The female 'Gareth', as requested
OK, having told about the female David Brent, here's the female Gareth. Who wasn't called Gareth. Let's call her Umber, for want of a near enough name.

Umber was best described as 'plain'. Pinched face, small eyes, round-ish body on skinny legs. Nothing to write home about, but similarly not terrifying to look at. Just plain. Her major passion in life was her kit car - but I can't remember what sort it was. Suffice to say it was as peculiar looking as her. She was chair of the owners club, or something like that, and could bore for England on the things.

Umber had a boyfriend, who was a similarly odd-looking bloke. But they were having sex. We knew this, because she told us. Anecdotes about romping in hotel rooms, use of sex toys, the perils of baby-oil soaked hair, all of that. The joys of these revelations were damped a little by imagining these two strange-looking types at it. Not nice.

That doesn't make her a bastard colleague, mind you.

The fact that she turned into a patronising and emotionally unstable idiot who adopted a fake music-hall-esque 'Northern' accent when saying 'Hello' or imparting bad news doesn't, either.

Her screaming fit in the office ending with laying into (physically) another member of the team doesn't make it, too.

Her persistent and nauseating brown-nosing doesn't manage it either. (Her and the aforementioned David Brent equivalent had pet names for each other, which they'd use all the time - WTF?)

No, it was when the boyfriend unexpectedly came to town that Umber showed how good she was with people. Rather than ring around in search of a hotel room for shagging, she delegated the task to one of the other staff in the department. The Director had suggested it, apparently.

While it was an insight into how junior staff were seen by the Brent-like Director, it was a job I wouldn't have wished on anyone. Of course, the room found wasn't as good as she'd hoped for, but 'at least we put the bed to lots of use' - or so she delighted in telling us the next day.

Eww. Not something to think about over the morning coffee.
(uncle whippity, Mon 28 Jan 2008, 17:25, Reply)