There's Always One

Amongst Your Work Colleagues

Conrad is well aware of this because he was probably 'the one' in the office wherever he worked.  "No sense of humour" or "A sense of humour but a horrid one" even "Has pervert eyes".  I dined out for years when one of our clients described me as "The big scary man" when in reality I'm as dangerous as marshmallow.  Art!

     Ah.  Yes.  Perhaps I chose unwisely.

     ANYWAY I would like to regale you with another account about Malicious Compliance, where people observe the letter of the law if not the spirit.  Original Poster worked in a warehouse that dealt with computers and computer equipment, and all was good in the land apart from a particularly unpleasant bluebottle in the Sudocrem: The Engineer.  Art!

Delicious!

     This particular individual was an aging man nearing retirement, and who was renowned for his unabated nastiness and general aggressive attitude.  Probably thinking to himself that all he had to do was wait out the next few months and he'd be shot of all the bottomwipes he had to deal with.

     The fun began when TE approached OP and accused him of messing about with 'his' stuff on a set of pallets.  Blatantly untrue, and OP told TE to go check the internal security cameras, which TE had installed.  This did not please TE, who got louder, angrier and swearier, besides going red in the face.  Conrad, being the unworthy person he is, would have goaded the bloated puffer to see if he could hit that myocardial infarction he was so obviously going for.

     Finally, by which point TE has reached fever pitch and everyone else in the warehouse had stopped working to watch the drama, he shouts at OP "If you have a problem with how I act, take it up with HR or the boss".  With a few swear words mixed in.  Art!

Rage, personified

      Well, OP does just that, after noting the time and getting three witnesses ready to testify.

     HR must have had prior experience of TE, and they had access to the CCTV or the incident because they didn't mess about.  Within 2 hours he was sent home.

Then twenty minutes later he was assigned to "Permanently working from home".

Twenty minutes after that his work credentials were cancelled, remote access was cancelled and his duties allocated to other people.

His job then consisted of writing up his tasks and how to do them.

     OP posted this on the day it happened and commented that TE still had seven months to go until retirement, but it looked as if he'd be fired within 7 hours.

     Tee hee*!

     Motley, don't bother protesting at your working conditions, BOOJUM! does not have an HR department and is run as a benevolent tyranny.  Now, toast me a crumpet!

BOOJUM! Reviews Things

Firstly I'd like to say that it's been raining for hours and hours, since I can hear the noise of tyres on a rain-slick road up here in the Sekrit Layr, and a depressing sound it is, too.

     So!  Let us brighten up the world by slandering and libelling the creative output of folks, which we can safely do because nobody reads this scrivel, do they?

"THE AMAZING MAURICE":  One presumes this is a kid's film, as it's animated and the poster features two children and a gigantic cat.  Personally, I'd see about a trip to the vets, that cat is morbidly obese.  I bet it frequents five different houses and gets three meals at each one.  Art!

Or perhaps they're really tiny children?

"GLASS ONION":  My my, they don't have much creativity in Hollywood, do they?  Perhaps we should be grateful that Stan Kubrick has popped off this mortal coil and never lived to see the day a sequel to "A Clockwork Orange" got made <hangs head in mournful silence>.  Art!

Note absence of glass.  Or onions

"YOUR CHRISTMAS OR MINE": Neither.  Get out of here with your vapid venal  vileness*.

Lord Peter's Crossword

Ah, I understand this one!  One of several that Ol' Dot included which are actually acronyms or merely initials, which is definitely stretching the boundaries of how fair a solution is.  Okay, here the 'clue': "Here in brief epitomy, attribute of royalty."

     And the solution?

     "H.M."  which as any fule no stands for His Majesty, as the situation is now, and was previously Her Majesty - STAND UP FOR QUEENIE**!

HM and Her

"The Sea Of Sand"

Our gallant band are assessing the situation they find themselves in, which is to say, not a good one, under-armed and heavily outnumbered.

Sitting in the back of their Bedford, Private Menzies boiled water for tea.  The dancing cooker flames made his underlit face look demented and evil, an appearance spoiled by his asking what Sarah wanted, a mug or a cup?  Did she want sugar, like normal folk, or jam like that Eyetie sergeant?

          ‘A mug,’ she replied, the right answer in Menzies’s eyes, as he pursed his lips in approval and nodded.  The mug of incredibly sweetened tea, heavy with condensed milk, went down like nectar.  Sarah sighed in satisfaction, able to concentrate on matters other than her thirst or stomach.   Over in the second Sahariana Roger, Tam and the Doctor were all in discussion, a  “discussion” sounding very much like an argument.

          ‘We have only three machine-guns, assorted small arms, a few grenades, not enough food or water and an equal split between British, Italian and civilians,’ expounded Roger, being studiedly polite and hence implicitly rude.

          ‘Them British gave the monsters a right stuffing. Blew up two of their tanks, and killed every monster in ‘em.  Put that in yer pipe.’

          A moments silence fell before any answer came from the Doctor.  Sarah winced in advance, knowing how unflattering and empirical the reply would be.  The Doctor might be humane, but this wasn’t one of those times.

          ‘With respect, that is massively irrelevant.  Yes, yes, I know your countrymen were brave, Private.  But they are dead, and our opponents are alive.  No, no, hear me out.  The “black tanks” you described are principally composed of silicon dioxide, of which there is an infinite supply in the deserts surrounding us.’

     Ah yes, trust the Doctor to bring things down to earth.  Or - should that be capitalised as 'Earth'?  Given that we're skipping between two different worlds.

Finally -

Let me be vatic about the next couple of hours.  I confidently predict that it will rain incessantly until long after night has fallen.  There you go, this vatic stuff's not that hard to do.  Still, it is still persisting down, which has rather put a downer on my intent of having a constitutional into Royton.  It would be more in the nature of a paddle rather than a walk.  I could take Edna for a trot and get a paper up at the shops, but I'd need to take my rucksack because - it's still persisting down.  The sky presents an aspect of what I like to call 'Uniform Grey Layer'.

      Conrad, signing off.

*  Yes, I am a terrible person, but we knew that already, didn't we?

**  A big fan of 'Doctor Who' and thus a person of considerable taste