All places of work have a system of folder navigation. They are, without exception, designed to make you want to kill yourself. Today, I stood over my colleague for half an hour while we watched hardcore pornography together on her computer. Sorry, wait, that’s right, we weren’t watching porn, we were looking for a document.
It took half an hour because there was only one document that we were looking for, but the folder we were looking in contained enough similarly-titled documents to contain the Arabic translation to Paradise Lost written in Times New Roman, size 36 font, on single sheets of A4, a million times over.
When she had finally located the document, insisting all the while that I loom over her in the manner of a particularly attentive stalker, I suggested:
‘Tell you what, now that we’ve found it, and hurrah for us by the way, why don’t I just file it into a ‘Master’ folder, so that the next time its needed we can locate it more easily. Because all of these other documents are just old versions of this one, right?’
She looked up at me, her face a recognisable mixture of apathetic disinterest and resentment. I began my usual round of apologetic prattle, but I think that the damage had already been done. I could see now that I had offended her deeply. What I had mistaken for me being helpful, albeit in an especially pedantic and anally retentive fashion, was in fact just a slur on her organizational skills, and probably also on the Belgians as a nation. So often I find that what is intended as me doing my job turns out, actually, to be me insulting the Belgians. And what a surprisingly racist individual I have suddenly revealed myself to be.
‘What’, she replied ‘what means zis ‘Master’?’
‘It means: here is the document that you are looking for’
‘We don know ‘Master’?’
‘No. Well…I can call the folder whatever you want, we can even just ignore the separate folder idea altogether and just label the document with the date that it was last amended, or we can rename the document as 'XXX new’.
‘But we find it now’
‘Well yes, yes we did find it. But we will need to access this particular document on a regular basis, and it just makes it more easy to find it ON A REGULAR BASIS if we put an identifier on it so that we don’t have to trawl through all of these old versions again’
‘But zis was izy to find: I sink zat we don need to chenj it becawz ze document is called what we are looking for’
‘I hear what you ‘re saying, but, um, its taken us half an hour to find it, right, because all of the old version are called by the same name’
‘But look urr, we can see wen ze document az been chenj, so we know which is ze one we want’
‘Yes, but now that you have opened it, the date has changed again. So every time we look through these documents to find this one’ - and by this point I could see this happening rather a lot - ‘the date changes to say that the document has been modified, you see?’
‘I don sink zat we need to chenj’
‘Right’
I decided at that point that I had spent quite enough time debating the relative merits of folder organisation, and that I didn’t really give enough of a shit to impose my new world order (of folders) upon the Belgians. It did leave me thinking, though: how does she organize her pornography?
Monday 26 April 2010
The bank called ING
I chose to open a bank account at ING. Well, I say ‘chose’, what I actually mean is that ING have an office directly opposite mine, therefore ING offered me the only chance to open a bank account which did not require a bus journey, time off work, and another chance to stockpile resentment in order to open it.
Before opening the bank account I had been reliably informed that banks in Luxembourg do not open on the weekends, and are in fact available to provide banking services only Monday-Friday 9am to 6pm, the time when most people who can make use of their services are at work. What did they do, I thought, before internet banking? Presumably not a great deal. Just like estate agents: available only during the hours in which the individuals who have the means to make use of their services are at work. It’s a conspiracy to make me piss my holiday allowance down the drain, I’m telling you.
I duly arrived at ING one lunch break, and was told by a man behind a plate glass window that I had to go to the caravan just opposite. I walked towards what looked an awful lot like a branded festival portapotty, went inside and sat down behind a vase full of easter eggs in ING colours and a man with a terrible black eye. The black-eyed man had an ING-branded pen on an ING pen-holder around his neck, and an ING polo shirt, name-badge, belt and mouse-mat.
I sat down in front of his desk, thinking to myself ‘Don’t stare at his black eye, don’t stare at his black eye, don’t..’
‘Oui?’ he said.
‘What happened to your eye?’
‘Quoi?’
‘Ton Oeuil – qu’est-ce-qui c’est passez?’
‘Je peux vous aider, mademoiselle ?’
‘I’d like to open a bank account. Une compte de banque. To put money in and that’
‘Identification?’
I pulled out my passport, and a copy of my employment contract which HR had helpfully warned me that I would need.
‘You liv urr?’
‘Yes’
‘You want credit card?’
‘Does that come with the account? I don’t know. I don’t care, really, I just want a bank account so that I can get paid, and I’ll worry about how I access the money later’
‘En?’
‘A bank account. Une compte de banque. I want one of those’
He wearily began the arduous task of filling out a form with my details, grafting away while I stared at his black eye and decided that he was living in an abusive relationship.
‘Can I pay in a British cheque?’
‘A shek? Not urr. You muss go to anuzzer ING in Cloche D’Or’.
‘Isn’t this ING Cloche D’Or? It says ‘ING Cloche D’Or’ on a big sign outside the entrance’
‘Non’.
‘If I go to this other ING, I can pay it in there? How long will it take?’
He shrugged, disinterested.
‘One week? Ten days? A year? A millennia?’
‘Maybe six week. I don naw. You giz shek to ING Cloche D’Or. Zey send next Muns. We mus send ze shek to ING UK’
‘Oh. Well in that case can’t I just send it to ING UK myself, by recorded delivery, and then it will take less time, yes?’
‘Non. It take six week’.
‘Right’.
After a few moments my battered, branded friend handed me a file full of information and a card with my account number and sort code on it.
‘What about my card, when do I get that?’
‘In sree week. We call you’
He was clearly concerned that I would start harassing him, and eventually become something of a stalker, which, to be fair, I eventually did.
‘Why has my account number got 25 digits? How am I supposed to pay for stuff online - American Apparel are never going to accept this?’
‘You want credit card?’
‘No. Wait – can I pay for stuff online by credit card?’
Another shrug.
‘Well, can I have a credit card?’
‘Non’.
‘Right. So where is the elusive ING Cloche D’Or, then?’
Black-eye handed me a leaflet decorated with branch details: then leaned back in his chair with an ‘I’d appreciate it if you suddenly died’ sort of expression.
The conversation was over.
Before opening the bank account I had been reliably informed that banks in Luxembourg do not open on the weekends, and are in fact available to provide banking services only Monday-Friday 9am to 6pm, the time when most people who can make use of their services are at work. What did they do, I thought, before internet banking? Presumably not a great deal. Just like estate agents: available only during the hours in which the individuals who have the means to make use of their services are at work. It’s a conspiracy to make me piss my holiday allowance down the drain, I’m telling you.
I duly arrived at ING one lunch break, and was told by a man behind a plate glass window that I had to go to the caravan just opposite. I walked towards what looked an awful lot like a branded festival portapotty, went inside and sat down behind a vase full of easter eggs in ING colours and a man with a terrible black eye. The black-eyed man had an ING-branded pen on an ING pen-holder around his neck, and an ING polo shirt, name-badge, belt and mouse-mat.
I sat down in front of his desk, thinking to myself ‘Don’t stare at his black eye, don’t stare at his black eye, don’t..’
‘Oui?’ he said.
‘What happened to your eye?’
‘Quoi?’
‘Ton Oeuil – qu’est-ce-qui c’est passez?’
‘Je peux vous aider, mademoiselle ?’
‘I’d like to open a bank account. Une compte de banque. To put money in and that’
‘Identification?’
I pulled out my passport, and a copy of my employment contract which HR had helpfully warned me that I would need.
‘You liv urr?’
‘Yes’
‘You want credit card?’
‘Does that come with the account? I don’t know. I don’t care, really, I just want a bank account so that I can get paid, and I’ll worry about how I access the money later’
‘En?’
‘A bank account. Une compte de banque. I want one of those’
He wearily began the arduous task of filling out a form with my details, grafting away while I stared at his black eye and decided that he was living in an abusive relationship.
‘Can I pay in a British cheque?’
‘A shek? Not urr. You muss go to anuzzer ING in Cloche D’Or’.
‘Isn’t this ING Cloche D’Or? It says ‘ING Cloche D’Or’ on a big sign outside the entrance’
‘Non’.
‘If I go to this other ING, I can pay it in there? How long will it take?’
He shrugged, disinterested.
‘One week? Ten days? A year? A millennia?’
‘Maybe six week. I don naw. You giz shek to ING Cloche D’Or. Zey send next Muns. We mus send ze shek to ING UK’
‘Oh. Well in that case can’t I just send it to ING UK myself, by recorded delivery, and then it will take less time, yes?’
‘Non. It take six week’.
‘Right’.
After a few moments my battered, branded friend handed me a file full of information and a card with my account number and sort code on it.
‘What about my card, when do I get that?’
‘In sree week. We call you’
He was clearly concerned that I would start harassing him, and eventually become something of a stalker, which, to be fair, I eventually did.
‘Why has my account number got 25 digits? How am I supposed to pay for stuff online - American Apparel are never going to accept this?’
‘You want credit card?’
‘No. Wait – can I pay for stuff online by credit card?’
Another shrug.
‘Well, can I have a credit card?’
‘Non’.
‘Right. So where is the elusive ING Cloche D’Or, then?’
Black-eye handed me a leaflet decorated with branch details: then leaned back in his chair with an ‘I’d appreciate it if you suddenly died’ sort of expression.
The conversation was over.
At work: the 'clean desk' police
I started a new job three weeks ago. New job, new City, new Country.
After three weeks, the colleague who sits at the desk next to mine had clearly had enough: ‘You naw’ she said ‘hactually, we az a clin desk policy ee-urr’.
‘A what?’ I replied, eyebrows knotted.
‘A clin desk policy’.
‘Yes, yes I heard you’.
‘Zis min zat your desk, eet muss be clin before you liv ze office. You muss clin your desk evewy hiv-en-ing befaw you live’. At this point, my esteemed colleague broke off to gesticulate with an irritable twitch of her finger towards the compost heap of a desk that I have swiftly made my own.
‘Right’.
‘So zat zee cliners, zey can clin’.
‘Right’.
‘Uzzerwise, zey cannot clin’.
‘I see’, I said, before nodding at what I assumed was the appropriate moment and turning back to face le problem in hand. She wasn’t finished. I think that she was waiting for something from me. Regret, perhaps? Shame? A complete mental breakdown with a little self-harm thrown in on the side for good measure? Who knows.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t really geared up to give a shit. I contemplated, briefly, taking a dump on my desk before I left the office that evening, to see how exactly the CDP (‘Clean Desk Police’) might choose to manifest their disapproval.
My colleague waited, quite patiently, looking at me as I tried with great effort to ignore her. After a moment or so I thought ‘Maybe I should approach this more efficiently: I’ll do the shit on my desk right now, yeah, and then later I’ll have the time to give her the finger before getting the sack. I don’t think that it was the moment she had been waiting for. I should have left it, but, well, you know, she was sort of annoying me and that.
I turned to her. ‘What happens if I just leave it as it is?’
‘If you live it? What ‘appen?’
‘Yes, if I live it, what ‘appen?’
A flicker of violence passed across her face. I could see her go through all of the five stages of grief: denial, depression, anger and two others that I can’t remember and can’t be naffed to look up. She tried to clarify the situation, presumably thinking that something had been lost in translation, which, of course, it hadn’t.
Here was a socio-cultural difference of such magnitude that she could barely equate my response with reality. I did consider meeting her half-way, but then again the idea of telling her to fuck off appealed to my innate sense of justice, you see, and, quite frankly, a really couldn’t have given a pig in shit what she thought of the state of my desk.
Later on, I fired off a whining e-mail to a friend to vent- subject title Re: The Cunts. My friend explained that there were clear-cut rules about such matters as post-it note use and desk tidiness.
‘You can’t just leave post-it notes lying around the place to remember everything, they told me that in my time-management course’.
‘I’m sorry’, I said, ‘But I have relied upon post-it notes and the back of my hand to remember things for the past ten years. I have found them both unfailingly reliable, provided, of course, that with relative frequency you steal supplies of the former from work, and wash the latter compulsively after visiting the toilet because otherwise the reminder alerts don’t garner one’s attention with sufficient regularity’.
‘The man in my time-management course wants post-it notes banned’.
‘Banned? From where? From here? Or from the world in general? What exactly does he expect us to use as an alternative?’
‘He said we should write it in a cahier’.
‘Write it in a cahier’.
‘Yes. Or use Microsoft Outlook’.
‘ Microsoft Outlook? We don’t have Microsoft fucking Outlook’.
‘Yeah, I told him that. He said to use the Cahier or Outlook’
‘Which we don’t have’
‘Yeah, because a cahier is more efficient, because you can’t lose it’
‘I can lose a cahier. I can lose pretty much anything, particularly if its standing in the way of my relationship with a fucking post-it note. Who is this Barbarian who thinks that he can swan in and dictate the fashion in which I choose to remember appointments, telephone numbers and the like. What a complete and utter bastard’.
‘You could use LotusNotes Calender’.
‘LotusNotes? You’re telling me that I should use LotusNotes. A piece of software so fundamentally flawed that I couldn’t bring myself to praise it even if praising it meant delivering a cure for AIDs. Presumably if your time-management course leader, who, by the way, is clearly a committed cunt, had his way, we would remember appointments by tattooing them onto our skin like that man in ‘Memento’
‘Like the man in what?’
‘Memento! You know! Guy Pierce. He keeps forgetting everything, so he tattoos himself to remember. The timing’s all over the place. We watched it together and you said that he was the only person with a tattoo that you’d ever fancied’.
‘I dunno. Who’s Guy Pierce? Do you mean Guy Ritchie?’
‘Yes. That’s exactly who I mean. Now lets just agree that my colleague is a cunt. That the system is a cunt. That the man who invented LotusNotes is a cunt but I that I am too much of a coward, or a too much of a cunt myself to do anything about it. Then I’ll crack on with my web-tree, internal conflict unresolved’.
After three weeks, the colleague who sits at the desk next to mine had clearly had enough: ‘You naw’ she said ‘hactually, we az a clin desk policy ee-urr’.
‘A what?’ I replied, eyebrows knotted.
‘A clin desk policy’.
‘Yes, yes I heard you’.
‘Zis min zat your desk, eet muss be clin before you liv ze office. You muss clin your desk evewy hiv-en-ing befaw you live’. At this point, my esteemed colleague broke off to gesticulate with an irritable twitch of her finger towards the compost heap of a desk that I have swiftly made my own.
‘Right’.
‘So zat zee cliners, zey can clin’.
‘Right’.
‘Uzzerwise, zey cannot clin’.
‘I see’, I said, before nodding at what I assumed was the appropriate moment and turning back to face le problem in hand. She wasn’t finished. I think that she was waiting for something from me. Regret, perhaps? Shame? A complete mental breakdown with a little self-harm thrown in on the side for good measure? Who knows.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t really geared up to give a shit. I contemplated, briefly, taking a dump on my desk before I left the office that evening, to see how exactly the CDP (‘Clean Desk Police’) might choose to manifest their disapproval.
My colleague waited, quite patiently, looking at me as I tried with great effort to ignore her. After a moment or so I thought ‘Maybe I should approach this more efficiently: I’ll do the shit on my desk right now, yeah, and then later I’ll have the time to give her the finger before getting the sack. I don’t think that it was the moment she had been waiting for. I should have left it, but, well, you know, she was sort of annoying me and that.
I turned to her. ‘What happens if I just leave it as it is?’
‘If you live it? What ‘appen?’
‘Yes, if I live it, what ‘appen?’
A flicker of violence passed across her face. I could see her go through all of the five stages of grief: denial, depression, anger and two others that I can’t remember and can’t be naffed to look up. She tried to clarify the situation, presumably thinking that something had been lost in translation, which, of course, it hadn’t.
Here was a socio-cultural difference of such magnitude that she could barely equate my response with reality. I did consider meeting her half-way, but then again the idea of telling her to fuck off appealed to my innate sense of justice, you see, and, quite frankly, a really couldn’t have given a pig in shit what she thought of the state of my desk.
Later on, I fired off a whining e-mail to a friend to vent- subject title Re: The Cunts. My friend explained that there were clear-cut rules about such matters as post-it note use and desk tidiness.
‘You can’t just leave post-it notes lying around the place to remember everything, they told me that in my time-management course’.
‘I’m sorry’, I said, ‘But I have relied upon post-it notes and the back of my hand to remember things for the past ten years. I have found them both unfailingly reliable, provided, of course, that with relative frequency you steal supplies of the former from work, and wash the latter compulsively after visiting the toilet because otherwise the reminder alerts don’t garner one’s attention with sufficient regularity’.
‘The man in my time-management course wants post-it notes banned’.
‘Banned? From where? From here? Or from the world in general? What exactly does he expect us to use as an alternative?’
‘He said we should write it in a cahier’.
‘Write it in a cahier’.
‘Yes. Or use Microsoft Outlook’.
‘ Microsoft Outlook? We don’t have Microsoft fucking Outlook’.
‘Yeah, I told him that. He said to use the Cahier or Outlook’
‘Which we don’t have’
‘Yeah, because a cahier is more efficient, because you can’t lose it’
‘I can lose a cahier. I can lose pretty much anything, particularly if its standing in the way of my relationship with a fucking post-it note. Who is this Barbarian who thinks that he can swan in and dictate the fashion in which I choose to remember appointments, telephone numbers and the like. What a complete and utter bastard’.
‘You could use LotusNotes Calender’.
‘LotusNotes? You’re telling me that I should use LotusNotes. A piece of software so fundamentally flawed that I couldn’t bring myself to praise it even if praising it meant delivering a cure for AIDs. Presumably if your time-management course leader, who, by the way, is clearly a committed cunt, had his way, we would remember appointments by tattooing them onto our skin like that man in ‘Memento’
‘Like the man in what?’
‘Memento! You know! Guy Pierce. He keeps forgetting everything, so he tattoos himself to remember. The timing’s all over the place. We watched it together and you said that he was the only person with a tattoo that you’d ever fancied’.
‘I dunno. Who’s Guy Pierce? Do you mean Guy Ritchie?’
‘Yes. That’s exactly who I mean. Now lets just agree that my colleague is a cunt. That the system is a cunt. That the man who invented LotusNotes is a cunt but I that I am too much of a coward, or a too much of a cunt myself to do anything about it. Then I’ll crack on with my web-tree, internal conflict unresolved’.
My 'I am watching sport. It is good and enjoyable' face
Yesterday I had to exercise my ‘I’m watching sport, me’ face again. Sooner than I would have liked. I thought that I had paid my penance with the Rugby. People were cheering and that. I wished that they would not cheer so that I could have a chat with my friend, but she had on her ‘watching sport’ face too, only I have a terrible feeling that hers was sincere.
Trouble avec le bus and le meeting
Today I discovered that you cannot get on a bus in Luxembourg without making a friend. Or go to the supermarket. Or go for a shit. Probably not so much the last one. I like making new friends. I do. But I like it on my own terms, and not in the morning when I want to read my newspaper and pretend that no one else exists until I get to work and realize that this frame of mind is harder to carry off in a meeting.
Got to work. Had a meeting, which went in the way that all meetings do, with me mostly looking at the wall and thinking about lunch, and the man pretending to be very much involved and worrying about their career and whether or not they are bing taken seriously at work. They kept calling someone Fanny, which is very, very funny. Especially if the person they refer to as 'Fanny' is in fact called 'John'.
Got to work. Had a meeting, which went in the way that all meetings do, with me mostly looking at the wall and thinking about lunch, and the man pretending to be very much involved and worrying about their career and whether or not they are bing taken seriously at work. They kept calling someone Fanny, which is very, very funny. Especially if the person they refer to as 'Fanny' is in fact called 'John'.
Film review: Chloe
Ah! Un film un peu wanky et Arthouse. Un film qui pretends to be french. Tres bien!
Except that c'etait actually tres tres merde.
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| 'Three heads are better than one'..is aparently what the uninspired graphic designer decided about the promotional photographs |
 |
| Liam and Julianne play 'Limpets' in their giant beige house |
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| A family trip to the cinema to watch 'Peggy Does Dallas' |
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| In this scene, Chloe offers Julianne a cup of tea. CHLOE: 'Cup of tea, Chloe?' JULIANNE: 'No, I'm alright for the moment thanks'. |
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| I was in 'Mamma Mia', you know |
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| Liam offers to 'water' Chloe's 'greenhouse' |
AbsolutCrap.
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