The Peril Of Two Jobs

Today is a bad day. I have to work at job #1, which is ok, and then job #2 which is also ok. But the two together in one day is definately not ok.

Job #1 is really enjoyable, if repeptitive in a very minor way. The idiot quota is fairly high, but I only belong to a team of 3 and the three of us are all ok dudes. No idiots in our platoon. Good money, bonuses etc make everything bearable, I just wish the rest of the business wasn’t full of goons.

Today I am working on the second coming of christ. I’m being facetious, it’s nothing to do with religion. It’s just really really important. It’s so important that it needs do be completed with “all due haste“. Don’t know about you, but I find that marginally irritating – I don’t usually drag things out for jolly’s – I’m pretty good at getting on with stuff in a timely manner. But still, the blunt point is, it must be completed as a number 1 priority with all due haste.

So anyway, bout 09.40 today I finished the first part, the form creation. Systems development for me usually follows the following pattern:

• Plan
• Create Form
• Get Feedback On Form, Improve
• Set up Validation/Mandatory Fields
• Set Up Database
• Set Up Database Insertion from Form
• Present Data
• etc etc.

There’s a good reason for this – if the form doesn’t fit requirements correctly and I spend 3 days setting up a validation script, I’ve wasted my time. So I can’t progress until the form is complete and more importantly, agreed upon by all parties else I open myself up to the very real possibility of some idiot saying “yeah it’s ok, but can you swap that bit and that bit, and we don’t want that bit anymore and we want these extra bits”. Shit you not, has happened before.

So remember, this is the most urgent project the human race has ever seen. And I requested a feedback meeting at 09.40, guess what. Still waiting. I’ve fannied around a bit, got some other stuff done and checked off, now I’m tapping the desk trying to teach myself morsecode for “I work with badly organised lunatics”.

Job #2 – that’s a real cracker. £22 cash in hand to sit and read a book for 4 hours. Sounds amazing right? It is. Well, mostly. The downside, and it is a pretty shear drop, is I have to periodically break myself away from my fantasy world written into pages between a glossy cover (decorated with a Tesco 2 for £7 sticker usually) to enter the fantasy world of tricked up drunk old racists. One man, who confided in me whilst buying a round that he couldn’t see his fingers anymore then told his wife to “shut up or I’ll smash your tits in”. Really surreal moment.

I would have thought they would of got bored of repeating the same conversation every week, but apparently they are so old and racist that they have mild Alzheimers. Every week it’s the same – immergents (sic.) are evil, 17 year olds are stab hapy and evil, council estates are baby making factories of evil and most distressing of all, Jeremy Clarkson isn’t as evil as other people think he might be.

What a bunch of dickheads. They make me sick sometimes. One 60+ guy (waist in inches, age in years), born in Australia as he proudly tells everyone (“I’M NOT FROM NEW ZEALAND YEAH, I’M AN AUSSIE WOO WOO”) completely missed the irony of saying “Yeah we should send all of them back where they came from..”. Gladly you racist old fuck, I’m right onto barge hire as I write.