SCOTS Project - www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk Document : 1670 Title : Selection of weblog entries Author(s): 1184 Copyright holder(s): Name withheld Content label: This document contains language which some may find offensive Text 07/08/07 Post Boy Jobsworth As well as the crazies out on the street there is always weird people around you 8 hours a day at your work. The "post boy" in my office is over 50 years old and I can’t figure out if he’s always been a post room boy or if he’s ever held a position of authority and is just happy now with an easy gig. He wears plain white shirts and a very old tie. His shirt pocket is always pulled down by his heavy security tag which no-one else has and I don’t think he actually needs, and also a row of pens. He walks around with an air of superiority as if he knows that with out him we would be unable to function. No, we'd just find someone else. He supplies the basics of our office like paper for the copier and printers and stationary and gets the post collected and sent out. He has one of these multi functional trolleys which can be used upright to lift single heavy items or down on four wheels to transport the many stationary orders he gets. I think he is a little "over proud" of his job and his little trolley as he frequently travels through the building with the stationary stacked as high as he can possibly get it. Boxes of paper at the bottom and paper clips at the top. Like thin pyramids. I am praying for the day the whole lot topples over in the middle of the office, with reams of paper bursting open and many boxes of small items breaking open and spilling their loads all over the place. That would be bliss. If someone has not used the correct and acceptable "code" on the stationary order, he'll come and tell you all about it. "White window envelope, small" is not good enough. He'll read through the order standing beside you and not only advise you of the correct terminology for the numerous envelopes available, but also correct your spelling as well. When the printer runs out of toner, he'll turn up some hours later, if not the next day and shake the toner, telling us it's not done yet and we can still get some use out of it. Then when it really starts churning out unuseable letters, he'll only then order another, saying it might be in tomorrow. He doesn't think to have some ready at all, in this large office with various printers on each floor. When he goes around collecting stationary orders he goes to each photocopier and kicks the boxes to see how full they are, sometimes with a little laugh as if to say "they want more paper, that's typical". Or if someone tries to hand him an envelope to be posted while he is actually collecting the post, he doesn't just take it from them, oh no, he'll tilt his head back as if looking down his nose at it and take a few seconds to decide whether he is going to take it from them, like he's deciding if your letter is worthy of being posted or not. I have seen him pick up letters which are obviously personal or a birthday card which the person has not stamped themselves and hold it up, inspect it and say "tch tch" before dropping it in his basket. Oh yeah, that should definitely be reported, someone bastard ripping the company off for 30p. In the past he has moaned about people using the wrong envelope for the size of letter being sent, and once he actually visited each team during their weekly meeting to perform a talk on the various envelope options and which ones we should be using and actually gave us a frigging demonstration of each envelope. He'll only permit use of the large gusset envelopes if all avenues have been exhausted, which includes him showing you your file being stuffed into an envelope which is obviously too small, until it rips and he concedes that he needs to use the slightly more expensive one. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was getting paid more than me. I just wish he’d do his job and do what we tell him to do. However, he is a source of entertainment for me, and now you. 06/08/07 Two Birds with One Door While trying to leave a shop in Sauchiehall Street I was walking out through the door and a young lady appeared at the door to enter. Rather than continuing to walk in front of her to get past her which I feel is rude, I backed up to hold the door open for her and allow her to pass me. In doing so, I backed into an old woman who was standing looking at a shelf display, nearly knocking her over, and in my panic of nearly breaking an old woman’s hip my hand slipped from the door and the door closed back onto the lady battering into her. Once I saw no-one was seriously injured I got out of there as quickly as possible without looking back. They say that chivalry is dead, well maybe it should be. 03/08/07 Satsumas and Cellulite Today I overheard two female colleagues talking about being on the phone and one of them trying to peel satsumas at the same time, and she became a bit pissed off. "I just realised I pulled all the white bits off" she said pointing to a little pile on her desk. "They're supposed to be good for anti-cellulite" said the other. She then walked across and blamed this on her friend who are convinced the white pieces are "evil" hence the reason she subconsciously was discarding them. Well there you go. As a man I have none of these “satsuma style” worries. 02/08/07 Ned In A Suit Just minutes after I passed the busker the other day, I was walking up Sauchiehall Street and passed a fire appliance with two fireman at the rear talking, in their full outfits. In front of me were three guys. One in a suit, light blue shirt, very neat hair. To his left was two neds....trainers, polyester tracky bottoms tucked into their white socks, tracky tops tied round their waists, polo shirts and....caps perched away back on their heads. At a safe distance from the burly firemen the guy in the suit turns and shouts back over my head... "Neeeeaaaarrright...cun ye no' find the fire, nnyyeeeeha ha ha ha"...... all delivered in the typical Glaswegian ned's nasal tone. His two pals in the tracksuits burst into much laughter. Oh yes, hilarious I thought as I fantasised about beating all three of them senseless with a baseball bat. I realised that the suited guy was just meeting up with his wee unemployed pals in his lunch hour before heading back to the office where he would immediately drop his nasal vocab and talk properly in front of his colleagues. If only they could see him in his natural habitat. On closer inspection when passing him my observations were that his "neat" hair was in fact shaved nearly to the bone almost to the top so it resembled a small hat, his suit was a royal blue cheap piece of tat (called a "fashion suit" in the Littlewoods catalogue some years ago with the strange collar) and dirty black slip on shoes. I'm sure his colleagues know exactly what he is. 31/07/07 The Waverley, Rothesay and the Incompetents I Met During some time off work, I went on the Waverley with the family, just as I had done when I was young. The day and the trip was perfect until we got off at Rothesy for an hour long stop. Within that "hour long stop" we had time to walk 100 metres up to a castle, then back to the front to get fish and chips and failing to do so before we had to get back on the boat or risk an overnighter on Rothesay. Passing two 15 year old girls in the street I overheard one explaining... "Ah hud tae to pit some mad code in ma mobey bu' it didnae work and I was like fuck, fuck, fuck". Took me right back to Sauchiehall Street. We got to Zavaronis for the food and with a hundred or so people getting off the boat at one time and a ferry coming in as well, it's reasonable to see why there was a queue out the door. Reasonable for us, but not for the guy running the shop. In the twenty five minutes we stood there with only nine or ten people in front of us, he chatted almost non stop, performed a comedic routine with his sidekick on the till who wasn't really becoming involved and slowly served customers. When people were asking for fish....he was only then putting fish in to cook. Why the hell did he not have a load of food already cooked and ready to go for the two boat loads of potential customers? We just had time to go in for a piss into the famous Victorian toilets before getting back on the boat. The men's toilets are so nice there was a man in there taking pictures of the central urinals. They are nice though. On the way into the toilets I had been stopped by a dirty man with very strange eyes who enquired of me... "Coo mee, ah mu is i' ?" Strangely I understood, almost wanting to tell him to fuck off instead, but I advised. "20 pence". I got in and locked in a cubicle as quick as I could. I left the kids outside though to fend for themselves against the strange one. Once back on the boat we decided to get food there and were royally screwed on the price versus quality issue. Haddock and chips for £6.95, and some peas. Fine if it's suitable sustenance. Again with all the passengers coming back on the boat after a lunch period he ran out of chips straight away and I had to wait ten minutes while he cooked some more. Then he dropped part of my own haddock into the tub of peas then picked it out and chucked it in the bin. He didn't even ask if I wanted it back! Complaint letter on it's way. As we were wise and got on the boat first, ahead of all the strange pensioners, we were served almost first. Though ahead of me were two old ladies who may have secreted themselves in the toilets just to get to the front of the queue for lunch. They actually started pushing each other a little in an effort to get to the till while arguing who would pay the food that day, trying to handover their crumpled tenners with their bony even more crumpled claw like hands. As the queue grew quickly we were sitting there eating our food with the majority of the people watching us eat. So I stared right back at them, then realised I was staring at the man with the strange eyes from the toilets. Just as well I was polite to him at the toilets. On the trip back I found some Americans on the top deck feeding seagulls with chips and crisps. How immature I thought. My kids thought it was great so I found a pack of Wotsits and joined in. It seems seagulls have no teeth. I noticed from having my fingers in their mouths so much. I've just realised I never washed my hands after. Down below amongst the variety of old people was some old woman who could barely walk but had managed to locate some loon in a Bear suit and dragged her back to her friends and was shouting... "Tom, quick, oh ha ha ha , oh jeez, look at me, oh ha ha ha , quick, oh Tom, take a picture of me, oh ha ha ha". While the old woman grinned inanely grasping onto the Bear's arm, old Tom was trying to get the camera set up and then held it up to his face two handed with both elbows stuck out at right angles, and after about another twenty seconds realised he'd not switched the bloody thing on, so on it went. The Bear was eventually released to go on her break. She must have been pishing herself inside that suit. I knew it was a woman inside the Bear suit. I've never seen a bear with breasts before. The old woman was then offered seat by an old man about ten feet away and eventually realised what he was talking about. There began the journey of two old unstable pensioners on a boat trying to navigate the narrow route through everybody's outstretched feet back to the chair. I was praying for one of two things, either they go down to the floor or by the time they get back, the seat is taken. It was like a scene from Still Game. Off the boat, quick visit to the public toilets in sleepy Kilcreggan only to have to read how someone will dress up as a French Maid and suck me off if I want. He's still not replied to me. This work is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. The SCOTS Project and the University of Glasgow do not necessarily endorse, support or recommend the views expressed in this document. Information about document and author: Text Text audience Adults (18+): General public: Males: Females: Audience size: 1000+ Text details Method of composition: Wordprocessed Year of composition: 2007 Word count: 2272 General description: weblog entries Text medium Web (webpages, discussion boards, newsgroups, chat rooms): Text publication details Part of a longer series of texts: Name of series: weblog at www.glasgowbloguk.blogspot.com Text setting Leisure/entertainment: Private/personal: Text type Diary: Author Author details Author id: 1184 Gender: Male Decade of birth: 1970 Educational attainment: Highers/A-levels Age left school: 17 Upbringing/religious beliefs: Protestantism Occupation: Insurance claims Place of birth: Glasgow Region of birth: Glasgow Birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw Country of birth: Scotland Place of residence: Glasgow Region of residence: Glasgow Residence CSD dialect area: Gsw Country of residence: Scotland Father's occupation: Marine Engineer Father's place of birth: Glasgow Father's region of birth: Glasgow Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw Father's country of birth: Scotland Mother's occupation: Housewife Mother's place of birth: Glasgow Mother's region of birth: Glasgow Mother's birthplace CSD dialect area: Gsw Mother's country of birth: Scotland Languages: Language: Dutch; Flemish Speak: No Read: No Write: No Understand: No Circumstances: a little, at home and with family Language: English Speak: Yes Read: Yes Write: Yes Understand: Yes Circumstances: