Clerical Terror
Nervous though I may be about my new hospital gig, I'm not that sorry to be bidding adieu to office life and the existential head-scratching it provokes in me; 'business' - the name for that which sheaths our fangs. Yesterday The Da and Bro 2 met up with the Boys, the current sharp-creased dream team, to hatch their latest money-generating scheme. Much subtle competition and low chuckling. They see themselves, I think, as masters of their destiny, and to an extent may be. Perhaps they regard a functionary like me with pity or scorn or incomprehension. They have both a talent and a drive for making money (well, they don't all have the talent - some come from money, but lose it) and our society allows people with these characteristics to believe they are our leaders, our inspiration, fuel for the will of the world...But I'm bailing out. I lack these drives and found out years ago that the work that gives me a buzz involves very different things.
And i seem to have an anti-talent for embroiling myself in stupid situations in the office universe. To wit, I have an ongoing problem with BT, who changed some billing details for mystic reasons revealed only to initiates. I met a salesman and later an engineer face-to-face some weeks ago but that was the last human contact in the traditional manner this case has involved. The problematic change was made by some faceless other at the salesman's office, my initial enquiry to the national office was bounced back to the salesman's colleagues and first a man and then a woman both possessed of an inexact but hypnotically accented English began to unpick the moorings of my sanity down faintly crackling long-distance lines. The details are not worth going into; it's enough to say i was left puzzled and exasperated, not by my far-flung interlocutors themselves, but by the implacable system, or SYSTEM, of which they (and I, as customer) are but components, lacking any will of our own, or any power to exercise it.
So - the last time the lady called looking for me, I couldn't face going round and round again. I adopted a rather stupid voice, a weak, whiny tone not unlike one Chris Morris sometimes lapsed into for vox pops on The Day Today and Brass Eye, in which I claimed unclef was unavailable. This went well until the lady caught me unawares and asked my name. From nowhere, the words 'Thomas Hardy' sprang to my lips. 'Thank-you, Thomas', she said warmly.
Everyone records phone conversations now and I fear this spur-of-the-moment imposture will come back to haunt me. The plan is now to answer the next call from the BT lady in gruff Yorkshire tones, claiming the name George Eliot. I may exhaust the roll of famous 19th Century novelists before I get the hell out of here and start at the hospital.
And i seem to have an anti-talent for embroiling myself in stupid situations in the office universe. To wit, I have an ongoing problem with BT, who changed some billing details for mystic reasons revealed only to initiates. I met a salesman and later an engineer face-to-face some weeks ago but that was the last human contact in the traditional manner this case has involved. The problematic change was made by some faceless other at the salesman's office, my initial enquiry to the national office was bounced back to the salesman's colleagues and first a man and then a woman both possessed of an inexact but hypnotically accented English began to unpick the moorings of my sanity down faintly crackling long-distance lines. The details are not worth going into; it's enough to say i was left puzzled and exasperated, not by my far-flung interlocutors themselves, but by the implacable system, or SYSTEM, of which they (and I, as customer) are but components, lacking any will of our own, or any power to exercise it.
So - the last time the lady called looking for me, I couldn't face going round and round again. I adopted a rather stupid voice, a weak, whiny tone not unlike one Chris Morris sometimes lapsed into for vox pops on The Day Today and Brass Eye, in which I claimed unclef was unavailable. This went well until the lady caught me unawares and asked my name. From nowhere, the words 'Thomas Hardy' sprang to my lips. 'Thank-you, Thomas', she said warmly.
Everyone records phone conversations now and I fear this spur-of-the-moment imposture will come back to haunt me. The plan is now to answer the next call from the BT lady in gruff Yorkshire tones, claiming the name George Eliot. I may exhaust the roll of famous 19th Century novelists before I get the hell out of here and start at the hospital.