Stain Survey

Today has been glorious. It has rained cats and dogs, I sat in a warm office and beavered away formulating my diabolical plans for world domination for the supply of products that would put your average non-engineer into a boredom-induced coma just by looking at them.

This made me happy in itself but the highpoint of my day came at around 11.30am. True to the immutable laws of IT, our network had a brainfart for no apparent reason and stopped everyone from accessing their files on the server. All around me there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, but not me. Oh no.

I was carried through the crisis by the deep joy of knowing that it wasn't me who was going to have to fix the bloody thing. That there would be no disgruntled Super arriving at my desk with a cheery "my computer is fucked and you'll have to stop what you're doing and fix it even though you don't really know what you're doing" look on her face.

I went downstairs to the coffee shop(!) and by the time I returned with my latte(!!) the IT pixies had worked their magic and all was well in the world. All I had to do was carry on where I left off. Marvellous.

And the title? Well, I stood in a meeting this morning and listened to a presentation regarding a survey that has been carried out by a very earnest colleague who is quite concerned by the state of the carpets in our office. She wasn't laughing, so I thought I'd best not either. To be honest they look fine to me, but she assures us all that a deep-cleaning operation has been scheduled for the end of May anyway.

I don't know whether I should be pleased or concerned.

NDC

FNG

Well, my first day working for The Man.

And all my concerns and misgivings can be put into context by one brief sentence from my new boss (who seems very nice), delivered at 17.12:

"Don't you have a home to go to?"

Bliss.

NDC

Hello, real world

Well well well.

After a few days away in Budapest* (which were frankly ace. Partly due to architecture, partly due to grisly recent history, partly due to esoterically-clothed locals, but mainly due to excellent company), I am firmly back in the real world now. Firmly.

As part of my re-integration into CorporateLand I am giving up my company car and as a result I have to get personal car insurance again.

Kill me now, it would be easier.

I could tell you about the part where third party only insurance is the same price as fully comprehensive**, I could tell you about the bit where reducing the voluntary excess from £200 to £0 actually resulted in a lower premium, I could tell you about the phone calls with various insurance agencies through which I was spoken to in a manner that I would expect had I opened the conversation with "Hello, my name is Andrew and I would like to shag your mother.".

But no.

Here's the tale.

I wanted to give my current insurer the chance to quote a price, I did it online (as we do everything these days), the quoted a price in the region of double that I had already been quoted elsewhere, so I wanted to talk to somebody, mano-e-mano.

I scoured the website for a contact number. the only number I could find was a premium-rate con, which felt like a complete insult. I emailed the helpdesk;

"Hello,

I have a current policy with you and I want to change my car. I have been quoted on your site, but the price is a lot higher than I can get elsewhere.

Is there a number I can call to talk to someone without being charged 10p per minute, or should I just move the business elsewhere and cancel my current policy?

Thanks and regards,

Andrew"

Here's their response;

Laugh my tits off? Oh yes.

Please note - this blog post was brought to you under the influence of a whole bottle of Rioja and I am a lightweight, so please excuse any grammatical, spelling, syntax or typo errors. The keys on this keyboard are considerably closer together than usual.

NDC

* - I will blog about this, I promise,
** - If you're overseas and don't know what this means, hit me up in the comments and I will elucidate.