Becoming one of "those" employees

It has happened.  My job has finally sent me mad. 

Below is a copy of an email I found myself sending to the team leader last week.  In my defence, in an office where we hotdesk, this felt at the time like a very serious issue.

Dear [team leader]

I am sorry to bother you about such a trivial matter, but I am not sure who else to contact regarding the issue of telephone wipes.

I know it was mentioned at the team meeting last week, but I was wondering if anything is being done about obtaining telephone wipes? We simply aren't given them any more, and as I am rarely at the same desk, most of my mornings are spent hunting around the desks of others for any spare telephone wipes. I confess that, as people eat at their desks, sneeze into their hands and then use the keyboard and mouse, I use mine not only for the telephone but also for wiping down the keyboard and mouse. After that spell last year when I was constantly sick, I have become concerned to prevent myself getting sick again. Increasingly, it is becoming difficult to find any spare wipes. If we are not longer going to be issued them on a daily basis, one solution may be for packets of wet ones or other disinfectant wipes to be left in the kitchen for those of us who move desks to use. Who can I speak to about purchasing these wipes for general use?

Kind regards

Natural beauty

I'm a believer in natural beauty.  Therefore, I usually don't wear make-up, heeled shoes or bother "doing" my hair.  Or at least the "natural beauty" thing is my excuse.  Actually, I'm just lazy.  Given I'm not overweight and don't yet have a face like a half-sucked mango, I like to think I can get away with my casual appearance.  If it was up to me, I would happily wear my tracksuit or leggings and trainers everywhere.  As it is, after much negotiation, G and I have reached a compromise, being that I can only wear such outfits  in public if I'm doing exercise or if I'm not in G's company.  He doesn't want to be embarrassed by my chavvy, casual look.   

Although G and I have reached this compromise, he still gives me disapproving looks when he discovers I've been out in public sporting a tracksuit, leggings or (sometimes) even just a coat thrown over my pyjamas (only when I'm getting the Sunday morning papers).  G tells me that, even at the local shops, it isn't good to look like a hobo.  I have always thought him uptight in that regards.  Now, however, I'm starting to come around to his way of thinking.

One area in which I am not lazy is in the personal grooming department.  Messy eyebrows irritate me no  end.  I like to keep mine looking natural but, as all women know, natural looking eyebrows are no less effort than their more shaped and sculptured cousins.  No grown woman actually wants natural eyebrows; the trick is to shape them so it looks like god gave us these beautifully shaped eyebrows, rather than the squashed caterpillar brows we're born with.  So I'm fastidious in removing those unsightly and out of place hairs and taking myself off to the beautician every now and again.

This weekend, G and I were in the rather unusual position of being in high demand for social events.  With two 30th birthday parties to go to on Saturday night, on Saturday I decided to attend the beautician to get my eyebrows done.  Given there's a beautician just around the corner from us, and given G wasn't accompanying me, I threw on my comfort outfit of leggings, uggs and flannel shirt. 

"Are you going out in that" G asked.  Yes, was my response. 

"You'll get cold".  So I threw my coat over the top.
"That looks no better.  Really, that is not a look you should sport in public.  Or anywhere".

I shot G a loaded "don't be so uptight" look as I walked out the door.  I didn't care that I looked ridiculous and off I went.  Oh, but I should have cared.  I really should have cared.

When I arrived at "Dee's beauticians" I gave the woman my usual mantra: natural looking, don't change the shape, just tidy them up.  Dee seemed to understand.  She pointed me to the table and quickly applied the wax to my eyebrows.  A few painful moments later and she gave me the mirror to see my reflection.  Staring back at me I found a woman with two eyebrows so thin they appeared to have been drawn on with a fine pencil.  Dee had managed to turn my "natural" eyebrows into two extremely thin lines.  They are the sort of eyebrows sported by young women who think pink velour tracksuits with heels are the height of fashion.   Dee told me that while she knew I said I wanted natural, she thought this look just suited me so much better.

And she's right in a way.  The "are they there or are they not" eyebrow look does perhaps suit the slightly insane look I was sporting that day.  On the other hand, they do not go at all with my usual look, which tends more towards the "I'm not a chavvy skank" trend. 

Don't tell G this, but I'm starting to think he is right.  Maybe, even when I'm only going down the road, it's time to trade in the comfort for a little bit of style.

An update on the farter

The flatulence problem in my office has not subsided.  Finally, however, the farter was spoken to.  His line manager discussed the tricky situation with HR and on their advice proceeded to have what she describes as the most difficult conversation she has had in a professional context. 

I am reliably told that the farter told his line manager that his "problem" was not a medical one but was simply the food he eats.  He was apparently baffled by the fact it was regarded as an issue, as he considered the smell (which he was aware of) did not travel that far.  In short, as one rather blunt work colleague put it ,"he knows he's a stinker and doesn't care".  Nonetheless, he was asked in future to excuse himself to the bathroom when a fart was imminent. 

Problem solved, we all thought.  But sadly, it wasn't to be.  The next day there was a noise of eruption and the office was once again filled with that familiar odour.  Worst of all, a colleague sitting near him insisted that his facial expression was one of (as she put it) "someone pushing it out".  The drama of the farter continues.

New York, New York

According to various members of my family, my previous blog post on New York was not sufficiently detailed.  I confess I didn't think a blog post detailing our trip would be of interest to anyone; after all, New York has been described in countless movies, TV shows and songs.  Musicians as diverse as Alica Keys, Frank Sinatra and Ryan Adams have written odes to the city.  And years of American TV shows like Sex and the City being syndicated around the world have resulted in images of the city forming part of most Westerners' cultural iconography. 

I blog about London, but then I think London is so badly represented in movies, songs and TV shows that there's still plenty to say.  When you try and think of a song dedicated to London, you end up with the Clash's London Calling, with its chorus:

The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in

Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
Cause London is drowning and I, I live by the river

Hardly descriptive of London.

The movies seem to show London either as a breeding ground for zombies (think 28 Days Later or Shaun of the Dead) or a place of bumbling, posh but oh-so-charming men (think Notting Hill or any movie from the nauseating corpus of  Richard Curtis' work).  Alternatively, you get the grimy, mockney gangster movies.  In short: Londoners pretend to hate London (and make it out to be a city of flesh-eating zombies) or exploit the stereotypes of it to sell movies abroad.  And the stereotypes are far from the reality:  posh public school-educated men are no more charming than their working class counterparts.  And most gangs in London consist of council estate teenagers carrying knives, rather than being full of lovable rouges with amusing accents and their own strict moral code.  The positive side of this representation of London is that I doubt visitors to the city expect London to be romantic or wonderful.  Londoners will rarely admit it to be either of those things, as it's far more in keeping with the British psyche to moan about the city.  But often London can be wonderful.  I don't know that anyone can walk through Regent's park on a sunny day or have a drink in an ancient, dingy London pub without being seduced by the city's charms.

In contrast, we know a lot about New York.  New Yorkers don't seem able to stop enthusing about the city.  All that talk and praise is pretty tough to live up to and I confess that, for me, New York didn't get there.

Perhaps I've become too English over the time I've been here, but I found that in New York, people just talk. They talk a lot.  Even when they're on their own, walking the streets, they talk.  They all seem to have a blue tooth headset perched in an ear and to be either having a shouty conversation through it or anxiously waiting to have a shouty conversation.  There are a lot of people in London who talk when on their own, but they are usually talking to themselves and are the sort of people one crosses the street to avoid. 

New York also has a reputation for being friendly.  In part that seemed correct, but people varied from being incredibly friendly to incredibly rude.  The former tended to be people working for commission (shop assistants) or tips (waiters) and the latter anyone who knew there was no hope of them getting a tip (eg, anyone on the other end of a telephone).  At least in London you know people will be rude or, at best, indifferent.  I find that just a bit more predictable and easy to deal with.  To be frank, I don't want to converse with the gym staff about my horoscope.  Nor do I want to discuss in detail my holiday with waiters or plans for the upcoming weekend.  But maybe I'm just becoming too English and/or grumpy.

The things I did love about New York were the restaurants (we ate at far too many), slick bars and coffee shops.  New Yorkers know how to mix a cocktail (English bartenders frequently do not).  And G and I greatly enjoyed the culture of the brunch: the day that starts with an enormous meal, a bloody mary or mimosa and strong coffee (with endless free refills).  I loved the diversity of the neighbourhoods; from the neighbourhoods of orthodox Jews through to the trendy gay Chelsea and the ultra hip Williamsburg.  I'll also admit that sometimes I liked the fact you could talk to strangers about things other than the weather.  Aspects of the city were also really beautiful, such as the view from Brooklyn Bridge and the city lights at night.  The Statue of Liberty is impressive and the Chrysler building stunning.  And New York was, I admit, very, very cool.  There were more hipsters than you could poke a stick at.  All this made for an absolutely fantastic holiday.

In Sex and the City, Carrie once commented that she was dating New York.  I think that if New York was a person, it would be the cool, slick bad boy of a teen soapy (think Dylan from 90210, the original).  That might be fun for a little while, but I think I would rather date his older, scruffier but ultimately more lovable friend.

The reign of terror continues

The office farter continues his reign of terror.

A co-worker and I were having a serious discussion today about how to tackle this issue. Afterwards, I went back to my desk, and wondered whether anyone else in the world had ever encountered this problem and, if so, how they resolved it. I did a quick google search of "fart, office" and discovered numerous websites of varying degrees of usefulness. Two were particularly helpful, discussing the matter in a serious way with suggestions made by people who (at least claim to) work in HR.

Given the websites offered practical, helpful advice I thought it would be useful for me to forward them to my co-worker. Sadly, I didn't think about the various popup ads embedded in the sites. When my co-worker clicked on one of the links she found her screen suddenly filled by an advertisement asking "do you have fishy, vaginal odour"? Conscious that she was sitting in an open-plan workplace, where numerous people had sight of her computer, she quickly shut the site down.

It seems popups can be just as troublesome in the work place as pop offs.

Weird stuff in NYC

G and I have returned from two weeks in New York.   It was a great holiday, even though G and I found ourselves going mad with Alicia Keys' song New York stuck in our heads the whole time we were there. 

The trip confirmed my view that Americans (or at least New Yorkers) are weird.  Below, in no particular order, is a list of some of the weird stuff we saw in New York.

A cafe in East Village that takes an interesting approach to attracting customers to its outdoor seating.

An urban junkyard in Brooklyn containing toy gorillas displayed to look like office workers.

People so beautiful they could wear "I love New York" t-shirts in New York and make them look cool.

A bar so exclusive that it has no signage. To get to it you have to go through a dingy looking hot dog stand and into a telephone booth.  There, you have to follow the strict instructions on the wall in order to be let in to the bar through a secret door in the telephone booth, while those eating their hotdogs stare at you in bemusement.  The name of the bar?  PDT (please don't tell). 

Fine wine bars containing advertisements that would make any English gentleperson blush.

Really old, tall and mulleted hipsters in Bloomingdales.

A relative at the Natural History Museum (in the evolution display).

A poorly placed plaque at the Natural History museum.  It took me some time to realise that the display is not intended to immortalise Mr and Ms Goldstein by way of statues in their images.  Or at least I hope it's not. 

Hasidic Jews wearing beaver hats, competing for space on the pavement in East Williamsburg with homeboys, dodgy white guys and numerous brothers who need to pull their pants up.

An Easter greeting outside a Baptist church.

 A diner so relaxed that the menu (without any prices) is written on your table by the waitperson. 

A random pair of shoes left on the pavement.  These weren't the only ownerless shoes we saw that were inexplicably lying around in New York.

And, finally (and there's no picture for this one), a very large and disheveled  white guy berating his son for trying to cross the street without holding an adult's hand ("you know better than that, you know the rules"), all the while puffing on an enormous joint.  For obvious reasons, I didn't try and take a photo of that one.

A Sizzling summer?

Apparently this year we're going to get a sizzling summer.  I'm not holding my breath.  Last year was meant to be a barbecue summer.  My wardrobe is still full of the summer clothes I optimistically bought last year, waiting for those barbecue days that never happened. 

I am quickly learning that the only way to guarantee a summer is to travel to the continent during the summer season.  The only certainty one has about an English summer is that it will rain and it will be awful more days than it is not.