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iDay stuff fatigue

Oct 4th, 2011 by

version 19

Today some of us will be upgraded to the next level. Oh yes from 4 to 5, how exciting! I don’t really know why it is exciting, in reality I secretly fear that it will be a major non-event and I may even miss last year’s level 4. Ok some may not have worked out the hidden message in this err message. It is all about the iPhone and the new version of it’s iOS operating system. We are promised all manner of features and treats, but I fear we may have reached a tipping point with these events now, both online & in-store.

The thought of going to an Apple Store (soon to be re-branded as an “aStore“) to be greeted by cobalt blue t-shirted, happy-clapping, whooping employees congratulating me on just turning up, scares the deleted files out of me. I would rather take my chances with identical suited religious clones who want to preach to a bleary-eyed version of me on a Saturday morning. In fact I would sign up with their cult as I have more chance of escaping their grasp, than the super happy Appledroids.

A refreshing approach would be to actually announce that the new version was actually not really all that exciting and in fact rolling back to the glorious days of iOS version 1 is where the party is really at. They could even charge for this as people would be falling over themselves and their cables to follow this trend. Perhaps companies should start at version 20 and release versions in a descending numerical order. The aim been that upon reaching version 1 it is the code nirvana and your  life’s journey (well from a communications perspective) is complete. (Please note, at this time, we can’t assume Angry Birds will work with version 1 of this new operating system.)

For now I will line up supplies of snacks and fizzy drinks and wait eagerly for the Cupertino servers  to awaken and spew forth an update. Come October 5th I predict my phone will still work reasonably well and I will question why I even bothered.

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Acceptable Condiments

Sep 28th, 2011 by

paprikannaise

Last week in our newly opened 24-hour all-nite staff canteen, a strange event occurred. Beneath the banner of “You Eat Here, You Will Work Upstairs“, one new member of staff, Toby Farquhar, was paying for his evening meal of potato fries and potato croquettes, covered in potato mash. He asked the cashier if he could have some condiments, in particular some “mayonnaise”?! The cashier looked aghast at the request and quickly hit her panic alarm button to call for Security to apprehend this person. He was then detained for the remainder of the night, as an investigation was started into the incident. After the facts were established, he was then taken to see Dr. Grubber for an interview to get his side of the story.

There was only one possible set of mitigating circumstances that would have let he him off the hook and Dr. Grubber, soon determined that this was invalid by asking him if he was from Belgium. He wasn’t, so he was indeed guilty.

For those who are a bit perplexed we should explain company policy here. Of course condiments are permitted. If you want to use tomato ketchup, brown sauce, or indeed salad cream, all are equally permitted, even when mixed together and this is indeed made clear in the company book of rules. We don’t have some sort of anti-Belgium policy here, it is just we don’t ever permit the use of any condiment that is sub-standard to the 1970′s-1980′s champion that is salad cream. Indeed we have a whole department that is full of Belgium people (Belgiques) – the air-conditioning planning department on the 14th floor mezzanine. All are from Belgium-land and all are 100% Belgiumy, apart from Claude, who is half-french and is generally ignored and rightly so.

Salad cream was such an evocative product. Look at that piece of lettuce. It looks a bit..erm..bland. It needs some sort of p’zazz, something to lift it up. Imagine if you could enhance the flavour of this dull green leaf with some creamy sauce; a cream for a salad, a salad cream if you like?! A legend was born. In his defence, Toby Farquhar said that it wasn’t so much the creamy consistency of mayonnaise that attracted him to the product, but the addition of paprika in the flavouring that out-trumped the humble vinegary salad cream.

The industrial tribunal found Mr Farquhar guilty of knowingly causing offense within the corporate leisure environment and was duly sacked. He is currently enjoying a sabbatical and is writing a book called, ‘How to dress salads with paprika based salad cream’. If you are interested in publishing rights, he can be contacted at t.farquar@saladcreamy.com

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Squirrel Stuffing

Sep 23rd, 2011 by

squirrel stuffedAutumn heralds a change to us all, as the summer light ebbs away and…. hang on, what is this some crusty poetry corner for unwashed hippies? No it is not. Most of us have now returned from our summer holidays, apart from Jim Kerr from Facilities, who is still away and we have sacked in his absence. As part of a new government directive, we now have to acknowledge the autumnal season and pay more attention to it, as of the four seasons it is the least represented and some feel that is form of prejudice.

As a result everyone now is to change their wardrobe to reflect the tones of the local parks and forests. We insist on shades of chestnut browns, moss greens and slate greys. Men and women should also wear make-up to compliment their wardrobe choices. “Subtlety” been the keyword: we want sombre smokey eyes combined with warm skin tones. We don’t want you looking like a manky, rabid-ridden fox on his last forage.

The staff canteen will now be dusted down and re-opened. All staff must spend every lunch there consuming nuts and berries in preparation for the cold winter ahead. Hibernation facilities will be provided by Jim Kerr’s replacement in the form of cardboard boxes dumped the alley behind the building. Please do not wee on them as they are not piss-resistant.

If this proves to be a success and enough staff survive, we will make this a matter of course each year. Bet you can’t wait to see what we have lined up as winter draws in. All I will say is: snow, Eskimos and polar bear meat…

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Team Curry – Christmas 2011

Sep 2nd, 2011 by

Memo from the Benefits Office Social Committee 

Yes, it’s that time of year again – time to plan the Christmas curry! Firstly, we must apologise for the problems encountered with recent Christmas curries, these were due to circumstances beyond our control.

One of the main complaints from staff last year was the Indian menu, it was impossible to understand. We have escalated this to Management, and they have provided us with a menu for this year, which I’m sure you’ll all agree makes a lot more sense. The menu is attached.

 

Please confirm your choice of starter and main course. Unfortunately, there is no budget for dessert this year.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

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Spillage on Aisle 7

Aug 14th, 2011 by

spillage

Welcome to the future. This week we officially moved into the future. Oh you didn’t notice? Well when you drop a tin of soup on the floor in the supermarket next time, wait for the response. You may well be in some serious trouble that could involved flesh wounds and rocket launchers.

Here at B.O. HQ we have adopted similar measures under the new Office Rules and have informed all employees that they should be full of fear of their Human Resources Dept. I mean real real dread. I mean total scaredy cat stuff. If you get a communique from said department, along with requiring a new set of underwear, you should consider rewriting your last will and testament. We feel that tough love should translate into tough abuse of employees and while most people know their jobs are replaceable at any time; we prefer to convey that their roles are so insignificant that they can be removed and never replaced. This is the future and will mean that we can keep everyone under close supervision, so much so they will be too scared to leave and get a job in a better company.

Our R&D department under the supervision of Dr Fizzy de Frizzel are attempting to replace all employee roles with automatons. This is taking a bit longer to development as some of the robots are now demanding cigarette breaks and others are talking about maternity rights. They expect to resolve this soon with help from union representatives. Failure to do so will mean we will replace them with frightened humanoids.

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Traveling Without Moving

Jul 11th, 2011 by

 

jammed - jammy dodger

All aboard the train of chaos! Right about now, I should be sitting at home with a nice cup of tea. Instead I am waiting half an hour extra for an underground train that should have arrived ten minutes ago. This is the same metro transport system cities all over the world have, whereby trains arrive every couple of minutes. So much so, you don’t even notice the space of air between each passing train, they are that frequent. Here the rats and mice can have a small break and even hold mini rodent sports days, followed by a BBQ and karaoke afterwards, there’s that much free time between each arriving locomotive.

It seems that the further we advance into the future, the longer it takes to traverse the world in real-time. Whether it’s the time spent going to work, traveling on holidays, or going to meet with friends. There seems to be an awful lot more time-consuming stuff in-between point A and point B, that delays the journey. If we give this stuff a name, say ‘a pain the in arse‘ and plot a chart, you will see that over time, journeys are increasingly a pain in the arse.

Say you want to go on holiday. In the backward, Neanderthal days of the late 20th Century, you would go to a travel agent, arrange a flight somewhere, perhaps also a hotel. Job done. No sweating over: ‘Did I book-in online not before 25 hours before, but at least 24 hours before the fight?’, ‘Did I print off the electronic ticket receipt to confirm printing off an electronic ticket, boarding pass and receipt to confirm printing of boarding pass?’

The dystopian vision of authors and film makers is supposed to be coming to pass. The mass transit issues and migration patterns appear inevitable, but the way we have compromised the standards of traveling is bizarre and doesn’t fit in with the sleek images these visionary seers have, where everyone glides across the metropolis in silver metal tubes. We have the tubes, they are a kinda smudgy grey tinged colour, and maybe very late at night they secretly do glide across the city piloted by a highly evolved rodent population.

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Google for fatties

Jul 3rd, 2011 by

google plus size

Sorry am I a bit late? I know the party started, but I sortof been a bit preoccupied with other stuff like updating my status, “liking” stuff (even when I don’t really like it), and generally spending a considerable amount of my life reading other peoples’ status updates and things they “like”. The problem is Google has announced their social networking service and I want to join, but don’t want to be the only one, so am hoping all of my 647 friends on BookFace will join before me, so it’s not like I have turned up to the party unfashionably early.

I suppose it is like been back in the playground at school. I know it’s not popular to publish my interests as grave-robbing and pressing flowers, instead I have go with the masses and say that I enjoy excruciatingly bad talent shows on TV and ‘having a laff with my mates’. So here I stand (sit) on the precept of a new social network. I am a mouse-click away from signing over my life and a mouse-cluck away from discovering another avenue to blabber about me me me and my world.

If we spend a third of our life sleeping and perhaps a third working, then of the remaining third, snooping around on virtual social clubs must account for a fair amount of it. Oh what have I got to lose, I mean it’s not like Big Brother is watching me, or I am susceptible to some national mind control program… My current status is: Having a great time with my 647 mates just as the government want me to.

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Summer Games 2011

Jul 1st, 2011 by

Summer Games

It has recently been pointed out to us that we need to improve morale to increase productivity by 23%. Apparently the method of wiring a staff member’s chair to the electrical supply for a quick jolt of encouragement is not as effective (only 14%) and slightly illegal. To this end, we would like to announce The Benefits Office Games Of Further Fulfillment (BOGOFF)
All events are to be staged next Thursday in three sessions:
7:00-8:00 / 13:00-14:00 / 17:30-18:30

Most people would assume the games would entail running races, and games of football / cricket / rugby depending on how middle-class you are. To avoid any problems with the Ruperts & the Pippas we are going for a more modern approach using buzz-words like “urban” (read “on concrete”) and “street” (read “on concrete”). We have no idea what this entails so have created as Sports and Social team and asked anyone called Ruperts or Pippa to arrange the events. Rupert Farquar-Tennison sent us this update:

“Ok, so like my mate Jez and I are like trendy office workers and play chess with over-sized pieces. It’s like really cool and even though we don’t know how to play the game, you look really cool and important standing there thinking of the next move. I mean, some of the pieces do go forward, so I like to casually nudge them forward with my foot, as it makes me look very cool. Obviously, I only have 45 minutes for a game at lunchtime, so we never really finish a game, it’s more about people seeing you there.

Another sport we can play is croquet which is like snooker, but on grass. We like to wear cravats and straw hats, as it is makes us look more professional. Again none of my chums know how to play this game, but it’s more about standing around, so other people can see you. I hope one day my mummy and daddy will make a sand pit in the back garden so we can play boules there. I think that will be the next big urban trend.”

*Since writing this section, Rupert Farquar-Tennison was involved in a fatal electrocution accident on his office chair. The Summer Games 2011 will be held in his memory and in tribute to all his posh friends, who may also succumb to similar accidents.

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Too much muchness

Jun 30th, 2011 by

black light

After a fair amount of restructuring of the business involving highly expensive consultants, we are now about to implement some severe cost-cutting measures to pay for the previous expensive consultants’ lunches…

1. All staff are now requested to bring a fifty pence coin with them. This will be used to power the individual electric meters at each desk. If you want to save money, you can turn off the light overhead, but we do not permit staff to scribble on their laptop screens, because they have run out of juice.

2. We will be switching off air conditioning & heating, but big coats & beach clothing are not permitted, except on our annual “Hawaiian Beach Party” day in late December, when everyone is expected to wear grass skirts.

3. Smoking will however be permitted again at your desk & in some departments it is mandatory. The management team requested this and as part of the building juts out over a river, that eventually leads to the sea; this counts as international waters and therefore is not under the jurisdiction of the Eurozone.

Failure to comply with these rules will result in medival torture and perhaps possible termination of employment.

 

** Updated Corrections
There appear to have been several mistakes in the previous article. This is partly due to the fact we employ farmyard animals to write most of the company’s policies. The article should read as follows:

1. Staff are not expected to bring a fifty pence coin to work for the the electric metres, as the overhead pipework is been removed to make way for a new staff floor. Instead staff are expected to bring in gas bottle portable heaters.

2. The annual ‘Hawaiian Beach Party‘ is not been held this year in the middle of winter, as that would be plain silly. Instead we will host our winter Eskimo fancy dress extravaganza in the middle of July. Full traditional Eskimo costumes will be supplied. Anyone caught without suitable attire will be fed to Frida our friendly polar bear.

3. Apparently smoking is now illegal everywhere and held in similar regard as grand larceny and gun-running. However, our management board have decreed that they still wish to be able to smoke anytime, anywhere. To this end, we need to show a united company-wide level of loyalty, and so all staff are now expected to smoke constantly in the workplace and between mouthfuls of sandwich at lunchtime. Failure to comply will result in a interview with our new compliance officer, Frida the hungry polar bear.

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A Week in Reverse

Jun 28th, 2011 by

reversed

Hooray! It’s the start of the week!
What a week in the office of the official sponsor to providing benefits to the Olympic 2012 event.
Along with the prestige of such a title, we are to have a park bench named with a brass plate after us, plus a load of tickets to the stadium events, plus a bundle of cash in a brown paper bag.

Added to that our expansion plans to open a continental base: “L’offiçé benéfiçíal” means that we have now decided to have a grown-up, registered address, but we promise the same poor level of prose and laziness from all team members. If there was an Olympic event in inefficiency and task-swerving, our office would be serious contenders for the final, alongside an island in the South Pacific, whose inhabitants start the day by  going back to sleep. They have very little food, because by the time they get up, wash, dress, and leave their homes; the shops have closed. No one really knows if the shops actually open, as the owner usually wake up in the late afternoon and then decide that there’s no point in opening that day.

In common with many online services, we are now considering a three-tier level of blog experience:
Free, VIP members & Budget blog options:
The free version is the same as before where not a lot gets done.
The VIP members version, provides you with an email update  every 7 days about new articles. But here’s the clever bit: even if we don’t write a new piece, you still get an email telling you of no update to the site. This is designed to make the customer feel important & happy.
A third “budget” blog option is also been considered where you are updated each day with one new letter of the new post. Today’s new letter is ‘X’.

 

 

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