom.
3. Dunno if it’s a caricature, but just an inexplicable reliance on acronyms. Acronyms for the sake of acronyms. It doesn’t save time if you have to explain it to someone every time you use it.
4. I really can’t think of anyone I hate just now. Nick Griffin seems like a safe bet, though.
5. When I’m hungover I tend to pick the most menial, repetitive task I can find – the one that requires the least amount of brain activity and effort – and then just fudge my way through it. So probably more than when I’m not hungover.
1. Pissing on the toilet seat. I mean, really.
2. Tutting at people on the phone who take aaaaaaaages to explain the most mundane problem that a six moth child could fix. I’m a busy man – I’ve got funny pictures to look at on the internettle.
3. Pony-tailed code monkeys laughing at innacuracies in sciffy films.
4. As long as it’s a really powerful bullet, then Piers Morgan standing in front of Amanda Holden standing in front of the patronising advertising cunts who came up with that latest RBS advert with that girl who wants to write for Tatler on it.
5. Funnily enough, I never get hangovers these days. I think I drank myself immune in my youth.
1. Name the worst violation of workplace etiquette which regularly gets your goat at your job.
Just people not doing their job properly. Mostly managers. I consider doing your job properly a necessity rather than etiquette but, really, if you can’t do your fucking job then you are likely to have fuck all etiquette. Poor communication. Borderline bullying. Cunts.
2. And confess to the one you are most guilty of yourself.
Pumping.
3. Which office charicature is most prevalent in your place of work.
Skinny borderline neds with spiky hair. Not in my department thankfully but they are all over the building. That and cheap slags.
4. You have one bullet, and the world has promised to turn a blind eye… who’s for the chop?
Any person that tries to break into my house or threaten a loved one. BLAMMO.
5. How many hours of actual work do you tend to accomplish on hangover days?
If by “work” you mean “wanks” then at least 4.
oh so other people get hangover horn as well then. That’s good to know.
Its not hangover horn. That’s actually less than how much Madcow usually masturbates at work.
Erm, I imagine…. (cough).
Im at work just now, using next doors wifi on my phone. Anger at work happens to me 5 days out of 7, if you follow me on Twitter you’ll see my work related red mist in text. I will post my propper Friday 5s reply when I get home to a computer that isn’t made of stone.
Ah, my pet subject.
1. Hard question. Too many. Endless quacking to mates on the phone all day? The passive-aggressive sighs and whinges? The woman who regularly comes in drunk and then tries to talk at everyone? The smae woman who, at the age of nearly 60, still can’t read anything without muttering it to herself under her breath? How can I possibly pick out just one?
2. Sticking on my headphones to block out the above and pretending I’m not here.
3. The whinging secretary who’s worked for the same firm for nearly 30 years. She terrifies me. I must get a new job soon.
4. If I don’t get a new job soon, it’ll be myself.
5. I’m usually more productive than usual until mid-afternoon, because I’ll probably still be a bit pished and trying to hide that fact. From 3pm, though, I do nothing other than pray for the end of the day. Also, hangover horn – indeed.
1)People leaving their shit on my desk when I’m out or clever gits who when you ask for help get hold of the mouse , point click spin round and shout Ta dah and I still don’t have clue what to do.
2) Being a smartarse
3) Everyones a bloody salesman
4) See above, particularly the ones in cars who can’t be seen for dust on Fridays
5) Half a day , either a really good half before I sober up or a really bad moaning tosser half.
Bart, my parents once bought two computers from Amazon by double-clicking a link. I did that half tears, half laughter, half wince of pain thing.
Two fucking computers! You’d think the size of the bill would have fucking alerted them, really, wouldn’t you.
1. I can’t think of anything other people do that I don’t do worse. Or better, obviously.
2. Pissing about online.
3. It’s a toss up between the put upon ‘the management hate me I’m going to leave (again)’ and the ‘this is how I do it because this is how I’ve always done it and I don’t care what anyone else says it works for me’. These are two caricatures but I think most people who have one also have the other.
4. Meh
5. None. Although I haven’t had a hangover at work for ages and ages. But when I’ve had them then if I’ve made it into work at all I’ve done absolutely bugger all. You people can’t be trying hard enough.
Bart – Have you cracked one out at work?
I’m not really comfortable with this line of questioning, Madcow.
That two computers thing is priceless. There was a time back when Tesco first started doing home deliveries and people in our office were regularly handing our bananas, because they’d meant to order 8 of them and ended up with 8 kilos.
who would want to whack one out at work?
there are only 2 or 3 males in our office, and one them can’t pish into the toilet, it’s lovely i tell thee, it really looks like he has just gone la la la la and pissed all over the floor….nice!
Gary: five kilos of chillies once.
Sure did get tired of chillies.
How is it possible to get tired of chillies? They’re like onions and garlic – lots in everything please, including cornflakes. Hello Dolly, you might be the first person I’ve met on the internet after meeting them in person.
Chutters, men who miss make me cross. It’s just not that difficult. And there’s plenty of loo roll even if you do find it a bit too challenging.
1. Sending company-all e-mails with a 10mb .bmp picture of your new secretary. Although it’s fun to hear the entire office simultaneously curse the chump responsible after an hour of e-mail downtime and then seeing that appear.
2. Excessive use of profanity, often expressed at the incompetence of others.
3. The would-be City boy. Fuck off down to London.
4. Obvious, but if I could line up Max Clifford and Simon Cowell… Come to think of it, have they ever been seen in the same room together? Possibly the devil incarnate between them.
5. About one. My worst ever hangover day was back when I worked at Thins on South Bridge. I fell asleep in the storage basement under Infirmary Street, which just happened to be the old mortuary. Not a place you’d want to wake up in.
At least you woke up.
1. There are completely sealed cubicles in the toilets at work with no windows. Apart from smelling rank, some anonymous arsehole keeps coming in and switching off the light when they’re leaving. Pitch dark with things left to accomplish.
2. Listening to music in earphones far too loud.
3. Senior types with a blue sky grand vision and fuck all common sense.
4. That cunt from the Lighthouse Family. He hasn’t annoyed me for a while but we have history.
5. I’m hyper productive when hungover as I get the guilt and over compensate.
Hello! And I’m very wary of chillies in general after a “friend” had a bad experience which involved chopping some and then changing a tampon. Pain.
the office has just been moved around at my work, i now have to incessant chatter of middle age women going on……they have no humility and seem to be the frigging expert on each and every subject they tackle. I just sit here trying not to laugh as they go ‘What about that global warming…..’
1. The milk system is the greatest cause of antagonism where I work. Most people buy a few bottles every so often, for everyone to use. Some people, however, buy a single bottle for their personal use, and label it ‘room 101′, or with their initials, or with little skulls and crossbones. These people are utter crotch pheasants.
2. Stealing the aforementioned labelled milk when the communal milk has run dry. Viva la resistance!
3. Geeks. The building’s full of them, I share an office with them, I’m one of them. The array of knitwear is mindblowing.
4. That’s rather drastic…
5. Describing what I do as ‘actual work’ is probably pushing it a little.
Dolly – chillies has to be the single most difficult food item to consume in volume, so I sympathise with you there!
Chillies and water biscuits. The latter not being as painful perhaps, but apparently far, far more practically challenging. Never tried it myself though.
Adamski – crotch pheasants? Is that an insult or just two words at random from the dictionary. Cheese badgers. Spam jugglers.
Make some harissa!
That’s the spirit! Join the league of non-expletive expletives, you dictionary weasel!
1. “Hi, can you please get me (X large chunk of information)? I have a meeting in about half an hour, it would be really handy” WHAT? Did you just find out about this meeting, or have you known about it for a week but only now started thinking about it, and realised with thirty minutes notice that you needed me to write a report for you? Clown.
2. I try to create as much confusion as possible about when I actually am or am not on lunch, in order to basically do no work whatsoever between 12noon and 2pm.
3. Young girls talking about Jordan and Peter Andre. Or whoever else has been on the cover of ‘Heat’ this week.
4. I genuinely couldn’t.
5. Quite a few? I don’t really get hangovers particularly, so am no more or less productive having been out on the ran-dan the night before. But we’re starting from quite a low baseline I suppose.
1. Name the worst violation of workplace etiquette which regularly gets your goat at your job.
It’s not regular but my wife reasonably frequently encounters used female sanitary things on the toilet seat / ground / basin. Apparently it’s disgusting.
2. And confess to the one you are most guilty of yourself.
Drifting off mid-conversation – as a general rule I only listen to half of anything anybody ever says. Sometimes I have to employ extreme powers of concentration to avoid getting the sack.
3. Which office charicature is most prevalent in your place of work.
There is a David Brent kind-of-alike not far from me who astounds me regularly with the things he says. I also have a feminist not far from me who’s good for a rile, once in a while.
4. You have one bullet, and the world has promised to turn a blind eye… who’s for the chop?
Definitely Katie Price (and alter-ego Jordan – I have some concerns that if one did not make a concerted effort to get rid of both, one might survive, a bit like a cockroach). In my experience, and really what is left of her that hasn’t been exposed to the world, she is hideous, odious, vacuous and lots of other bad things and it annoys me that people are interested in her. I accept that a lot of that interest is a car crash type of interest.
5. How many hours of actual work do you tend to accomplish on hangover days?
If it’s a proper one, barely a few hours.
I try to create as much confusion as possible about when I actually am or am not on lunch, in order to basically do no work whatsoever between 12noon and 2pm.
That’s excellent. I spent a while working on the devil that is flexitime with core hours of 10 till 12 and 2 till 4 – I would get in at ten, take two hour lunch breaks, get all of my work done by about half three and go home at four. I had to trade in almost all of my annual leave to make up my time but it was kind of worth it.
1. People using the last of an antibody and not ordering any more. Bye bye three days of work!
2. Not refilling the big 10 litre containers of things at the end of the lab. But I do them a lot, and they are ALWAYS empty…which suggests that I’m not the only one.
3. Mad scientists, the lot of us.
4. Olga the Mad Russian. The first person in the world I have actually met and have no hesitation in saying I hate.
5. Depends on how much I’ve stupidly set up the day before. Sometimes lots.
1. Working from home, I tend to find that everything, everybody does when I have to make those rare visits to the office really fucks me off, but especially hovering.
2. using meeting rooms without booking them first.
3. The office Nazi, doesn’t she realize I don’t have to justify my fucking hours to her.
4. Thatcher but with Mark Knopfler tied to her so as one bullet gets both.
5. hours? try about half of one.
“People using the last of an antibody and not ordering any more.”
Yeah I, er, fucking hate that too.
My Friday music recommendation is the new Spoon album which is called Transference…….it’s good old fashioned guitar indie music.
I’m going to see Spoon in Glasgow on Valentine’s Day!
My wife is not that pleased about it.
It really is a pain Matthew, you grow your cells for 2 or 3 days, carefully get them to express your gene of choice, fix them with methanol, go to get your antibodies and…they’ve all gone. Your cells will last a couple of days in some cold saline, but antibodys are notoriously slow at being delivered. It really is a pain in the bum.
what is antibody?
TT: i’m in London most weekends, and i’m not happy that i’ll be missing that gig…..
Little Bear is an antibody
No you won’t be, it should be a pretty good show – think it’s in King Tut’s which seems like a small place for them to play.
It’s part the body’s natural defence system against disease – they bind very specific bits of proteins and hold them still while white blood cells can attack. Because they’re so specific (apparently) we can use them to label proteins of interest inside cells and stuff, if we stick a fluorescent blob on the end. They’re pretty cool really.
Spoon are shit. Next question.
Spoon are far from shite, actually they are what you would call an ambitious band, Toad boy, their sound, whilst staying typically Spoon-like has developed over a period of 5 albums or so.
Right thats enough Toad like pish that will be spouted from moi
Er… Spoon are not shit?
Finer Feelings, Cherry Bomb and Underdog are all very good songs. They’re not beyond reproach but to say they are shit is probably doing your music critiquing credentials a disservice… or maybe not?
Thank you Becky. It always surprises me when you get into the physical aspects of science i.e. labelling a cell with a colour – I expect it to be less obvious than that.
Actually, I have never listened to Spoon, I was just riling Chutters.
Matthew spouts mental shit all the time.
I’m going to become a science evangelist soon if I’m not careful. It is fun though. Even after 6 weeks of exile in Yorkshire with only a squeaking demented cat for company.
Matthew – you should listen to those songs I listed – they’re good.
Chutters will no doubt recommend his own favourites.
There is only one acceptable sort of Spoon on the Friday Fives, and it is used for scooping out mouse foetus brains.
Part of Becky’s job involves attaching a fluorescent blob to the end of cell.
Brilliant! It would be like decorating the Christmas tree every day!
1. Name the worst violation of workplace etiquette which regularly gets your goat at your job.
2. And confess to the one you are most guilty of yourself.
3. Which office charicature is most prevalent in your place of work.
4. You have one bullet, and the world has promised to turn a blind eye… who’s for the chop?
5. How many hours of actual work do you tend to accomplish on hangover days?
1. Walking around chatting on a mobile phone, usually with a Bluetooth headset. Particularly when they pause and hover for a moment near my desk. “Fuck off out of my airspace, cockface, before I ram that flashing blue thing down your aural canal with my fucking chair!”
2. Using office supplies for personal use.
3. IT geeks. It is an IT company though.
4. This weekend? Jeremy Guscott.
5. It would be difficult to measure in hours.
Especially for Dylan:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/faintgirl/sets/72157623233296233/
One protein has a red marker, the other has a green, whack the images together and see if they’re found in the same place.
Extra marks if you can tell me what kind of cell that is…
Becky always gives me career envy.
The pictures are pretty, but there is also a hell of a lot of transferring clear liquids from one small plastic tube into another. So much sometimes that before Christmas I was physically unable to hold a pen after all the pipetting.
Still, I don’t think I’d give it up for the world.
Well running a record label is mostly about sending endless emails and addressing envelopes.
Still cool though.
Dylan – Jeremy Guscott. Definitely. Or Brian Moore. Or Jonathan Davies. What is it about rugby pundits?
Matthew – collected my Meursault 7”s from the post office this afternoon – cheers! (on the turntable now)
1. When someone has to “pop to the chemist” during work hours as opposed to doing it in their allocated break time.
2. If I still had a proper job it would have to be stealing big envelopes for posting off demos.
3. Old, cynical sun reading, racist, nationalistic sweetie wives.
4. I nearly got a nasty piece of work fired in my last proper job .She was calculating, evil, patronising, didn’t do her job properly and was generally a cunt. I took her down. She got in a lot of shit. fuck you evil lady. She had a moustache too. double fuck you. I’d be quite happy to blow her head off.
5. 2 hours of collating paper samples for clients the day after drinking a whole bottle of absinthe. I was hallucinating the whole time and probably got it all wrong. Hardest 2 hours of my life.
1) Endless use of meetings for self promotion.
2) Closing my office door when I want everyone to just leave me alone.
3) 20-something women with no discernible skill and a media studies degree.
4) The next person in the office who says “I had no idea that was part of your job”.
5) I try really hard not to be hung over at work. Not because I’m well behaved. My job is just fucking torture if your head hurts!
First off, thank you for ranting so damnably well–it made me laugh about my own job (a rare thing).
1. …there are so many. Smugness, schadenfreude, someone shitting on the floor of the ladies’ ten minutes before a health and safety inspection…
2. pretending like I have Important Things to Do when my job is a complete douchecakewalk.
3. the patchouli-sweating pothead with a grudge against reality.
4. the Brownest Nose in the Space Time Continuum: judgmental, joyless, wants the trains to run on time in a fucking call center.
5. Substitute ‘OCD’ for ‘hangover’ days & I’d say 45 minutes.
1) People with special dietary requirements, ‘ooh, I cant have gluten/dairy/eggs/onions/potatoes/garlic’… FUCK OFF, there are poor wee bastards starving to death in the third world and you choose to be a fussy eater just because you’re fucking overpaid and have been to see a useless cunt hack dietician AND you also claim to be a fucking save the whales vegan lesbian organic anti-globalisation ‘activist’. fannies.
2) Swearing at the customers and drinking liberal amounts of the work booze after hours.
3) I like Emma’s ‘patchouli-sweating pothead with a grudge against reality’ although I really have to include myself in this category.
4) Roger Waters
5) work? mwahahahahahahahaha!