Unreliable I know, but like a bad penny, undercooked chicken or persistent boomerang, I keep coming back. For good this time I hope, I need something to make me look busy first thing in the morning.
We had yet another leaving card come round today. This company is bleeding people at the moment and there seems to be another card coming round every other day.
There's a strange yet accepted etiquette to leaving cards which I've always struggled to come to terms with. For a start, why is there such an urge to sneak them around the office in envelopes or files so the leaver doesn't see them? How surprised do they expect them to be when this hilarious oversized card turns up? "For me? But everybody's signed it, that must've taken ages, look, there's a fold down the middle like a crude hinge, genius."
Secondly, what the hell do you write in these pissing things? Most people's jobs are reasonably insular, you deal with half a dozen people on a regular basis and that's it yet these cards keep plopping on my desk for people I don't know.
I keep writing "Sorry to see you go" on cards for people I have never seen come.
And then we come to the money, the familiar jingle of coins in an envelope. Our company has developed a tradition of printing off the phone list and sellotaping it to the front of the envelope. When you put your contribution in, you cross off your name. Give or be shamed.
So is it unreasonable not to give money towards a present for someone you've either never met, at worse, or, at best, only have a vague awareness of? Logic says no, English awkwardness says yes. I've slipped so many strangers 50p in the last two months I could've bought myself an engraved hip flask or personalised fountain pen with the total. More fool me.
Anyway, enough of that tedious rant, it wasn't really working anyway. One of the other reasons why I returned to this blog is that I have appeared on someone else's. Richard Herring, the comedian who I have talked about before, has a website and blog which I dip into quite often. He wrote about an idea he had for a new type of urinal and, well, I emailed him explaining why it wouldn't work.
I know, I know, but boredom and pedantry are a lethal combination.
Anyway, here's the link.
http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/
The initial bit about his idea is on January 10th 2005 and then his answer to my mail on Tuesday 11th. Here's a telling, yet accurate, snippet that I want carved on my gravestone should I die tomorrow:
"Here are his expert opinions on the subject (and remember, he is an expert in urinals and thus we should listen to him and respect what he says, even though some might argue that he has wasted his life)"
