» The most childish thing you've done as an adult

I am the very personification of juvenile
Inexplicably, I find the word/name 'wang' hilarious.

It's been an affliction of mine for a number of years but, of late, has grown worse.
I've gone from sniggering under my breath and having to suppress an inane grin, to (when it caught off-guard) having full-on, drop to my knees, choking for breath laughing attacks where I bray away for a couple of minutes at a time.

'Boobies' tends to elicit a similar, if less-extreme reaction.

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To preface what I'm about to say next, where I work is quite near to a high school and at times I end up having to get a train to work which then requires me to navigate my way through/round the massing hordes of, ahem, 'eager young minds' just before school starts.
Furthermore, as I'm not a morning person, I tend to sleep as late as I can, shower and leave for work, choosing to put off such niceties as breakfast until I reach my place of employment, so I quite often end up taking something with me to work to have for breakfast.

My breakfast of choice is Coco Pops.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I semi-regularly board the train to work and march up past hundreds of teenagers with a box of Coco Pops under one arm.
The looks on the faces of the young scrotes* as I wonder past would lead me to believe that I resemble a day release patient from the local home for the clinically bewildered.

But screw 'em - I get to have my Coco Pops and the chocolaty milk that goes hand-in-hand with them.

(* as an aside, myself an my colleagues have been trying to invent a collective noun for 'scrotes' to describe a gathering of 12-15 year olds - so far the best suggestion seems to have been 'an ASBO of scrotes' but any further suggestions would be appreciated)

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As far back as I can remember, I have named every muffin I have ever eaten (not a euphemism).
They were all called Frank.



I'm sure there's more of my behaviour that but I can't seem to think of any of it just now.

Mandatory length gag: about a 15 minutes from the station to work, past the school.
(Sun 20th Sep 2009, 0:16, More)

» Sexual fetishes

A quick question
As has been touched upon by a few of our, er, esteemed colleagues, there seem to be a number of women who have something of a thing for a man in a suit.
Now I suspect that what they mean is they have a thing for an attractive man in a suit but that's not what I'm curious about, so apologies for my digressing.

What I'm wondering about is whether the whole smartly-dressed thing covers kilts as well.
(Sun 25th Oct 2009, 23:15, More)

» Call Centres

TalkTalk and Roger fucking McGough - now with example wankstain poem!
I've had my fair share of call centre-related run-ins, as the unfortunate person at either end of the phone.


I've had to cold call people to try and get them to make a charity donation - starting at 9am on weekends no less, a genius strategy(!)

I dodged a bullet and ended up not working for Sky at one of their call centres, mostly because it took them until 6 months after I aced the interview process to finally ring up to offer me a start date.

I've spent hours at a time on hold with card authorisation companies whilst working for a bank, listening to the same 60 second clip of U2 that, to this very day, causes me to wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

And of course I've had to pit my wits against a steady stream of young fellows with names such as Sebastian and Alexander who, despite their reasonably-plummy sounding names, have an inexplicably strong Delhi accent along with a questionable grasp of the Queen's English.



However, despite this already burgeoning litany of shame, there is one thing about call centres that stands out above all other as being particularly soul-destroying and that is having to call TalkTalk.
Not only can you spend upwards of 90 minutes on hold on a bad day but the had the genius idea of replacing their hold music with poetry. Not just any poetry mind, but the primary school stylings of Roger McGough no less.

Now I cannot comment on the experiences of the Guarbian's journalistic staff but having spent in excess of an hour listening to the same collection of literary 'droppings' on a loop, I can tell you dear reader that the only thing more likely to inspire bloodlust than having to listen to the cruel and unusual, 'it's not poetry unless it rhymes' style of prose for interminable lengths of time is the knowledge that the smug, talentless twat whose voice you are listening to a recording of almost certainly earned more for this than you yourself are likely to do in at least a couple of years.

In case you doubt how bad his work is, this is just one of the 'gems' you'll encounter when waiting for some guy in Bangladesh or wherever to tell you to try unplugging your router and plugging it in again.

My only hope is that Karma has my back and that Mr McGough is a TalkTalk customer...




I suppose I'm due a length gag now.
All the way round at least 6 times, if you believe what you read in the papers.
(Thu 3rd Sep 2009, 21:31, More)

» Mobile phone disasters

Nobody's life has been wrecked...
...but this might help one or two people escape from their own mobile disasters.

Orange (UK) have recently been fiddling with some of their out-of-bundle charges for contract customers and, in their defence, pretty much all the changes have been them lowering charges (which in this day and age is something of a miracle).
However, they did raise one charge and that is grounds for most of their contract customers (ie anyone affected by these changes who signed up prior to June of this year) to cancel their existing contract, with no penalty charge, taking both their phone and number with them.

I know this probably sounds like a scam or spam or whatever but I can attest first-hand to it's effectiveness (because like no scams have ever used a line like that(!)) - five months into a 2 year deal and I've managed to escape with a free phone and a free PS3!

Details on how to play the system can be found here, along with a troubleshooting guide telling you how to deal with most of the possible lines Orange will try to feed you to stop you from leaving.
Hopefully one or two of you will find this useful.
(Mon 3rd Aug 2009, 23:06, More)

» Complaining

Sadly not my own work...
I remember this being referred to as the 'Times letter of the year' for 2007 (if memory serves) in one of those e-mails that does the rounds - though whether or not anyone working at or for The Times has ever clapped eyes on it is another matter entirely.

The story goes that this was a letter sent into a bank by an elderly lady who is/was a customer of theirs (supposedly 98 years old) and the manager or someone else working in the branch was so taken with it that they removed any personal/identifying information and sent it in.

Anyway, whether it was real or not it's definitely worth a read but since it's a little on the long side, I think I shall leave it in the replies...
(Thu 9th Sep 2010, 0:29, More)