Ah, Month of the Bastard has started well…
Getting on the train this morning, one nong had got his stuff spread across the table of an entire 4-seater, and showed no signs of moving or doing anything.
So I sat on the chair diagonally opposite him – i.e. about as far from him as possible, in order to be fair about space allocation and so on – and got out the laptop. To be fair, he moved his paper across a little bit, so that there was room for it. Why he couldn’t pick the sodding thing up I have no idea. Maybe he only had intermittent use of his arms. He certainly preferred to keep them down by his side, with the paper on the table, along with all the files that he didn’t even open. But I had a plan…
Come the next station, there’s another surge of people getting on, and one pair ask whether the other seats at the table I’m using are free. Yeah, no worries. So I have to scoot across, and now sit opposite MonkeyBoy. Still using the laptop, of course. So he should move his shit from taking up all the space. Only he doesn’t. (And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t)
So having given him the opportunity to move his crap (which wasn’t getting looked at, remember) I just plonked the laptop on top of his files (and some of the newspaper that was also spread out, and that he couldn’t/wouldn’t pick up) and carried on.
Annoying? Hell yeah. Funny as chuff. Even more so.
I’ve decided that for the month of March, I’m going to feed my inner bastard. Any number of things that normally get on my tits will be dealt with in a very different manner to usual. This includes, but is not limited to :
- People who have walked past four display screens telling them where the train is going, get on the train, and then ask “Is this the train for Ely / Norwich?”. The answer in March will be “No”.
- Couples walking arm-in-arm towards me and blocking the entire path, with no intention of seperating or moving, as if they’re actually physically joined at the hip. During March, I will not be avoiding them, or stepping into the road to go round them.
- In a similar vein, the chuffwit tosspots who ride their bikes down the pavement, ringing their bell so the pedestrians get out of their way. Steel-toecapped boots will be used in enterprising ways on these doughnuts during the month
- On trains, the nongs who sit in the outer seat of a pair (i.e. the one closest to the aisle) with no-one on the inner seat, then sigh when someone wants to sit in the empty seat. These people may be sat on…
OK, so let me explain. Yesterday’s “backlog” post was (for once) not an “I’m great” post. Well, not much of one anyway.
What I was actually getting at is the slow speed that other people in the organisation, both currently and historically, seem to work at. I suppose it’s also related to the other observation I made about corporate indecisiveness, in that organisationally it just seems to take forever to get things done. In my own business, and when I’m dealing with clients, I tend to be at the other end of the scale, and work on getting things done. I find it generally leaves the people I work with happy, and feeling that their requirements and so on have been listened to, understood, and then attended to.
I bring the same attitude into the office, and get things done. Nothing waits overnight, it all gets done on the day I receive it. All the people I deal with regularly within the company know that if they have something important or urgent, it’ll be done as soon as possible.
But that attitude is apparently rare. Those same people I deal with regularly comment on it – and see it as a positive thing. But it’s still a rarity.
It’s not a complaint, not an ego-boost – just an observation.
