Things that might happen at my workplace?

What's your job like? Is it challenging in the right way, safe, secure, well paid? Or is it a daily splodge of tedium, only relieved by an underlying strangeness affecting you, your colleagues and your working environment.

Here's a few strange facts I found out about my job. You might experience a shock of recognition in some places, or perhaps just shake your head at the strange awfulness of it all.

Anyway, enjoy!

There is absolutely no truth in the rumour that:-

The decor in the recently refurbished downstairs office has been carefully chosen to minimise the effects of blood spatter.

Some people liked to live dangerously and leave it to literally the last minute before arriving for the early shift. Their athletic prowess when running to their desks at 0759hrs was serenaded by the music from 'Chariots of Fire', by Vangelis, in person!

A standard technique for selecting suitable candidates for management positions was to screen the movie 'Jaws' to a batch of interviewees and carefully monitor their reactions, The person that shed the most bitter tears when the shark lost by exploding at the end, got the job.

Customer service agents in some contact-centres are given a helium allowance to keep their voices at optimum levels of squeakiness.

A system upgrade at our place typically has three system analysts, seven programmers, and a couple of fully human sacrifice trained Aztec priests working on it.

(And it still stuffs up, the day after.)

But these might be possibly correct?

'London London', an address identified in countless new orders is not a mistype, it is a real location! It was created in 1963 by the General Post Office (GPO) as a back-up in case the original London got broken and was taken offline for repairs. It was made out of state of the art for 1963 materials such as vinyl and polyester.

An apricot and mango yoghurt, placed in the staff kitchen fridge in March 2010 and completely forgotten about until now, has accepted a workplace transfer to live at the back of the fridge in the Selkirk (Scotland) office. It was even able to put a workable signature to a piece of paper to confirm this.

Our office air-conditioning has its own team of meteorologists working constantly to interpret its ever changing moods. Successful male candidates for that job consider it as invaluable training for future relationships!

We are way ahead of the competition in recognising customers in the middle of gender reassignment issues, judging by the orders placed by people like "Mr Gloria Smith"?!

Curious ghost hunters of the near future will flock to the second floor of our office. They will be investigating a mysterious smell, as if a poltergeist had curled up and died peacefully, lingering near the kitchen sink.

Everyone loves our new 'virtual agent' website client. A previously unheralded effort in early 2011 went under the name of 'Colin'. Unfortunately, this ground-breaking prototype, made out of field-mouse brains stapled to circuit boards and connected to a 9 volt battery, was hastily scrapped when it spotted and attacked its own reflection in a puddle.

Little known and cunningly hidden drinks vending machine button pressing combinations..

3 - Is the magic number, no reason or explanation is given.

42 - The answer to life, the universe and everything.

666 -Devil's brew (Cappuccino gone wrong with green bile, in other words.)

747 - Aviation fuel, did nobody mention the secret black helicopter pad on the roof of our office?

999 - Fire service, police or ambulance, in a plastic cup!

1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 - A live electric mains cable has come adrift and is nestling gently against the metal outer shell of the drinks machine! Don't touch it!

Finally, a wise man once said that a really cunning arsonist will wait until the regular weekly fire alarm test takes place at 1100hrs sharp every Thursday, in order to exploit the convenient suspension of disbelief window, thus getting a really good head start on the body count!

CiH for Mag! - Sept 2013, but based on some stuff I wrote about a year ago, when big changes were on the way at the workplace in question.

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