I Am a Moron {or "How Not To Start Your New Job!"}

Sir Humphrey Appleby once told Jim Hacker that you should always dispose of the difficult bit in the title of a report.

NERD ALERT

Episode 1.1 “Open Government”

END OF NERD ALERT

That’s what I have just done. Get the difficult bit out of the way. Confess to the world that I am a cretin, an idiot, a person unfit to walk the modern twenty first century Earth. I was due at the new office – out towards the middle of nowhere – at ten am. The company could not have been more generous – a later start on your first day so you miss the traffic and arrive raring to go. Come ten ad emma I wasn’t so much raring to go as raring to arrive. Father (who knows every road in England blindfolded) had shown me where to go. It was nice and straight forward – head for Tesco and then stay on the bypass until you are literally a hundred yards from the site. So easy that even a simpleton could do it. See figure A.

So I hurtle off in the wrong direction, missing my target by what we shall, for dramatic effect, now call inches and race off along the road. For maybe ten minutes I am looking at every turning to see if I can see the magic sign. No joy. “Right” I said to myself, rudely speaking over Anna Massey as the nice lady was telling me about the Venerable Beade, “I’m blinking well going to turn the fuck around” and I did. The trouble was, I’d gone a long way along a straight road but when I retraced my steps I arrived somewhere else. I’d blame mystical forces but you would simply point me to the title of my essay and slap me with it. At this point, nearing ten, I used the mobile telephone I had been so aghast at buying to call father. He gave me full and clear directions. I followed them… to the best of my abilities.

Oh dear. Not again.

So from what I shall call Village A where I made my semi-panicked phone call I race in the direction of the office. The flaw in the plan was that the traffic lights that I was expecting weren’t operational. So I somehow missed them entirely and ended up in Village B. Another – this time genuinely panicked - phone call to father followed and I could almost hear in his voice as he gave me yet more instructions a ruing of the thousands and thousands of pounds he spent on my education.

“Why didn’t they do elementary map reading?” his subconscious voice sobbed.

Finally I get the freaking message. I drive slowly from point B towards point A and stop at the right place. All’s well that ends well.

Shit. See figure B.

I parked in more or less the right place. Certainly the right car park and not in a disabled spot. There were gaps on either side of me before, during and at the end of the day so I assume the place I parked in was not in demand. As you can see I wandered off in entirely the wrong direction. It is quite a complicated site – several previously unconnected buildings brought under common ownership and now linked my a series of roads, paths and ponds. It’s also quite hilly so things are on different levels. It had the air of one of the newer Universities about it as I trudged along and tried to follow the tiny map they had sent with the letter I expect they are already regretting. On the plus side I saw the duck pond, the cenotaph, all the major houses, the main road, the duck pond again, the fountain, the restaurant, the duck pond and the delivery bay before finally getting – the hell – to reception at about 10.45.

It spoils the self flagellating angle of the story when I tell you that all I missed was a lecture on what to do when there is a fire (head for the fire exit apparently) and various other bits of legal nannying. The other new starters (including someone I worked with at the Old Place) emerged around eleven and I joined them for the tour round the site. Then a loathsome photograph was taken for a security pass which I’ll have to wear. But, to misquote Colin Baker, if a photo of me is on display I’d rather be the one wearing it, that way I don’t have to look at it.

But what of the job itself?

Well, the computers are antiquated. Seriously – we’re talking a fifteen inch monitor and not even TFT. The Old Place, which had had an IT spending freeze since forever, managed nineteen inches. And when you’ve become used to nineteen inches, fifteen inches just doesn’t cut it. The mainframe systems are, as they were at The Old Place and as I fear they must be everywhere, baffling and stupid. The incantations needed to obtain anything like information must be slowly learned over a period of years. The atmos of the place seems dry and sedated. Say what you will (and I have) about the Old Place, it had characters and it had atmos. It had Dave’s knees, Jonny’s drunken antics, Woolly being Woolly and more besides. This place is bigger. It has banks and banks of identical desks with only familiar faces (and on one occasion a familiar bottom) to delineate them. For I am one of many to have migrated from The Old Place to The New Place.

Tomorrow is the first day of rush hour traffic, finding a space in the pleb car parks, actual work and paying for lunch. And then the next day. And the next day. And the next day.

Oh for a vocation…

26th January 2004