Thalidomide drumsticks.

I sat in the cafeteria in work today across from a man with a stunted arm whose hand was the wrong way round. He picked up two spoons, one in each hand, and proceeded to start smacking them together, his stub flailing about madly as he threw his head back and started singing and laughing. As fast as he had started he stopped, put the spoons down, and told me all about why I should tell every customer to rotate their cables, because all the fibre optic electrons will gather at one end if I don’t. With the show and the speech done, he hopped up, crotch-thrusted his chair back into place, and fucked off with a slightly effeminate wiggle. I spent the next ten minutes wondering if he had a special mouse to use, and what it looked like.

Got my “probation” review tomorrow, where I’ll either be kept on permanently, given another three months probation, or sacked. At least I think that’s how it works. I was given a formal looking envelope, telling me the details of when it would be (tomorrow, too late to be early, and too early for me to finish my shift straight after) and informed I could have a union rep in there with me. Does anyone bar teachers and those in the emergency services even have unions anymore? If it isn’t a job for life, you’ve got nobody standing at your back. The whole thing is just me and my manager, don’t even know if it’ll be done in a separate room or just on the call floor. Bit of a waste of the nice thick paper they printed the letter on if they aren’t going to bother going the whole hog and make it a shirt and tie tribunal.

If too many people call back, it's a shift in Azkaban.

Had a one-on-one session for a few minutes as well, something they’re keen on to help you progress and develop and other forward thinking words. The whole thing could be summed up thusly: I’m not making technical mistakes, I’m not rude, but I’m not a barrel of laughs either. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to phone somewhere up and hear a cheery voice at the end of the line. Why are you so fucking happy? I know the kind of place you’re working in. If your shit breaks, and you need to phone somewhere up to get it sorted, do you want to spend an hour talking to a lovely person who’ll ask you how your day’s been and what the weather’s like, or do you just want some cunt that will see what the problem is, fix it, and get you the fuck off the phone and back doing something more enjoyable?

You might not be able to tell, but I’m not really invested in the company. Sure, the logo is everywhere and we got free mugs(!) but man, I’m just not feeling it. Maybe because it’s an outsource company, which by its very definition means we’re doing the work that Daddy can’t be arsed doing himself. Now, when Daddy wants to cut back on some money, he doesn’t have to worry about looking bad in the papers with lost jobs, because all he’s doing is cutting back on the money he’s giving to another company. And the company I work for doesn’t need to worry too much, because they don’t have a large public presence, and have an easily replaceable workforce. Sure, you might get an article in a local paper if you lay off 1000 people, but wherever you go to next will love that you’ve made 300 new jobs there instead! I could work in that place for a decade, and if I dropped dead one day there’d be no mark I’d ever been there. I’m ranting again, I promise that I’ll make no more mention of that sort of thing until I’ve finished my manifesto and found a gorgeous idealistic young woman to have a tumultuous relationship with that will be remembered through the ages.