As those of you who have been subjected to my rants on the antisocial network will know, one of the side-effects of my move from Metropolis to Smallville has been that I have inherited three young and unruly children. Jason, Matt and Craig are 23, 24 and 25 years old, though I can never remember who is which age as they all behave like hyperactive two-year-olds. If nothing else, sharing an office with them has reinforced my belief in the wisdom of not breeding.
I am used to a spacious and quiet office (or working from home with classical music playing softly in the background) but now find myself crammed into a room the size of my former workstation with three idiot children and a ramshackle tangle of prehistoric alleged ‘computers’ that sound like vacuum cleaners and are about as useful for my 3D work.
Over the past half-century I have managed with some difficulty to rid my life of the sheer fuck-awfulness of four particular circles of Hell, namely: football, television, ‘popular’ music and junk food. Inevitably these are the four main topics of conversation with the Office Children. Oh, and boobs. A good half of each day finds them ‘perving’ (their term) photographs of women on Facebook for ‘boob action.’ The rest of the day is taken up with arguing about football, raving about crap celebrity television and singing (ear-buggeringly badly) along to execrable chart hits.
Today (and bear in mind that the morning is only half over) we have had football, moaning about the shit office heating, eBay crap and the idiot family who turned up last night to collect Matt’s old sofa in a compact car full of kids and let their screaming brats run riot in Matt’s flat while they discovered the sofa would not fit in their car before asking him to deliver it for free, last night’s celebrity TV, Craig’s’ lucky’ shin-pads, who in the office is the biggest bell-end (Nick from the back room), strippers, football, video games, the ’shaggability’ or otherwise of the women in the local shop, burgers, last weekend’s binge-drinking sessions and just how much Matt vomited, football, boob-perving, football, Craig’s sister, what they would do if they won the lottery, why the only piece of classical music Jason knows is the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and what that tells us about him, bad pizzas, moaning about the office computers, arguing about the smegging X Factor, bitching about old girlfriends, a waste-paper fight, hobbit jokes (Craig is a hobbit; honestly, he could pass for Frodo in an identity parade), football (I hate fucking football), Parisian hookers, the worst kebabs available locally and football.
All of this has been accompanied by the most excruciating, out of tune falsetto singing by the tone-deaf trio to a selection of shit-awful chart crap, rap songs, bad Elvis film songs, thrash metal and farmyard noises from iPods and YouTube. Add to that a bout of belch-tennis (thank God they’ve not yet started their regular rounds of ‘fart-tennis’ that would gag a rat) and the usual graphic descriptions, comparison and rating of their most recent poos.
Only one of them has ever read a book (Craig, who managed to struggle through the first Harry Potter tome but got no further). Matt does appear to follow the celebrity scandal magazines but he’s probably just looking at the pictures. Jason plays bass in a thrash-punk band but is the first to admit he only knows three notes.
There’s an old Larson cartoon depicting Satan leading an elderly man into a room filled with banjo players, saying ‘and this is your room, maestro.’ I am beginning to wonder whether I dropped dead of a heart attack running for my last London train and have found my eternal resting place here in this cramped and freezing room filled with shrieking idiot children (currently belting out Queen songs and revealing their opinion that fat-bottomed girls make the rocking world go round).
And it’s only Tuesday.
15 comments:
have they found you on the place that shall not be named yet? xoxox
Oh, yes, Savannah, it was the Children who insisted I join the antisocial network. They're not allowed over here with the grown-ups.
xoxox
Wow, they kind of ARE really children. I thought you were just calling them that in the way you call us U.S.ians, children. I could almost be their...auntie. ;)
The train looks better and better.
Grumpy!
I breed frogs at work. And sometimes I read - on my phone, so it looks like I was busy.
Wow that sounds like my work environment but I work with adolescent boys (high school students). I've grown to expect that sort of thing. I mind them less, however than my administrators.
How delightful.
Do you have to supervise them (as part of your job)?
Perhaps you should bring in a music player and a good set of padded headphones. (And a small flask of your favorite libation....)
I just lost all I was saying on here! must have been because I should not have said it ha ha.. so I will just say you know you love them really..
Have you forgotten your youth? xx
Auntie Shan? Hee hee. What a deliciously strange concept. I think the kids would love that!
Vanda: grumpy? Moi?
Wow! You breed frogs? Awesome! I love frogs, toads, newts and all their buddies; the more I get in my garden the better.
So is this a one woman war on the catastrophic global amphibian population decline or a more personal lifestyle choice? Either one is cool.
Neetzy: these guys may be in their mid-twenties but they have yet to mature into adolescents.
As for the administrators being even worse: I'm the administrator (evil cackle).
Ms.M: Delightful? Hee hee. I do get a sort of revenge in that late afternoon is now 'Culture Time' when I force them to listen to classical music. We've had some great (as in utterly horrendous) opera karaoke sessions lately.
Mum: No, I've not forgotten my youthful behaviour; it comes back in nightmares.
Now THIS is the kind of Dive post I have been missing. hee hee
Ah, so you enjoy the posts born of suffering, eh, Robyn? I must confess, those are usually the better ones, darn it.
I should overnight you a little something to shut them up. We anesthesiologists are known for our ability to make children very quiet. ;)
Opera karaoke session! That sends chills up my spine! Do you do Wagner? ;)
T: I'd be too tempted to use it on myself. Boy, do I need a good night's sleep.
Ms.M: Brunhilde (drat this stupid office PC with it's lack of umlauts, accents and ligatures) has been heard rampaging through the office in a ludicrous falsetto, but mostly they like Nessun Dorma and Zadok the Priest (because they're used as theme tunes for football programmes) and la Donna e Mobile (to which they know alternative and unprintable lyrics).
Sadly, they are virtual frogs. Better than no frogs at all.
Damn! That sounded like such a cool job.
Post a Comment