I had another restless night. I gave up trying to sleep,
got up and watched more "Brideshead Revisited". Yesterday I
mentioned that the actor who had been Marvin in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy had played cousin Jasper. This morning I was reminded that the actor
who'd played Lord Brideshead had also been in The Guide - he'd played Arthur
Dent. I watched every actor like a hawk in the hope of spotting more
crossovers.
As “er indoors TM” and the dogs
staged a rather impressive snoring contest I got ready for work and set off
through a rather dark morning. It was over three weeks since I'd last shown my
face there, and in the meantime the mornings have got noticeably darker. As I
drove the pundits on the radio were spouting what they spout. Wars still raged,
politicians still pontificated... all paled into insignificance given the
revelation that some poor chap had had a tug with such
ferocity that he'd ripped his aorta open.
It strikes me that you'd have to have quite a serious
joddrell to give yourself an aortic dissection.
I suppose that, if nothing else, here's another reason for having a cold
shower.
Being rather unimpressed with the sweetie selection we'd
had in Uzbekistan I thought I'd take some sweeties into work from Sainsbury's.
So I went to the Aylesford branch where yet again there wasn't a single manned
checkout. Instead members of staff stood glaring at the people struggling with
the self-service tills, and occasionally making pointed comments. One of my
fellow shoppers was challenged by the supermarket staff; they wanted to check
the contents of his shopping bag against his receipt. He told them to get
knotted; if they didn't trust him then they shouldn't have forced him to use a
self-service checkout.
I thought about applauding.
I got to work. Apparently yesterday we'd had a visitor. One
of my trainees from twenty years ago had come for an interview for a senior
position. Fortunately he didn't get it.
I spent much of the day thinking about the chap. I can
always remember him going from argument to argument. His grandfather died and
left him a legacy which at the time he was squandering by moving house at least
once every year seemingly constantly falling out with neighbours. There was one
episode where he had a fist fight with a neighbour over who was allowed to park
where on the local streets.
I can remember being his manager and having my manager
wanting to know what the problem at work was; this chap had approached my
manager in tears because everyone hated him and everyone was picking on him.
Neither I nor any of my staff knew anything about what the issue was, nor did
we ever find out. When he left he organised his own leaving party to which he
made a point of inviting secretaries and people from adjoining departments, but
none of the people with whom he actually worked.
He came off Facebook years ago - I'd often wondered what
happened to him. Apparently he's spent the last few years moving across the
country... still going from squabble to squabble.
When I got home I spent a few minutes looking at my LinkedIn account. I don’t know why really. Of all the various
social media, LinkedIn is far and away the most lame. Social media is supposed
to be fun… LinkedIn is for people who really don’t have anything in their lives
but work. Sadly there’s a lot of people like that.
It speaks volumes that I’ve formally verified my LinkedIn
account for free, but Facebook wants a tenner a month…
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