Salad days

My mother is a nurse and has never worked in an office. I once showed her where I worked and she looked around her in wonder and bemusement. All those people just sitting at computers all day, she said. What on earth are they doing?

A very good question. One of the things they are doing is using stationery. There is a fantastic sign on a cupboard door downstairs, begging for a photo but I would need to sneak in after everyone's gone home. It says: This is the new stationery cupboard. Whatever is not in here is in the old stationery cupboard. Right.

Another is putting up Christmas decorations. There were six geese a-laying on our corridor (part of the twelve days of Christmas competition). What they were laying was balloons called things like 'critical thinking' and 'valuing diversity', and best of all they were pinned to the ceiling right next to the 'Danger: Asbestos. Do not Disturb Under Any Circumstances' stickers.

Finally, of course, is having meetings. If there are enough of you in the meeting, it involves sufficiently senior people and some of those people are Visitors, then you get sandwiches in for lunch. These are uniformly awful but you eat them anyway, and what's left you put out in the office for the less fortunate.

And eventually you are left with a tray of garnish. Which you put on the floor by the recycling bin and leave for people to make pretty shapes out of. I saw one of them doing it with my very own eyes.

Beats working for a living.

joella