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.