Ian - the freak of nature
bastard colleagues - where to begin?
I've had all the usual mcjobs and a few others beside - potwash and commis chef when I was at school, moving on to bartender, forklift driver, bouncer, and then after leaving university slowly but surely moving into office jobs, and from there into IT where I find myself nowadays.

not so much a bastard as bloody unpleasant was the dirty get we ended up working with one summer in the nineties in a dairy in north manchester, employed as manual labour on the nightshift in a boiling hot factory - no one was leaving in the mornings smelling like roses, but this smelly f***er went *two months* without washing either himself or his clothes (the first shift of the week, you'd spend half an hour surreptitiously checking the stains on his clothes to see if they were the same as the week before - they invariably were.) The first ten minutes of every shift were usually a brisk argument with the foreman over who had to work with him, as the smell would make you retch.

The most outstanding bastard, however, has got to be a bloke - let's call him Ian. Ian worked for a large cable tv company in the late nineties and was, even the most charitable soul would have to admit after a few hours in his company, a complete bastard. I've never known anyone to be so universally disliked, even by people who can usually find something good to say about everybody. he was about four foot ten and looked like a cross between a weeble and harold bishop from neighbours, and claimed to be blind in one eye - which gave him the excuse for his speciality. now as anyone who's worked in a big call center knows, staff turnover is pretty high, so there was always a fresh supply of victims for him who weren't acquainted with his MO and so didnt know to stay well away from him. his trick was to sidle up behind any of the lady employees who caught his good eye (if you were blonde you'd definitely get the Ian treatment, but brunettes were by no means safe), 'accidentally' bump into them, have a quick grope of their funbags and then hurriedly apologise, claiming the poor girl concerned had been on his blind side and he hadnt seen them. His other favourite was standing in front of them while they were sat at their desk and a captive audience, playing pocket pool and not even trying to be subtle about it. he had no personality and was as dull as dishwater, but it still didn't dissuade him from trying to be your friend, when you just wanted him to stay as far away from you as possible.

all of which meant that Ian that was fairly universally disliked by *everyone* in that office. he was quite fond of getting up for a wander when he was supposed to be working and subjecting the women on the ground and second floors to his dubious charms as well. there would be a few people at the end of each shift all heading home the same way, and getting on the same bus to head back into manchester centre. About two or three times a year, you'd be lucky enough to be sat on the bus as it pulled out of the station and suddenly become aware of a frenzied tapping on the window - it would be Ian, getting to the station just *that* bit late and running alongside, trying to get the driver to stop, while everyone on the bus who knows him is sat there, pretending they havent seen him and laughing like hell when he gets left behind. On one memorable occasion the bus turns up about five minutes late (what are you going to do? it happens.) Everyone just accepts it and gets on - except for Ian. He wants to know where the driver's been and an explanation of why he's late. And, after about a minute of listening to this, the driver tells Ian to f*** off and get off the bus. and leaves him there, to everyone's great amusement.

the irritating c*** decides he's going to sit with us one sunday - and we soon notice that every time he gets up for one of his little wanders, he's leaving his pc unlocked. oh dear. the main work program we used had an option to recolour the text on the screen, so we're taking it in turns when he's gone to recolour the text black on a black background. He spent all day on the phone to IT and he still didnt twig it was us until the very end of the day, despite us making pointed suggestions to him that maybe he should either stop wandering off and do some f***ing work or lock his pc.

he'd get dragged down to HR fairly frequently and warned about his behaviour with the ladies in the office, but they'd back down every time because he'd play the disability card and threaten to go to the union - till it got to the point where HR just couldnt put up with the complaints any more and told him it might be in everyone's best interest for him to resign. the dirty, dirty bastard.

A few years later I was working as a financial advisor for a *very* large bank, and what do I see in a party of new starters being shown round the office but that same weeble like malformed profile - I honestly thought I was hallucinating at first, until I found out that with this bank it's almost impossible, at the very entry level, to *not* get a job with them unless you're a convicted axe murderer. And as he'd 'resigned' from the previous company, there was nothing on his record per se about his habits. it didnt take long for him to get up to his old tricks however (to the point where even the security staff knew about him) and as he was still in his trial period, they just told him not to bother coming back in one week. I pity the poor sods who've ended up with him as a co-worker though, wherever he is, the boggle eyed dirty twat.
(tjn whizzing on the electric fence of life, Sat 26 Jan 2008, 12:37, 3 replies)

for the love of god
If you make it long, use paragraphs
(kimini touches your shoulder gently on, Sun 27 Jan 2008, 14:52, closed)

sorry
did the bits where the sentences stopped halfway across the screen not clue you in to where the paragraphs are?

or do you really need things making that simple for you?
(tjn whizzing on the electric fence of life, Tue 29 Jan 2008, 18:22, closed)

Paragraphs.
You either have to indent the start of each paragraph, or put a blank line in.

As B3TA doesn't seem to like allowing indents, or even rows of spaces, blank lines are the way to go.
(Musuko, Wed 30 Jan 2008, 15:45, closed)