“HAVE CYCLISTS INFECTED HOUSE PRICES WITH AIDS?”

My working day

I come in.

I copy a file and send it to China – this takes 5 to 6 minutes.

Then I check facebook.

Then I check the BBC web site.

Then I check facebook again.

Then I get a cup of coffee. And try hard not to look at facebook. [Seriously why am I on facebook … please don’t answer that, I already know it’s because I am losing my grip on reality and instead prefer embellished sound bites of needy people who aren’t actually part of my organic world]

Sometimes I get to reply to an email or listen in to a telco or copy a graph into a report.

Then something awful happens. I get bored, and I end up reading the daily mail web pages. The daily mail keep its finger on the pulse of Britain by often inaccurately reporting on the gritty social affairs of celebrity weight loss, reality television couplings, the royal family and their fashion choices. It interjects sporadically with attention grabbing headlines such as “Mama Mia! Most popular pizza in Italy is actually manufactured in Lancashire... by a German company” [HOLY SHIT this changes everything!] and “Hidden heart risk for cocaine addicts even if they feel perfectly healthy” [Next they will be telling us that smoking causes cancer or something such crackpot idea].

I found this  daily mail headline generator and generated the following attention grabbing headline  I knew it was the cyclists fault. Bloody tree huggers.

“HAVE CYCLISTS INFECTED HOUSE PRICES WITH AIDS?” ….

So back to my working day.

My ex boss has even less of a reason to exist here at work. So she keeps herself busy by spying and snouting on me and her old team and trying not to get caught browsing the internet.

She also uses English last seen in colonial pre war film. If I ring in sick she emails my entire floor with ‘Lilly has taken ill’. I wish sometimes she would expand on this single line and add ‘she has an attack of the vapors’. In confidence sometime ago I was airing a particularly grievous opinion. Her response was ‘As women we are prone to outbursts and emotion and hysteria and you must learn to act more like a man’ [Hello … Hello … It’s Emily Pankhurst on the phone for you from the suffragettes asking WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING???]. My favorite is when she asks me ‘to do the needful’. I fight the urge to go and wee in a corner.

Back on topic.

So I sit at my desk. Discretely watching 4OD or i-player. I can see how retched this is. Pointless even. I have been exceptionally outspoken about this situation and those who manage me know I am doing literally nothing. There is the knowing nod that work is around the corner but in the meantime I’m attempting to fly beneath the radar

OOOoo facebook – I haven’t checked that in 40 minutes. Someone may have had their hair cut. Or be making a sweeping statement about how all immigrants should go home and stop living in 6 bedroomed houses driving jags and draining the NHS.

It’s really rather like being in the 6^th form common room on study leave really. Only I’m 35, with stretch marks and fewer spots and a massive mortgage.

4pm … I’m out of here.