Logo no go

I think I may have just deeply offended someone - totally by accident.

I was just checking through a box of gifts which are going to be given out next week at a big presentation / gala event / soiree type thing. First thing I've done today. They are black faux leather folders which contain a handy notepad. They're ok, as far as free gifts go, quite useful I suppose, but they are emblazoned with the [company] logo.

I could see him watching what I was doing, although he was trying to concentrate on booking a room - or was pretending to book a room so he could spy on the presents...

"Those look nice" he said finally.

"Yeah" I replied, "shame about the logo though".

"Why? Don't you like [the company]?" he instantly accused.

"It's not that" I replied, half-truthfully, "It's just all this over branding I'm not too keen on. It's like walking around with a [company] bag. I'm not too keen on that really".

"Well, if you work for [the company]..."

"Yeah" I reluctantly agreed "and it is better than nothing I suppose. And it's free!"

"Quite" he added, then left.

I strongly suspect he has a [company] bag, the matching t'shirt and cap, the mug and the mousepad and longs for a branded faux leather folder to complete the set!

Friday feeling

It's Friday and I have so very nearly made it through another boring week. Albeit a shorter week than normal.

From the offset I was trying to treat Wednesday as Monday, and Thursday as Tuesday, so that when today came around it would be a lovely suprise that it was Friday and not Wednesday! Didn't happen though. I woke up at 3am this morning convinced that it was the weekend.

What a horrible feeling.

False alarm

I enquired about the security cameras when I came in this morning and it turns out that, like the duress alarm button which is situated under my desk, they are just for show.

This leaves me slightly perplexed as I have to test the panic button every Tuesday.

Another of my jobs which is ultimately useless then...

Beedie Eye

I have just noticed that there are two security cameras which watch over my desk. One behind me and one infront to the right. I wonder if they work. I wonder if someone is keeping a beedie eye on me.

How could I have not noticed them before? They are right there, little domes protruding from the ceiling. Even when I was counting the ceiling tiles yesterday I didn't see them. Now i've noticed them I can't stop looking...

Tea please!

I just walked around the whole floor to avoid having to ask two guests who have just arrived if they want a drink. I actually hid around the corner until I knew that they had gone. This is because I remembered their faces - I asked them if they wanted one the last time they came and they both wanted coffee.

I very rarely make people drinks when they come in, it's not in my job description and I have far more important things to be getting on with. Do I?

We have a tea lady for tea-making, but she regularly takes herself off for a snooze in the store cupboard or one of the meeting rooms for a morning and afternoon break. She was caught in the small meeting room the other day, sitting in the dark, under the table, chatting on the conference phone. It was reported to me as it was considered 'out of order', slightly odd and a tad annoying. I was supposed to pass details of the 'incident' on to her boss, which I actually felt a bit bad about - so I didn't!

If I do ask people if they want a drink I do it in a way which makes them feel like they have no choice but to decline. It makes me laugh inside. I sort of screw my face up as if to say, you don't really want a drink do you?

Works nearly every time...

Taste of bird poo

Allen's off again today so the email will have to wait. Although relieved, I'm also slightly perturbed as that was going to keep me busy for a while today. Now I am left with nothing to do whatsoever.

I'll have to think of something else to occupy the empty 9 hours that is my working day...

As nothing is happening I have nothing to report - apart from the fact that a small blob of bird poo landed on my bottom lip as I was walking to work this morning. Just a tiny bit, but it was definitely white. You always think "I really hope that was rain" when you feel little wet splats on your eyelids or cheeks, but when I felt this on my lip it didn't even cross my mind to pray that it was rain as I didn't consider for one moment that I could be that unlucky. Knowing my luck though (as I do), the bird was probably ill and in a few years time I will be uncovered as the dastardly person who spread bird flu in humans. I can see it now.

Straight after that unfortunate incident I ran out into the road right into the path of a speeding motorbike. I don't know why I was running and I don't know what I was thinking. Clearly I wasn't thinking. Getting bird poo in your mouth is bad, but its not that bad!

Needless to say I rinsed thoroughly once I got to work, and I relaxed with my bran flakes to settle my nerves.

I hope something good happens today.

About a boy

I really don't want to go on about it, but I've been having a good think about the whole Kim situation. I have nothing better to do after all... I don't exactly have any work to keep me occupied. (Just for the record, I have done nothing today...)

Anyway, I have remembered another similarly embarrassing situation, which happened to me many years ago, when I really should have spoken up too..

I've studied a bit of psychology - and am now led to believe that perhaps it was this deeply distressing incident which took place when I was younger that has led to my severe inability to put Allen straight. I think I have been left mentally scarred. We're talking a good 15 years ago now, so I would have been about ten at the time, but I can remember it like it was yesterday.

It was summer, the air was warm and the leaves on the trees were green. My younger sister was out playing with some new kids who had just moved in around the corner. It was like that where I grew up - all the kids knew eachother and played games together in the street. It was a nice little kiddy community which we probably took for granted at the time. Anyway, to cut a long and dull story short, I had to go and get her for some reason. I'd only just taught myself to ride a bike so I proudly rode over to the their house on my second-hand rusting orange chopper to say hello. I stopped to say hi to the dad of the new kids, who seemed nice, and who wanted to know a little bit more about us. My sister and I told him how old we were, what school we went to and stuff, and that we had an older brother who was at home.

"How nice" the man said to us "for your mum to have two boys and then a girl"

I wanted to say "I'm a girl, I'm a girl!"...

...but I kept quiet.

It was easier to smile politely, fight back the tears, and to let him continue thinking I was a boy! Even though my sister was understandably in hysterics as we rode off.

I know that I was as straight as a plank and as skinny as a rake. I realise that my pudding bowl haircut that didn't make it past my ears (that the hairdresser assured me was a 'bob') may have hinted that I was male. I can see how the hand-me-down Spiderman t'shirt and webbed jeans may have compounded the boy-image, and I know that my bike was a rusty old orange chopper (not the racer with a basket on the front that I dreamed of), but I was a girl and it was really horrible thing to happen - being called a boy!

Kim's not a bad name, so it's not a personal insult (like being called a boy most definitely was) but it's still annoying, and I still face the repeated shame of him calling me it infront of people everyday - the fear of which is bringing me out in hives.

Perhaps I will send him a little email tomorrow to address the situation...

Hi Jim

It's just been brought to my attention that perhaps Allen is equally as bored at work as me, and he's keeping a count too. I hadn't thought about that. His count may be for how many times he can call me Kim before I feel compelled to correct him.

Perhaps, like me, he has two counts. One for how many times I respond, like an idiot, to the name Kim, and one for how many times he manages to say it while others are present. If this is the case I am sure he gives himself bonus points for humiliating me publically.


...I'm thinking of calling him Jim.

(Very important note: I don't think that Allen can be quite as bored as me as I often see the shadow of his flailing lasso through the frosted window of his office. He's definitely having more fun in there than I'm having out here!)

Goodmorningamy!

"Goodmorningamy"

These were the words (which sounded like one long word) that I heard come out of Allen's mouth when he cheerily greeted me this morning.

Blimey! I thought that the unimaginable had happened while I had been away and he had somehow realised that my name was Amy.

"Motivation Kim, that's what I need" is what he said to me just now while flexing in the doorway to his office.

Looks like my ears were playing a cruel trick on me earlier.