The Other Peter

The boy (and I genuinely mean boy, he is most certainly not of legal age) whom is seated nearest to me is a painful swine. I do not care for him on any level. I find myself wishing that any number of things would happen to him throughout the day.

When I hear his effeminate little whine, I will his computer monitor to overheat and explode in his stupid face. When he complains about clients and colleagues, I gaze longingly at the florescent lights overhead, praying that they will collapse on his head and embed hot shards of glass in his thick skull.

He is a sickly-looking child, and I am led to believe from his unwanted verbal intrusions that he comes from a council estate in a rough area of town. How such a flimsy specimen has survived for this long without a thug in a football jersey beating him senseless is beyond me. Perhaps he is too soft a target even for those addicted to petty theft and sniffing glue.

He is pale. He cannot spell. He is unbelievably awkward, even by my standards. His level of professionalism would be matched if the company were to replace him with a pig. In fact, that is an insult to such an intelligent creature; a pig would do a far better job.

Why do these things bother me so greatly? There are any number of physically and mentally deformed colleagues I could find fault with, and amuse myself just as much by visualising their death by office equipment. My loathing of this little twit eclipses my general disdain for other workers because of one reason, and one reason alone.

He has the same name as me.

It is the only similarity that we share. I am a man, he is a boy. I read books, he reads magazines with titles that end in exclamation marks. My mother gave birth to me when she was 36, his mother is 36. I have facial hair, he has acne. We are from opposite sides of the globe.

Despite all these polar opposites, the predominantly phone based nature of our work somehow causes clients and colleagues to confuse us. Whether this is a damning indictment on the quality of the telephony equipment we use or the stupidity of our co-workers, I do not know, nor do I care. I just want it to stop.

Amongst other things, I am a realist. I accept that I cannot force the company to upgrade their phones nor introduce bi-annual I.Q. tests for employees. There will be no office function for the purpose of differentiating between the Peters. Therefore, I feel I am left with only two options.

I have applied for a position in another department that is located on a different floor. Should my application be successful, we can consider this little problem to be solved. However, in the unlikely event that I am not the kind of chap they are seeking, my hand will be forced.

I will have to murder the little swine.

Normality

It is one of life’s little mysteries, or perhaps even a great one; that for all my distrust and hatred of the bulk of the white collar workforce, I am unfortunately naturally proficient at everything they hold in high regard.

Today I was informed by a grinning dolt that I had exceeded the department’s all time quality score. Oh, such joy. That is sure to erase the self-loathing that plagues me at night.

Minutes after learning of my momentous achievement for humanity, I was notified by the boy that sits next to me that I had received a complaint. This gave me much more joy, even if the chap apparently couldn’t quite specify what it was that I had done to displease him so. Perhaps he was able to detect my pretending to stab myself in the throat with a biro from the other end of the phone line.

As adept as I am at the technical elements of these jobs, and as impressive as my feigned sincerity towards clients is, I have accepted that I shall never really fit in with my colleagues. Not in the way that they do, with their crude discussions, stupid interests and occasional high fives.

I approached a co-worker at the water cooler today, interested to see if a conversation of that variety really was possible.

“So, that show on the television was good last night, wasn’t it?”

She regarded me with an obvious mixture of confusion and repulsion before replying.

“What show?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have a television.”

By this stage, her cup was full, and she beat a hasty retreat. A wise move, really. I shall revert to spending my tea breaks in the toilet.

Toilet Hogs Cause Profit Flush

AN ALARMING report recently published by leading business consulting group IVAN Communications has highlighted the need for stronger sanctions to be imposed against any employee found to be flaunting the spirit of the toilet break system in workplaces across Victoria.

Figures in the report estimate that one in five employees within the workplace are taking longer than necessary toilet breaks at the expense of their management, with reduced productivity and profits being the unfortunate result.

Security cameras installed in every cubicle of a leading insurance firm has revealed unscrupulous staff reading magazines, newspapers and paperback novels for long stretches of time whilst phones remain unmanned and reports sit on desks waiting to be filed or shredded. In one case a senior underwriter was caught spending 46 minutes dissecting a sudoku puzzle instead of attending to his reports and charts.

Police are at a loss as to how to tackle the wave of laziness that seems to be taking over the business precincts of Melbourne’s CBD. Detective Senior Sergeant Antony Toppslovic has gone on record to say that “we are looking at all of our options with regards to the most appropriate weapon to be used in fighting this scourge. I expect that all frontline officers will be armed with state of the art tazer guns and Walther PP11 megaphones by December 2010 and this hopefully will enable us to get the upper hand before things get really out of control.”

Mr. Justin Davies, founder of the newly established pressure group Call Centre Employees Pushing for Workplace Rights (CCEPWR), believes that a cool head needs to prevail and that the government needs to be careful about knee-jerk responses similar to the dock disputes of 1998. “I think it is really unfair that we have been singled out. It’s just really unfair.”

Managing director of Reece Plumbing Mr. Mick Hinders was unavailable for comment. He wasn’t in his office and his mobile phone went to voicemail.

The Window Seat

For the past month or so, I have been perched four stories above the ground. I have had not one, not two, not even three, but four windows beside me. I was afforded the grandest of views; able to observe the rabble on the ground beneath me, the fascinating lives of the pigeons upon the rooftops, and an uninterrupted line of sight to the sea.

As well as my general duties for the overlords, I voluntarily manned the blinds on all the windows. Were it a sunny morning, I would adjust them to prevent my colleagues from being blinded. As the day progressed, I revealed the majesty of our view window by window, carefully timing my unveilings as the sun made its usual journey from east to west.

It was a most agreeable arrangement. The manager called me The Light Master. My colleagues often verbalised their contentment with my blind prowess.

Today, everything changed.

I was moved to another seat, in order to make way for a manager. I am amongst the slack-jawed commoners, able to hear their inane “water cooler conversations” and their appalling phone manner.

For this, I may befoul a manager’s pencil holder and/or executive desk toy.

Conversations to be Heard Around the Warehouse Floor (Men's Room) in E flat

...

SCENE 1 – INT. – THE MEN’S ROOM

PICKER

What time did you start?

PACKER

Six.

PICKER

Oh yeah. That's not bad.

PACKER

What about ya self?

PICKER

Eight.

PACKER

Oh yeah. That's alright. What time do you knock off?

PICKER

Probably around two-ish. Just depends if I can get the work done. I feel like a slave. (Laughs)

Both men are now washing their hands, the man with the cape turns to his colleague.

PACKER

(casually) Hey...do you hear those screams?

PICKER

(Cocking an ear and smiling) Yeah. Yeah I do.

The men, beaming with mutual admiration conclude their toileting session by drying their hands with paper towel and then walking out together to face the rest of their day. The caped employee gives a hearty and morale boosting pat on the back of his co-worker as they move out single file.

SFX: Cymbals crash