Golman Sachs and the three ring (circus)

Working at Goldman Sachs does not sound like a barrel of laughs to me.
Unless that is you're someone that doesn't mind emailing other colleagues when you're about to go for a pee.

And that's what they have to do.

Because they have a culture of picking up the phone in 3 rings, and they're pretty serious about this, it means phones have to be covered at all times. Which means if you need to go pee pee you have to email a colleague so they'll cover you.

Colleague is definitely the right collective noun for Goldmans.

So you email T + K, 5 mins.

Toilet + Kitchen, 5 minutes.

That's a number one isn't it? 5 minutes is a quick pee, or if you're a lady a squeeze of your lemon then just enough time to make a cuppa and frog march it to your desk only partially scalding your hand as the boiling water slops around.

Can expand on this + nice simple jokes.

This must set up a whole load of Goldman Sachs code as to what people are doing when they're not answering the phone withing 3 rings.

T, 10 mins.

Translation: I'm having a dump.
Not planning on coming by the kitchen for a celebratory post-dump cup of tea.

T + D, 20mins tbc

Which obviously means. Toilet + Diarrhoea. 20 minutes is just a rough estimate. Who knows what's going to happen once that cubicle door is locked.

Diarrhoea is not a 3 ring situation. It takes time.

I didn't really need to telly you that mins meant minutes did I. I think you had that one covered.

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(if you ever did this out you'd do this bit first)

But 3 rings!

3 rings.

Now I understand why the banking crisis happened. Suddenly it all makes sense. Goldman Sachs, one of the world's biggest investment banks is solely focused on answering the phone quickly.

Bringgg Bringggg.

Hello Goldman Sachs.

Hello. What have you done with all my money?

(breezy robot) We don't know. We just answer phones quickly.

You're supposed to be an investment bank.
What's going on with my investments.

(breezy robot) We have absolutely no idea. Literally none. We just answer the phoned within 3 rings. We were hoping if we did that people would get the distinct impression we knew what we were doing.

You're nuts.

(breezy robot) It used to be within 4 rings but since the banking meltdown we've gone to 3. We think people need more re-assurance that we know what we're doing now.

But you don't .

(breezy robot) Absolutely correct.
But we can tell you that within 3 rings.

The Office. Epsiode 1.

What happens?

What do we find out?

Character-wise.

David Brent

Knows he needs to be PC and hides that real badly.
Gareth is his 'right hand man'.
Likes a booze.
Fancies his boss and is shit at hiding it.
Sees himself as "a friend first, a boss second and third, an entertainer"
That above quote is key in setting out the stall of his character early on.
Is quite spiteful when crossed.
Is a man in deep, deep pain.
Wants to be funny/witty but isn't, ultimately.

Gareth

In (was in?) the TA.
Is the assistant to the manager.
Despite technically being more senior than Tim is absolutely not respected by him.
Is not cool.
Sees himself as being more important that the other staffers.

Dawn.

Normal.
Not single.
Flirts with Tim.
Is sensitive.

Dawn's boyfriend.

Not very chatty.
Could be menacing.

Tim.
Funny, does actually good practical jokes.
Anti-establishment, winds up Gareth etc.
Stapler in jelly and so on.
Stapler out window, good jelly joke 'trifling matter'.

Brent's Boss

Very alpha male (even though a woman)
Humourless.
Efficient.
Sees Brent as a 'panicker'.



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50 cent/ Come give me a hug

Always thought there was something a little 'off' about Fifty's lyrics to 'In the club'.
Can't work out whether he just gave up trying to find 'u' lyrics or whether he genuinely was revealing a much more sensitive side where he wanted someone to come and give him a 'huuuu-uug'.

Ahhh fifty.

Such as softy

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You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub
Look mami I got the X if you into taking drugs
I'm into having sex, I ain't into making love
So come give me a hug if you into to getting rubbed

Write about what you know. The spa.

The Spa is like therapy for men.

You've got every conceivable creed, colour and background of geezer down there and it's a chance for men to swap men stuff. It's kind of like Group Therapy.

Maybe that's a good title. Steam work.

Steamwork.

Although, just plain and simple "The Spa" does have a nice ring to it too.

Steam therapy.

As well as men having conversations about all sorts of things they wouldn't normally, you've got hassidic jews, muslims schmeissing them, you've got a whole interest.

You've got that old Indian guy in there who last Monday had a very intense conversation with me and my brother about how "A woman can never make you happy"

"Trust me"
"On the word of God, this is what I think"

Not even "a woman' but "The women can not do this, do that" "She is different species. Trust me"

"The woman needs you for security and stability and that is all. Also, when The Woman reaches menopause, she is no longer interested in sex. Trust me. It is the word of god".

"The woman will lose interest in The Man and makes friends and want to spend time only with other Woman"

"If I ask her to make me some food she says "You have hands. Make it yourself".

But if my son comes "She will we up at 6 in the morning for him. Helping him. Spoling him".

Fire alarm in a swimming pool

So there I am, Sunday night at my local swimming pool, just done my however many lengths and looking forward to a Sauna.

And the fire alarm goes off.

There's something a bit odd about when a fire alarm goes off in the middle of a pool. There's a big part of you that thinks, well, I should probably just stay in the middle of the pol right. ]Safest place.

Anyhoo. The pool numpties start shepherding everyone out and cracking out heat blankets and expecting us to go outside, me in my budgie smugglers and all - in heat blankets. Are they smoking crack? That obviously make sense if there's a fire, but a fire there was not.

So I made a break for the border and scooted into the changing rooms where I was met with a group of people, who should they be competing in 'in no particular hurry to leave a building' discipline in the Fire Alarm Olympics, I'd say they were looking at Gold.

There's people showering, borrowing each other's soap. Washing their hair. Half of the people in there were Chinese and I think actually didn't realise there was a fire alarm happening, hence their lack of action.

And then the pool numpty guy comes in and downgrades the evacuation status to "will everyone please leave the building asap". Well, I don't mean to be a stick in the mud, but ASAP is not an acronym that instills urgency into anyone.

So. We're all getting changed "as soon as poss" and then one of the older, beefcakey-er guys rocks up and starts shouting at everyone to leave, but even that was having no effect due to the combination of

A. him not actually being understood and
B. a pretty solid 'no real need to leave quickly' foundation having been laid.

And it's against this backdrop that I saw something, really really funny.

Now that the boss man has come in the attendants are trying harder to clear the room yet still n0 one is taking any notice and then I hear the attendant say in bewilderment and utter disbelief.

"Oi. Mate. Are you having a shave?"

Some Jose Mourinho-lite kind of character who clearly didn't know what was going on had taken some time out during the tail end of a building evacuation to have a cheeky shave.

Was he freshening up for the fireman?

Will we ever know?

What I do know is that with the exception of a pedicure, or maybe even a massage it's very hard to think of something that cocks more of a snook at the attendants than this.

This is a man who is saying, I fear not the fire.

Rebranding the recession

Every time I hear the word recession it makes me feel a bit afraid.
Like there's some cloud hanging over us, just overhead somewhere and that nothing will be OK until it's lifted.

This is silly.
Actually it's a bit more than silly, it's very silly.

I don't want anyone out there in radioland to think I'm being insensitive to people who've lost their jobs, or are finding it hard to make ends meet or make sure their family's OK, I get all that.

And even though that's happening lots of other things haven't changed.

Hot chocolate is still hot.
The drink, not the 70's Errol Brown fronted band, is still hot.

When the sun occasionally blesses us with it's presence, it's still yellow and warm;

And music. We can still listen to music. Our ears aren't part of the recession

So I say let's re-brand the recession.
Try and re-train yourself that every time you hear the word recession, you replace it with the enlightenment. Let's call it the enlightenment because it's made people less focuses, or at least less exclusively focused on materialism and making moolah.

That way, the next time you hear the r word, you'll hear, economists are predicting that the enlightenment will carry on into the Spring of 2011. And you'll feel sad, because you don't want the enlightenment to end.

Have I droned on a bit too much about this? Perhaps.

Here's a Beatles record about the sun.

It's Friday and I'm going on holiday

Holidays are great aren't they.

They're just a celebration of leisure, of time when you just get to do whatever you want and to hell with the consequences.

I think sometimes holidays can be a bit stressful because of that very fact. That's there's so much pressure on so few days in the year for them to be great, that it's very difficult for them to be.

The answer my friends is to practice more.
Take more holiday.
No, I'm not talking about becoming a teacher. I'm talking about every weekend, rather than saying you're looking forward to the weekend, can;t wait 'til the weekend la la laaa, just say, I can't wait 'til the holiday.

That's right.
Every weekend can be a holiday.

Got to get going now, I need to do a bit of washing before my holiday.

Etc.