Back At Work: Day 02
(I wasn't actually expecting this to be a serial, but anyway...)
Everything was moving along swimmingly (well, actually not, but we can pretend for the sake of this blog post, ok?) until lunch. Earlier in the day I placed my expensive plastic Addis lunch container in the office fridge, as it contained fruit and vegetables that I painstakingly washed, chopped (where necessary) and assembled last night for my lunch today, as part of my new campaign to eat more healthily. Yesterday threats were made that the fridge would be cleared out (so we should remove anything we want to keep), as it has been kinda rank since we returned because some stupid people had left food (in some cases in open containers) in it for months. This morning I checked the fridge, and noticed that most things had been removed, including all the gross stuff, so I presumed that everything was now sorted, and put my lunch on the shelf.
Lunch time. 1:30pm and I'm quite hungry. I go to the fridge to get my lunch. There's even less in the fridge than there was before, and my lunch is gone. Gone! Confused, I check the (gross) bin to see if some fool had thrown it out. It's not there, although a bunch of other people's containers are. I wash my hands (literally) with manky [*] soap that happens to be at the sink. I immediately start feeling grief for my lost, expensive container and lunch. I return to my office and start checking my bag and my desk, because now I'm questioning everything: did I actually bring my lunch in today, or did I leave it in the fridge at home and only imagine this? Did I bring my lunch in, but accidentally leave it in my bag? Is it on my desk?
I can't find it. The PA (personal assistant [explanation added for a friend who obviously doesn't have one]) who would know what has happened is on lunch, so I phone her, but get voicemail. I leave a message, and then go back to the bin, but as I pass the PA's desk I hear her cell phone beeping that it's received my message, so I know she doesn't have her phone with me. I check the bin again, more (*ugh*!) thoroughly. It's still not there. I wash my hands again, this time with dish-washing liquid. I wonder if maybe someone put a few things in a fridge on the other side of the division, while whoever did whatever with our fridge. I check that fridge. No lunch. I return to our kitchen and check the bin. Again. Because I'm obsessive like that and sure that I'm just not seeing my container. Another PA happens to be in the kitchen at the time and I tell her my tale of woe. She says that it's possible that someone may have put my container in a cupboard, and in one magnificent sweep swings open the correct door and there it is in a little pile of homeless Tupperware and plasticware. But my food's gone.
And I'm hungry.
Despondent, I return to my office and dramatically demonstrate how my container has been found...but is empty. It is suggested to me that I go upstairs to the cafeteria and buy food there, and then bill the company. I initially balk at the idea because the cafeteria is run by one of those food-service companies whose sole purpose is to service the food needs of large corporations, and the food is pretty vile a lot of the time. I also don't see why the company would reimburse me but I'm hungry (but not quite enough to venture out of the building to find a real restaurant), so I decide to chance it, and go to the cafeteria. The vegetarian meal of the day is macaroni and cheese with a side salad, so I ask for it, pay, and return to my office.
At my desk I'm tentatively eating my macaroni and cheese while I read Piled Higher & Deeper online, because I can't possibly type or do any other real work while I'm holding a fork (you know?), when A asks: "How's your macaroni?"
Me (at a loss for words): "It's...an experience..."
A: "A good experience or a bad experience?"
Me: "I'm not sure. I can't decide. It's very strange and it tastes weird. There's a giant glob of cheese on top, which I'm having a hard time with because I don't have a knife."
M: "...you have to find the macaroni..."
Me: "Well, I can see the macaroni, I just don't know how they can make it not taste like macaroni..."
I eventually finish lunch (and - writing this - two hours later I'm still alive). The PA, who has returned from lunch, reimburses me with no questions, to my surprise.
The topic of conversation in the office turns to TV. CSI season 5 has been showing on M-Net, and we're 14 episodes in (to a 25-episode season, which ends with the Quentin Tarantino written and directed two-parter that I am looking forward to with great patience), yet the M-Net TV guide is listing it as finishing next week, to be replaced with Prison Break, and the latest issue of tvplus, the bi-monthly (and only decent) TV guide, says the same thing.
A freelance copy editor currently with us in the office mentions that she does work for tvplus and suggests that I email particular people there, as they may be able to help me. So I do, with a very impassioned message. Seconds later one of my recipients phones and we have a lovely conversation about TV (my favourite kind of conversation), as he tells me the sick, sick news. M-Net is halting CSI, mid season, to air Prison Break and then some other programme (presumably either secret or still to be determined), before returning to CSI (again, mid season, in a rather gripping season, too) in December. December!
This news, which I had feared but could never have imagined would actually be true, is devastating to me, as is evidenced by my responses, which begin benignly with "...no way...", and "...are you serious?..." but rapidly scale upwards to "...that is, like, the worst news ever...". By this point I am struggling to hear my new TV friend on the other side of the phone, however, because the people in the office with me are laughing their asses off listening to my side of the conversation as I become increasingly despondent. But come on! CSI is being interrupted for an entire year. December is a year away! A year! I'm forced to console myself with memories of seeing Marg Helgenberger and her husband Alan Rosenberg and their son in line at Musée d'Orsay last year while I was on vacation in Paris.
I really hope the rest of this year is not going to be like this...
Everything was moving along swimmingly (well, actually not, but we can pretend for the sake of this blog post, ok?) until lunch. Earlier in the day I placed my expensive plastic Addis lunch container in the office fridge, as it contained fruit and vegetables that I painstakingly washed, chopped (where necessary) and assembled last night for my lunch today, as part of my new campaign to eat more healthily. Yesterday threats were made that the fridge would be cleared out (so we should remove anything we want to keep), as it has been kinda rank since we returned because some stupid people had left food (in some cases in open containers) in it for months. This morning I checked the fridge, and noticed that most things had been removed, including all the gross stuff, so I presumed that everything was now sorted, and put my lunch on the shelf.
Lunch time. 1:30pm and I'm quite hungry. I go to the fridge to get my lunch. There's even less in the fridge than there was before, and my lunch is gone. Gone! Confused, I check the (gross) bin to see if some fool had thrown it out. It's not there, although a bunch of other people's containers are. I wash my hands (literally) with manky [*] soap that happens to be at the sink. I immediately start feeling grief for my lost, expensive container and lunch. I return to my office and start checking my bag and my desk, because now I'm questioning everything: did I actually bring my lunch in today, or did I leave it in the fridge at home and only imagine this? Did I bring my lunch in, but accidentally leave it in my bag? Is it on my desk?
I can't find it. The PA (personal assistant [explanation added for a friend who obviously doesn't have one]) who would know what has happened is on lunch, so I phone her, but get voicemail. I leave a message, and then go back to the bin, but as I pass the PA's desk I hear her cell phone beeping that it's received my message, so I know she doesn't have her phone with me. I check the bin again, more (*ugh*!) thoroughly. It's still not there. I wash my hands again, this time with dish-washing liquid. I wonder if maybe someone put a few things in a fridge on the other side of the division, while whoever did whatever with our fridge. I check that fridge. No lunch. I return to our kitchen and check the bin. Again. Because I'm obsessive like that and sure that I'm just not seeing my container. Another PA happens to be in the kitchen at the time and I tell her my tale of woe. She says that it's possible that someone may have put my container in a cupboard, and in one magnificent sweep swings open the correct door and there it is in a little pile of homeless Tupperware and plasticware. But my food's gone.
And I'm hungry.
Despondent, I return to my office and dramatically demonstrate how my container has been found...but is empty. It is suggested to me that I go upstairs to the cafeteria and buy food there, and then bill the company. I initially balk at the idea because the cafeteria is run by one of those food-service companies whose sole purpose is to service the food needs of large corporations, and the food is pretty vile a lot of the time. I also don't see why the company would reimburse me but I'm hungry (but not quite enough to venture out of the building to find a real restaurant), so I decide to chance it, and go to the cafeteria. The vegetarian meal of the day is macaroni and cheese with a side salad, so I ask for it, pay, and return to my office.
At my desk I'm tentatively eating my macaroni and cheese while I read Piled Higher & Deeper online, because I can't possibly type or do any other real work while I'm holding a fork (you know?), when A asks: "How's your macaroni?"
Me (at a loss for words): "It's...an experience..."
A: "A good experience or a bad experience?"
Me: "I'm not sure. I can't decide. It's very strange and it tastes weird. There's a giant glob of cheese on top, which I'm having a hard time with because I don't have a knife."
M: "...you have to find the macaroni..."
Me: "Well, I can see the macaroni, I just don't know how they can make it not taste like macaroni..."
I eventually finish lunch (and - writing this - two hours later I'm still alive). The PA, who has returned from lunch, reimburses me with no questions, to my surprise.
The topic of conversation in the office turns to TV. CSI season 5 has been showing on M-Net, and we're 14 episodes in (to a 25-episode season, which ends with the Quentin Tarantino written and directed two-parter that I am looking forward to with great patience), yet the M-Net TV guide is listing it as finishing next week, to be replaced with Prison Break, and the latest issue of tvplus, the bi-monthly (and only decent) TV guide, says the same thing.
A freelance copy editor currently with us in the office mentions that she does work for tvplus and suggests that I email particular people there, as they may be able to help me. So I do, with a very impassioned message. Seconds later one of my recipients phones and we have a lovely conversation about TV (my favourite kind of conversation), as he tells me the sick, sick news. M-Net is halting CSI, mid season, to air Prison Break and then some other programme (presumably either secret or still to be determined), before returning to CSI (again, mid season, in a rather gripping season, too) in December. December!
This news, which I had feared but could never have imagined would actually be true, is devastating to me, as is evidenced by my responses, which begin benignly with "...no way...", and "...are you serious?..." but rapidly scale upwards to "...that is, like, the worst news ever...". By this point I am struggling to hear my new TV friend on the other side of the phone, however, because the people in the office with me are laughing their asses off listening to my side of the conversation as I become increasingly despondent. But come on! CSI is being interrupted for an entire year. December is a year away! A year! I'm forced to console myself with memories of seeing Marg Helgenberger and her husband Alan Rosenberg and their son in line at Musée d'Orsay last year while I was on vacation in Paris.
I really hope the rest of this year is not going to be like this...
Labels: At The Office
posted by Mandy J Watson at 4:39 PM
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1 Comments:
I knew you'd say something about that. Just knew it!
The answer is "three times", because it became a slight obsessive-compulsive "did I check it properly?" thing. However, after each attempt, I nuked myself thoroughly and felt ill about it. But the container was expensive, and you can't get that colour (silver!) in the shops anymore. At the moment the range (when you can find it) is only in some naff green.
As for CSI and TV, the licence goes to the SABC, not M-Net. M-Net is actually paid a proper subscription. I should demand a refund. And Prison Break, as I suspected, has been hardly as entertaining as CSI/ It doesn't suck, but it's not CSI.
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