Details of the work Christmas Party are now coming out. I’m still not going, but even I have to admit that the directors here are being remarkably generous…

Consider these points :

1. The party has been booked at the (apparently good) restaurant at one of the local NT Properties.
2. There’s also a disco/dance thing after the meal
3. The company has booked the entire place
4. Everyone who’s going will be collected by taxi from home, taken to the do, and taxis have been booked to take them home again. That’s paid for.
5. The only thing that people attending the do will have to pay for is their own drinks from the bar. All the food and wine at the table is being paid for by the directors.
6. People going to the party can leave work in mid-afternoon to go and get ready. They’re also not expected to come in to work the following day ’til mid-morning.

I reckon that’s pretty generous, and I’m not even going!

Many moons ago, I used to run pubs and hotels – as I’ve mentioned once or twice before. It’s still something that I’d go back to, depending on the right circumstances and so on. In fact, it’s something we’re both talking about as an idea – although not just ‘any old’ pub/restaurant. Although I’ll leave that for now.

Anyway, as a result of that, I do find myself interested by programmes like (among others) BBC’s “The Restaurant“, where nine couples compete to win the chance to run a restaurant in partnership with Raymond Blanc. It’s kind of like “The Apprentice”, but for the restaurant business. My initial plan was to watch it as research, making sure I wouldn’t make any really stupid mistakes.

However, it also leads me to be exceptionally rude and sweary. Sadly, ‘The Restaurant’ has fallen into the same kind of Reality TV trap as The Apprentice, in that the people they’ve got on there aren’t really interested in running a business, but are more interested in being on TV- and that’s also evident in the selection process, where the competitors have quite obviously been selected for their road-crash style fuckups rather than their ideas or restaurant skills.

I’m not saying I’m surprised by this, by the way – more like vaguely despairing, but not at all surprised.

In the current series we’ve already had the couple who (on camera at least) couldn’t find a proper can opener, and thus tried opening a can (and a coconut) with a razor-sharp chef’s knife, using a rolling-pin as a hammer to knock the knife in. I had to look away at that point, because I couldn’t help but wonder whether we were about to see the first on-screen amputation.

We’ve also (somehow still) got a pair where the chef doesn’t cook – and in fact appears to be actively terrified of cooking. How – and indeed why?!? – do you select a pair for a restaurant/catering-based show when the person doing the cooking side of things is (frankly) an utter bell-end whose previous ‘cooking’ experience has been – um – making cocktails in a bar?

I just think it’s a shame – and a waste – of a good idea to have ended up with it being so obviously made-for-TV. I know, it’s a TV programme – but there could’ve been so many opportunities for having something that promoted innovative food, ideas and menus, and instead it’s just another sad Reality TV staple.

For a few hours this morning, D4D was unavailable.

The hosting company that I use for D4D suffered what they describe as “a massive network outage” which took nearly three hours to fix.

It’s back now, but there may be other blips over the next couple of days while they work out what the hell went wrong.

It’s probably done the rounds by now anyway, but I still find this rant email from the owner of the New York restaurant “Paradou” to be pretty amazing. And not in a good way.

Basically, he’s asked the waiters and bar hosts to get email addresses for their customers – one assumes so that they can be sent marketing shite – and is unhappy (to say the least) that people don’t seem to be doing what he wants. (Although I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the owners being tosspots, looking at how fucking horrible their website is!)

And I have to say, on the face of this email, I wouldn’t want to work for the fucker either.

Amazingly, I’ve already been in the new job for five weeks. In that time I seem to have got a remarkable amount done – which worries me a bit, as it’s conceivably making quite a rod for my own back.

In the five weeks I’ve done the following :

• Created (and launched) a new site for the company, which has already taken enough money to pay my salary for the next six months
• Written a complete card-processing system
• Written an audit-log set-up that’ll list every time certain actions happen
• Cleaned up a load of shit in the database
• Implemented some automated backup procedures etc.
• Sorted out some significant security bits
• And a load of other smaller bits as well.

I think it’s fair to say that the company’s pretty pleased with how I’ve settled in so far. In a lot of ways it’s still part of that Contractor ethos that I’ve had for years – come in, get down to it, get the job done. Regardless though, they’re pleased with how it’s going, and it’s already been made pretty clear that I’m not going to need to worry about my three month assessment in mid-January.

And I have to admit, I’m actually quite enjoying the challenges that are being thrown my way. There’s a whole load of stuff that needs to be done by Jan 1 2010, which is pretty scary. But it should all work out OK.

The current workplace (and I really must think up a name for it at some point) is having a ‘dress-down’ day today, with payments for it going to cockbag Children in Need.

A number of the people in the office were really excited about being allowed to dress down, because even the “smart casual” dresscode is supposedly ‘boring’ in their eyes.

What’s amused me though is that they actually all look a lot more individual in the usual work clothes than they do on ‘dress-down’ day, when they are all in jeans, and most of the girls are wearing sodding Ugg boots.