Testing times
Keanu ReevesI have written before about how my job can bring out strange emotions in people. Appear somewhere with a camera and folk have a tendency to act like complete jerks. In my last post about my strange job over a year ago, I talked about the usual kind of nonsense comment I and my colleagues are subjected to from punters in the mildly irritating world of corporate video.
I said this:
There are common phrases that people I come across during my job say to me like it’s the first time I’ve ever heard them. Problem is, these people are paying you, so you can’t respond to them like they are annoying drunks that accost you in a nightclub.You must chuckle as if it is indeed the first time you have ever heard the following laughsome nuggets:
“Hey Misssy, I’m not doing my interview ’til I’ve seen my trailer! Hehehehehe!
“Hey Misssy, when’s my shower scene? Hehehehehehe!”
(Shouted to the bloke you’re filming by a workmate), “Hoi Jim, you’ll be getting your Equity card next! Hehehehehe!” (Much laughter from both parties)
(Shouted to the bloke you’re filming by a workmate), “Hoi Jim, you need a touch more makeup mate!” (Much laughter from both parties)
“Hey Misssy, does your wee dog bite?” (gesturing to the furry windshield for the mic)
What I didn’t blog about was the annoyance and paranoia that you are sometimes subjected to as a camera crew when you appear at a worksite of any description. I wish I could say it were rare but sadly it isn’t. Very often the folk who’ve commissioned you to do a programme in their worksite neglect to tell the workforce that you will be filming them. Or worse, they have told them and they’ve all run away. A mixture of the two happened in Canada.
However, in the shoot in question worse happened, and me and my cameraman were subjected to something that I’ve only experienced a couple of times in my increasingly long and drawn out career as a corporate video director; aggression, paranoia, hostility and Parental Advisory language.
The Paranoia
We’re there for three whole days. We’re filming drills and safety notices and safety inductions. It’s dull. Yet I could match every Canadian celebrity who the world thinks is American with the following types of approaches from the gossip bound crew:
“Hey, we hear you guys are from the news, whatya filming us for?” (And I’m matching that with Jim Carrey, native of Newmarket, Ontario)
“Hey, are you guys from the Discovery Channel?” (And I’m matching that with Mike Myers, native of Scarborough, Ontario)
“Hey, I don’t want filmed for the fucking news..” (And matching that one with Neil Young, native of Ontario)
“So I hear you guys are with the Discovery Channel” (What are you guys, bloody migrating wildebeest?) (Matching that one with Keanu Reeves, native of Toronto. Yeah, really you thought he was Hawaiian. He’s not. No really.)
Those kind of comments were often said to us directly but more frequently we overheard whispers of “news crews…” “Discovery channel”…”Documentary crew”….as people cleared a room or site that we entered. I haven’t been able to watch the Discovery Channel since, in case I see any documentaries on people lifting supply containers onto ships. Life’s just too bloody short.
Here’s what I would like to have said in response to these comments: “Why the blue blazes would any news channel or a documentary team or ANYONE be on this pile ‘o’ junk filming you dullards? Why? What are you up to that ANYONE would be interested in? What’s that you say? Nothing?…No, nothing, you’re dull, you’re guys hitting things with spanners and welding stuff, what’s to watch? Some of you can barely speak coherent sentences and touch your nose with your finger never mind be of international concern or interest. Now can I just film you taking the stairs safely or wearing the correct protective equipment, yes? Thank you.”
What I did actually say: “No, we’re not. We’re making your safety induction video. Now can I just film you taking the stairs safely or wearing the correct protective equipment. Thank you.”
I didn’t get where I am today by being honest with people.
Hostility
Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?
Person: Nah, I’m too busy.
****
Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?
Person: Yeah go and see person X. She’ll sort it out. I’m too busy.
****
Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?
Person X: What? Why is this my job? Who said this was my job? I don’t have any time for this? No. No way. Why do you even need to film that stuff. I’m way too busy.
****
Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just ask if we could round up some guys to pretend to have a safety meeting so we can film it?
Person Y: Come back tomorrow.
Missy: We leave tomorrow.
Person: Then I’m too busy.
****
Misssy: Hi, we’re here to film your safety induction video. Can I just film you two guys sitting here in the smoking lounge. We need the footage.
Person A : Why the fuck do you need that?
Missy (whispers to cameraman): Record, dammit, record!
Person B: (As camera rolls, to Person B) Dude, why the fuck are they filming us?
Person A: I don’t fucking know.
Person B: I hear they’re from the fucking Discovery Channel.
Person A: Maybe they are making a programme about our migratory patterns.
Person B: Fucked if I know….
****
All of the above happened. …repeatedly. OK a little artistic license with the last one, but they did say everything other than “migratory patterns” on tape, so I’ve proof. Apologies for the swearing. I did warn you with the Parental Advisory bit at the front. And as my son says, “It doesn’t count if you’re quoting.”
Aggression (and Mild Peril)
I finally get some people who’ve been coerced into appearing in our shots. They also just happen to be the people who will use the DVD we are producing most. I know!
Misssy: So… I just need one of you guys to be in shot.
Person X: Well, it sure as hell ain’t gonna be me, I can tell ya that! (Slamming stuff shut and hurumphing about like a two year old)
Misssy: I actually don’t mind who it is. Can you decide which one of you it’ll be and just do your job as you would normally and we’ll record you doing it? It won’t take long and then we’ll leave you alone.
Person X: It ain’t about time! I don’t care how long it takes! It ain’t about time!
Misssy: Listen, I don’t care why none of you will help us. All I know is that if I don’t film you guys you won’t have a safety DVD and you won’t be able to legally operate. Now, it won’t take more than five minutes.
Person Y: It ain’t about that. It ain’t about time!
Misssy: Listen, I don’t CARE what it’s about. I just need the shot, OK?
Person Y: Hey there, don’t you..don’t you get testy!
Misssy: (speechless)
Now, that conversation actually happened. Two things to point out. Before this happened, we got thrown out of their office whilst they went mental about having to be filmed. Then their boss told them to get on with it. Then we came back in and tried to be pleasant as we realised we were 3 miles from shore and couldn’t leave so had to get on with it.
Second thing. The urge to laugh at the word “testy” was strong in me, and I managed to stifle it. You’ve no idea how hard that was. For one it sounds exactly the same as “teste” and I have a childish sense of humour. For another the guy who said “Hey there, don’t you get testy!” was consumed with rage yet said something so Ned Flanders that he may as well have been yellow with a cookie duster moustache. And the third thing is, I had to put up with insanely unprofessional levels of rage but as soon as I started to mildly assert myself I was likened to a bollock. There’s no justice in this world of ours.
That word “testy” might have been the words of a raging Ned Flanders-alike, but man, it was the Canadian equivalent of a Sicilian insulting someone’s Mama. He said “testy” and by God he meant “testy”!
Sometimes I bloody love my job. Not this time, though, not this time.
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We’re gonna need a bigger boat
Five Ways to get Through Your Office Christmas Party
Please don’t let this be you
So I’ve done a Christmas post already. I know. Just like the shops, I’m setting out my Christmas stall early and having old ladies walk past me muttering about Christmas being too early this year. What I haven’t mentioned is that the last Christmas post has a sister. This one. We’re a double feature. A conjoined twin. A tandem bike. A Twix.
Anyway, this part of the Christmas double feature concerns your impending work Office Christmas Party. I’m not going to mine this year. Prior engagement, you see. But I fear for those of you who have to endure, so I’ve dug out my Five Christmas Party Rules, in the words of Kylie and Jason, especially for you. Read them, memorise them, and for Gawd’s sake put them into action.
1. Beware of the free bar.
This is a poison chalice of the highest order.
I once saw my old company handyman passed out drunk on a couch in the reception area. As the night went on, people essentially vandalised the poor guy. By the time he came round he had a cock drawn on his cheek leading to his mouth, his shirt was off and he was sporting marker pen boobs. In addition, someone had managed to pull a silver sequined G-string over his trousers. Photos were, of course, taken.
Keep that picture in your mind as you consider your response to “Flaming Sambucas all round, anyone?!!!”
2. Do not get stuck next to management in the seating arrangements
Sometimes this is hard. My managing director for six years running would make sure that in the table layout my name tag was next to his. One year I snuck in and swapped it, but he insisted it was swapped back. He was a perv, though and maybe not all bosses are like that.
Perv or no, and assuming you have a choice, there is one good reason you should avoid them; they are not your friends. No amount of alcohol is enough to switch off the power balance switch that exists between the two of you. Don’t delude yourself it’s even worth trying. Also, they only want to talk about work. And you want to be over with your mates talking utter crap (and working out what to do to the passed-out janny this year), don’t you?
3. Do not go onto a club afterwards.
Given that most Christmas parties start at lunchtime, you really need to be home and out of harm’s way by late evening. Anything more is guaranteed messiness. And even if you are not the one being messy, then you will witness sights you cannot erase from your brain.
Worst of all will be being forced to dance with middle aged guys with Santa ties on, who haven’t been near any club recently that doesn’t have the word “golf “in front of it.
4.Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, cop off with anyone you work with.
I cannot stress this enough.
Other than the obvious “don’t-get-your-meat-where-you-get-your-bread” reason, there are three particular extra reasons.
Firstly, EVERYONE will know about it instantly. I was once called over by a work mate to witness a happening of this sort through the board room window. Before table-top coitus was even interuptusused, the whole company knew.
To be honest the couple were bloody lucky that drink perhaps makes things a little quicker, shall we say, as one of the cameramen I worked with was running to get the camera from upstairs. Lucky for them, he was too late to catch the exclusive. Also this was before YouTube, so big luck all round, there. The woman’s husband however, did find out…… and so the luck endeth.
Secondly, even if the affection was genuine at the time, you’ve got at least a week of no-work between the “happening” and going back to work guaranteeing extreme awkwardness that first day back. And you can bet the whole work is beaking-in to watch that situation go down.
Thirdly, you don’t want to ruin your Christmas with horrid flashbacks and ruminations of whether you should hand in your notice along with the drunken janitor.
5. The Special Fifth Survival Rule
Of course, you could just not go to the party, making all of the above redundant, but this requires extreme cunning. You need to be organised for this rule to stick. Think on, and have an excuse ready in September. Oops, too late. Maybe next year.
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Out in the Fields
In this part of the world, that is, the Scottish part, I suspect that a lot of my compatriots share the same anniversary. For the October school holiday is also known as “The Tattie* Holidays”.
For those of you not aware of country ways (arrr!) and perhaps from non-potato growing regions of the planet (where do you get your chips?), the idea of a holiday in honour of the potato might seem a little strange. And if that were the truth, then yes, it would be a little strange. Kind of like Hawaii having a week off to celebrate the pineapple, or Germany having a local holiday in honour of the cabbage. But the Tattie Holidays are the opposite of what you might think. Yes, they are holidays from school, but they are holidays in which the children were traditionally released from the classroom in order to bring in the potato harvest. Perhaps, in days gone by, folk took their kids out of school for harvest anyway, and the school ended up just giving in and making it official. For many of the boys and girls of rural Aberdeenshire, the Tattie Holidays remain to this day, your first chance to earn some cash.
At fourteen years old, the idea of £10.50 a day for picking up some potatoes was too good for me to resist. It seemed like riches compared to my previous wage of £0.00 per day. I had calculated that if I worked the whole week, I’d be rolling in it and could spend my cash in my continuing quest to dress like the members of Duran Duran and follow them around the globe with a view to eventually marrying one of them.
Now, I’m no Tess of the Durbervilles by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought in my stupid hairsprayed head that working on a farm would be “quite nice”. I was wrong. It is a deeply unpleasant business. Especially for a fourteen year old whose only recorded manual labour up until this point has been tidying her room under extreme coercion by her parents, and filling the dishwasher once a week on Sunday to the soundtrack of the Top Forty Countdown.
To say I was ill prepared would be understating things. There I am on wet October morning, about to pick potatoes in a big field, but you can bet your Eighties arse I’m still going to be rocking those lycra infused Oddball stretch spray on jeans I’ve barely been out of since I bought them. Never mind that I can’t actually physically get out of them, I’m mainly wearing them because “lads from school might be there”.
I’d like to think that I was at least wearing wellies, but I can’t in all honesty tell you I wasn’t in fact wearing tukka boots or suede pumps with dainty bows on the toes. And as anyone who has ever worked on a farm, nay been in Scotland, in October will tell you; you need yer wellie boots.
So here’s how tattie picking works- the clue’s in the name. A tractor with a thingy attached goes up the field. The thingy digs over the ground exposing the tatties to the world, it is your job to pick them up. There we stand, with our own six meter square area to clear of tatties and put them in buckets. You’ve the time it takes for the tractor to come back down the field until we move on to the next dug section of earth to start over again. It’s physical work alright. In fact, it’s chain gang type work. Without the fetching striped jammies and ….erm, chains.
After a few lanes of tattie filled earth, I’m way behind. Ruddy faced men with meaty hands are shouting at me in frustration, as I claw my way in the earth, falling to my knees with tears in my eyes, vowing never to eat a potato ever again. I resemble Tim Robbins when he finally gets to the end of the shit tunnel in the Shawshank Redemption. 
It’s the end of the first tattie picking day and I can barely move for exhaustion and muscle rippage. After the tractor deposits the trailer full of tattie howking** kids back at the pick up point, my dad has to chisel a hardened Misssy shaped mud sarcophagus off me before my Mum will let me in the house. I return home, at least with a little brown envelope containing £10.50. The hardest tenner I’ve ever earned. As well as the hardest fifty pence.
The next morning, Day Two of Tattie Week dawns and my dad gives me my wake up call.
But I will not be working the fields that day…or any other. Dad smirks and closes my bedroom door behind him and somewhere down the road a trailer trundles off to the potato farm without me on it.
(Can you remember how you made your first Dollar/Pound/Euro/Peso/Rouble? Delete as appropriate.)
* For overseas visitors tattie means potato. You knew that, right?
**Howk is Scottish for to pull up. you can even howk up your trousers if they are falling down.
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Hey, Kids! Leave those teachers alone!
Quite soon after the launch of Friends Reunited, some forums were the subject of a legal investigation, after subscribers defamed and slandered teachers they had once had in an effort to rekindle and relive the old days.
Kids seem to be able to find a person’s weak point and home in on it, making it the be-all and end-all of a teacher’s reputation. Kids can be vicious little feral monsters. William Golding knew this; he wrote a book about conches and flies and pigs heads and stuff that kids are now forced to read in the very schools they mockingly run amok in.
Given that a teacher will, in the course of their career, teach generations of kids, it still surprised me to find out that down the years, and even across different schools, different kids have had the SAME nicknames for certain teachers that I once had.
A couple of times since Meeester started teaching we have come across teachers that he has been in contact with or even colleagues with, that I had at school. In some cases, those teachers had (usually offensive) nicknames.
A biology teacher who had a perennial, vile blob of spittle in the corners of his mouth was simply called “Foamy”. Often in Bunsen burner type experiments where liquid was to heated up, we would exclaim excitedly on boiling point, “Sir it’s foaming, it’s foaming!” to much sniggering. Surely, the man knew that we were mocking him, yet he would calmly respond, “Well, yes, it will do that…”
Another teacher who would get quite exuberant and energetic about his subject, but who decided never to wear any deodorant, was given a can of SURE for Men on his desk every Christmas, as all his students could concentrate on were dark patches of sweat under the arms as he waved them about. We never paid much attention to the actual content of his sweat inducing rants.
Given that a teacher can have a career of forty years, and that every class would do this to him every year, we’re probably talking over 1200 cans. He could have set up shop.
Then there was Funky Fred, the most inept and least funky of all teachers, nay people, I have ever come across. I don’t even know if his real name was Fred. It just fitted with “Funky”. “Funky Brendan” or “Funky Arthur” wouldn’t have had the same pzazz.
Wearing dirty, coke-bottle-lensed square glasses, he certainly could never have been empirically defined as “funky”, yet generations of kids knew him thus. He may be dead now; I’d like to think his obituary in the local paper mentioned his workplace moniker. It’s what he would have wanted.
One teacher whose name was Bashford, was simply called Mr Bastard. Simple, yet effective. I quite liked old Mr Bastard, he seemed OK. Yet you don’t get away with a name that can be easily turned into a sweary in a secondary school. Mr Bastard he stayed. Nice guy, or no. All over this country, there are teachers called Mr Buck and Mrs Hunt having a really shitty time of it.
However, it doesn’t stop at school. Later on in life we get bosses, managers and supervisors. In an effort to bond with our peers, give a little light relief and generally kick against the pricks, we give our boss a nickname. It helps to pass the day/week/career.
Nicknames of bosses I have had include :
“The Bald Eagle” (he was bald; gosh we were inventive)
“Barry Gibb” (he had thick mulleted hair and a beard- of course he’s Barry Gibb)
“The Prince of Darkness” (second only to “Hitler”, officially the most common nickname for a male boss. Source: me . It makes me wonder, did Adolf Hitler’s underlings have a nickname for him. Where did they go for inspiration given that Hitler was his actual name?)
“The Human Hormone” was a female boss, whose mood would swing like a Peter Snow Swingometer on election night, and whose crimes against her staff we passed off (by her) as being the result of erratic menstruation patterns. Way to go sista! Thanks for setting women’s rights back a few hundred years. Someone actually got her a badge that said “Watch out; I’m premenstrual”. From where, I don’t know. Maybe she sat up all night making it. Certainly, I know for sure, it would not have been presented to her in the week before ovulation. Talk about having a death wish…
This makes me think, do we do this our whole lives? Right now, in Old Folks’ homes are certain carers, matrons or whatever, in charge of making our final years as comfortable as possible, providing sniggers, as one of the elderly residents comes up with a suitable yet vicious nickname? A nickname that makes all their elderly resident mates guffaw everytime it is mentioned or exclaimed under the guise of a cough or whisper as they go past with the meds trolley.
You know something, I kind of hope so.
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I was a professional Southern Belle
In my life I have a few rules that I live by. One of them is: never do a job that requires you to wear a uniform.
In lieu of deciding exactly what it was I wanted to do with my working life, I thought this rule was at the very least a good place to start. The no-uniform decision was largely a result of some early and unfortunate brushes with nylon waitress and petrol attendant nastinesses that I had to endure whilst trying to get by as a student. I vowed that once I graduated, I would never let polyester enslave me again, unless it was by some bizarre personal choice.
One particular uniform stands out amongst the rest though. I once had to wear a “Gone with the Wind”-style Southern Belle dress on Bourbon Street, New Orleans. For work.
The venue was the Tricou House, 711 Bourbon Street. The Tricou House was a restaurant, bar and the only non-transvestite, non-erotic dance or non-gay nightclub in Bourbon Street. My mate and I worked there for 3 months (shhh…illegally) when we were 21.
If you worked the bar or restaurant you got paid $1 an hour but got the opportunity to earn good tips. If you “worked the dress” as it was termed, enticing tourists into the bar or restaurant with your faux-Southern charms, you got $7 an hour but no prospect of tips.
What you did get was people annoying you, sexually harassing you ,wanting their photo taken with you or openly feeling sorry for you. Working the dress was not an easy option and certainly not for the shrinking violet. However, when the bar was slow (mostly during the week) there was not much chance of tips whilst waitressing, and there was no way I was working for 7 hours at $1 an hour.
So I checked in my dignity, pulled on the frilly horror and took to the street to be gazed at, chatted up, laughed at, sleazed at and marveled at in equal measure. Off I’d go uneasily into the streets of the Big Easy, muttering something along the lines of,
“Aah have always depended on the kindness of strangers…”
or ,
“Aah feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof…”
It didn’t take long before I became a flippin’ bona fide tourist attraction. At one point it was me and Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid vying for the top chart spot of Most Photographed Female Tourism Icons in the Northern Hemisphere. And she only won because she had them out. Tart.
There were three dresses to choose from- one red, one apple green and one enormous lilac one that a monster dress girl must have worn at some point, but three of me could have squeezed into. All the dresses had enormous hooped skirts with a frilly underskirt and an accompanying frilly umbrella which also doubled as a weapon, should it be required. All dresses stank to high heaven of B.O. having never been washed in their existence. Point of fact: New Orleans is about 80% humidity and 35 degrees in summer.
So 5 days a week I was the “Dress Girl”, channeling Vivien Leigh and spraying the pits of the dress with layer upon layer of Sure. All over the world there are holiday snaps of people with their arm round a Scottish fake Southern Belle smiling in a forced way outside a restaurant in New Orleans. It would be hilarious to see them all, but an impossible task, I know. But there must be HUNDREDS of them all over the world. Three months I worked that bloody dress and I got my photo taken at least 15 times a night. I make that over 900 photos.
If anyone was in New Orleans in the Summer of 1990, have a look back at your snaps; I’ll be in there somewhere. Scan it in and send it to me will you? If I manange to get 100 of them, I’ll stage an art exhibition of them.
I’d like to think that even now some poor lassie is standing outside the Tricou House now with that green dress on (I favoured the green) and there’s still some Misssy sweat in the pits, cos I’m sure the buggers haven’t had them dry cleaned since I wore it. One thing’s for sure, Scarlett O’Hara would NOT have pulled Rhett Butler in any of these garments. Civil War or no Civil War.
Strangely, I don’t have any photos of me in the dress, although my friend claims she has one somewhere, so I may still be able to post it up one day. So, until that day, I do some Googling… you never know. And I find this bizarre photo courtesy of Gil Davis at GatesofDixie.com.
And that, my friends, is the lilac dress of yore. But I must make it clear, in case there’s any doubt; that photo is NOT of me.
As I said, I favoured the green.
STOP PRESS (01/09/08): My thoughts go out to all the Southern New Orleans belles, beaus and otherwise that are yet again in fear for their most excellent city. Fingers crossed Gustav passes you all by and you can return home soon. (Misssy, ex-fake Southern Belle and friend of the Big Easy.)
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This Could Destroy the World!
Yesterday in the office I sometimes swan into when I’m not working from home, there was much hilarity. Loud guffaws of laughter were heard. Screams of mirth were piercing the air. At points it was startlingly loud. Clearly someone visiting the office was a bit of a joker, a character, or a “good laugh”.
At one point the laughter that erupted from the office this bloke was in was so uproarious that it prompted one of my colleagues to say this:
“Bloody Hell, that’s not even a corporate laugh. That’s an actual laugh”
I thought my friend’s comment was funny. So I laughed. A real laugh; not a corporate laugh.
I’ve been thinking about corporate laughing ever since. The social and business oil of the corporate laugh is a powerful force. The forced or fake laughing at the joke or the comment that someone makes, even though you don’t find it particularly funny, in order to make life go smoother, is the Castrol GTX of the global business machine.
I wonder what would happen if one day we all decided not to do the corporate laugh?
What would happen if everyone, one day, didn’t laugh at the lame comments a workmate makes about their weekend exploits, but instead just looked at them silently?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t laugh at all, but only genuine situations of hilarity should get any response.
A typical day would also involve not laughing at meetings or presentations where the boss tells a funny story to get everyone on board with something, makes remarks about fellow workmates, or generally just tries to show what a wag he is. Unless any of this was genuinely funny. Which in 99% of cases, it wouldn’t be.
We could widen the definition to extend to social occasions. For example, hopeful boyfriends meeting the girl’s parents for the first time would be banned from doing the corporate laugh. If the meeting of Dad-in-Law-To-Be fell on “No Corporate Laughing Day” they’d be screwed as they’d have to look Daddio unsmilingly in the eye as he tells all his mother-in-law jokes and expects a captive and generous audience in the form of the suck up future son in law who wants full approval.
Excepting the office of Gordon Brown which I’m guessing sees little in the way of joshing, the political machine would seize up. All that forced laughter and barracking in the House of Commons would cease and some actual progress might be made. Similarly the ass kissing laughter of the minions during a golf game with George Bush would result in shockwaves of indifference leaving the ego of the President battered, forcing him to do God Knows What.
Would all business deals fall flat? Would “office pranksters” find themselves facing a wall of silence provoking a crisis of self doubt? Would the psyche of the corporate drone be irrevocably damaged causing most of them to cease to function? Would the social grease of the day be wiped away, make us all anxious, disorientated and even angry?
Maybe even then I’m understating it: would a global war break out within one day of the no corporate laughing embargo???
Let’s try it and see what happens!
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When’s My Shower Scene?
King of the Corporate Cocks
The thing about being a corporate cock sucker* for a living is the corporate cocks are, as the name suggests….cocks.
This is the one fundamental thing about working life that I will never be able to get over. Shame really, or else working would be unremittingly fab!
My particular field is loosely coined as the visual arts. But not the type that allows you to drunkenly dribble paint over a canvas, ride a bike through it, fling some dog poo at it with a catapult and win you prizes and slots on “The Culture Show”.
No, I produce and direct corporate telly; the bastard child of television.
I make programmes that are used in the workplace or are used to sell stuff to folk. I didn’t really mean to get into this…but it keeps me from having to become a customer of unsecured loans endorsed by Carol Vorderman.
My brother does the same thing, but he does it down in London dealing with marginally larger cocks than I. We recently had a long discussion on a London bus about things that upset us about our paymasters.
They would be funny, if they weren’t true.
The Boss Is Really Good on Camera
All too often, I’ll be scripting a programme for a client and someone will pipe up in a meeting, “Oh we should get Bossman ZeroCharisma to present! He’s very good!”
I have to physically restrain my eyes from rolling heavenward by sticking my fingernails into them. A huge sigh will have to stifled and redirected into my digestive system to be recycled into a fart that I will do in the client’s lift later on, seconds before someone gets in the lift with me.
Compare and contrast my two replies to this suggestion and guess which one goes live out of my mouth and which one festers in my brain unsaid contributing to an aneurysm I’ve got brewing.
Option A: “If you force me to put some John Majoresque phelgmy-voiced rabbit caught-in-the-headlights dickhead with a personality by-pass and dandruff in my programme, I will have to run at you with a javelin for the good of mankind.”
Option B: “ I have nothing against Bossman Zero Charisma being in the programme as an interviewee, but you must always bear in mind that no matter how good Mr Zerocharisma is at public speaking, presenting a television programme is a skill that few untrained people have naturally. I think it would put unnecessary stress on Mr Zerocharisma and may compromise the quality of the final product. I think we should stick with the professional presenter we’ve got lined up. With all due respect. ”
If this doesn’t work, I have the Holy Grail of replies in reserve , “Bossman will take longer to get it right as he may need many takes, I’ll need a bigger budget.”
Works like a charm, that one.
Steve from Marketing is a whizz with the video camera
These chumps are spending £50K on a training video that is professionally shot and edited to standards as high, if not higher, than most broadcast television. So, why oh bloody why does the client think that I would want pour a bucket of rancid pigshit all over the finished programme by including some shaky-cam VHS footage that Steve-from-Marketing shot whilst clearly suffering from a stroke?
Hey Misssy, when’s my shower scene?
There are common phrases that people I come across during my job say to me like it’s the first time I’ve ever heard them. Problem is, these people are paying you, so you can’t respond to them like they are annoying drunks that accost you in a nightclub.
You must chuckle as if it is indeed the first time you have ever heard the following laughsome nuggets:
“Hey Misssy, I’m not doing my interview ’til I’ve seen my trailer! Hehehehehe!”
Hey Misssy, when’s my shower scene? Hehehehehehe!”
(Shouted to the bloke you’re filming by a workmate), “Hoi Jim, you’ll be getting your Equity card next! Hehehehehe!” (Much laughter from both parties)
“Hey Misssy, does your wee dog bite?” (gesturing to the furry windshield for the mic)
Oh is it a boom mic or a flipping Shitzu? (Wankers…)
“Hey Misssy, I’m a bit of a dab hand with the old video camera myself, would you like a look at my home movies? Hehehehehe!”
“Hey Misssy, any chance of borrowing that camera for the weekend. If you know what I mean..hehehehe!”
“Hey, Mrs Spielberg! Hehehehe!” (You can insert alternative well known director’s name here. But never a female one, as corporate cocks are unaware of the existence of any. It seems to matter not that the actual Mrs Spielberg is, in fact, a second rate actress last seen ruining her husband’s second Indiana Jones film)
Kate Capshaw (or Mrs Spielberg). Married Stevie for his looks and personality apparently
Using technical jargon like a pro
Watching the Director’s Commentary on your bloody Die Hard DVD does not make you an expert, mate.
Nothing makes me cringe more than a client trying to look cool by using supposed industry jargon like:
“It’s a wrap!”
or,
“Action!”
But my absolute opposite-of-favourite is the one where a client will shout “Cut!” when actually being the Director of the shoot, it’s my flipping job to tell the cameraman when to stop recording. I have felt my trigger finger twitching on many occasion when this has happened.
I tell you, even if handguns become legalised in this country, never let me have one, OK?
Another gem is when your client repeatedly offers to carry the camera so that he can look cool in front of his mates. Always decline, but give him the innocuous and extremely heavy lighting kit to carry instead. Ha! Sucker!
To round off my assault on the people that pay my wages, I have to say that I would love, love love to show you a collection of the worst instances of clients on camera, but I’ve still got 12 years left to run on my mortgage so you’ll have to wait til 2020 or until I win those EuroMillions.
Whichever is the sooner….
(I’d love to hear your corporate cocksucking stories, by the way…but not the literal kind, if that’s alright with you.)
* it’s a METAPHOR, a METAPHOR, I tell you! (Ok, a metaphor largely borrowed from Bill Hicks…but I’m sure he won’t mind…anymore)
An Atypical Post
One of the few photos I have of me in teaching mode (I’m on the extreme right)
I don’t tend to use the Misssives as a diary, nor do I use them as a therapist’s couch. I promise funny stories.
Except that this week I haven’t got any…I’m just sad. So forgive me for this momentary change to the previously advertised programme.
You see, on Monday I went in to the college where I used to work for a little visit.
“How are you liking your new job?” I was asked a million times.
“Meh” I answered, not able to summon up much more than that.
“Good money, though, I thought?” several would say.
“S’pose” I mumbled.
Truth is I miss being what I was, a teacher. It’s a horrible pain in the arse sometimes and there’s a lot of non-teaching bollocks associated with it, but God I miss my team, I miss my students, I miss the laughter. I used to love my job. I was enticed away from it by a proverbial “offer I couldn’t refuse” and a return to industry.
I’m always like this after I move jobs, I go through an intense and usually year long mourning process. But, I’m six months into this one and it’s not waining any.
As I left the college building I heard a banging on a window. I looked up and there was one of my former students waving at me like a maniac.
Call me a snivelling cornball, but I have tears in my eyes just writing that.
I need to get over this. Never look back.
The Christmas Party Survival Guide
My new work’s Christmas Party is on Friday. It is an overnight stay at a country estate. We arrive at 10.30 in the morning and depart the next day.
Sweet Child o’ Mine….I am terrified.
Shaking in my sho-boots as I am, I am not going to anticipate anything about it. Instead I am going to give you Misssy’s rules for work Christmas party survival.
1. Beware of the free bar.
This is a poison chalice of the highest order.
I once saw my old company handyman passed out drunk on a couch in the reception area. As the night went on, people essentially vandalised the poor guy. By the time he came round he had a cock drawn on his cheek leading to his mouth, his shirt was off and he was sporting marker pen boobs. In addition, someone had managed to pull a silver sequined G-string over his trousers. Photos were, of course, taken.
Keep that picture in your mind as you consider your response to “Flaming Sambucas all round, anyone?!!!”
Please don’t let this be you
2. Do not get stuck next to management in the seating arrangements
Sometimes this is hard. My managing director for six years running would make sure that in the table layout my name tag was next to his. One year I snuck in and swapped it, but he insisted it was swapped back. He was a perv, though and maybe not all bosses are like that.
Perv or no, and assuming you have a choice, there is one good reason you should avoid them; they are not your friends. No amount of alcohol is enough to switch off the power balance switch that exists between the two of you. Don’t delude yourself it’s even worth trying. Also, they only want to talk about work. And you want to be over with your mates talking utter crap (and working out what to do to the passed-out janny this year), don’t you?
3. Do not go onto a club afterwards.
Given that most Christmas parties start at lunchtime, you really need to be home and out of harm’s way by late evening. Anything more is guaranteed messiness. And even if you are not the one being messy, then you will witness sights you cannot erase from your brain.
Worst of all will be being forced to dance with middle aged guys with Santa ties on, who haven’t been near any club recently that doesn’t have the word “golf “in front of it.
4.Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, cop off with anyone you work with.
I cannot stress this enough.
Other than the obvious “don’t-get-your-meat-where-you-get-your-bread” reason, there are three particular extra reasons.
Firstly, EVERYONE will know about it instantly. I was once called over by a work mate to witness a happening of this sort through the board room window. Before table-top coitus was even interuptusused, the whole company knew.
To be honest the couple were bloody lucky that drink perhaps makes things a little quicker, shall we say, as one of the cameramen I worked with was running to get the camera from upstairs. Lucky for them, he was too late to catch the exclusive.
Secondly, even if the affection was genuine at the time, you’ve got at least a week of no-work between the “happening” and going back to work guaranteeing extreme awkwardness that first day back. And you can bet the whole work is beaking-in to watch that situation go down.
Thirdly, you don’t want to ruin your Christmas with horrid flashbacks and ruminations of whether you should hand in your notice along with the drunken janitor.
Your Chrimbo cop off won’t look like this….( I Googled some terrible things to find a pic of what it would look like,
but I’ll spare you)
5. The Special Fifth Survival Rule
This can always be used but you need to be organised. It is this; have an excuse ready in September as to why you can’t make the Christmas Party at all and avoid it altogether.
Make sure to save appointments up for just this occasion. For example, you could book the operation to get your varicose veins done that very week. It’ll be more enjoyable certainly, than being felt up by Barry from computing on the dancefloor.
Other than that, my dears, have a good one and let’s all make it through unscathed.
