» Bastard Colleagues

Does it still count if you saw the guy for less than an hour?
Picture the scene, if you can:
A young BTBB turns up at a shiny building on an industrial estate- Vectura Labs, if anyone knows it.
He presses the button to be let in, and tells the people he's here to work for an agency. A couple of minutes later, a lovely man named Andy comes, and explains they were meant to be having a girl, not BTBB. 'Should I try and grow breasts and a vagina?' quips BTBB; 'oh, no' titters Andy.
BTBB is given a guided tour, given his own shiny safety goggles and lab coat, and told to report for work, after being told 'you'll be here for a week, for definite'.
during the day, BTBB is as happy as a turd in shite, pushin his little trolley round, collecting things to wash, putting things back, washing things. He even gets complimented that he's picked things up very well! BTBB is One Happy Boy.
Andy comes to see him off at the end of the day, shakes his hand, smiles, tells BTBB how well he's done, etc, etc ,etc.

Next day, BTBB doesn't feel too well; 'I don't think I can go in' he says to his father. 'nonsense' says his father 'you'll be fine, lad', and off they drive.

BTBB is hardly there for half an hour before hes hauled out of the middle of a VERY BUSY LAB, a squaky clean flask still in his hands, to be told he's no longer required, and will be paid for the day.
Teary-eyed, BTBB makes his way forlornly out of the lab, waving bye-bye to everyone, and barely makes it into the car park before he bursts into tears.

On the way home, he calls the agency, who tell him 'oh, yes, we were told yesterday morning you wouldn't be needed for the rest of the week. Apparently your work wasn't very good, and you made far too many mistakes'.

BTBB was not happy, as you can imagine. He'd been lied to more than once, on this, his very first job.

The End.

No apologies for length- this is my first proper in-depth reply to one of these.

P.s.: Click 'I like this' if you were moved by this tale of heartbreak, sorrow, and betrayal.

P.P.S: If, say, ten people click 'I like this', i'll tell the story of Bryce the Scheiss from my other job.
(Mon 28th Jan 2008, 3:17, More)

» Corporate Idiocy

Not sure if relevant, but here goes anyway.
I've been cursed (maybe blessed, not sure), with a fairly light voice; it's unmistakeably male, most of the time, but when I answer the phone, I tend to go into some sort of Hyacinth Bucket-style thing, and can end up sounding disturbingly like my sister might, if I had one. This is important.

Anyway, when I was living at home, and unemployed, I'd quite often be the only one in the house during the day, so I'd answer the phone every time it rang. Usually it'd be a relative or friend wanting to chat, but every so often, it'd be someone from some telesales company somewhere.
Every time it was, without fail, they'd assume I was a woman- or, to be precise, a girl. Sometimes, by the way they'd talk, they'd think I was at least legal, other times they'd talk to me like I was some obviously-rebellious lass skiving off school.
Usually I'd be ever-so-polite, and courteous, and tell them my parents would be home later, and they could call back later, thankyouverymuch. Sometimes, if I was particularly annoyed, I'd tell them in my gruffest (not very, really) voice that I was, in fact, the younger of the Misters of the household.

Once in a blue moon, I'd have some fun.

This particular day, for one reason or another, I was in a foul mood. The phone rang, I answered, and immediately this guy said 'hello, darling. Are you the lady of the house?'.
I said that yes, I was.
what proceeded was about fifteen minutes of him half-telling me about his wunderproduct, and half-flirting. Badly.
I played along with it, until, just as he said 'alright, thanks for listening' or something like that, I told him my name was Dave, and that he really needed to work on his pickup lines.
(Thu 23rd Feb 2012, 13:23, More)

» Anonymous

My tale of hijinks and anonymity.
Jesus, that's a hard word to spell- anonymity.

A long ,long time ago, around eighteen months or so, I found myself with nothing to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. I ended up on the internet a lot more than I should have, and started frequenting message boards, chat rooms, that sort of thing. I talked to lots of people, and had many good times, as you do. After a while, though, I discovered I was growing bored with the mundane talking, with the fact I had to be me on these sites, so I decided to do something about it.
At first, I did the staple of any bored internet user- I created a seperate identity for myself. I made myself older, or younger. I even, on a couple of places, made myself a girl- and a lesbian, too, just to make sure I had that extra bit of diversity. Eventually, this too became stale and boring.
So, I looked for new ways to amuse myself, and discovered that, on certain sites, l and I look exactly the same (small 'l', big 'i'), and set about using usernames- pre-existing usernames- of people who had those letters in. That's where it became fun- I was assuming identities of people who were already known, who already had reputations. Not only was I becoming someone else, I was becoming someone else who already existed. Each came with new friends, enemies, lovers. Soon I spent more time as other people, and less time as myself.
Eventually, though, I realised I was enjoying being other people more than I wanted to be me, and I stopped, just in time to stop myself going completely insane.
I realise this isn't a funny story, and perhaps not even relevant, but I just wanted to share it.
Anonymity, the idea that you can be anyone you want to be, is intoxicating, and powerful, and very dangerous. I almost lost myself to it, and it was only thanks to some very good friends that I didn't.

EDIT (does it count as an edit if I'm altering this before anyone's read it?)
Anyway, I also had- and still have- problems with creating identities on instant messengers. In fact, I've got a couple I've worked on so much, I could reel off their entire backstory, and talk about them like they're real people. I've gone so far as to research minute details about medical conditions, about supposed places they've been, people they've known, things they've done. I've created social networking sites, I've set up blogs, I've done all kinds of things, and all because I like the idea of escaping and being someone else.
One identity I had, I used for two years straight with a girl; she fell in love with the guy I was meant to be, and she dated 'me', and we were on the verge of being engaged(she asked 'me'), when I told her we couldn't do it. I never told her the truth, instead coming up with some reason why it would never work; better to hurt her with a lie than destroy her with the truth.
I can't help myself with these things, although I wish I could; I feel it's some sort of mental condition, and I would do anything, anything at all, to stop, but i'm addicted.
So, if you see anything on a Lucifer Deveaux, a Roxbury Kendrick, a Raphael Douquet, or a Liliana Newbury, they could possibly be me.

Thanks for letting me share.

Oh, and on the off chance she happens to be reading: Katie Lettering, I'm sorry.
(Tue 19th Jan 2010, 13:08, More)

» Tactless

The Halloween Party From Hell
When I was a little lad, I had a Best Friend, whose name was Elaine. Her mum and my mum were friends, so we spent a lot of time over there; one year, it was decided that Elaine and I would have a Halloween party, and to save it from being some weird two-person party, we'd invite along her friend Hannah, who was moving to Canada soon- this is an important point, and a very sore point for her at that time.

So there we are, having our party of three, doing all kinds of games, and talking about whatever it is kids do at that age. Eventually, we had dinner, with the three of us sat at this massive table, awkwardly eating our food. We were talking about something or other- some kind of food or something- and I just randomly came out with 'do they even have that in Canada?'

Silence fell like a fat man on a patch of black ice.

Next thing I know, two things happened at the same time:
-Elaine leaned over the table and slapped me harder than anyone has ever slapped me.
-Hannah began to cry. Like really cry. Like 'threw up from tears' cry.

So yeah, I made a girl cry because I said something without thinking.

Oh, also, not sure if this counts, but I apparently once turned to my mum in the middle of a supermarket and said 'mum, why do you have saggy tits?'. I say apparently, because I genuinely don't remember doing it.

I'm sure I'll have more of these, now I think about it, because I'm the sort of berk who always mentions something if someone tells me not to.

Oh! I just remembered one from uni, though it wasn't me who said this, but my lecturer:
We had an assignment where we had to record someone who had an accent and/or style of speech that was different to those in the area. I hung around the lecture to ask the lecturer something, and waited patiently while a girl talked to him. She told him she might take a while to get the assignment done because her grandad was going into hospital to have an operation, and there was a chance he wouldn't make it, and she needed to go to Yorkshire to be with him. 'Yorkshire?', he said, as his eyes lit up, 'that's great. Why not use him? You can have a before and after conversation with him. Unless there isn't an after, in which case you'll just have to use someone else'.
(Mon 7th Nov 2011, 22:18, More)

» Bastard Colleagues

Bryce the Scheiss
Okay, so he wasn't really a scheiss, being French and not German, but merde doesn't rhyme..

Anyway, we once again find a young BTBB doing agency work, this time for a company making catering trollies for schools and hospitals. BTBB is told this work is for a month, and it seems like a bit of a doss.

All he has to do is test these things for bugs. That involves pressing a few buttons on a menu, and looking for flickering- that takes a grand total of about a minute, every quarter of an hour or so. Bearing in mind these things take at least 45mins per cycle, that doesn't leave BTBB with much to do for a day that lasts between around half eight and four every day.

So he decides to entertain himself; doodling in a pad, reading a book, generally making himself look busy whilst he isn't; and the two guys who are his immediate bosses- M and S- are fine with it. They chat to him, ask him what he's reading ask him to draw doodles for him, so on and so forth, and everything is great and fine.

Except for Bryce.

Bryce is the section boss, sent over from the French parent company, and..in a way, he's a nice guy. Doesn't seem too bad at first, if a little quiet and businesslike.

Anyway, one day, BTBB turns up for work, and M, who gives BTBB his trollies to test, isn't there. So BTBB pulls out the manual to read, and takes a little break; which involves standing up and wandering around idly.

And in comes Bryce, flashes a glance at BTBB, and asks him while he sn't working. A conversation(with a little of 'I can't work if I don't have anything to do' 'you work if we pay you to work' thrown in for good measure) ensues, and it ensues Mr French guy isn't happy with BTBB, who's done nothing wrong.

Later that day, M and B are in the office next to where BTBB is working, and there's raised voices- and BTBB hears his voice mentioned.

The next day, BTBB turns up, works for an hour or so, and is then told his contract will be terminated that day- after only a week of work.

----
Technically, this is probably just sour grapes on my part, but it still seems so petty. I wasn't doing anything wrong, and yet they still decided to get rid of me.

I won't apologise for length; the trollies were only about three, maybe four feet long.

And I'm not gonna ask people to click 'I like this' or anything.
Nuh-uh.
no way.
No way, Jose.
No sirree ma'am.
(Mon 28th Jan 2008, 14:03, More)