How was your weekend?

Today is Monday and Mondays are always a pain in Miserable Middle Manager’s life. In everybody’s life I guess. The world suffers on Mondays!

Nothing new here you will say, but then I thought I would describe my early Monday morning. See if I can beat you in the race for the worst first few hours of the day.

7:30: Iphone alarm clock goes off, the vegetables I had on Sunday night kick in, I have some energy (30% batteries left my brain tells me). My hand reach the Iphone to shut it up and put the news on. I doze another 15 minutes listening to the misery in the UK, the lodger who’s killed two women, rioters and police relationship, boring stuff....what’s become of Amanda Fox, has it rained in Somalia I wonder?

I stop wondering and look at my work mail (first mistake of the day) – a care home who wants to withdraw from its contract, Mark Oobs asking me to come earlier to take care of it. I think about my best friend Stress, nooo it is too early don’t come over, I leave the phone alone.

8:00: reach the bathroom, crawl to the shower. Hit my head on the wall – did I tell you I can’t stand up in my shower? It’s been built under the outside stairs. Anyway, doesn’t help the Monday mood – what’s gonna happen to Miserable Middle Manager this week?

8:15: the dog still hasn’t moved from his lamb sheep skin (called the moumoute, the thing was bought in Ikea when it was all soft and smooth, but the dog trashed it to make it his own). He looks like a snake on the moumoute, only his tail moves...every morning is the same, he hopes that I will leave him alone, that I won’t put him in his huge garden because it is cold outside. For him I am the monster that drags him out, but come on, it was the garden or the nice shower, I chose the shower to beat the ungrateful dog’s depression!

So every morning I take him for walks, 10 minutes around the block. He analyses pee, I call him the Piss Analyst, I have a theory: he is secretly part of the PSI squad (Pee Scene Investigation). He analyses every pee and covers it with his own to hide the smell of dog criminals who try to overtake the neighbourhood.  I know that he is a hero, although he is a miserable OCD lad.

Anyway! Off we go, once the pee has been all analysed, he ends up in the garden for the day.

8:25: put some make up on, eat a toast and drink half a litter of coffee – I will talk about the diet of Miserable Middle Manager another time, but in a nutshell : I am hooked to coffee but I shouldn’t, I should eat fruits, veggies and less carbs, but I can’t. Basically I eat fuck all at lunch from Monday to Friday, because of the stress that blocks my stomach.

8:30: am on my way to the tube, recharge the Oyster, signal failure on the Jubilee Line, train eventually comes, my cold body crashes against 50 other, the sardine is in the can, ready to get everyone’s disease and be pushed in the ribs by at least one person.

8:55: am off the tube, phone beeps: Gabino Ducon’s boiler has broke, he must wait for the boiler repair man to come by between 9 and 2PM, so he asks if he can work from home. I reply yes good luck take care, at least he is not off sick, so I won’t have to cover for him, and I don’t have to smell his presence in the office.

8:56: Philippe Focker text me he is late, bus tyre exploded on the way, won’t be able to attend the 9:30 meeting, off course.

9:00: reach KonarKingdom Ltd – my friend Stress welcomes me at the gate, he is my best friend and will shadow me the whole week. I guess without Stress I would feel lonely.

So there I am in the office, 20 desks on open space, 10 for my department, 5 for my team, all empty.

9:15: computer on, (yeah it takes on average 15 minute for the shit to be fully functional – IT keeps rebuilding it, it seems that they don’t have the budget to buy a new one, so they would rather spend time on it themselves).

So people start arriving between 9:30 and 10:00, I always try to force Philippe Focker to go to the 9:30 meeting, but he never does, he always has a good excuse, he never arrives before 9:40. But apparently it is ok, according to HR, the company is flexible on office hours, as long as we do 8H per day. According to them, if I start being strict on time keeping, employees will take revenge. I don’t really understand, between 9:00 and 10:00am, clients call, colleagues ask questions, meetings happen etc etc...so what, if nobody is in, clients will wait?

Ho well.

10:30: most people have arrived, I say hello to everyone, not everyone answers, I keep hearing colleagues saying ‘how was your weekend’, no one asks me how was mine. I guess I am the Miserable Middle Manager, not the office friend, people keep their distance.

I have tried to work on my body language (NLP experts told me to), but as I am always the first in the office, body language is only limited to my face. So I catch people and tell them an enthusiastic ‘Hello, how is it going!’ distorting my face in an extatic and happy shape.

I try to hide my miserableness obviously.

But it doesn’t work.

Very few answer.

Nobody ask me how my weekend was.

But if someone had I would have said the below:

On Friday night, I left work late and fuming because of Philippe ‘Busy’ Focker. I went straight to the pub to meet my friends, drank as much alcohol as my body could take and vomited on my BF car. I was quite hangover on Saturday morning, spent my whole day in front of the TV, watching all the Come dine with me and Signed by Katie price trash TV available, accompanied by the dog on his moumoute (the moumoute is really screwed to the dog now that I think about it). Then on Sunday I went to the North Acton scrapyard (hell on earth) to dump the pieces of an old shed that had been living in the garden for too long.

And each time I threw a piece of trash in the skip, I would call it a name : YOURS!

Today is Ninja day, happy Ninja day!