Diary of a Grumpy Old Git

by Tim Collins

  Tonight I wheeled my bin down to the front of the driveway for collection and I noticed I was the only person who wasn’t chucking out a mountain of shiny Christmas tat. I felt grateful for my freedom from Sarah once again. This was the first year I didn’t have to bother with decorations and it was a huge relief. No covering the front of the house with tacky lights to compete with the neighbours, no treading pine needles into the carpet and no spotting tiny scraps of tinsel still stuck to the ceiling in the middle of June.

  And what do we get for coating every visible surface with sparkly rubbish? The chance to say we feel ‘all Christmassy’. What does this even mean? Is it a distinct emotion like happiness or sadness? Do people feel it in summer by mistake and have to drink Pimm’s and listen to the Beach Boys until it passes?

  Anyway, except for asking for turkey instead of chicken in Subway, I made no attempt whatsoever to celebrate Christmas this year, and I didn’t miss it one bit.

  THURSDAY 10TH JANUARY

  My train was delayed this morning because of ‘signal failure.’ It always seems to be signal failure. Either they need to stop buying their signals from the pound shop or this is just a vaguely technical excuse they trot out when their staff are too hungover to show up.

  I was forced to get the bus instead. The only free seats downstairs were reserved for infirm or disabled people, so I had to go to the top deck, where a teenage boy with massive headphones was listening to hip hop so loudly we could all hear the rapper boasting about his possessions.

  I strolled up to him with every intention of telling him that the music would damage his ears if I didn’t get to them first. But then I remembered my vow to be more cheerful. Instead, I asked him what he was listening to and said it sounded really cool. He looked at me with contempt, and he was right to.

  The driver waited until I was walking down the stairs before making an emergency stop, which sent me tumbling down to the lower deck. No wonder they need to reserve so many seats for the infirm and disabled. Most regular bus users probably end up that way.

  When I got into work, I was too traumatized to do anything, so I spent the morning on Facebook. Jen has tagged Brad in a photo now. I clicked through to his profile. It turns out he’s an estate agent.

  FRIDAY 11TH JANUARY

  This is worrying. Steve announced today that we’ve lost the Donaldson Sweepers account. At first I was pleased because it meant I wouldn’t have to write the brochure and I could concentrate on the Scrabble game I’ve downloaded for my laptop. But then I thought they might have to get rid of someone and it was more likely to be the person who plays board games all day than the person who finishes their work early and asks for more.

  My fear was compounded when Steve popped over to my desk on his way out and said we should catch up first thing on Monday as there was ‘something we need to discuss’.

  You can’t do that. You can’t just say there’s ‘something we need to discuss’ and swan off for the weekend. What am I supposed to do now? This was going to be the weekend I finally got round to my Sopranos box set. There’s no way I’ll be able to focus on it now.

  SATURDAY 12TH JANUARY

  I had another peek at Brad’s Facebook profile today. He seems to be one of those people who can’t do anything without posting it for all his friends to see.

  These people think we’re all wildly impressed with their choice of holidays, restaurants and friends. They don’t realize that the only thing they’re really communicating is their unhappiness. They’re so insecure they need constant validation for everything they ever do from everyone they’ve ever met. It’s like they’ve never got past that stage of running into the kitchen to show their parents the drawing they did at school today.

  Look at me, I’m on holiday. Look at me, I’m out with my friends. Look at me, I’m in a restaurant owned by a TV chef. Look at me, I actually paid money to watch some shitty band in a huge indoor arena.

  Well done, you. Let’s give you a pat on the head. Let’s give you a gold star. Let’s stick your entire life up here on the fridge where we’ll all be able to see it.

  SUNDAY 13TH JANUARY

  I notice from Facebook that Brad has taken Sarah to Brussels for the weekend. I’m guessing he takes all his girlfriends there, as it’s the only place in the world he’s more interesting than.

  Look at him with his baseball cap and dark glasses on an overcast day. There he is in front of the Atomium with his jumper draped over his shoulders. I had no idea anyone outside a catalogue actually did that.

  Well, guess what, Brad? You were stupid enough to put your email address and mobile number on Facebook, and now I’m going to give you so much spam you’ll think I’m a dinner lady from the seventies. Here we go. Would you like text alerts about our great offers? Yes, please. Would you like us to email you with details of our upcoming events? You bet. Please enter the time when you’d like our support staff to call you back. Can you do five on Saturday morning?

  What a loser.

  I’m sure there are some who’d point out that I’m the one who’s just spent an entire weekend looking at someone else’s Facebook page, and therefore I’m the actual loser. But at least I found something to take my mind off tomorrow’s ominous meeting. So I’m a winner, really.

  MONDAY 14TH JANUARY

  I got in early this morning, as I wanted to be alert and ready to argue back if Steve tried to get rid of me.

  I’ve never been on the early train before. Every carriage was full of neat young men and women sipping skinny lattes and prodding their iPhones. They’d probably already thrown together a PowerPoint presentation, been to the gym and done a charity parachute jump. Now they were racing to their offices to stare smugly at the normal people who stroll blearily in at 9:33. I’m not saying I wanted the train to crash. But if a train had to crash, that’s the one I’d pick.

  Jen was already sitting behind her desk when I got in. Did she even go home? Or did she stay there all night typing, ‘All work and no play makes Jen a dull girl’?

  Steve didn’t turn up until half nine, and he faffed around in the kitchen for ages, prolonging my torture. It was almost ten by the time he called me into his office to give me the bad news.

  At least, the sort of bad news. I haven’t been given the sack, but Steve is leaving on Friday, which means I’ll have a new boss on Monday.

  Eek.

  I’m going to get made redundant, aren’t I? Everyone knows that new bosses clear out the dead wood. And if anyone around here is shedding bark, covered in fungus and blocking the footpath, it’s me.

  I don’t care if I get made redundant. I’ll take a year out to do all the things I’ve always wanted to do.

  But what are all the things I’ve always wanted to do? I’d quite like to order the fillet steak in Chez Gérard. I’ve not started on my Sopranos box set yet. And the garden could do with some decking. That’s pretty much it. It’s not going to take a whole year, is it?

  Who am I kidding? Of course I don’t want to get made redundant. It would be a disaster. I won’t even be able to keep up the payments on the ground-floor flat I moved into after the separation from Sarah. I’ll be forced to traipse around the streets pushing my identical clothes in a trolley and telling passers-by that I could have been a contender in the world of industrial brochure writing.

  I’ve got to keep my job. I won’t get another one. I’ll beg if I need to. I’m not proud.

  TUESDAY 15TH JANUARY

  Cathy and Imran were panicking this morning about how this new boss was going to sack everyone. Jen must have overheard, because she sauntered over and said, ‘Don’t worry, guys, you’ll get on fine with Josh.’

  It turns out that Jen has known about this new boss all along, as he interviewed her for the job. So not only is this person called Josh, but he chose Jen over some other candidates. He heard her speaking and he actually chose to be in the same building as her. This doesn’t bode well.

  My blood didn’t really run cold,
however, until Jen described him as ‘funky’. I can’t imagine any description that would have been more disturbing. She could have said he was a keen collector of Nazi memorabilia or an avid badger baiter, and I’d have been less perturbed. I can take a lot of the horrendous things that life throws at me, but I’m not sure a ‘funky’ boss is one of them.

  WEDNESDAY 16TH JANUARY

  I must be losing my mind with stress because I apologized to a cyclist this morning. I swerved to avoid the carcass of a bizarre multi-limbed creature that turned out to be an abandoned KFC value meal. This sent me right into the path of an overweight cyclist wearing a pink safety helmet. She slammed her brakes on and tutted loudly, and I muttered ‘sorry’.

  Why? Why was I sorry that she nearly ran me over on the pavement?

  I regained my senses and shouted, ‘Actually I’m not sorry at all. You’re supposed to be on the road. Just because what you’re doing is good for the planet doesn’t give you the right to put everyone else at risk. You know what? Get a Land Rover and make the icecaps melt. It would be safer swimming to work than avoiding you bastards.’

  The woman didn’t hang around to listen. She whizzed off, leaving me ranting into thin air like someone who sits in the park all day drinking Special Brew. Which I probably will be soon.

  THURSDAY 17TH JANUARY

  In these times of crisis what I need is a serene, calm life. Instead, I get an endless parade of trivial frustrations. Today I got stuck behind an old lady at a cashpoint. It’s not like I was expecting her to be quick, but the faffing went on so long that anyone’s blood would have gone on to an even simmer.

  The first thing that pissed me off was her complete lack of preparation. You’d think that someone waiting in the queue for a cashpoint might go to the trouble of getting their card ready. But this old bat actually waited until she read the screen before fishing around in her bag. What was she expecting it to ask her to do? Play ‘Axel F’ on the keypad?

  The woman rooted through her purse and tried four different cash cards. At least, I’m assuming they were cash cards. They could have been library cards for all I know. After several centuries of this, I leant forward and tapped her on the shoulder to let her know there was someone else in the queue. Then the old trout had the cheek to accuse me of trying to ‘steal her PIN number’.

  I told her that it probably wouldn’t be much use to me, as she certainly hadn’t managed to produce any cash with it in the last twenty minutes. And anyway, it’s called a ‘PIN’ not a ‘PIN number’. What you’re effectively saying there is ‘Personal Identification Number number’.

  You know what I think? I think the old lady didn’t even want any cash. I think she just likes to queue. In the unlikely event that one of those cards ever produced cash, she’d be straight down the bank to put it back in her account. And you can bet she’d wait until she got to the window before filling in the slip.

  But I resolved to be more positive this year, didn’t I? So I should end on a good thing that happened.

  Er … the bank didn’t charge me for using the cashpoint. I know this because they told me before returning my card. That was quite good, I suppose. Although I find it very suspicious that banks feel the need to congratulate themselves every time they resist doing something evil. I resisted killing an old lady today, but you don’t catch me boasting about it.

  FRIDAY 18TH JANUARY

  We went down the pub for Steve’s leaving drinks tonight. I asked him if he had a new job yet, but he said he was taking early retirement, the utter bastard. Apparently, he’s paid off the mortgage on both his houses, so now he can move into one and live off the rent of the other.

  It doesn’t seem fair really. Just because he’s earned loads more money than me and invested it sensibly, he’s free to do as he pleases while I remain trapped in a room full of idiots. Someone should give me enough money to retire. I wonder if there are any charities for gits.

  Steve left quite soon and the rest of the night was a complete washout. I got trapped talking to Jen about her career ambitions, and I had to pretend I thought they were in some way worthwhile so she wouldn’t grass me up to her funky mate Josh.

  SATURDAY 19TH JANUARY

  Another small victory today. I noticed that my chicken tikka masala ready-meal was past its use-by date. But guess what? I ate it anyway. This is something that would never have happened under the Sarah regime. She obeyed use-by dates like they were commands from God, rather than approximate guidelines. She once got out of bed at five past midnight to throw away an iceberg lettuce that had just passed its expiry date.

  The moment I knew it was all over for us was when she said our marriage had passed its use-by date. If she’d put it any other way, I might have believed there was a way back. But not that.

  SUNDAY 20TH JANUARY

  I meant to watch my Sopranos box set today, but I got distracted by worrying about whether the correct phrase was ‘box set’ or ‘boxed set’. I searched online and ‘box set’ seems to be standard, but it doesn’t sound right to me. It’s not a set of boxes, it’s a set of items in a box.

  Perhaps I should go on some sort of crusade to save the phrase ‘boxed set’, but it’s probably too late. There’s no point in trying to save language in a world where bosses can be described as ‘funky’. If things have got that bad, we might as well return to pointing and grunting.

  I’m going to spend tonight trawling the dark recesses of my imagination to guess what Jen meant by ‘funky’. Beards, ponytails, baseball caps – nothing will be taboo. Then however things turn out tomorrow, I’ll already have anticipated it. That’s the great thing about being a pessimist. You’re never disappointed.

  MONDAY 21ST JANUARY

  The newspapers reckon today is the most depressing day of the year. It’s called ‘Blue Monday’ because of some bogus calculation about how bad the weather is likely to be and how little money you’re likely to have left.

  Actually, I beg to differ. The twenty-fifth of December is the most depressing day of the year. When you’re a kid it’s depressing because your expectations are so high that only a pair of hover shoes and a working time machine would meet them. And when you’re an adult it’s depressing because you’re drunk and shouting at your relatives before noon. It wasn’t depressing for me this year, because I stayed in bed all day. But it has been every other year.

  Nonetheless, it all increased my anxiety about meeting Josh. ‘Blue Monday’ didn’t seem like a very good day to meet a new boss.

  Josh didn’t turn out to be too horrendous, though. There wasn’t much interesting about him at all, really. He had short black hair, black trousers and a white shirt that was quite probably tucked into his underpants. The only thing that really caught my attention about him was that HE LOOKED ABOUT EIGHT YEARS OLD.

  Seriously. I thought a paperboy had sneaked into Steve’s old office to see what it was like to sit in a grown-up’s chair. But apparently that little foetus is my new boss. I hope he’s been through puberty. I don’t think I could handle the mood swings.

  I’m tempted to find out his actual age, but I’m not sure I want to know. Was he even alive when I saw Star Wars in the cinema? Or Back to the Future? Or Jurassic Park? He probably wasn’t even alive when I walked out of Mamma Mia because Pierce Brosnan started singing.

  Well, now he’s my boss and I have to do what he says. So I take back what I said yesterday. Pessimists can be disappointed, too.

  TUESDAY 22ND JANUARY

  It looks as though I’m getting the chop after all.

  There are a couple of new people joining next week. I only found out because I saw our office manager Erika going round and changing the phone lists. I asked her who Jo and Jez were and she said they were starting on Monday. I asked her where they were going to sit and she said they could perch on the ends of our desks for the time being. For the time being. Subtle, eh?

  Imran and Cathy immediately started fretting about which of us would be fired to make way for th
ese newcomers. I told them there was probably nothing to worry about. Then I quit my game of Scrabble and started searching on job websites.

  So it looks like it’s all over for me and either Cathy or Imran. Two new people are joining and they aren’t buying any new desks. I can’t really complain. I’ve managed to ride it out for over a decade, which is pretty good going. But it’s a little unfortunate for Cathy or Imran, because they both seem to work pretty hard. Unless they’re just as lazy as me and really good at hiding it.

  WEDNESDAY 23RD JANUARY

  I feel like I’m crossing a line with these use-by dates now. I’ve just eaten a ready-meal lasagne that was a whole week out of date. Rebelling against the tyrannies of your ex-partner is one thing, but this is just reckless.

  I have no idea what will happen now. Maybe I’ll wake up on a cloud next to Jim Morrison, John Lennon and Kurt Cobain. I’ll tell them about the lasagne, and they’ll greet me as one of their own – a victim of rock and roll excess who burnt out instead of fading away.

  THURSDAY 24TH JANUARY

  Jen asked me for the SOP on one of our accounts today. For a moment I thought I was supposed to have done some work and I’d have to dip into my bank of excuses. But then I realized she was just asking me about the state of play. So she’d managed to invent an acronym that caused unnecessary confusion, and for what? To make herself sound so busy she hasn’t got time to say entire words. And how many syllables did she save exactly? None at all.