Course We Do! It's Not All Work, Work, Work!

I got made redundant a few years ago. Not a very funny opener I grant you, but then it wasn't. At the time it was the catalyst for everything that could have gone wrong in my life to go wrong. However, I like to think I'm well on the way to seeing it as the perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me. I'm now a mature-student training towards my goal of becoming a primary school teacher.

I certainly don't miss being in an office, with all the nauseating corporate twatspeak. I remember one time this middle-manager (looked liked Neneh's Cherry's fat half-sister) swanning out of her office and over to the lovely lady opposite me (looked like the perfect humanisation of Marge Simpson) and asking her "Have you got capacity?". Translating from twit to English, she meant "have you got a minute?" or "are you free?". What sort of cunt chooses to say that now? Why has that superceded normal English? Imagine if they remade 'Are You Being Served?' now - "Do you have capacity Mr Humphreys?”. “I have capacity!”.

I also don't miss all the gobshite I used to overhear. I remember this woman telling her friend that her daughter had been ill with earache. “Ooh, that’s the worst thing they can have isn’t it,” her friend replied. No it isn’t. I’d have thought that the worst thing a child could have was, I dunno, a severed head? Another time I heard the same two women banging on about being ill and one of them said “Ooh, I was off last week, with one of those head colds”…. A cold. In your head. As opposed to where exactly? “Sorry, can’t come into work today boss, yeah, got one of those arse colds”.

I certainly never did what I read about in some lad’s mag' (it wasn't mine I might add). This article claimed that in a survey, 83% of men admit to masturbating whilst at work. That sounds a bit too high for my liking to be honest. I suppose it depends on what your job is. I mean, a bus driver probably couldn’t and a teacher… definitely shouldn’t. I reckon it’s chefs that bump that figure up a quite a bit. I can certainly imagine them adding their own sauce to various dishes. Although if that's correct then I'm guessing this survey was done before the death of Michael Winner.

These surveys though, who do they ask? I’ve never been asked or met anyone who’s taken part in one. It’s always a sample of about 10,000 people. I reckon it’s the same people each time. Live in their own little town in the West Country somewhere. That’s why none of us ever get asked. What about the bloke doing the survey? Presumably he’s in marketing or something and that’s his work. So did he ask himself? I’d hope he answered ‘no’, be a bit off putting wouldn’t it, you’re trying to think about your answer and he keeps asking you to hold his clipboard. God help any blokes whose work involves using the internet!

I'm glad to be out of there really. I wasn't put on this earth to be a pen-pushing, spreadsheet-scanning, brown-nosing office monkey. Oh and I don't miss having to work during school holidays either!