Paperjam

Everyone you work with is a cock - Part 1

Rant // Jim // 9th October 2007

Everyone? Yes. Absolutely everyone, of every career path, of every vocation - anyone drawing a wage is in one way or other an absolute cock.

Allow me to begin to explain why, hmmm where to start? How about one we can all agree on...

The PR Department

A refuge for people who are so poor at journalism that they can’t even hold down a job writing stories about slightly perturbed pensioners and escaped pets for the local advertising rag. This, however, doesn’t stop them all thinking that they are some kind of latter-day Hemmingway - but with a devastating flair for puns and a deep appreciation of how often to use exclamation marks.

Despite what they think, no-one outside your company gives a flying fuck whatever it is that goes on in there all day. So bereft of any chance of dealing on a professional level with actual newspapers or journalists these feckless souls will spend a large amount of their time creating internal news stories, usually for some kind of staff newsletter. The style and content of these literary efforts have the medicated blandness you would normally associate with propaganda from the most rudimentary yet brutal totalitarian regimes. For example:

Adrian Goes Nuts and Makes A Big Splash!

There was plenty of interest in the finance office last month when junior accounts payable clerk, Adrian Ogilvy, completed a sponsored swim in aid of a local squirrel sanctuary. Adrian (27) completed a magnificent thirteen and a half lengths of the nearby municipal pool, a feat that was described as “a reasonable effort” by duty lifeguard and swimming expert Ray Potshaw (43).

Speaking to us afterwards Adrian revealed, “It was tough going but I just kept thinking about the squirrels and I was able to battle through the pain. I’ve never done more than nine lengths before and I’m totally puffed out! I’m so tired I may need to hibernate!”

Mrs Cheryl Weathership (54), proprietor of Grey Tails Squirrel Reserve was delighted to receive a cheque for £29.62 that will “go towards some twine and possibly some nuts”. She was also quick to pay tribute to her aquatic benefactor “I can safely say that I have never met anyone quite like Adrian,” she gushed, “Sometimes he just stands there watching the squirrels for hours, even in the rain.” Her furry friends must certainly think that Adrian is tree-mendous!!

Human Resources

HR is seemingly a closed shop for eternally pregnant women to sit around gossiping about all of the most sensitive details in the personnel files (“ooh, you’ll never guess who had a non-descended testicle!”) while eating large amounts of cake. Sometimes this all gets a bit much and they have to take a break and relax by spending hours talking about soap operas while drinking hot chocolate out of stupidly oversize mugs. There is no one working in HR in the UK who is not a member of weight-watchers.

If you ever actually need anything from them they turn into overly officious hags who make you fill in about a hundred forms if you dare to do something as outrageous as change your address, or enquire as to why you haven’t been paid for three months.

If you ever get disciplined, someone from HR will manoeuvre her corpulent pregnant bulk into an ill-fitting power suit, put on too much make-up and sit in on the bollocking. Her purpose in the meeting is to look smug and superior, while taking detailed notes so that she can recount to the girls in the office exactly who it was that you told to “fuck right off, you total nonce” - and exactly how much trouble you got in for it.

Temps

There are several types of temps:
The “Wet-Dream Imbecile” Temp: An incredibly nubile or tremendously studsome specimen somewhere in their early twenties. The magnitude of their trouser-tenting or gusset-dampening desirability will only be matched by their absolute inability to do anything remotely useful what so ever. Destined to alienate everyone of the same sex immediately and get all their work done for them by the other side. Will eventually leave to go travelling with some other ridiculously gorgeous but spirit-crushingly vacuous idiot.

The “Post-Graduate Dullard” Temp: Likely to look a bit like Mr Bean and exude all the charisma of a traffic bollard. Will never, ever leave even if you stop paying them.

The “Total Fucking Liar” Temp: The CV looked to good to be true and it turns out that it was. Congratulations, you have got a total fucking liar on the payroll for as long as it takes to get rid of them. It should only be a couple of days, so get them to make you endless cups of coffee to keep you awake while you end up doing all the work that they were supposed to.

The “Australian That You Want To Kill” Temp: Apparently Australia is the best fuckin’ place in the entire fuckin’ world. The sports are better, the beer is better, the girls are better, the weather is better and so on. All of which begs the question: Why leave this sun kissed, non-stop party, utopia to come and be a poorly paid data-entry clerk in a faceless corporate basement in London. Is it really just so you can take the piss about the cricket?

The “I’m Too Good To Be A Temp” Temp: They got third in Business Studies from a university so marginal that you haven’t even heard of the county that it is in. They are still living at home with their parents, or more likely have been “so totally kicked out” with a fifty grand down payment on the sort of flat that you will never, ever afford. Almost entirely useless, they will end up doing spreadsheets, pissing about in Powerpoint and endlessly clogging up the photocopier. All the while banging on loudly on their mobile about how they are going to be a DJ or a fashion designer and how everyone that works here is "such a loser" and how "they haven’t even got decent cars" – eventually they will fuck off and get a job as a management trainee in HMV or New Look.

Call centre operatives

If you are lucky enough to work somewhere that has a call centre (essentially a large air-conditioned slave galley) then you will have run into these people, probably in the corridor, maybe on the steps outside the office, certainly in the canteen, hanging around vending machines in the smoking room and lurking near the newsagents across the road – basically anywhere but in the call centre answering the fucking phone.

The irony is that whenever you see one of them, steadfastly avoiding whatever it actually is that they get paid for doing, they are on a mobile phone moaning about how awful their job is.

Generally not the healthiest looking bunch in the world, call centre operators are blessed with incredible manual dexterity and the visual acuity of a hawk, a by-product of playing Tetris for five hours at a time, while being able to press ALT and TAB in a fraction of a nanosecond if any hint of management approaches.
Still, if your entire working life was governed by a flashing board and a contract that stipulated to the nearest second how long you are allowed to take to have a shit, you’d probably skive off too.