I get the bus to work every day, and the bus driver did something very odd and intriguing recently.
I got on the bus as usual and we set off on the normal route. Ten minutes later, as we passed through the next town he made an unscheduled stop at the side of the road on Main Street. He popped out the bus onto the road and ran off away to a car on the other side of the road.
When he came back he was carrying lots of little brown cloth bags which he set down on the dashboard. By the looks of them, the contained something fluid like you’d imagine a small bag of ball bearings to be.
The rest of the journey went as it should with the exception that he kept forgetting to go when traffic lights turned green. He was too busy looking into each bag in turn to examine the contents and setting them down on the floor. That continued for the remaining half hour of the journey.
What the hell was in those bags? I wanna know.
My favourite theory - stolen diamonds - is unlikely since he’s still driving the bus.
Woooh, mystery…
February 14th, 2006
Went out for a meal last night. It was very nice indeed but ate far too much. We also were in the strange position of having too much attention from waiters and waitresses asking if everything was ok. In a restaurant full of buffet diners I guess a couple who want to eat from the menu instead will get all the attention.
Tracy had a prawn and mango starter. It was very nice but the sauce was very sweet and after a short while it had to be abandoned for fear of her mouth clamping shut in protest.
“Do you know what you’re meant to do with your knife and fork?” I asked, informatively.
“Put them together, like that if you’re finished” she replied, equally informed and placing them neatly together.
“Ah, but did you know that if you put them apart, then that tells the kitchen you didn’t enjoy it”
“What, like this?”
She moved her knife and fork to opposite ends of the plate and blow me if it didn’t work like a charm. In less than a second a waiter was at her side with an alarmed look on his face.
“You didn’t like the prawns??”
“Er, it was ok - tasted nice but just a bit too sweet to finish…”
“Too sweet?”
“Just a bit”
“I’ll change it for you”
“No it’s fi-”
But that was that. The prawns were whisked away and the chef was no doubt beaten around the head.
When it did come back it was another plate of prawns and mango albeit with slightly less sauce. Still tasted the same though. Tracy battled through it though for fear of the chef coming out and stabbing himself with a fork in a pythonesque apology.
Knives and forks were clasped firmly together for the remainder of the meal.
February 13th, 2006
Hello there. How are you? I remember this place.. (Blows dust from keyboard). My my, this seat feels a little creakier than I remember. Perhaps it needs a little oil on the springs. Let’s see if I can remember what the buttons do…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about job satisfaction. It’s a complicated thing, you know. There’s a lot of things that need to be set up for it to happen, and a lot of things that can knock it over like a fragile house made of defective lego that doesn’t have the nobbly bits on top of the bricks.
I haven’t had many jobs. Three real jobs in my professional career, in fact. Each of them fails to deliver full job satisfaction for different reasons.
The first one had enormous potential. It was great because
- I got to work with video editing equipment, which was quite cool.
- I had pretty much full control over the work that I did.
- My boss would go away for long periods of time.
- He hid pornographic tapes of his wife in plain view and in the office whilst expecting me to stick to the same tape of Status Quo playing at some festival every single day. Hide it in the bedroom, for fucks sake.
Unfortunately it sucked because
- I got paid £9k a year.
- It was always really cold.
- Only retired people buy amateur video editing equipment, and I had to explain how to use Windows to pensioners over the phone on a regular basis. It was painful.
It was my first job though, so my view of job satisfaction was still pretty much undefined. I just thought it was cool to have money.
Job number two was the longest lasting of the three (So far). It was cool because
- I got proper money.
- I didn’t have any contact with customers whatsoever.
- We went to the pub a lot.
- People had a laugh quite a lot.
- We got free cakes.
It sucked because
- I always felt like I could be made redundant at any moment.
- I had absolutely no idea how the end product was going to be used by the customer because I never really understood the problem we were solving.
- The end product was so far down the food-chain that it was entirely intangible, and therefore impossible to explain your impact on the world to someone who asked what you did.
- The truth is, I really had no impact on the world whatsoever.
- Free cakes are slightly condescending, if you stop and think about it.
Job number three (My current job) has its own set of pros and cons. In it’s favour are…
- We get to work on really cool products that make people say ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaaah’.
- I can (theoretically) walk into a shop and see something I’ve worked on sitting on a shelf.
- I’ve developed a new-found interest in the design and architecture of products which I’d previously assumed I was crap at. It turned out that I just needed to actually care about the product.
- I get even more proper money.
- I get free curry and periodically, a free mug.
On the down-side of things
- Most of the cool products get canned with such alarming regularity that I often have no idea what I’m meant to be working on from day to day.
- The hierarchy is so confusing, that I’m not entirely sure who’s in charge most of the time.
- Things are so appallingly political that I’ve been known to work on products to compete with other development teams internal to the company.
- I have no sense that what I’m doing will see the light of day.
- I have to wash my own dishes. I hate that.
- In over a year, I’ve been to the pub with workmates only once.
- Free curry and mugs is slightly condescending, if you stop and think about it.
So if someone wants to offer me a job, here are my specifications…
- I want to work on cool things that are tangible and easily explainable to friends and family.
- I want to be paid handsomly.
- There needs to be a dishwasher in the office.
- I want a say in how the product is designed.
- I want experts in charge who know what the customer wants before we start building it.
- The office must be near a pub. Preferably one that plays good music.
- I want to be left alone to get on with it, most of the time.
- Good air conditioning.
- A clear hierarchy, but with genuinely approachable staff at all levels.
- Zero customer contact.
- If you’re going to give me free things to keep me happy - pornographic videos of your wives should be one of them.
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, am I?
February 3rd, 2006
