Me and Arthur Dent

Okay, no one bulldozed my house this morning, and as far as I'm aware, no one's going to blow up the Earth anytime soon (not even us, though we seem to be trying pretty damn hard). Even if they were, I don't know anyone who'd pop up and take me Hitchhiking. But all the same, Thursdays just don't seem to work for me.

See, this morning, I was going to get out of bed at seven, have coffee, make lunch, remember my permanent job-related bits and get out the door on time. What actually happened was that I turned off the alarm when it went off at six-thirty, looked at the clock again at twenty-five to eight, only managed to look like I didn't dress in the dark by virtue of the fact that everything I'm currently wearing is black, snatched my bags off the kitchen floor and managed to get out the door on time anyway ... minus lunch, permanent job-related bits and coffee. Lunch was taken care of by a stop at Sainsbury's for some potato salad. Permanent job-related bits will just have to wait. If I have this much trouble getting out of bed in the morning, maybe I'm just working too hard.

Anyway, got into the office, and they've changed the radio station again -- I normally switch it to XFM and usually they just leave it alone, giving me halfway decent music. Occasionally, though, they change the station to some shit like Capital or Heart or, as I believe is the case today, Magic. *shudder* These stations play either pop crap or (in the case of the last one) easy listening semi-oldie shite that could put you to sleep. (And not only is it dull shite, but it's repetitive dull shite -- decades of easy listening crap and they still play the same songs over and over and over...)

And before I could even rectify the no-caffeine thing, I had to cope with the Epsilon Semi-Morons in Filing. Actually, that's being kind -- Epsilons were suited to their jobs. I think the entire Filing department is staffed by mandrills. Basically, I have been looking for this one file for the past 24 hours, and Filing insists it doesn't exist even though it's booked to them -- default booked, mind you, but booked all the same. This film was supposed to be at a meeting this morning, but I guess the people running said meeting will just have to manage without films taken two days ago. I got the other ones yesterday, after yelling at Filing for about a half-hour.

I got coffee and woke up enough for hunger to kick in (I have to start eating breakfast in the morning), so went digging in my ruck for one of my 'emergency' bags of crisps. And in the process, managed to drop my container of potato salad about three feet, at which point it dropped, cracked and leaked salad cream on the carpet. At least it's salvageable, but seriously, this day is getting ridiculous and it wasn't even ten in the morning yet.

Now, there's been a certain school of thought about the Jack of All Trades among my group of late, and whatever your opinion on it -- that it makes you less employable because someone who's specialised in one of the trades you're a Jack of will be better at it than you, that it makes you more employable because it means that you can be more versatile in the workplace -- I can tell you that it's an eternal ball-breaking bitch. See, if I have a speciality, it's the English language, but having a speciality is a little like having a car -- you can get from A to B with a vehicle that has four wheels and a motor, but it's more useful and more fun if you tack on added extras (snow tyres, rear view mirror, stereo, cupholders, little fuzzy dice...). My added extras to the English language include tactical thinking, imagination, typing speed and general computer know-how, which makes me a pretty good secretary and a potential writer. (My GM skills remain to be seen.)

I don't know what Julie's speciality is. I'm not sure if she has one. I'm not even sure how she got hired anymore. She's doing Nuclear Medicine work -- she was so keen to do this, probably because it means she gets out of the regular typing rut -- and spent most of this morning in consistent foul-up. It involved locating a document on the C drive on another login name without being sure of the document name or where she'd saved it. Kate tried to help (in usual abrasive style) and Julie started going ballistic. I approached with caution -- I think she likes asking me for help because, much as I don't like having to be called out as the poor man's tech support, I at least have a little patience with the unclued -- and we worked out what the problem was. Sorry; I worked out what the problem was (turns out you can't access things you saved on the C drive on one login from the other login, which makes sense seeing as one of the logins is in use by most of the department). And she's still confused. In the course of the hour, I saw her click onto an icon that she obviously didn't need (same one three times in a five-minute period) and have to be guided through the same drop-down menus every single time she hit them. Apparently, this is excused by the fact that she hasn't used Word in awhile. And she thinks she's going to leave here and find a 'better' job soon. Without Word, patience and a willingness to work, I'd like to see that...

Anyway, this day is bound to get better. I at least got my coffee eventually...

Thess