The Giant Arm

Hello everyone.  Happy New Year.  Nothing to report except that it's really hot.
Note: this changes later in the post when I remembered that I did have things to report.

It's stick your head in the fridge and get jealous of the slightly freezer-burnt pork ribs hot.  The kind of humid sticky hot where you're super glad to be single because quite honestly even thinking about sex is exhausting and kind of sweaty by inference and if Channing Tatum showed up in the next five minutes and said "well do you fancy it?" you'd say No Thank You Channing But Did You Bring Any Cold Beers.

Anyway since September you have missed nothing except that it is really hot and also I grew more hair.

I got Instagram.  This is my life now. Let me filter you.

And we moved into a new building at work!

The new building combines our print, radio and digital arms into... one giant arm, I guess.

Dwayne "The Corporate Strategy" Johnson.

Here are some things the new building has: it is state of the art!  The art of building buildings.

1.  Fancy Lifts

The lifts in our new building are so fancy that they have heated handrails.  Or perhaps just handrails that are lit from the bottom - for all your late-night lift adventures when you can't be bothered to turn on the automatic lift lights - that have the side effect of warming the entire lift to the perfect temperature for a cup of herbal tea.  I'm sure this will be delightful in winter.

Lift planning meeting begins
"Do you know what would make an uncomfortably small, unventilated box full of people even better?"
"What, Rupert?  What??"
"HEAT!"
Lift planners applaud; meeting is closed.

One of the lifts also used to have Lift Lady, who was a disembodied voice or potentially a visitor from the spirit realm who would say, "Level One.  Doors closing."  Pause.  "Ground floor.  Doors opening" in an unsettlingly pleasant and even tone.

Lift Lady: "Basement One.  Doors closing."  Pause.  
Lift Lady, pleasantly - "Doors closing forever.  Lift on fire."

Lift Lady disappeared after two weeks. Presumably there was an exorcism.

2.  Swipe-activated printers

In the Sleeve (this is what I am now calling the new building which houses the Giant Arm) if you wish to use the printer you must first ask your computer to print the thing, then go over to the printer and swipe your access card.  I don't know why this is.  I genuinely don't.  You can still print ridiculous amounts of nothing important (I am the current owner of a 67-page compliance report that I didn't realise was 67 pages when I started printing it), and surely in today's day and age you could look in the printer logs and trace the 10 buttcheek photocopies straight back to Rupert's machine.

Is it because people are worried about other people seeing their secret printing?  How much secret printing are we all doing?  Does anyone actually secret print anything that isn't their CV?  Why would you even need to print your CV anyway?  Wouldn't you just email it?  What happened to 'hit print, immediately rise from your chair and walk very briskly to the printer without getting waylaid by another department'?  This printer has taken all the fun out of printing.

- here there is a brief hiatus where I fish a small bug out of my drink.  Button once alerted me to a bug in my drink, right as I began to sip it, and I said "Button, I think he's already gone" but it turns out her concern was more hygiene-based.  Thank you Button. -

3.  New Colleagues

There are many new colleagues in The Sleeve and I made an excellent graph about them but then remembered that many of these colleagues know about this blog.  Everyone is wonderful and certainly not worthy of a scathing Venn diagram.

Have this one instead.  It is my most-used graph in the office.

 I tried to make a graph about revenue once but it turned into a lunch break.

4.  A No-Clutter Environment policy

I can't remember why we have this, but we do.  The idea is that you don't have any clutter on your desk, which has highlighted that my definition of clutter is quite different to the Giant Arm's definition.

"What's this?"
"That's a file rack for compliance documentation that we legally have to hold for seven years."
"Ok.  What are these?"
"Those are sales awards."
"What about these?"
"Those are my grandfather's cufflinks, which I like to have on my desk."
"Ok, what's this?"
"That's perfume in case I have to go to a meeting."
"And this?"
"That's backup perfume in case I have to go to an important meeting where it's not appropriate for me to smell like Selena Gomez."
"...and this?"
"That's a small wicker duck full of candy."
"...and th-"
"THAT'S A PILE OF CANDY WRAPPERS NO MORE QUESTIONS"



This post with thanks to Danny for reminding me that blogging is a thing I like to do!