Two For The Price Of One
Apologies in advance, this story sounds like utter bullshit but I swear on my life its completely true. I used to have a drop dead gorgeous friend called Jo (that's not the unbelievable part btw) who landed on her feet with her first job. She worked in a little office with three other staff and a manager who was rumoured to be a forty year old (plus) virgin. He certainly seemed so, always flustered around the beautiful Jo, barely able to string sentences together and with an ever-present leer, usually aimed at her legs. Jo quickly found out she could use this to her advantage. The first mention of 'wimmin troubles' and he would go bright red and immediately give her the day off. She was sorted.

It got a little out of control one fine sunny day when rather than go to work she took off on a pub crawl round the town. Feeling a little guilty (and more than a little drunk) she rang the office sometime over the afternoon and, getting a little carried away, tearfully informed the boss that she'd found out she was pregnant and just couldn't face work that day. The boss muttered a stammered apology, wished her well and told her to take some time off.

So she did. Two whole weeks, in fact.

Why two weeks? Well she was going on holiday with her boyfriend after the two weeks were up so now she had time to go shopping beforehand. The fact that she hadn't put leave in at work for the two weeks of her holiday didn't bother Jo at all. After all, she was about to get the worst 'morning sickness' ever. So just before she left for her holiday Jo phoned up to inform them of the new symptom of her phantom pregnancy. There was only one slight problem, the boss was off and his replacement was the atypical hard nosed bitch second in command. Jo was taken aback, expecting an easy ride and instead getting a rollicking from this woman over taking advantage of the poor boss. After five minutes of a rant about repect and equality Jo burst into extremely convincing tears. The stand-in boss faltered and asked what was wrong. "I lost the baby." Jo managed between sobs. Cue one very apologetic lady and, again, a 'take a couple of weeks off' holiday.

So, without a tinge of guilt, Jo had her two weeks in the sun and came back to the realisation that she just couldn't be bothered to go back to work. So what did she do? Quick phone call to the boss (not the hard-nosed bitch, thankfully) and the use of the classic line "It turned out to be twins......and I just lost the other one." quickly followed by more tears and another two weeks off.

She never did tell me how her 'spontaneous suntans can be an odd symptom of miscarriage' excuse went down. She runs the place now.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Fri 9 Jun 2006, 11:23, Reply)