Absence Explained

Today I have returned from holiday, only to find that many of my readers are disgruntled that I have not kept my blog going. Why, they all ask, have I not updated my blog?

Because, you fuckers, I WAS ON FUCKING HOLIDAY! You don’t like that? THEN EAT SHIT!

I don’t take holidays often. I find that it’s prudent to avoid holidays. Whenever I do take a break, I invariably end up in some kind of trouble. Like in a jail cell, or with work in crisis, or suddenly discovering that I have become a key investor in a racehorse/ski chalet/goat farm/seedy bar. Yes folks. All different and unique stories that have one key characteristic in common: I was on holiday, and drunk at the time.

My first day away from the office, I got a call from my PA at ten am, asking me the whereabouts of a certain document. “It’s on my fucking computer,” I answer.

“Where?”

“No fucking idea. Google desktop it.”

Two more calls later over the next hour, and I instructed her that for all further requests for information, she was to ask my director. An hour later, I had my director calling me, asking for the same stuff, plus a few other things my PA hadn't yet managed to ask me.

“Don’t know. Look on my fucking computer,” I answer.

“Where?” he asks.

“Look for it. It’s there. Unless it’s not there, in which case I haven’t written it yet, which I’m not going to do before I return from my holiday anyway, so if you can’t fucking find it, then there’s nothing to be done about it.”

My director sighs his ‘I’m barely tolerating you’ sigh.

“Oh, and by the way,” I say.

“Yes?”

“There is one document that I haven’t yet completed.”

“Oh?” My director asks.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s my request for annual leave. Which means that given that I haven’t actually applied for annual leave, then technically I’m not on annual leave right now. Which would probably explain why I’ve been receiving so many phone calls from you fuckers over the past two hours. Since I only have about three genuinely useful and productive telephone conversations each work day, you’ve already used up your limit. So I’m going to call it a day today, and not count today as annual leave. And any further calls I get between now and when I return from annual leave, I’m going to deduct from the annual leave that I had originally intended to claim.”

Suffice to say, I continued to receive phone calls over the next five days, and I have arrived back at my desk with no more paperwork on it than when I left, and have no intention of filing a retrospective request for annual leave. After all, since I had not managed to get drunk enough to make any ridiculous personal investment decisions while on holiday, I concluded that I hadn’t actually been on holiday at all.

It so happened that while I was away, the refit of the top floor of our building was completed. Due to some cunning bureaucratic sleight of hand, my team managed to secure part of the top floor. I don’t recall precisely how this happened, but it was something along the lines of when drunk at after-work drinks, I diplomatically suggested to my chairman: “I’m moving to the top fucking floor.”

The refit of the top floor took a couple of months to complete. The HR manager, in whose good books I have yet to make an appearance, spent some time deciding the furniture, décor and office layout. Painstakingly, she spent some weeks consulting broadly about the appropriate seating plan, paying keen regard to the intricate principles of feng shui and office politics.

I arrived this morning to see the new structure. This time, I spoke to my director who had so generously given me a week’s extra leave. I said to him: “Nice office lay-out. I don’t care where I sit, as long as it’s in the corner next to a window. Figure there’s no point in me being on the top floor if I’m not in the corner, next to the window.”

My director began to launch into a pre-prepared speech about the effort that the HR manager had put into the seating arrangements, and made a reference to feng shui.

“I’m sorry,” I say to him. “You must have mistaken me for a Chinaman. If I’m not wrong, there isn’t a single person on this fucking floor who is Chinese. Feng shui doesn’t matter to fucking anyone. I’m going to a meeting, and then I’m going to lunch.”

So off I trodded to my supposed client meeting. On my way, I get a call from the HR manager.

“Your director says you want to change the seating plan,” she says.

“No,” I reply. “I just said I didn’t care where I sit, as long as it’s in the corner, by the window.”

HR Manager then tries to launch into a detailed explanation of her rationale for seating various people in various places. I interrupt: “I’m sorry. That’s not my job. That’s your job to sort that shit out. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, am I?”

“Why couldn’t you have told me last week?” she asks, exasperated.

“Because I was on fucking holiday last week!” I say.

“You didn’t file for it!” she says.

“That’s not the fucking point,” I say, “and nor is it the point that I don’t intend to file for it. What is the point, I think, is that I’m giving you plenty of options here. Four options, in fact. There are four corners.”

“But you can’t have one! People have already moved to their new offices!”

“Then move them again before they get fucking attached to them,” I suggest helpfully.

HR Manager begins jabbering about procedures and protocols. Again, I interrupt her: “Look. You are the HR Manager. You are empowered to make these important decisions that affect the smooth performance of the workplace environment. Since I actually make money for this firm, and since you are just a fucking overhead, I think you should make an important decision.”

And with that, I rang off, turned off my cellphone, went into a meeting, then went to lunch, and returned to my new corner office on the top floor. Four other people had been moved to accommodate me.

But there were some stressful moments there, I tell you. So stressful, dear reader, that I think I need a holiday.