How to Seriously Annoy People

I just couldn’t help myself at work today. It all started out very serious. It was the kind of busy that you get lost in your head and forget there are other people in the room, so by about lunchtime everybody hates you already because they think you’re ignoring them when you don’t respond to any stimulation that doesn’t take place between your head and the screen.


Then, of course, when you get lost in what you’re doing, you also don’t notice that you probably have a number of irritating habits that are unbeknownst to yourself but very obvious to others. Given that I live with knuckle clickers and gum chewers I do try to monitor whatever it is I might be doing to tick people off, but I can never quite figure it. Today though, I managed to chew through the top of a pen, and without thinking about it, I then put the top of the pen in my mouth and started to blow through it (You do that kind of thing when you’re losing a battle with an excel spreadsheet). It was only after a few minutes that I realised I had unwittingly made myself a little whistle and that I was now whistling a non-tune around the office.

I guess because nobody was talking to me anymore, there was nobody to tell me, but I didn’t really care, after all, they were all sitting around clicking pens and making tapping noises and talking way too loudly on the phone, so I just stopped and silently felt a bit smug that I had inadvertently invented a utensil to get on peoples nerves. It reminded me of a list I once read on how to people off. For those of you interested in doing so, here’s my edited version of it:

HOW TO TICK PEOPLE OFF

1. Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.

2. Specify that your drive-through order is "TO-GO."

3. If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.

4. Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.

5.Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up."

6. Reply to everything someone says with "that's what you think."

7. Practice making fax and modem noises.

8. Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophesy."

9. Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears and grimacing.

10. Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you "like it that way."

11. Staple pages in the middle of the page.

12. Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a croaking noise.

13. dont use any punctuation

14. Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole streets.

15. Repeat the following conversation a dozen times.

"DO YOU HEAR THAT?"

"What?"

"Never mind, it's gone now."


16. Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce "No, wait, I messed it up," and repeat.

17. Ask people what gender they are.

18. While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.

19. Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.

On This Famous Day

Years ago, and I’d be talking donkeys years ago, on one of those horribly dark January mornings that everyone dreads; up in the maternity ward of St. Michael’s hospital, a shrill piercing scream competed with the fog horn on the Dun-Laoghaire pier. It was the 11^th morning of January, a Monday, and out I screamed, disappointing the world with my gender, my jaundice and a strong pair of lungs. The mother couldn’t handle any of this, so I was dispatched to the granny who looked after me until I could scowl properly, whence I was returned to the mother.

So every year, on the 11^th of January, I mark that day by eating cake and generally celebrating the fact that I was born on my birthday.

So this year I looked up Wikipedia to see what sort of famous things happened on my birthday other than me being born. Turns out, all they can come up with for my actual day and year of birth is some damn Dutch darts player who shares my birthday. How the hell could a Dutch darts player be more important than I am, so much more important that he’s up there in Wikipedia and I aint?

Roland Scholten, who the hell has ever heard of Roland Scholten? And to make it worse, the famous person a year before that on my birthday is some snooker player, Dean Reynolds. It’s not fair. Whenever I see those postcards in shops with famous things and people from the 11^th of January, they are always vague and boring.

Why didn’t my mother have me on the due date of 8^th of January, then I could have shared a birthday with David Bowie and Elvis Presley, and that would have inspired me so much that I’d now be a famous singer.

Etna Erupts - Nothing Spectacular?

Well at least something important did happen on the 11^th.  In the year 630, Mohammad led an army of 10,000 to conquer Mecca. I suppose that’s more important than  David Bowie being born in Brixton to an Irish mother called Peggy Burns, but not in my world of whose brilliant it’s not. And even though Bowie is 18 years older than me, given that I was christened Margaret, and am Irish, I sometimes wish that the mother hadn’t decided to take me back after the initial shock, because than I could fantasize that I’m actually Bowie’s half sister or even his daughter, and that they came over to Ireland to have the baby and then went back to Brixton to forget about the whole thing. So instead, I just imagine that famous adopted people are actually my other siblings who the mother couldn’t handle, like Steve Jobs and Debbie Harry. But what my mother was doing having babies in America from the age of 15 is beyond me. But you just never know…

Well there were other things going on on the 11^th of January. Mount Etna erupted in 1693 ( I vaguely remember that one) and more importantly, just a few hundred years later, Romania reincorporated Transylvania in 1919 and in 1935, Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California (women drivers and all that , she couldn’t get anyone to go with her, I suppose).

So the bottom line is this: I was born on a day that nothing amazing ever happened, so for that reason I need to become really famous and successful and well known so that the birthday card people will have something to write on their cards and key rings and other yokes that they sell in those gimmicky card shops.

I think I might take up darts, or snooker or go on a mission to Mecca on my own in an airplane…

    

The Office Xmas Bash...

My latest article for the Galway Now Magazine... So go on out and buy the Mag as there is much better stuff in it than what I write...

While driving to work recently, I spotted something on the footpath that brought back memories. It was a crumpled up fast food bag spilling out the remains of a half eaten hamburger and about a dozen chips. The blackbirds were having it for breakfast. What evoked the memories though, was that beside these stale remnants of the night before was a stiletto-heeled shoe. Just one. Ah yes, it all came flooding back, that first office party I ever went to. It was the Christmas party and I was about 20, not long out of college and clueless as to what I should expect.  

I played safe and borrowed a classic LBD (little black dress) from a friend. OK then, the dress wasn’t all that little, but back then I was, which meant that the cleavage gaped across my breast like an open handbag, and one of the straps kept slipping down my shoulder. My feet were squeezed so tightly into my high heel shoes that I could have given lessons to Cinderella’s stepsisters in the art of wearing shoes that are at least two sizes too small. And that’s about as much as I remember.

  I do vaguely remember free drinks. There was champagne upon arrival, wine with dinner and after that either a free bar or a lot of generous people handing me whatever took my fancy – pints, shorts, cocktails and shots.

The way it should be - bring back the olden days!

Oh and singing. I remember singing along to one of the songs but as nobody was listening I decided it would be hilarious to climb  onto a table  and perform the song from there. It must have been the tight shoes that made me trip. After that all I remember is waking up the next morning to find a rip in the cleavage of the dress (yes, I was wearing it in bed), and one shoe missing. So somewhere between rolling off the table and waking up fully clothed in my own bed, I lost a shoe. And that’s why the other day when I saw that shoe beside the fast food bag, I couldn’t help but wonder if my shoe from all those years ago might have found the same fate?

I guess I’ll never know. There are gaps that I have not filled to this day. How did I get home? Where was my shoe? And why did I get funny looks from everyone in the office for the next six months?

There are some things you will never find out,  so I decided not to beat myself up over it. Instead, I would learn from my mistakes and never let something that stupid happen ever again. Especially not when it came to the professional world where you have to work with the people who you have ridiculed yourself in front of.

 I learned from these mistakes and never erred again. NOT. In fact, it got worse. Spilling drinks on colleagues and bosses, coming home   without both shoes, without my glasses, my money, my phone, my coat, or worse, not coming home at all. My most cringeworthy Christmas party  party-piece was removing my boss’s lovely white fur coat from the cloakroom and believing that it would be hysterically funny to put it on my lap and pretend it was a kitty cat. When she gave me the evil eye across the room I made a catlike claw sign with my hands, while hissing the word ‘meow’ in her direction – really funny!  After that I danced around the dance floor pretending the coat was a polar bear. It was great fun but the rest of the work crowd didn’t join in and I knew it was only because they were afraid of the boss. All the same, I think she took in good sport. I never got a chance to chat to her about it because shortly after that night I was let go due to some unexpected changes in company strategy that meant my role was no longer viable. It seemed that the business of Christmas parties wasn’t as much fun as  they were before, and that it probably isn’t a good idea to dance with coats or lose shoes.

So these days, as a Christmas Party veteran I would suggest the following advice to all those planning their Office night out.

1.     Turn up. Despite the fact that I may have been a lot better off never showing up to the office party, and also might still have that shoe and the other lost items, as a rule, it is expected that you do actually turn up. From there it’s up to you to keep it sane.

2.     Dress appropriately. Rule of thumb, if it’s too short, tight, see-through, or comes with flashing lights; don’t wear it.   

3.     Take a page out of Cinder’s book and leave the party before someone else suggests that it’s time for you to go home.

4.     Limit what you drink. Easier said than done. But do you really want to arrive home with one shoe? You can plan your drinking by starting with soft drinks and having your first alcoholic drink later in the evening.

5.     Promise nothing. I read an article recently about how an employee asked his manager for a pay rise at the Christmas party. The manager agreed that this would happen, and even though the promise was vague, when the pay rise never happened the employee left the company and sued on the grounds of constructive dismissal.

6.     Plan how you will get home. Order a taxi in advance or have a lift arranged. You do want to get home, don’t you?

7.     Careful about who you bring. Some office parties invite people to bring guests. I a friend of mine invited a guy along who she barely knew. As the night progressed her date got into a fistfight with another guy at the party. It was so bad that one of them broke his nose. Since then my friend is constantly reminded of the ‘nose incident’.  You just never know what trouble other people will get you into.

Do remember to enjoy yourself. These parties are great if you get the balance right. So go on and have a great night, just not too great!

A few years ago I was teaching 

literacy skills to various adults who, for whatever reason, hadn’t gotten around to learning how to read or write. It didn’t take long for me to realize that you actually have to be extra clever as an adult if you need to navigate the world without literacy. One guy who I taught was a publican another worked in a factory. There was a dressmaker, a deliveryman, a taxi driver and various other occupations. They all had two things in common: they were experts in working around not having literacy, and they all kept their lack of literacy skills a secret.At first I had this naïve idea that actually they were managing fine and didn’t need to read and write seeing as they could manage perfectly well without it thank you. Of course, I soon found out otherwise. The taxi driver told me that although he knew all the streets of the city by memory, he was brought to utter embarrassment when the local school asked him to fill out a form for his son’s swimming lessons. In fact, when we started out, his goal was to learn how to spell the names of his four children. The dressmaker told me that although she loved health and fitness, she could never join a gym because she wouldn’t have the confidence to fill out the application form. But what really brought it home to me when the publican asked me what all the writing on a cereal box was about.

It made me think about how much writing hits you from the time you get up in the morning – is this one shampoo or shower gel? What kind of milk is it? What are these flyers about that come in the letterbox? Well for those of us who can read, we know that most of it is a lot of irrelevant advertising, but when you can’t, you’re left with a feeling that you’re missing out on what’s really going on in the world. And that’s when you begin to doubt yourself and from there you lose your confidence and then it’s all a big slippery slope.

The one thing that really got to me with all of my students was that they would consistently talk about ‘not having an education’.

I might be playing around with words, because I know what they meant, but I always went to lengths to point out that they had indeed received an education, most of them, no, all of them, a richer education than my own, but that they may have been missing out on ‘a schooling’. That said, most of them had been to school until about the age of 12, so they did in fact have enough schooling to learn how to read and write, hence one does have to wonder why school lets so many people down (but I’ll elaborate on that one later).

So what then, is education? Well the dictionary tells us that it’s ‘the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.’

And if you agree with that just make sure that you don’t ever send your children to school. School is a place where you get detention if you’re not wearing the right anorak with the school crest on it. It’s a place where you learn to jump through hoops like a little circus dog, and it’s a place where you pick your subjects not at all based on acquiring general knowledge or developing the powers of reasoning and judgment. You pick the subjects that will get you the most points for the least amount of effort. So even though one of my teenage sons is mad for history, he dropped it at school because ‘I have really bad hand writing and there’s so much writing in the test and they take away points if it’s messy.’ His six subjects are: English, Irish (because you have to), Maths, Physics, Accounting, Economics and German. So there goes acquiring ‘general’ knowledge for a start. But hang on a minute, what about the powers of reasoning and judgement and all that preparing for ‘mature’ life? Well you see, here’s the thing. Last week I asked my teenage daughter to share the joke when she was laughing out loud at some home video. It was one taken at lunchtime in school. Two boys from the class were having a rap competition. One, an African kid, shit hot and brilliant, rapping away with his own words, his own work, and a bunch of kids dancing to it. Then the other kid, a little small Irish guy who decided he was up for the challenge, and a whole pile of kids high on the word-off competition, jiving at the locker rooms. And even though I knew that the people I worked with who never went to school in their teens probably got a better education and became successful in what they did, I also had a moment of enlightenment, where I realized that sometimes school really does give people an education: an amazing, great experience of talent, teamwork, expression and creativity. In the end it really is all about reading, but only between the lines. School does educate people. But only at break time and in between the lessons. 

The Infidelity of the Music Collection

The first record I ever bought was 'Power to All our Friends' by Cliff Richard.  Ah come on now, you can't blame me, I mean what else would you be spending your First Holy Communion money on? Well ok, there was also the pink nightdress case (that I still have) and a gold watch with a black face that I don't still have. My Mammy is still minding the rest of the money until I'm big.
It was a single, in a sleeve, and even if I can't remember what the song on the B side was, I do know that I played both sides over and over until it was too scratched to get any sound out of at all. But by then I had two records. The next one was Gary Glitter 'I love, you love.' And I did. I loved Gary Glitter so much that come Christmas I even got the Gary Glitter 1974 Annual. If I'd only known at that tender age that he might even have loved me back had I played my cards right...
Skip a few years to the Boomtown Rats, and the Moving Hearts. Blame the hormones for the Clash, the Sex Pistols, anything Punk or Bowie with a secret few bits of Abba and the Carpenters.
But my point is this - they were records, and as one of the obnoxious teenagers asked me when he was but a child: 'what are those black circle things in the thin covers?' Whatever they were, they are gone. Replaced by the cassette tapes that ended up tangled on trees. Followed by the CD collection that ended up as a collection of empty boxes with the CD's piled into the glove compartments of cars or stacked on top of sad domestic ghetto blasters that you could never turn higher than half it's potential because of neighbours or babies or just because it's loud.
So along came electronic media. It seemed like a good idea at the time. All your music on your laptop and you put it on to your ipod and you do a back up too, just in case, but you actually don't, and then the laptop gets stolen and the ipod falls down the toilet, so you start all over again. Then you plug in your ipod and the whole laptop goes into meltdown, or sometimes you don't do anything but you just lose all your music anyways and your kids smirk at you because you actually paid for music so it must be your own fault really.
Much worse though, is having about 64 of whatever those giga yokes are called, jam packed with every song in the universe that you ever listened to, but you still can't find a song you like and you spend most of your time clicking on to the next song. Then you hear a song on the radio that you think you can't live without having on your ipod but when you go to download it, it tells you that your ipod is full. So you delete some other song but a week later you miss that song and want it back. But you have to be cruel to be kind.
Music collections are just unfaithful. I could sing about it...

God Loves the Atheist

One thing that annoys me about God is that he (and there's no point in even considering calling him she, or he/she or it, because let's face it, there is no religion with a lady God, is there?) Well, he seems to prefer atheists. I mean, I don't believe in him and he makes good things happen to me all the time. And he seems to pick good godfearing believers to make bad things happen to, maybe he wants to test them or something.

But in another way you can't blame him. Atheists solve their own problems without asking God to do it for them. They leave God alone and don't expect him to solve all of their problems like they were kids who need to ask a parent for everything. And atheists don't go to war with other atheists because they believe that their way of being an atheist is better than someone else's way of being an atheist.

And atheists don't go around to peoples houses when they're just about to sit down for dinner and start talking about the lion lying with the lamb or ringing bells and singing hare hare krishna. And because of that, God loves them.

I suppose God is being clever. He loves atheists so that they'll love him back for being so good to them. And we do. So remember, before you knock them: atheists do love God. And remember the thing about how it's easier for a rich man to get through the eye of a needle? Well Churches are rich and atheists are not. So guess who's going to heaven first? Thing is, I'll probably hate it, it'll be full of bible thumping do-gooders and tame lions.
Ah well....

Money

I was on this training course there the past few days. It was hard to keep my mouth shut really, because I sometimes teach courses like the one I was on, and I just had so much to contradict and when I wasn't contradicting I was shouting up the answers before everyone else, because after all, I've heard all of this at least 100 times before. Well actually, I didn't keep my mouth shut, so I suppose I can't say that it was difficult as it didn't actually happen.
Well the old question came up on motivation: does money motivate people?
You had to write your answer on a post-it note and stick it on the wall, when it would later be revisited. I knew that the clever answer would be no, because the next part of the exercise would be writing down all the things that motivate and/or de-motivate you, and of course nobody was writing down money (except me of course, just to annoy the trainer as I knew that the next part of the exercise was going to be him pointing out that none of us had listed money as a motivator).
Well actually, I do think that money is a motivator. Even if you are loaded, what you get paid to do your job is symbolic of how you are valued. And even though it's the root of all evil and all that, it still is the axis upon which our world turns.
Money - the reason that people, countries, continents, can starve to death. The reason that a small bunch of arseholes can rule the world, the reason that I haven't gotten to see as much of the world as I'd like to, and the reason that we eat pancakes shortly before pay day.
I'd like to go into more detail, but because of money I'm doing a day job these days and am too tired to write much or do or say anything creative. Because of money I can't work full time as a writer, not even as a bad writer. But that said, working for the man is good writing material. Well it will be, eventually, when I get the gold watch and the pension, probably at age 75.
So what does motivate people? What makes you get out of bed in the morning? In my case its my bad hip. I need to stretch it. After that, I need to get out of the house before I have to speak to the bunch of teens who live here.
And the other things - recognition, thanks, success, teamwork and all the usual crap. Well they all end in money I suppose, somehow.
Even this blog, c'mon, I want your donations, want it to make money. And when it does, then I can sit back smoking a lady pipe and throwing wildly extravagant parties telling people how money don't mean nothing...