musings and knee jerk reactions

After starting yet another painfully boring job, which is so impossibly dull, I would rather play darts with my own eyes as targets for fun. I have again taken my place in the Disenchanted Workers Union (DWU) and I am hating every moment. I’m back to being patronised beyond all recognition and espied with loathing and suspicion in equal measure. I am temp scum and for the foreseeable future I will be temp scum. I am scum.

Training has so far involved a series of computer based tests and the one thing that I am equipped for now is bomb threats. Want to know what to do? Call me in, I’m now an expert. Within the first two hours of said temp job, I had the threat of BOMBS spelled out very loudly. You see, the large multinational finance company apparently has quite a few embittered customers who regularly threaten staff with BOMB talk. We were given at least a two hour talk on what to do if we suspect that there is a BOMB on site and if we are on the receiving end of coded warning from a would be BOMBER. If am placed in one of those difficult situations, which lets face it I will be (when I worked in Makro a customer lobbed a Microwave at me) I have a three page questionnaire to fill out. Yes, after being asked questions like “What does it look like?”, “Where have you planted it?”, “Why?” I’m pretty sure a would-be BOMBER would detonate it there and then. There is also a page in which you have to circle what the person sounded like, if they were depressed, happy or malicious sounding and you could write down if the person sounded familiar and who the person was, I would be tempted to write Vernon Kaye, but hey, it seems that space is there for a multitude of embittered ex-staff, still seething with grudges long after they’ve left.

Training did provide some light relief in the afternoon however with the ‘Discrimination in the Workplace’ training. After being asked the question “Sue has been receiving rather a lot of inappropriate comments from Roger of late and she has caught him looking at pornographic websites whilst at work. She has asked him to refrain from this behaviour at work but he persists. At Christmas he bought her a chocolate novelty sex toy. Is this an infringement of ...some law or other?” I was nearly weeping at this question in all its poetic brilliance. Whoever made that piece of software is a complete and utter genius in my eyes and should win some award. I was hooting, thigh slapping and chortling at that amazing piece of work. I was desperate to know what comments Roger had made and what exactly he was looking at. That would have made the whole training experience so much more enriching and would have got quite an amazing answer from myself in return.

Another brilliant slice of genius was also another section in the aforementioned training in which you are given a picture of a desert island with the faces of 12 people above the trees. The programme requires you to pick the people who you want to stay with you on the island. Fair enough, who is the fittest? To be honest, after picking the best looking out of them, I then went on to the slightly more rotund people, using the notion that if we get hungry we can spit roast the porkies on the fire. I’m cruel, I know. Then a little pop up comes on screen saying that you have discriminated against three ethnic minorities or something and you have to pick again to infinitum.

I’m dreading starting proper work after training, but I can’t wait to meet Roger and Sue. I hope they are in my department.

The human brain is a wonderful thing: working out complex puzzles and making lightening quick decisions without you even realising. It is pretty frightening when you consider than blamonge in your bonce can fire off synapses in milliseconds and can mean the difference between you crossing the road successfully in the morning or being plastered all over the place. Just contemplate that a second. Pretty scary isn’t it when you consider some of the stupid things that you do, even when the old grey matter is supposedly on top form.

This morning, for instance, awoken by my alarm after a paltry four hours sleep , I instantly worked out that I could hit the snooze button a further two times before I REALLY had to get up. Even in my morning state (too terrifying for most people to comprehend) I was pretty amazed by those swift working synapses: working out that the snooze lasts for nine minutes and cross checking that with the time it takes to do the necessary - dressing, eating and plastering of slap in the morning and even factoring in that I’d be slightly quicker as there was no heating on, that old brain of mine allowed me to fall back asleep almost instantly. It was like that scene in Old School, in which Will Ferrell has to deliver a speech about American economic policy and is suddenly overcome with this awesome amount of brain power, like he’d been touched by the hand of God or something. That was just like me this morning.

When I woke up proper and contemplated what a sly little bastard my brain has been all these years, hiding away such a little talent like that, I was a little pissed off. All those years of taking me an age to do the simplest things because old grey up there couldn’t be arsed to process information that little bit quicker, all that time wasted: I felt cheated. I’m not sure if it was a case of the mind was willing and the body wasn’t, which explains the gargantuan grump I am most mornings, but still, I was a little overcome by my own self. You’ve heard of the term ‘flash of genius’, well I was privy to it, and it felt good.

I only wish my head would behave like this for the rest of the day. Maybe, if I could get even get a few flashes of genius in a day I would avoid doing all those embarrassing and stupid things that my day to day seem to be made of. It would be great. I wouldn’t have made the frankly disastrous choice to take a teaching a course six months ago, that provided enough stress and anxiety to make a nun ‘go postal’. I wouldn’t have wasted two and a bit hours of my life the other night on the ridiculous rental of The Illusionist, and would have spent that time doing something worthy and important...maybe. Such quick fire activity would have meant that in a particularly heavy rainstorm a couple of months ago, I would have hit the brakes on my car that bit sooner and wouldn’t have ploughed into the car in front. The absence in that moment of a speedy brain function meant that a few days later, I had to turn down the advances of the bloke that I hit, although I’m pretty sure that this particular gentleman used the ‘quick breaking/girl hitting car/girl distressed that she might have hurt someone’ as a pulling technique. When I inspected the damage he said that the other knocks had been from other accidents. Still I wouldn’t have had to receive a begging telephone call and a text message which went in to a bit too much detail on his life and being told that I ‘seem like a nice girl’: he obviously should meet me on a day that I don’t try to inflict GBH by whiplash on people. I also wouldn’t have been wracked with guilt when I made up some dross that I’m in a relationship and live with my boyfriend, which he probably saw through. Anyway, bumping into someone by accident does not mean they owe you anything. Not even a blowjob.

I need a brain to keep up with me. I need it to work doubly hard everyday to keep up with me. Hopefully that way I’d avoid accidents and all the stupid decisions which plague my life. I’d even settle for one flash of apparent speedy thought a day. It would save me from myself.