Monday, August 15, 2005

More Office Humour


By demand from certain parties, more office humour involving B.

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"Ben Shui"

"Ben Shui", not to be confused with "Feng Shui" is B.'s way of making a student-proof nest that discourages students from bothering him by making his office as inaccessible as possible without a five mile hike.

You might have noticed we redecorated the CW303 office. We got l-shaped desks. We chucked out old disgusting furniture, like B.'s old bookshelf.

B. when he got back on holiday couldn't live without it, as he has nothing to hide behind when students come in. B. stormed out the office suddenly and dragged said old bookcase into the office, placing it against the wall and then moving his l-shaped desk against the bookcase. I've a diagram for your reference... I also used to have photos of him struggling to stretch across his desk to reach books in the shelf, only to discover the desk completely blocked them. I deleted them for more interesting photos.

B. also put his partition at a 45 degree angle until he realised he couldn't get out of his chair, get out of his office space (once we shoved the spare chair he demanded for visitors in front of him).

Sadly the unique Ben Shui can no longer be seen as he eventually realised. However he managed to spend 2 days fiddling with his bookshelf non-stop

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On the clock

B. sends round a high priority/urgent email that is going to take the student problem's database offline at 12 for 15 minutes. Not sure if it's 12am or 12pm (so he can take it off precisely at midday) he asks to make sure. Then at midday he tries to take it offline and edit it but the server has crashed.

Yelling about how unfair it is, and cussing and swearing like a sergeant-major B. has a kiddy-style tantrum and storms out of the office. One of these days I will get a movie file of these tantrums.

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The Mary Whitehouse Experience (or the first time I suspected B. had lost his marbles)

Ben said one of the previous escapees from our office used to keep porn in the office.

Yes I was cynical.

But B. told me this was true.

Porn including such titles as "FHM", "Maxim" etc.

Now, if like me you were labouring under the impression that such things were not actually porn you were obviously wrong... at least according to Mr B.

B (pulling out copy of Maxim and shoving centre-fold in my face): "Look, dirty isn't it? Ugh, ugh..." (various other disturbing noises. I'm fairly certain he used the word, "Dirty" like the weird cleaner on that episode of Black Books)

S (rather dumfounded and shocked that B. would shove something he considers porn in my face): "Err... isn't that a lad mag. I mean she does have clothes on."

B: "Yes but its so offensive." (proceeds to show several other "pornographic" images to me and puts magazines back neatly in the cupboard).

S: "B. if you're so offended by them, why haven't you thrown them out. It's not like he's going to come back for 4 magazines from last year."

B: "..."

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Today's excitement is that last night B. was on University Road when a lady of the night propositioned him. And naturally he thought we'd all want to know about this.

S: "So were you so offended enough to call the police on her?"

B: "No, that's not my job."

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK Stu, someone needs to have a sit down with you about this.

Dude, I think Ben's erratic behavious is starting to tip you over the edge just ever so slightly..... let's think about some coping strategies:

1) Breathe IN with the anger/ incredulity/ sheer bafflement....hold... then OUT with the love. If this doesn't help after 5 breaths find a wall to lean against and continue breathing exercises. Do this while he's talking to you. Make sure you SAY 'in with the anger...etc' while doing it.

2) Hand Ben some copies of Cosmo, Marie Claire etc. Hopefully the content of these magazines (for the opressed women he was so concerned about in FHM) will so blow his mind he will burst with excitement, never to trouble you again.

3) Last ditch action to make him crazy. Only attempt if you think you will go postal if he doesn't cease and desist. While he waffles on cup your chin in your hand and gaze dreamilly at him, punctuating his chat with 'ooh' 'wow' and 'that's really interesting Benny' **make sure there is no sarcasm in your tone**. While making sheep's eyes at him pay him little compliments when he pauses for breath e.g. 'you smell really nice today' 'did I ever tell you how pretty I think your eyes are?' keep this up for long enough and from what you've said he'll either run away forever... or ask you out. If he does the latter sue him for sexual harrasment. And give Big G his job.

Stuart said...

There are just some things blokes should never do. #3 is definitely one of those.

Anonymous said...

I dunno... I've sucessfully wierded out some folk using those tactics...

Maybe you should all band together and buy him a prozzie...

Anonymous said...

I've always had a great deal of success with suddenly jumping out from behind doors with cap guns and emptying a clip int the offender or sending them letters from the American Embassy with a request that the offender attends an interview with the FBI. A solicitor will be provided. You know, harmless practical jokes...