Symbolic Forest

It’s still only spring, and it’s becoming rather clear that our new office was rather badly planned. It’s a two-person office, with lots of computers in it,^* no windows, no air conditioning, and a door which, we’re told, must remain closed. The only concession to ventilation is a small extractor fan – the only incoming air is from the corridor. The fan itself was an after-thought, installed after the office secretary started campaigning for us.

It was only a mildly warm day outside today, but the office was already unbearable. I sat in a sleepy stupor all afternoon. In a couple of months, it’s going to be a danger to our health. I really must bring in a thermometer to see just how hot it gets in there.

* five at present, including the company mailserver, which lives under my desk and occasionally gets an accidental kick.

Keyword noise: airflow, buildings, cooling, heat, office, overheating, temperature, ventilation, weather.

I like bank holidays and long weekends. I especially like pairs of bank holidays, and extra-long weekends. Today really felt like a Friday at the office, particularly as The Secretary^* was handing out buttered hot cross buns (albeit cold).

Getting home, The Mother had been baking ready for breakfast tomorrow, so the house smelled of warm cinnamon. Hot cross buns for breakfast: the one thing Christianity really has going for it.

* no, she is nothing like the film

Keyword noise: baking, Easter, food, holiday, hot cross buns, long weekend.

There are many things I just don’t understand about people, but this is one I’ve been thinking about lately.

A month or more ago now, I wrote about Big Dave’s Dating Life. In particular, about one particular girl from his darts team, who was constantly tempted to go back to her ex-boyfriend even though he tended to beat her up whenever she visited him. Big Dave’s romantic contribution: a few vigilante-style threats to help persuade him to stop.

Anyway, Big Dave’s wooing proceeded according to plan, with a few dates which got more and more serious as time went on. Until last week, when he was cruelly dumped by text message, because she’d decided to go back to the abusive ex, with still no sign that he really was going to stop the beatings.

No sooner had this happened, then one of the worse gossip-mongers at our branch in Another Part Of The Forest starts telling us that one of her underlings – a woman who I’ll call Antivirus – is on a diet, because she wants to look good for her wedding. Which is, well, news.

I don’t know Antivirus very well, but we do chat to each other on the phone every week or so, and the last I’d heard about her relationship really didn’t sound promising. To put it bluntly, a few months ago it had broken down. Not only was she moving out, but she was moving out secretly. She’d planned to wait until she knew the boyfriend was securely at work, then she rushed in with some friends in a van, so that he’d come home to find her, her kids,^* all her possessions gone. Because she was terrified of how he’d react if she told him she was leaving.

If you ask me, that’s not a good relationship to be in. It’s not the sort of relationship you’re going to want to go back to. But, for some reason, she has. Not only that, but she’s agreed to marry him.

Obviously, I don’t know the details of either of these cases. Maybe there’s a good reason for everything here. Maybe both of these men have turned over a completely new leaf, and are going to be perfect partners from now on. That’s what they’ve probably promised, at any rate. If it was me, though, I wouldn’t be convinced. There are lots of aspects of relationships I don’t understand, but there are some people who really baffle me.

* not his, in case you were wondering.

Keyword noise: abuse, abusive relationships, Big Dave, dating, domestic violence, relationships, romance, violence.

On top of the timezone confusion, work is getting a little pressured this week. I’ve been driving about between branches carrying equipment backwards and forwards, because if you’ve got a large amount of data in the wrong place, the quickest way to sort things out is still to put your computer in the boot of your car and drive it down to Another Part Of The Forest’s branch office. Squeezing it down an internet pipeline takes all day; driving to the other side of the county only takes an hour.^*

The best part of that, of course, is that an hour of driving down the motorway is an hour of not having to answer the phone to be given more work.

* Well, the other middle of the county, at any rate.

Keyword noise: busy, commuting, data transfer, driving, Sneakernet, travel.

So, as I explained yesterday, the security contractor at the office has saddled us with three “incompatible” security systems, two of which probably are compatible after all, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to get them to work together. We complained to the office manager about it. “Well, if that’s what the contractor said, that’s what’s going to happen.”

The next day, our boss comes through to visit. “What’s this about us needing three different tags for the alarms?”

We told him what we’d been told.

“It’s a bloody stupid idea. I thought they were all going to work together.” Yes, so did we. “I don’t want to have to carry three tags on my keyring.” And he wanders off, grumbling about it.

The following day, we notice the Managing Director stalking about in our part of the building, looking at the security gadgets and making “hmmm…” noises. The office manager is following him around, trying to explain how wonderful these expensive systems we’ve commissioned are.

“…you’ll have one tag for these doors, one tag for the outside doors and gates, one tag for…”

“Why do we need three different tags for everything? Why can’t we just have one?”

“The contractor says that they won’t…”

“Well, I thought we were just going to have one tag that would do everything. I don’t want…”

I tuned out, but it was clear the way the conversation was going. What makes me sigh isn’t that we always prefer contractors who have worked for us before, even when their track record is hardly promising.^* It’s that the management should have spotted this coming. The contractor did give the office manager a nice thick specifications document – did the manager bother to read it at all? Didn’t he bother to ask questions about the vague parts?

* This isn’t the first time the security contractor has fitted something and then not set it up properly, because although he’s agreed to fit the system we wanted he’s not willing to learn how to configure it.

Keyword noise: alarm, contractors, incompatibility, management, office, RFID, security.

As part of all the building work that’s been going on at the office, we’ve been getting the security systems upgraded. A new alarm system, new motorised front gates,^* and new electronic locks on most of the internal doors. All to be worked by RFID tags, kept on our keyrings and carried round all the time.

Now, being logical and sensible, we assumed that the company had specified either a single system, or compatible systems, so that we could use one single tag to unlock everything. Therefore we were pleased to spot, as the contractor^** started to install the hardware, that all the sensors we could see came from the same manufacturer. Very sensible.

We each get a tag the other week, and start using it to open and shut the front gates. Three days ago, the contractor pops his head round the door to say he’ll be issuing us with the rest of the tags, the ones for the indoor locks, soon.

“The rest of the tags? We’ve already got one.”

Apparently, we need separate ones for the outdoor locks, the indoor locks, and the alarm system itself. Because “the systems are from different manufacturers.”

“But they’re not from the same manufacturers! We’ve seen them, and they’re identical! If you hold an outdoor tag up to an indoor sensor, it recognises it!”

“No it doesn’t.”

I held my “outdoor tag” up to the newly-installed sensor by the office door. It bleeped, and flashed a little green light at me.

“Well, I can try to set it up so that that tag unlocks this door,” the contractor said. “But it won’t work.”

(to be continued, otherwise this post would get a bit long)

* This is a Good Thing, because guess who’s job it is to unlock and open the old front gates every morning.

** Our usual security contractor, a friendly chap, who is very anal about making sure his cabling is put in and terminated neatly, but isn’t very good at setting up the security systems themselves properly.

Keyword noise: alarm, building security, buildings, compatibility, defeatism, electronic locks, forward planning, incompatibility, locks, planning, RFID, RFID locks, security, systems.

Last week, I told you about Big Dave’s Impending Date. This week, I’ve been finding out what happened. This is all retold second-hand from what he told me; but this is pretty much exactly how he said it.

Quick summary of the Story So Far: Big Dave asked a girl from the Darts League out, even though she wasn’t single, because her dad kept pressuring him to do it. On Saturday, they were supposed to be going out for a drink.

Well, she cancelled. Then, on Sunday, she didn’t show up at the darts. So, Dave asks around a bit to see what’s going on. It turns out, she went to visit her ex, who then decided to beat her up.

Dave pops round to visit, and sees the rather nasty bruises all over her face, which explain why she hasn’t been about. “You won’t do anything though, will you?” she said to him, nervously.

“Of course not,” says Big Dave, fingers crossed behind his back. As soon as he leaves her, he goes straight round to the man’s house. As soon as he opens the door, Dave’s hands are round his neck and he’s up against the wall.

Now, there is a reason he’s called Big Dave. And the man in question is, according to Dave, your typical kind of girlfriend-beater: small and skinny himself, and a coward. The sort of bully who will take his anger out on people he knows aren’t going to fight back. With Dave there, he needs to change his trousers. “I don’t have a problem with you, mate,” he kept stammering. “You do now,” Dave replies. He leaves without doing any damage, but with Dire Threats should anything happen in future.

I’m slightly in two minds about all this myself. On the one hand, the scumbag sounds like a nasty piece of work who clearly had it coming. Nevertheless, I’m still a little nervous around vigilante justice. Especially when I share an office with the vigilante in question. And the girl Dave was trying to help isn’t talking to him at the moment. Because she didn’t want anyone to make a fuss about it. She just wanted everyone to ignore her hideous bruises and let it all die down again.

Keyword noise: abuse, relationships, Big Dave, colleagues, darts, dating, domestic violence, gossip, vigilante.

Big Dave At The Office is making a move back onto the dating scene. He’s mostly doing this, as far as I can tell, by playing darts.

I knew he was on his dad’s darts team, playing weekly at various dodgy-sounding pubs round the area.^* I knew, too, that there was a woman on the team – also there with her dad – who he was getting friendly with; but that as she isn’t single, nothing had happened.

“So, I was at the darts last Thursday,” says Big Dave, “and you remember that lass I was telling you about? She wasn’t there, but her dad just comes up to us and says: ‘Why haven’t you boned my daughter yet?’ As if he’s insulted that I haven’t, or something.”

“But I thought she wasn’t single?”

“Well, yeah,” said Dave. “Anyway, this week, I was stood talking to her after the match, and her dad comes up to us again. And he says to her: ‘Why haven’t you let him bone you yet?’ I think he’s trying to drop hints.”

“Subtle,” I said. “Very subtle. What does he say to her boyfriend?”

“Well, I dunno,” he replied. “But we’re kind of going on a date on Saturday.”

If I hear how he gets on, I will keep you posted.

* such as the one where local pre-teens will hang about in the car park offering to get you practically anything for twenty quid, and if you take them up on it, will return with a freshly-nicked anything within a couple of hours.

Keyword noise: Big Dave, colleagues, darts, dating, gossip.

As I mentioned the other day, Colleague M isn’t Colleague M any more. She’s now Ex-Colleague M.

Her contract was coming to an end, and her manager was being suspiciously non-commital about its renewal. So, rather than wait to find she was out of a job, she jumped.

Secretly, I was hoping that she was going to leave in a dramatic, destructive way, and reveal all the little secrets of the colleagues she didn’t get along with. Which of them are the most two-faced and hypocritical, for example, or which ones use the work computers to download porn. Unfortunately – as M is slightly more sensible and rational than I am – she decided not to. Bah. I’ll let you know how her job-hunting goes.

Keyword noise: career, Colleague M, colleagues, resignation.

Work is wearing me down again. We have several projects on our menu, for different divisions of the company, and of course everybody thinks their own project is urgent. Our manager’s opinion of the most urgent depends on who he had last talked to.

When people ask me: “have you done X? When will Y be ready?” over and over again, I get annoyed and irritated. Unfortunately, most of the other managers in the company seem to think that this is the best way to go about motivating people. Of course, some go further, and lie directly: “I know Z is supposed to be ready by the end of the month. I’m sure someone told me that. I’m not sure who, but I’m sure someone did.”

Keyword noise: management, motivation, planning, prediction, work, project planning.