What do you do then...?

I've just completed my second week as a Marketing Officer.

Well, I say second week. I was off 2 days the first week, one day this week and left early to go for some training today. So I've just completed my first six and a half days of actual marketing. I believe that 6.5 out of 10 is actually quite a high attendance rate for a Marketing person. Well done me. I'm a credit to my profession.

There have been a couple of minor challenges so far:

Day 1: Arrived refreshed after two weeks in the strange void between Client Services and Marketing, during which I spent a large part of my life cruising up and down the M6. If that makes me sound like some kind of huggy-bear/superpimp type character, then I'll cope with that as a concept. *long pause* I'm still coping. Anyway - my desk was missing something when I arrived. After a bit of pondering, a touch of wondering and a fair amount of puzzling, I realised that the bloody great big mac that had been there before I went away had vanished. No computer. Tricky.

Anyway, the poor thing was panting it's last in the company of my friend and IT colleague the lovely Jompet. He'd tried all sorts of things to revive it (some of which I'm sure are illegal and/or physically impossible) but it was deeply traumatised, possibly at the realisation that an imbecile was about to become its user.

I then had to steal a colleague's PC. She's on holiday for a month, but it took several days to un-stick the gonks, frills and another stuff from around the screen. To my family - I love you and will miss you when I'm gone. I know I will be killed when she gets back.

By the end of Day 1, I knew how to:

a) look for a mac
b) steal a PC

Day 2: Some stuff happened. Some of it involved doing things to a web whilst grazing the interworld. Or something. Not really sure. learning on Day 2:

a) There's an Inter Net.
b) I think I'm slightly scared now

Day 3: A colleague based in another office needed something doing RIGHT NOW. In fact, if I didn't do it RIGHT NOW, the imminent collapse of a big lot of money and possibly the whole office's careers would occur. Slight problem, in that the only version of software I can do the "thing" in is on the mac. It perks up slightly allowing me use it for a bit, before breathing it's last. Bearing in mind that I don't know how to use a mac you can see my dilemma. Oh, and I haven't the faintest idea how to use the software either. Things I learnt today:

a) I don't know how to use a mac
b) I don't know how to use a Soft Ware
c) Jeeesus, now I'm really scared

Handily, at this point my huge week had ended. Woo! Marketing! Yeah! I can do that! 4 day weekend - woopwoop!

All too quickly, time was up. I won't bore you with all the details of this week. Here are the highlights:

It involved slightly less fear
A chunk of websiteyness (which having actually had training on it today, highlighted the fact that my previous dablings were lucky not to have brought the whole WWW to it's virtual knees and that I now have a lot of fixing to do)
A bit of finding out about training (HOW much for a 2 day course?!)
Some frankly quite brilliant (if I do say so myself) arranging for someone else to do the things I can't
A Krypton factor style intelligence test where I attempted to erect a 6 foot display, er, thing, in a room 6 foot high, without instructions, using only my cunning - Display 1, Jenwis 0.
Photographing some nice people giving us a cheque - an actual cheque mind, not one of those comically big ones you can actually see in a photo
Some meetings about marketingy-type things
I'm still pretty good at making tea and coffee
Marketing should apparently be called La La Land

And there you go. 2 weeks in and I'm none the wiser. Hope nobody noticed I was bluffing it...

This post is for my friends & colleagues, with whom I shared an entertaining 5 minutes today reminiscing about the good old days (actually about 2 months ago) when we worked together and used to have way too much fun. Probably why we got split up....

Playing tonight on the Hamilbutton cheap stereo (playing through my expensive amp and speakers which are about all that's left of my decent hi-fi after the CD skipped all the time and the cassette deck chewed up it's last C90) is Eddie Vinson's "Cleanhead Blues".

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...

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