The biggest mistake of my life

I've made a dreadful mistake today, for I have left my iPod at the office.













On it's own, that wouldn't sound like much of a problem. Surely the worst that happens is that instead of listening to my music of choice on the train to work tomorrow morning, I'll just have to listen to the excuses of Northern Rail as to why my train is delayed again, but nobody has been hurt, nobody has died, it's just an insignificant error that nobody will care about.

Oh no, for the contents of said iPod are cause for concern.

I can sleep safe in the knowledge that my bright red iPod (like the one in the picture) would have been like the forbidden fruit to my work colleagues as it sat there on top of my paper stacker and those who had stopped after 5:30 will have definitely been thumbing through the, shall we say, "eclectic" library. You know the big red button that they always tell you not to push yet proves too irresistible? Well this was the big red iPod equivalent.

I don't have a "bad" taste in music, quite a good one in fact but I do have an uncanny knack of going to crappy, cheesy nightclubs, coming home with hangover already brewing and kebab / curry in hand and heading straight to iTunes to download whatever tracks are still ringing in my ears. My local pub also has 'golden oldies' on Sunday, so it's a bit of a double whammy really.

I won't go through what's on it (I'm pretty sure my colleagues have already uploaded my library to as many social bookmarking sites as possible) but me thinks that I'll have some serious explaining to do tomorrow morning.

At times like this, you realise you aren't as fit as you used to be.

"Michael, fancy football on Wednesday?"
"Where is it?"
"Goals in Kirkstall"
"Sure, put me down"




The above exchange is th first mistake in my new job since joining three weeks ago. Long story short, I goot roped into a 5-a-side kickabout with a few lads from work - it's good to make an effort and blend in after all.

So anyway, Wednesday comes and we arrive at a well-hidden 'soccer centre' which is essentially a field of astro turf divded onto lots of little boxes where people such as myself can make idiots of themselves. My sports playing days were long over. I'd played rugby until the age of 16 but the time came to get a part-time job instead because I quite liked having some money to spend.

Having scored the first goal after a few minutes, it started to go downhill from there and my lack of match practise soon caught up with me. I soon learned that performing a slide tackle on astro-turf would make a cheap alternative to a skin-grafting operation (or at least half of one) and that beer and pie does not make forr a good sporting diet.

Two days later and my thighs were still tight.

Perhaps it's one of those symbolic things. I write this just one day after the 33rd anniversary of this piece of footballing brilliance. The resemblence to the standard I displayed on Wednesday night is uncanny:

This week I have been mostly...

...leaving my job.

After five and a half years of retail and pandering to halfwits in the customer service sector, Sunday saw me leave work with a leaving present of a crate of Stella Artois.

That might be a little unfair, not everyone who walks into a high-street retailer is a complete halfwit, but the ratio seems to be getting further weighted in that direction year upon year.

And so it's time for me to move on. After Thursday afternoon, I'll be liberated from the incompetence of Trinity & All Saints College and moving on to the next step, free from 6:30am Saturday morning starts and with a bit more pocket money to boot.

Like with any change, there's bit that you miss and bits that you won't. In many respects the former outweigh the latter but at the same time, those factors wouldn't encourage me to stay in retail or customer services much longer.

What it might also mean though is that updates on here from this point onwards might be even more sporadic than usual!

(PS, I don't travel home from work in a helicopter)

Selective reporting

One of those "reports out today" (well, yesterday actually) claimed that the average worker takes around seven days a year off work through 'sickies'.










This survey was done by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), who are some sort of representative body for business in this country.

It's not surprising to find out that 'sickies' had a link with major sporting events and hot days and the CBI claims that by bunking off, we are collectively costing the economy £13.4bn a year.

But this is where these 'surveys' fall down, because whilst one statistic says that we are all evil for costing our bosses a few quid, they neglect the very opposite views.

Whilst we might take seven days a year from work, we also happen to give back near enough to one day a week (7hrs 6 mins) in unpaid overtime. Over a 45 week working year, that means the economy is actually up by 38 days every year. On that basis, a full-time minimum wage worker gives away almost £1700 in free labour and, by the reckoning of the TUC, the collective £23bn made from these extra hours, still makes businesses £9.6bn better off.

So now you know that, you can now get back to work.