I've been thinking about Sliding Doors style scenarios a bit lately. A little bit Butterfly Effect with added cute new haircuts.
I'm trying to cut down on my consumption of Coca Cola, upon the advice of my dentist. Nice guy; sadistic as fuck and with a love for shoving metal hooks into gums and letting 'em rip. Still, now that I've gotten a root canal and fillings out of the way in the last 10 days, I feel I should give it a crack. Hard not to wonder, however, what effect this could have on my life in the short, medium or long term.
Seeing as I have the day off tomorrow, I figure there's two ways that this can go.
Someone calls in sick so I'm asked if I can cover and do the put-in for the night's show. No biggie, I could use the money. To be honest, if I have the day off I'll likely just sit about on my couch playing FIFA, and fall into old habits with a sneaky can of blackish brown, liquid goodness. Might be for the best to keep myself occupied. Nigella Lawson is giving a talk in the theatre, so while it will be busy, it's not going to be a riotous crowd. Still, I've been thinking about that drink now. If I wasn't working, I'd be there right this minute.
"I could really do with some Coke right now, lads."
Nigella strolls serenely through the foyer, past the box office. She's practically gliding. We make eye contact. Be cool, Deebs. Be cool. I'm not being cool. She aims a saucy wink my way, and whispers something to her PA or whoever. The day carries on as normal, until someone slips a note under the glass screen at my counter.
"Come to my dressing room after the show. N."
Lads, help. What do I do? Well, I go to her dressing room after the show, obviously. There's a few lines cut and waiting for me on the table. I think there's been an essential misunderstanding.
Three weeks later I find myself the subject of lurid Daily Mail headlines dubbing me Nigella's toyboy lover, The press attention is quite upsetting, but it's my day off so I try to forget about it by sitting back on the couch and playing FIFA with some coke.
Of course, the couch is so much bigger in Nigella's than my one in Edinburgh, and this coke is less liquid than it is white and powdery, but otherwise nothing much has changed in the last three weeks.
I should probably let Miriam know where I am.
"Nigella, I'll have to get that recipe from you."
OR
I could just have the day off tomorrow and drink some Coke. I suppose it all comes down to whether that's really so bad? If anything, it seems like it would be wrong of me NOT to have some now.
Fuck the dentist's caution.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Saturday, October 10, 2015
The Belgians
And they only invented the chocolates to get to the kids.
I was working a theatre festival five years back, a mere volunteer covering in the stead of people ruled out through broken ankles and dance-dislocated kneecaps. This festival was more fringe than Fringe. And the most bizarre of the events were saved for the intimate Dublin theatre I was haunting on my shifts.
This is how I was introduced to The Belgians.
They had three shows on during this festival, each lasting no more than a matter of days and with scant "audience" permitted. Not sure I can justify terming those who attended as audiences, when they were as central to the performances as the company itself. They allowed very little information to be put out indicating what they were going to be doing, so people were essentially coming in blind. First show went for literal (temporary) blindness, had us corral attendees in a waiting area before they were led in to a pitch black corridor, one at a time, restrained to a wheelchair by wrists and ankles and blindfolded for good measure. This was not your granny's tea party. Or, if it was, then....hey, your granny definitely owned a gimp suit and a ball gag. Moving on from your saucy granny, the subject would then be wheeled into different sections and exposed to different stimuli (having scents wafted at you, being laid out on a bed where someone stroked your hair and whispered encouraging words in your ear etc) before finally having the blindfold removed as they were being wheeled out backwards....facing a Jesus-like dude in a loin cloth standing before them....weeping.
The Belgians were into some weird shit, but fuck me it was interesting.
They needed numbers to fill the 10 minute slots for each day of this, so if there were no-shows or if the quantity of the unknown scared people off, the volunteers on shift were asked to step in and have some wafty, whispery, weepy, wheely fun.
"Deebs?"
"Nah, can't do it. I've got a bad knee."
"You'd be sitting in a wheelchair."
"Er....I'm allergic to wheelchairs."
The third of their three limited run productions saw people escorted into a small room, ostensibly waiting for something to happen. It already had. They were alone, save for a large mirror, and alone they would stay for several minutes. Then they were led behind the mirror, to watch the next person in to be marooned in the emptiness of that room. There they examined and extrapolated..What's this person's story? Who are they? What does their body language and behaviour say about them, as they stand in this room with only their reflection for company? When done with giving their thoughts on who this person was, they were led out and presented with a CD containing the commentary that had been provided on them by the previous attendee to them. Again, quite fascinating, and again I opted against participating.
The second show though, that I went for. Let me tell you about "Internal" (shout out to the magnificent Miss Elphinstone for recalling the title I could not).
Again, I knew what it entailed before I was summoned to take part, but, fuck it- let's test some personal friggin' boundaries! I knew what was lying in wait, but the other ringer, a jovial, cheeky techie from Northern Ireland did not. Wee fucker had no idea what he was in for.
Five strangers were led to their marks, an inch from a heavy dark curtain, which raised to leave them nose to nose with five new strangers; The Belgians. They cocked and rocked their heads as they examined we who stood before them. We giggled nervously as a collective, as the performers switched between themselves to choose their preferred opposite. They took our hands and led us each off to our own individual encounter, one on one with whomever had chosen us.
I was directed wordlessly to a small, curtained-off cubicle amidst the darkness of the space. Here began my speed dating experience.
Yep.
All practiced anxiety, and cautious flirtation, the actress sequestered with me played the pro. Maria and I traded names, and settled in for 10 of the most gosh darn romantic moments that Belgian theatre could seek to provide. She set about making me at ease.
"So, Deebs, that's an interesting name."
"My parents were hippies."
"And where do you work?"
"I'm a volunteer here. I'm wearing the t-shirt."
Alright, so maybe I was a difficult bastard to start, knowing as I did what I was participating in ahead of time. I caught myself, and embraced the experience with as much honesty as I could muster. She suggested a shot to relax us, and poured one from the bottle of vodka to her right. We toasted to us, and knocked back a midday eye-opener. In adjacent cubicles, whiskey, cointreau, a drink I cannot recall, and....er....milk were similarly enjoyed.
From there, I obliged Maria's request to hold my hand and delve further into our date. Asking after any story behind the two rings I wore then (and wear now), led into asking if I had loved the girl who had given one of them to me, or if I had a girlfriend now, and tick followed tock from there. Alright, so this is reading like the beginning of some dull as fuck erotic fiction. I was open and honest, but prior knowledge held back enough with reason.
"Will you do something for me? Will you close your eyes? Picture us on our dream date, anywhere in the world. Where are we?"
"I don't know."
"Come on. Where are we? What time is it?"
"OK, Edinburgh. It's late, and we're sitting on a bench in the gardens underneath the castle and a full moon."
So, technically this was just me substituting her in to the memory of my most recent date at the time. Still....
"What are we doing? Are we kissing?"
"Nope. We're talking, laughing together on this bench."
"Have we maybe been kissing?"
"I don't know. No."
"Why not?"
"Maybe I'm not that kinda girl, Maria. Nah, we might be heading that way. Just feeling each other out."
"Do you think we will be kissing?"
"Yeah, sure."
She pried further.
"What is your deepest secret?"
Not a chance, Maria! I know your game. Yet, I can see why people opened up more than I did at this point. She was very good at making me feel at ease, and like this really was romance at work.
She stood, still tenderly clutching my hand, and guided me out into a now lit up circle of chairs. We were joined by the other four couples, as the actors took it in turns to introduce their partners to the group. Upon introducing us, they would open up to the circle about their date had gone. It was as though a speed dating night had been crossed with an AA meeting. Well, there was drinking, and we'd only just lost that anonymity. Describing their dates led into the performers' respective special moves, or party pieces.
My turn.
"This is Deebs. For our date, he brought me to Edinburgh. We talked, and I waited for him to kiss me. He seemed hesitant. I get the feeling he has been hurt before. He wants to love, but he is afraid to put himself out there. His deepest secret, or at least his deepest flaw, is that he is a perfectionist. He likes to write, but he worries he will never finish anything of consequence. His favourite thing to say is 'I don't know'."
Not bad, Maria.
"I like to think there was a spark between us. Did you feel it too, Deebs?"
I turned to the circle.
"I don't know. Ha."
Get a load of Mr. Comedian over here.
"Well, did you feel a spark, or did you not?"
"Yeah, sure. No, I mean it. I did."
"Prove it."
The other actors chanted this to echo her challenge. She leaned in and we kissed.
See, the thing is, I was well briefed in what was going to happen in this one. I knew that any secret I spoke of in private would be revealed to the group. I knew about the rating, the hugging, the pissing, and the kissing. More importantly, if mine was the kisser, then I knew what that meant for the northern techie across from me.
I sat back and imagined the popcorn in my hands. He had no idea.
His date was a brunette dressed in an elegant dress, who apparently spent almost the entirety of their 10 minutes together refusing to speak. She did not offer him a drink, instead pouring both shots for herself. His frequent attempts to make conversation were met with stony silence. Her only words offered were a solitary utterance of "I am beautiful".
"He thinks I'm beautiful. He speaks too much. He never shuts up. Well, let me ask you, what do you have to say about these?"
She dropped the dress. There were boobs everywhere. She was a breast octopus. I mean, there were only two, but at that moment, everything else in that room ceased to exist next to her chest. A few titters echoed through the space ("titters" ha), as Norn Iron's own forced his eyes from nipple to eyeball. He spoke.
"Could you not have picked a better time?"
The dress went back on, as soft music was piped in, gentle lights rose partly and we were each brought from our seats. Our dates held us each close and danced slowly with us.
"Do you think we will stay in touch? Will you write to me, if I do to you?"
With that, Maria turned (as did the others) to offer a pen, paper and her back upon which to put them together and write my address. We parted, promising to write each other soon.
We, this audience, were left alone in a corridor suddenly lit and revealing all the responses from past encounters that their own letters had inspired. They covered the entire wall. Each seemed to truly believe that what they'd shared had been real.
We five strangers left as one, joking at the experience we had just shared, and then went our separate ways. Yet, I saw other people through that week arrive alone and leave as part of a group. I overheard groups of five organising impromptu trips to the pub with people they knew nothing of beside the fact that they may or may not piss n the shower with frequency.
Each group, bar one, I guessed who had been on the receiving end of a mammary surprise. They were always the flustered one, and they were always more than willing to reveal themselves when asked, The one group I opted not to question featured a two mid-argument as they exited. Seems that when Maria had asked him if he was single, he'd said he was. His girlfriend apparently disagreed.
Seeing that The Belgians were putting on a show this August at a theatre around the corner from mine, I wondered if I should have given Maria my actual address in 2010. We could have had that date under the castle and the moon.
Miriam would have understood, right?
I was working a theatre festival five years back, a mere volunteer covering in the stead of people ruled out through broken ankles and dance-dislocated kneecaps. This festival was more fringe than Fringe. And the most bizarre of the events were saved for the intimate Dublin theatre I was haunting on my shifts.
This is how I was introduced to The Belgians.
They had three shows on during this festival, each lasting no more than a matter of days and with scant "audience" permitted. Not sure I can justify terming those who attended as audiences, when they were as central to the performances as the company itself. They allowed very little information to be put out indicating what they were going to be doing, so people were essentially coming in blind. First show went for literal (temporary) blindness, had us corral attendees in a waiting area before they were led in to a pitch black corridor, one at a time, restrained to a wheelchair by wrists and ankles and blindfolded for good measure. This was not your granny's tea party. Or, if it was, then....hey, your granny definitely owned a gimp suit and a ball gag. Moving on from your saucy granny, the subject would then be wheeled into different sections and exposed to different stimuli (having scents wafted at you, being laid out on a bed where someone stroked your hair and whispered encouraging words in your ear etc) before finally having the blindfold removed as they were being wheeled out backwards....facing a Jesus-like dude in a loin cloth standing before them....weeping.
The Belgians were into some weird shit, but fuck me it was interesting.
They needed numbers to fill the 10 minute slots for each day of this, so if there were no-shows or if the quantity of the unknown scared people off, the volunteers on shift were asked to step in and have some wafty, whispery, weepy, wheely fun.
"Deebs?"
"Nah, can't do it. I've got a bad knee."
"You'd be sitting in a wheelchair."
"Er....I'm allergic to wheelchairs."
The third of their three limited run productions saw people escorted into a small room, ostensibly waiting for something to happen. It already had. They were alone, save for a large mirror, and alone they would stay for several minutes. Then they were led behind the mirror, to watch the next person in to be marooned in the emptiness of that room. There they examined and extrapolated..What's this person's story? Who are they? What does their body language and behaviour say about them, as they stand in this room with only their reflection for company? When done with giving their thoughts on who this person was, they were led out and presented with a CD containing the commentary that had been provided on them by the previous attendee to them. Again, quite fascinating, and again I opted against participating.
The second show though, that I went for. Let me tell you about "Internal" (shout out to the magnificent Miss Elphinstone for recalling the title I could not).
Again, I knew what it entailed before I was summoned to take part, but, fuck it- let's test some personal friggin' boundaries! I knew what was lying in wait, but the other ringer, a jovial, cheeky techie from Northern Ireland did not. Wee fucker had no idea what he was in for.
Five strangers were led to their marks, an inch from a heavy dark curtain, which raised to leave them nose to nose with five new strangers; The Belgians. They cocked and rocked their heads as they examined we who stood before them. We giggled nervously as a collective, as the performers switched between themselves to choose their preferred opposite. They took our hands and led us each off to our own individual encounter, one on one with whomever had chosen us.
I was directed wordlessly to a small, curtained-off cubicle amidst the darkness of the space. Here began my speed dating experience.
Yep.
All practiced anxiety, and cautious flirtation, the actress sequestered with me played the pro. Maria and I traded names, and settled in for 10 of the most gosh darn romantic moments that Belgian theatre could seek to provide. She set about making me at ease.
"So, Deebs, that's an interesting name."
"My parents were hippies."
"And where do you work?"
"I'm a volunteer here. I'm wearing the t-shirt."
Alright, so maybe I was a difficult bastard to start, knowing as I did what I was participating in ahead of time. I caught myself, and embraced the experience with as much honesty as I could muster. She suggested a shot to relax us, and poured one from the bottle of vodka to her right. We toasted to us, and knocked back a midday eye-opener. In adjacent cubicles, whiskey, cointreau, a drink I cannot recall, and....er....milk were similarly enjoyed.
From there, I obliged Maria's request to hold my hand and delve further into our date. Asking after any story behind the two rings I wore then (and wear now), led into asking if I had loved the girl who had given one of them to me, or if I had a girlfriend now, and tick followed tock from there. Alright, so this is reading like the beginning of some dull as fuck erotic fiction. I was open and honest, but prior knowledge held back enough with reason.
"Will you do something for me? Will you close your eyes? Picture us on our dream date, anywhere in the world. Where are we?"
"I don't know."
"Come on. Where are we? What time is it?"
"OK, Edinburgh. It's late, and we're sitting on a bench in the gardens underneath the castle and a full moon."
So, technically this was just me substituting her in to the memory of my most recent date at the time. Still....
"What are we doing? Are we kissing?"
"Nope. We're talking, laughing together on this bench."
"Have we maybe been kissing?"
"I don't know. No."
"Why not?"
"Maybe I'm not that kinda girl, Maria. Nah, we might be heading that way. Just feeling each other out."
"Do you think we will be kissing?"
"Yeah, sure."
She pried further.
"What is your deepest secret?"
Not a chance, Maria! I know your game. Yet, I can see why people opened up more than I did at this point. She was very good at making me feel at ease, and like this really was romance at work.
She stood, still tenderly clutching my hand, and guided me out into a now lit up circle of chairs. We were joined by the other four couples, as the actors took it in turns to introduce their partners to the group. Upon introducing us, they would open up to the circle about their date had gone. It was as though a speed dating night had been crossed with an AA meeting. Well, there was drinking, and we'd only just lost that anonymity. Describing their dates led into the performers' respective special moves, or party pieces.
- First one up asked her date to rate their time together out of 10, and reciprocated with a rating of her own. They each scored highly.
- Next victim was asked if she wouldn't mind giving the group some space. Once consigned to the darkness, out of earshot of the hushed gushing, we learned that he was unsure if she was right for him. Her darkest secret had been that she pissed in the shower. Daily. When she was welcomed back to the group, she was invited to spill, as the performer took his leave of the circle. She thought he was a ride, and had to be shushed a couple of times when she got overexcited in proclaiming this. She was not to know that he had told us her secret. Nor was she to know that he said this same thing about all of his dates that week.
- Kwint (from Gent), finished his appraisal by asking his date for a hug. She ecstatically accepted.
My turn.
"This is Deebs. For our date, he brought me to Edinburgh. We talked, and I waited for him to kiss me. He seemed hesitant. I get the feeling he has been hurt before. He wants to love, but he is afraid to put himself out there. His deepest secret, or at least his deepest flaw, is that he is a perfectionist. He likes to write, but he worries he will never finish anything of consequence. His favourite thing to say is 'I don't know'."
Not bad, Maria.
"I like to think there was a spark between us. Did you feel it too, Deebs?"
I turned to the circle.
"I don't know. Ha."
Get a load of Mr. Comedian over here.
"Well, did you feel a spark, or did you not?"
"Yeah, sure. No, I mean it. I did."
"Prove it."
The other actors chanted this to echo her challenge. She leaned in and we kissed.
See, the thing is, I was well briefed in what was going to happen in this one. I knew that any secret I spoke of in private would be revealed to the group. I knew about the rating, the hugging, the pissing, and the kissing. More importantly, if mine was the kisser, then I knew what that meant for the northern techie across from me.
I sat back and imagined the popcorn in my hands. He had no idea.
His date was a brunette dressed in an elegant dress, who apparently spent almost the entirety of their 10 minutes together refusing to speak. She did not offer him a drink, instead pouring both shots for herself. His frequent attempts to make conversation were met with stony silence. Her only words offered were a solitary utterance of "I am beautiful".
"He thinks I'm beautiful. He speaks too much. He never shuts up. Well, let me ask you, what do you have to say about these?"
She dropped the dress. There were boobs everywhere. She was a breast octopus. I mean, there were only two, but at that moment, everything else in that room ceased to exist next to her chest. A few titters echoed through the space ("titters" ha), as Norn Iron's own forced his eyes from nipple to eyeball. He spoke.
"Could you not have picked a better time?"
The dress went back on, as soft music was piped in, gentle lights rose partly and we were each brought from our seats. Our dates held us each close and danced slowly with us.
"Do you think we will stay in touch? Will you write to me, if I do to you?"
With that, Maria turned (as did the others) to offer a pen, paper and her back upon which to put them together and write my address. We parted, promising to write each other soon.
We, this audience, were left alone in a corridor suddenly lit and revealing all the responses from past encounters that their own letters had inspired. They covered the entire wall. Each seemed to truly believe that what they'd shared had been real.
We five strangers left as one, joking at the experience we had just shared, and then went our separate ways. Yet, I saw other people through that week arrive alone and leave as part of a group. I overheard groups of five organising impromptu trips to the pub with people they knew nothing of beside the fact that they may or may not piss n the shower with frequency.
Each group, bar one, I guessed who had been on the receiving end of a mammary surprise. They were always the flustered one, and they were always more than willing to reveal themselves when asked, The one group I opted not to question featured a two mid-argument as they exited. Seems that when Maria had asked him if he was single, he'd said he was. His girlfriend apparently disagreed.
Seeing that The Belgians were putting on a show this August at a theatre around the corner from mine, I wondered if I should have given Maria my actual address in 2010. We could have had that date under the castle and the moon.
Miriam would have understood, right?
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Secret Seats
Alright?
Have you ever or do you now work in a customer facing job? Even if you haven't, you should be aware of this, but for the customer service veterans out there, would you care to tell me the biggest lie out there today? Just shout it right at your screen. Go ahead, I'll wait.
"The customer is always right."
Are they fuck! We all know this is bullshit, yet we have to adhere to its ridiculous principles. In recent job interviews I've stated my view as "The customer is always wrong, but we have to treat them as though they're not." That is the essence of any job. You're paid to provide expertise to aid an avalanche of arseholes who will insist (free of charge) that they know better in spite of any reasonable grasp of facts.
Just today, a woman came to speak to me a few minutes after having collected her tickets for a show. She'd purchased what we call "Secret Seats", which are two or three times less in price than the rest of the seats on sale, on the understanding that you won't know until the day where you will be sitting. That's the hook. You could be sitting in the stalls, the grand circle, or the upper circle. All we guarantee is that you'll have a full, unobstructed view and that, if you've bought more than one seat together, then we will put you sitting beside each other. Sweet deal, and the major hint is in the title. Not good enough today. Not for her.
"This isn't a premium seat."
"No, you're right. You purchased a Secret Seat."
"I read that it guaranteed me a premium seat in the stalls or grand circle."
She clung to the "fact" that she'd read this on our website. She didn't. Still, I can't outright tell a customer to fuck off with bullshit claims, so all I could do was assure her that IF she read that anywhere on our website, it was entirely mistaken. Why would we guarantee a premium seat, but not charge premium seat prices? What kind of business sense is there to that? I found the terms and conditions as stated on our website, and turned my screen around to face her. All the while, I remained cordial and professional as I listened to her repeat the "facts" she held true. Nowhere on there did it mention anything that resembled her claims. She insisted she would never have bought them, had it said she would be anywhere other than centre stalls/grand circle. The information she was quoting "from our website" was contradicted entirely by the information I was quoting....actually from our website.
So that's that then, surely? Argument settled? Customer realises they're completely mistaken and wanders back to their full view seat, pride wounded but a little wiser?
You've never worked with the public before have you?
"I'm not happy about this!" she bellowed, as she stomped away with a look of purest hate. She was ire defined. And why? All because I couldn't honour an offer that existed only in the deepest fictions of her mind.
Lady, I'm not paid enough to deal with your functional stupidity. I'm paid just enough to pay my rent and eat enough to stay alive. That's it. I'm not in this job for glamour, or riches. I'm in this job for two reasons, and they are as fucking follows:
1) To live.
2) Rightly, or wrongly, I still enjoy dealing with a percentage of you clinically fucktarded, bargain bin quality cardboard cut-outs of the criminally insane.
Frequent readers may be aware that the theatre I'm working at presently isn't always the busiest. Yet, right now, we're busy as fuck. We've got a more or less sold out show on for the next few weeks, and we're kind of flat out right now. It's glorious! Show me an insanely busy box office, and I will show you a god damn happy box office. Aside from the fact that being this occupied means that the day no longer drags, it reminds me of the fact that a majority of the people out there are not complete cock hostels.
When you're quiet, the only people you might deal with are those that are afflicted with that special kind of entitled stupidity. Morons can be dealt with. Morons with a God complex, less so. If you start a conversation with a person in customer service by saying "I know this is stupid but...." our job is to tell you you're not stupid, and hold your hand as we walk you through whatever truly stupid thing you've done. That's alright. People are stupid. All of us. That's why you're talking to the people who know what to do in this area in which you are not well versed. It's the fuckers who talk down to you while asking for your help that are a plague. Being busy dilutes their number rather than drowning them out entirely, but we'll take it.
You're a season ticket holder, a friend of the venue, a patron, a platinum member, or some such shite as that, and you want to exchange your ticket? No fucking problem mate. Sit back and let us do our thing. We'll get you the best that can be gotten, cos it's what we're paid to do. So what part of this transaction needs you to treat us like we're beneath you exactly? You need us, motherfucker! You bought a ticket for a performance you can no longer attend, and we're trading this to a different date free of charge. It's an almost sold out show, so we can only offer you seats that are a couple of rows back from where you would have been sitting on the original date. Seats that would be in the same price band. Seats that are still dead centre and among the best in the house. Sweet deal, right?
So, why in the almighty fuck do you see fit to throw a hissy fit in the foyer at how "disgusting" it is that we can't get the exact same seats you had in your original booking, four months after it was made? Disgusting? Really? This is disgusting to you!? Leaving aside all the actual, real world events that deserve your disgust, your revulsion, and your genuine concern, and focusing on the small scale situation at hand- you're horrified that we're not willing to grab some other punter by the shoulders and chuck them to the floor so you can sit in the seats they've paid good money for?
And we have to be nice to these people. They know it too. They have the kind of security that only comes from knowing that we can't casually stroll over to them, slap them across the chops, and shake them until Sam Beckett Quantum Leap's into them at the exact moment they became such an insufferable twat lozenge.
Last year, someone threatened to make an official complaint about me in another job. This customer came to collect tickets for a show, but didn't know any of the specific details of the booking that we required. Her friend had made the booking on her behalf, and she had no idea of anything other than the fact it was for this day's sold out matinee performance. I spent twenty minutes speaking to her, constantly batting away the credit card she kept pushing at me while sneering obnoxiously at me to someone she really needed to speak to on the phone at that precise time. When I eventually convinced her to call her friend to find out the facts of the booking, she would talk to them in front of me about how incompetent I was being for not being able to search using her card details. I'd explained to her multiple times by this point that the box office system in place wouldn't allow me to do this. The friend had deleted their email confirmation, and couldn't remember the name or postcode they'd booked under. My customer insisted there could only be one name and postcode combo they were under. They were not. Then it could only be this one. Or this one. Each one a certainty that rung hollow. I was polite throughout, and stated frequently that I would absolutely find her booking, and that she would be in her seat well before the show started. The only time I briefly lost my cool with her was when she interrupted my explanation for the fifth time with her assertion that I could find her booking with her name alone. Our database covered not just Edinburgh, not just Scotland, but the whole of many linked venues throughout the UK. Hers was not an uncommon name. I was momentarily terse with her when I relented and stated that the search had returned 913 results. Eventually, we found a back door way of locating her tickets. The name and postcodes she was offering me had each been wrong. One was close enough that it had probably been mistyped by the friend when booking online.
Was she happy? Did she thank me for my efforts, or apologise for her errors?
She told me she was going to make an official complaint about me. I had made her look like an idiot in front of the 15 year old daughter who was trying to drag her away from me by the arm at this point. I took off my name badge to move it closer to her, as I quoted the number she could call to lodge any official complaint she wanted. I had witnesses to back me. She had righteous idiocy backing her. No complaint went through, but I know I would have been backed 100% had it done so. Still, I needed to step outside to clear my head for a few after that one. It gets to you.
The next day, I was on duty alongside the deputy box office manager. A kind faced lady came in on behalf of a charity to ask if there were any complimentary tickets that we could arrange to provide them for a raffle prize at their next fundraiser. Between the two of us, we explained that it was unlikely at this point. The show was far enough into its run that we were mostly sold out, and all charity requests that we could accommodate had long since been dealt with. Nonetheless, the deputy box office manager, the indomitable J Bomb as she should be known, provided details and names of who this lady could attempt to contact about it. She even gave her own details to the customer should they be slow in responding. The woman thanked us for our help, and left. It was a rare and nice contrast to have someone seemingly satisfied with our work.
She lodged an official complaint later that hour.
The kindly woman made a complaint that we were rude, unhelpful and scoffed at her request for tickets. She was working for a bloody charity! Her complaint was more or less laughed out of the office. Apparently they get this sometimes, where a customer hopes making a complaint will see the company give them tickets as an apology gesture. Luckily, the people she complained to happened to be in the foyer on an unrelated matter at the time we were dealing with her. They'd heard the whole thing and knew exactly what she was up to when they got her call.
Let that sink in though. We tried to help this woman, and she responded by making an official complaint. She was perfectly happy to jeopardise the jobs of two people who had attempted to help her, in pursuit of a raffle prize. Bitch, were you working for this charity on commission to buy back your soul from the devil!?
Here's the thing, we want to help you. A happy customer who has been satisfied with the job we've done is exactly what we're aiming for. Dealing with nice people makes the job, man. We don't care if you don't know what you're doing, or if you're a bit difficult, so long as you appreciate that we're trying to fucking help you. A couple of weeks ago, I witnessed a customer coming to the box office after a show specifically to apologise for being a bit short with someone earlier that day. We hadn't remembered them being particularly impolite, much less in comparison with some of the people we deal with on a daily basis. That apology can fuel your good days for a week or more. Same day, an actor was dickishly rude to my colleague (shout out to Cinderella for her suffering) as she went out of her way to help him with a request that had absolutely nothing to do with us. Thing is, even he asked someone to phone across later to apologise for taking his bad mood out on her. It didn't erase the poor behaviour from beforehand, but it was a nice gesture and a step in the right direction. It's the little things.
I'm not saying you have to have worked in a customer service role to comprehend any of this, but it really does give you some perspective on how people are treated whilst getting paid little more than pocket lint for the pleasure. Before I did this stuff, I heard about how a girl I know who worked in a bar would deal with rude customers who would shake money in her face to get her attention. She would calmly take their money, tear it up in front of them and hand it back. Her manager would apologise and tape the money back together. I remember thinking that was a kind of shitty thing for her to do, no matter how rude the dudes or lady dudes at the bar were being. Opinions change.
I hold my tongue 60% of the time I'm faced with a bad customer. Often I'll share times from that 40% where I don't, for the entertainment of others.
Every day I meet someone whose money I wish I could tear up and hand back to them. Stop being a dick to people who are paid to help you do the things you can't do.
Have you ever or do you now work in a customer facing job? Even if you haven't, you should be aware of this, but for the customer service veterans out there, would you care to tell me the biggest lie out there today? Just shout it right at your screen. Go ahead, I'll wait.
"The customer is always right."
Are they fuck! We all know this is bullshit, yet we have to adhere to its ridiculous principles. In recent job interviews I've stated my view as "The customer is always wrong, but we have to treat them as though they're not." That is the essence of any job. You're paid to provide expertise to aid an avalanche of arseholes who will insist (free of charge) that they know better in spite of any reasonable grasp of facts.
Just today, a woman came to speak to me a few minutes after having collected her tickets for a show. She'd purchased what we call "Secret Seats", which are two or three times less in price than the rest of the seats on sale, on the understanding that you won't know until the day where you will be sitting. That's the hook. You could be sitting in the stalls, the grand circle, or the upper circle. All we guarantee is that you'll have a full, unobstructed view and that, if you've bought more than one seat together, then we will put you sitting beside each other. Sweet deal, and the major hint is in the title. Not good enough today. Not for her.
"This isn't a premium seat."
"No, you're right. You purchased a Secret Seat."
"I read that it guaranteed me a premium seat in the stalls or grand circle."
She clung to the "fact" that she'd read this on our website. She didn't. Still, I can't outright tell a customer to fuck off with bullshit claims, so all I could do was assure her that IF she read that anywhere on our website, it was entirely mistaken. Why would we guarantee a premium seat, but not charge premium seat prices? What kind of business sense is there to that? I found the terms and conditions as stated on our website, and turned my screen around to face her. All the while, I remained cordial and professional as I listened to her repeat the "facts" she held true. Nowhere on there did it mention anything that resembled her claims. She insisted she would never have bought them, had it said she would be anywhere other than centre stalls/grand circle. The information she was quoting "from our website" was contradicted entirely by the information I was quoting....actually from our website.
So that's that then, surely? Argument settled? Customer realises they're completely mistaken and wanders back to their full view seat, pride wounded but a little wiser?
You've never worked with the public before have you?
"I'm not happy about this!" she bellowed, as she stomped away with a look of purest hate. She was ire defined. And why? All because I couldn't honour an offer that existed only in the deepest fictions of her mind.
Lady, I'm not paid enough to deal with your functional stupidity. I'm paid just enough to pay my rent and eat enough to stay alive. That's it. I'm not in this job for glamour, or riches. I'm in this job for two reasons, and they are as fucking follows:
1) To live.
2) Rightly, or wrongly, I still enjoy dealing with a percentage of you clinically fucktarded, bargain bin quality cardboard cut-outs of the criminally insane.
Frequent readers may be aware that the theatre I'm working at presently isn't always the busiest. Yet, right now, we're busy as fuck. We've got a more or less sold out show on for the next few weeks, and we're kind of flat out right now. It's glorious! Show me an insanely busy box office, and I will show you a god damn happy box office. Aside from the fact that being this occupied means that the day no longer drags, it reminds me of the fact that a majority of the people out there are not complete cock hostels.
When you're quiet, the only people you might deal with are those that are afflicted with that special kind of entitled stupidity. Morons can be dealt with. Morons with a God complex, less so. If you start a conversation with a person in customer service by saying "I know this is stupid but...." our job is to tell you you're not stupid, and hold your hand as we walk you through whatever truly stupid thing you've done. That's alright. People are stupid. All of us. That's why you're talking to the people who know what to do in this area in which you are not well versed. It's the fuckers who talk down to you while asking for your help that are a plague. Being busy dilutes their number rather than drowning them out entirely, but we'll take it.
You're a season ticket holder, a friend of the venue, a patron, a platinum member, or some such shite as that, and you want to exchange your ticket? No fucking problem mate. Sit back and let us do our thing. We'll get you the best that can be gotten, cos it's what we're paid to do. So what part of this transaction needs you to treat us like we're beneath you exactly? You need us, motherfucker! You bought a ticket for a performance you can no longer attend, and we're trading this to a different date free of charge. It's an almost sold out show, so we can only offer you seats that are a couple of rows back from where you would have been sitting on the original date. Seats that would be in the same price band. Seats that are still dead centre and among the best in the house. Sweet deal, right?
So, why in the almighty fuck do you see fit to throw a hissy fit in the foyer at how "disgusting" it is that we can't get the exact same seats you had in your original booking, four months after it was made? Disgusting? Really? This is disgusting to you!? Leaving aside all the actual, real world events that deserve your disgust, your revulsion, and your genuine concern, and focusing on the small scale situation at hand- you're horrified that we're not willing to grab some other punter by the shoulders and chuck them to the floor so you can sit in the seats they've paid good money for?
And we have to be nice to these people. They know it too. They have the kind of security that only comes from knowing that we can't casually stroll over to them, slap them across the chops, and shake them until Sam Beckett Quantum Leap's into them at the exact moment they became such an insufferable twat lozenge.
Last year, someone threatened to make an official complaint about me in another job. This customer came to collect tickets for a show, but didn't know any of the specific details of the booking that we required. Her friend had made the booking on her behalf, and she had no idea of anything other than the fact it was for this day's sold out matinee performance. I spent twenty minutes speaking to her, constantly batting away the credit card she kept pushing at me while sneering obnoxiously at me to someone she really needed to speak to on the phone at that precise time. When I eventually convinced her to call her friend to find out the facts of the booking, she would talk to them in front of me about how incompetent I was being for not being able to search using her card details. I'd explained to her multiple times by this point that the box office system in place wouldn't allow me to do this. The friend had deleted their email confirmation, and couldn't remember the name or postcode they'd booked under. My customer insisted there could only be one name and postcode combo they were under. They were not. Then it could only be this one. Or this one. Each one a certainty that rung hollow. I was polite throughout, and stated frequently that I would absolutely find her booking, and that she would be in her seat well before the show started. The only time I briefly lost my cool with her was when she interrupted my explanation for the fifth time with her assertion that I could find her booking with her name alone. Our database covered not just Edinburgh, not just Scotland, but the whole of many linked venues throughout the UK. Hers was not an uncommon name. I was momentarily terse with her when I relented and stated that the search had returned 913 results. Eventually, we found a back door way of locating her tickets. The name and postcodes she was offering me had each been wrong. One was close enough that it had probably been mistyped by the friend when booking online.
Was she happy? Did she thank me for my efforts, or apologise for her errors?
She told me she was going to make an official complaint about me. I had made her look like an idiot in front of the 15 year old daughter who was trying to drag her away from me by the arm at this point. I took off my name badge to move it closer to her, as I quoted the number she could call to lodge any official complaint she wanted. I had witnesses to back me. She had righteous idiocy backing her. No complaint went through, but I know I would have been backed 100% had it done so. Still, I needed to step outside to clear my head for a few after that one. It gets to you.
The next day, I was on duty alongside the deputy box office manager. A kind faced lady came in on behalf of a charity to ask if there were any complimentary tickets that we could arrange to provide them for a raffle prize at their next fundraiser. Between the two of us, we explained that it was unlikely at this point. The show was far enough into its run that we were mostly sold out, and all charity requests that we could accommodate had long since been dealt with. Nonetheless, the deputy box office manager, the indomitable J Bomb as she should be known, provided details and names of who this lady could attempt to contact about it. She even gave her own details to the customer should they be slow in responding. The woman thanked us for our help, and left. It was a rare and nice contrast to have someone seemingly satisfied with our work.
She lodged an official complaint later that hour.
The kindly woman made a complaint that we were rude, unhelpful and scoffed at her request for tickets. She was working for a bloody charity! Her complaint was more or less laughed out of the office. Apparently they get this sometimes, where a customer hopes making a complaint will see the company give them tickets as an apology gesture. Luckily, the people she complained to happened to be in the foyer on an unrelated matter at the time we were dealing with her. They'd heard the whole thing and knew exactly what she was up to when they got her call.
Let that sink in though. We tried to help this woman, and she responded by making an official complaint. She was perfectly happy to jeopardise the jobs of two people who had attempted to help her, in pursuit of a raffle prize. Bitch, were you working for this charity on commission to buy back your soul from the devil!?
Here's the thing, we want to help you. A happy customer who has been satisfied with the job we've done is exactly what we're aiming for. Dealing with nice people makes the job, man. We don't care if you don't know what you're doing, or if you're a bit difficult, so long as you appreciate that we're trying to fucking help you. A couple of weeks ago, I witnessed a customer coming to the box office after a show specifically to apologise for being a bit short with someone earlier that day. We hadn't remembered them being particularly impolite, much less in comparison with some of the people we deal with on a daily basis. That apology can fuel your good days for a week or more. Same day, an actor was dickishly rude to my colleague (shout out to Cinderella for her suffering) as she went out of her way to help him with a request that had absolutely nothing to do with us. Thing is, even he asked someone to phone across later to apologise for taking his bad mood out on her. It didn't erase the poor behaviour from beforehand, but it was a nice gesture and a step in the right direction. It's the little things.
I'm not saying you have to have worked in a customer service role to comprehend any of this, but it really does give you some perspective on how people are treated whilst getting paid little more than pocket lint for the pleasure. Before I did this stuff, I heard about how a girl I know who worked in a bar would deal with rude customers who would shake money in her face to get her attention. She would calmly take their money, tear it up in front of them and hand it back. Her manager would apologise and tape the money back together. I remember thinking that was a kind of shitty thing for her to do, no matter how rude the dudes or lady dudes at the bar were being. Opinions change.
I hold my tongue 60% of the time I'm faced with a bad customer. Often I'll share times from that 40% where I don't, for the entertainment of others.
Every day I meet someone whose money I wish I could tear up and hand back to them. Stop being a dick to people who are paid to help you do the things you can't do.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Perfect Dark Week: Day Fast and Fourious
Is this still going on? Sake....
Day 4
09:45 Made it at the buzzer, but Flounder's in today so my efforts are in vain. I've been relegated to the shitty computer for the first time this week. It's barely functional at its best, and smells faintly of sudden cheese. Thus, today's blog takes form as handwritten notes to be transcribed later (yup).
09:51 What's on here on Saturday? A whole lot of "we're not open for another 9 minutes, so ask me then". I'm in an unusually kind mood this morning, so I answer his question now. I will be expecting overtime pay. Nothing on Saturday. No, not on Monday either. That's two questions before we open, so you're pushing it, kindly elder gentleman. No, that's on at a different theatre. It's two doors down. No, I don't know what else they're showing just now. You know who might be able to answer your queries? The people who work two doors down from here. Yeah, I thought we were them too. Imagine my surprise when I came here today and realised I was me, not them. Let's go there together, shall we?
10:00 Ugh. Does the phone system have to make that whining sound? It's really fucking with paid nap-time.
10:44 The Tall Woman enters. She gently raises my hopes of that longed for lifting, then dashes them almost at once. Mocking my hopes and dreams, yet you expect me to sell you these tickets!? Ok, yeah, sure. Is she always so late for work?
10:50 A regular sized woman enters, but I doubt her lifting capabilities. She makes a quite elaborate spectacle of removing her glasses from their case and putting them on her regular sized face. She literally has to walk past me to get to Flounder. We lock eyes as she wordlessly rejects me. Flounder tells her the dates a show is running between, and yet she decides to arbitrarily choose another date to see it two weeks after it's finished. I savour her snub, wearing my smug disdain as a badge of honour upon my face.
11:11 A customer calls to help me break my duck for the day. That really is a weird-ass phrase. She's nice. We telepathically high five.
11:46 Flounder has been scrolling through the facebook history of her fanny of a friend. It's been strangely captivating to hear her read the mundane shite this person...WHAT!?....wait....go back, Flounder. What was that about a wet t-shirt contest? Are there pictures?
11:53 Flounder makes a phone sale, with my energy entirely focussed on Robot Unicorn Attack. Rainbow dash, damn you! Don't you want to become a rhino!?
12:03 Girl standing in the massive, street-facing windows above the macaroon shop across the road is attempting to find the perfect lighting for her selfie. She adjusts, and pouts as required by law. #blessed
12:04 Yes, there is a macaroon shop across the road. And they owe me a promised cake for sorting them out with tickets a couple weeks back. I haven't forgotten our deal, Macaroon Girl!
12:04 "Windows has encountered a critical problem and will restart automatically in one minute. Please save your work now." This message has been displayed for 6 minutes, but the computer has been unable to restart as it's remained frozen. It is the second time this terminal has crashed in just under 15 minutes.
12:05 I casually stroll over to frape Flounder as she heads out for a smoke. She's logged out. Clever girl.
12:09 Mufasa enters with an "a-ha!". He has located a perfect elastic band of mass destruction. The battle lines our drawn, and the ceasefire is at an end.
12:17 We're rewriting Cards Against Humanity to make out own version.
12:19 The terminal only just holds together long enough for me to sell more tickets to an actual living person in the flesh. It's weird to see an outside face. Has summer arrived yet, dear stranger? No? Never? Warmer rain at least.
14:02 Lunch Buttons have happened again.
14:03 "It IS on here! You ARE selling tickets for it! It says it right here in the literature....oh, no it's....". Yeah, that theatre's two doors down, isn't it? It's almost as though we know which theatre we're working in, and what shows we have on. Almost. Applause erupts through the box office as he leaves, to mark a moment of outstanding foolishness.
15:15 "Wish we had box office bunk beds. That'd be so good". Flounder's not used to going this long without a nap. Flounder fucking loves naps. Almost as much as she loves Kanye.
15:50 "I kissed -Cliff Richard and his army of underage Cambodian sex puppets- and I liked it". Yeah, these handwritten cards are a decent addition to the game. We're learning some things about how deep our respective mental sicknesses run.
15:54 So many new cards speak to Cinderella's life outside the box office. "Cinderella's dignity" is tradable.
15:56 Speaking of Cinderella's dignity, I'm not even supposed to be here today. I'm covering her shift, as she couldn't make it. She's met a new fella. He sounds nice. Charlie has really got into her brain. He seems very family orientated, which is a good sign of a caring person I suppose. Anyway, Cinderella's gone to join him in living with them on a farm. Sounds ideal. We've found all the scraps of paper she's scribbled her future married name on when she locks him down. "Cinderella Manson" has a certain ring to it. Maybe this will be the one.
16:05 "And I'm eligible for a discount on those tickets, aren't I? Is that price with my discount?". Jesus, I've not met someone so preoccupied with avoiding cost since Father Ted judged Lovely Girls. "And, there is a discount on that day?". FUCKING YES, OK!? She wanders away, discounted tickets in hand.
16:05 She shambles back. "You gave me my discount, didn't you?". I should be able to decide who gets euthanised in this place.
16:05 She shambles back. "You gave me my discount, didn't you?". I should be able to decide who gets euthanised in this place.
16:54 And the crafty veteran wins another game via tie-break. Technically, as the two presiding judges couldn't decide a winner, she's won via tie-break within a tie-break. I need to brush up on my rock, paper, scissors skills.
Pocahontas: 10
Mufasa: 9
Mad Hatter: 8
Flounder: 6
17:00 Freebird motherfuckers! Phones are off, disturbing blood red shades are on in spite of the still overcast conditions, and I am out the door to meet my girlfriend and cook some fucking steak.
Time killed mostly with: Writing vile, offensive things and cackling like a witch on morphine.
Total ticket sales
Cinderella: 9
Flounder: 6
Maleficent: 3
Deebs AKA Mad Hatter: 10
Pocahontas: 2
Mufasa: 2
Cinderella: 9
Flounder: 6
Maleficent: 3
Deebs AKA Mad Hatter: 10
Pocahontas: 2
Mufasa: 2
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Perfect Dark Week: Elastic Band of Brothers
Preamble So I had a few drinks last night. Not a lot, but enough. And I may definitely have committed a crime.
I went to meet my ex-flatmate for a crafty beer or two, and to collect the stunning amount of post that has accumulated in the nine months since I moved out and didn't get any of my mail redirected. Yet, beforehand, and in complete opposition to the spirit in which he once started a blog to try to teach me basic cooking skills- http://recipesfordeebs.blogspot.co.uk/ - I went to a fast food franchise for my signature Blandy Meal. There were a few obnoxious kids at a table behind and to the right, the youngest of whom was 7 years of pure sugar and he was literally climbing the walls. Also, the fuckers had balloons, and I was exceedingly jealous of this fact. So, I was in a toilet cubicle, and the second I unlocked the door to leave, the door was pushed in against me. Steady on, hombre. The pressure on the door was coming from not a great height, so either a child or an eager midget. It was the wall-climber, and he just stared mindlessly at me as he continually tried to walk through me in this tiny space. No request for space was met with a verbal response, so I eventually just had to try to squeeze past. In short, I had to manoeuvre a child out of my path with my crotch. I crotched a small boy in the side of the head in a fast food bathroom.
Now, onto today.
I went to meet my ex-flatmate for a crafty beer or two, and to collect the stunning amount of post that has accumulated in the nine months since I moved out and didn't get any of my mail redirected. Yet, beforehand, and in complete opposition to the spirit in which he once started a blog to try to teach me basic cooking skills- http://recipesfordeebs.blogspot.co.uk/ - I went to a fast food franchise for my signature Blandy Meal. There were a few obnoxious kids at a table behind and to the right, the youngest of whom was 7 years of pure sugar and he was literally climbing the walls. Also, the fuckers had balloons, and I was exceedingly jealous of this fact. So, I was in a toilet cubicle, and the second I unlocked the door to leave, the door was pushed in against me. Steady on, hombre. The pressure on the door was coming from not a great height, so either a child or an eager midget. It was the wall-climber, and he just stared mindlessly at me as he continually tried to walk through me in this tiny space. No request for space was met with a verbal response, so I eventually just had to try to squeeze past. In short, I had to manoeuvre a child out of my path with my crotch. I crotched a small boy in the side of the head in a fast food bathroom.
Now, onto today.
Day 3
09:42 Working computer again. I'm on a roll. Today's players scheduled are Mad Hatter and Cinderella in the front, Pocahontas and Mufasa in the rear.
10:01 No sign of Cinderella. Not entirely surprising. Should have called her Sleeping Beauty.
10:07 A season ticket sold to a man whose laugh spoke of internal strife and a lifetime of sadness.
10:10 Cinderella has been called. No response. We're starting to gradually come to terms with her likely death. I'll share my thoughts through the day as we reflect on this tragedy. She was always such a lovely....
10:11 ....false alarm. Cinderella has contacted the box office. In an occurrence that is wholly out of character for her (much as sarcasm is for me), she has slept in. Of course, if I was holding someone hostage, I'd probably get her to call in to work with a similarly plausible (on the face of it) excuse. Blink once for "yes", twice for "no", Cinderella!
10:17 The tall woman passes by once more. She promised she'd lift me this time, so I raise my arms accordingly and swivel excitedly in my chair. A squeal escapes my lips. She smiles and gives me the finger. No lift. Devastated.
10:29 A lady enters. She wishes for tickets for a preview. She is two months early. Happens. She was lovely, and I wish her luck with an honest smile as she heads onto the next theatre on her list of places to buy tickets today.
10:39 Cinderella's pumpkin has pulled up outside. She's free! And she's late as fuck.
10:45 Blue-screened phone system. Surprisingly common occurrence. Floppy disk drive issues.
11:03 Checked the phones by calling the box office. Cinderella answered. We had a brief phone chat sitting side by side. She has a charming phone manner. I didn't buy tickets though.
11:30 Cinderella is calling customers from the problem folder to see if we can resolve issues with their bookings. Old guy can't bear to let his season booking lapse, but he's just not physically up to it anymore. Saddening.
11:35 Cinderella's ears are pricked. What's that song, Mufasa? It's Paul Simon, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. I leave this information here with neither comment nor judgement.
11:39 A woman is befuddled. She does a full spin on her heels in the foyer. And another. Our brochure's over here. Nope, not there. Here. Here! IT'S HERE!
11:50 "Good aftern....I mean, morning." First incoming call of the day, and I've already forgotten how to speak. Putting tickets on reserve for the lovely people at a group that books for people with disabilities. Nice folk doing nice things.
12:08 Transport for the elderly and/or infirm pulls up outside. Probably here for us then. Or maybe they fancy a low-quality Chinese buffet. Hope they're not here for that, cos it's been closed down for months now. The local pimps and prostitutes have been going hungry for months.
12:16 London Boys, "Requiem" pulled up on screen, as it was shamefully omitted from yesterday's account of late 80s musical time. The video, near as I can tell, takes place in Tim Burton's bedroom, and features a cross between Crocodile Dundee re-imagined by a dominatrix and Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat. Worth a watch through your fingers.
12:27 Mufasa playing some dynamite choons round the back.
12:29 Third phone call of the day. Previous two were from the same person. This ends much as they did, without purchase.
12:40 Taking advantage of Cinderella's weakened state by using it as an opportunity to crush her spirit and self-belief. I'm not a good man, and it passes the time.
12:41 Post! And a season ticket renewal each for Cinderella, and I. Crucially, there's also one for Mufasa. Mufasa is on the scoreboard with his first sale of the week.
12:48 Someone comes in to confirm the tickets I'd reserved for them earlier, and Cinderella steals the sale.
12:50 "I may legitimately use my lunch break today to have a nap". Cinderella, all over the blog today, is struggling.
12:55 There's talk of baked potatoes from Mavie's in Grassmarket. Mavie has earned his shout-out.
13:35 I give up my computer so Cinderella can complete a sale after her barely functioning computer has crashed. How does she repay me for this kindness? By viciously fraping me while I'm out buying the traditional chocolate Buttons. Apparently, I'm a "Salad Girl" at Hooters in Atlanta, Georgia now, for one thing. Associating me with salad is an abhorrent crime. A grave insult that shall not go without retribution. Sure, I once fraped her as she attended to a first aid emergency, but that was funny.
13:54 "There is no Cinderella, only Zuul". Curious development here, but it seems there's a new man in Cinderella....er....Zuul's life. His name is The Keymaster, apparently. Lovely name. I've asked if they have any cool plans for the weekend. Something about meeting a friend named Gozer? It's nice she's found someone else, and she's clearly happy. She's practically levitating. She doesn't look well though. I'm not sure goths are allowed to be jaundiced.
14:29 Presently engaged in an elastic band flicking war with Mufasa. Battles have been raging for approximately 15 minutes now. War is hell. Well, this is less a war, and more an example of what would happen if the United States started bombing one old man living in assisted care in Margate. I can't get my angles right, and I've been massacred.
14:35 I flinch whenever I hear that telltale ping, and yet my feeble cries for mercy fall on deaf ears. Mufasa truly is a monster.
14:37 As the dust settles, I've not seen this many bands lying around since Cinderella's last party.
14:57 A flock of new recruits arrive from a festival to have a tour of the venue. Not sure if "flock" is the most accurate collective noun for them though. A misery? A misery of new recruits seems more fitting. Problem is, we have a rehearsal going on in the auditorium at the moment. Mufasa sets off to show them everywhere the light touches.
15:31 Fuck it, it's Cards Against Humanity o'clock.
15:44 Cinderella has been routinely unable to finish a sentence without hyperventilating through horrified tears of laughter during this game.
16:03 A woman just wandered in, turned left and walked to the far end of the foyer. In the distance we could hear her asking "Is this the box office?". I'm not sure where she's gone, or who she was talking to, but I think they're bundling her into a van as I type.
16:06 Pocahontas is a dark horse in this game. So dark.
16:07 Everybody seems to have lost their powers of speech. I've not heard this many garbled sentences since the last Frock gig. Frock are Cinderella's band, named because "frock" rhymes with "rock", and girls wear dresses. I'm not making this up.
16:47 And the scores are in. With a last gasp Hail Mary, Pocahontas takes the win courtesy of "Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's....surprise sex."
Pocahontas: 13
Mad Hatter: 12
Mufasa: 11
Cinderella: 8
17:00 Quick, before the phone rings for the first time in several hours, kill the phones. Put the "closed" signs up, and fuck off home.
Time killed mostly with: Cowering in fear from volleys of elastic bands aimed directly at my eyeballs. Also, the relentless character assassination of Cinderella, even though she's lovely.
Total ticket sales
Cinderella: 9
Flounder: 2
Maleficent: 3
Deebs AKA Mad Hatter: 7
Pocahontas: 2
Mufasa: 2
11:39 A woman is befuddled. She does a full spin on her heels in the foyer. And another. Our brochure's over here. Nope, not there. Here. Here! IT'S HERE!
11:50 "Good aftern....I mean, morning." First incoming call of the day, and I've already forgotten how to speak. Putting tickets on reserve for the lovely people at a group that books for people with disabilities. Nice folk doing nice things.
12:08 Transport for the elderly and/or infirm pulls up outside. Probably here for us then. Or maybe they fancy a low-quality Chinese buffet. Hope they're not here for that, cos it's been closed down for months now. The local pimps and prostitutes have been going hungry for months.
12:16 London Boys, "Requiem" pulled up on screen, as it was shamefully omitted from yesterday's account of late 80s musical time. The video, near as I can tell, takes place in Tim Burton's bedroom, and features a cross between Crocodile Dundee re-imagined by a dominatrix and Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat. Worth a watch through your fingers.
12:27 Mufasa playing some dynamite choons round the back.
12:29 Third phone call of the day. Previous two were from the same person. This ends much as they did, without purchase.
12:40 Taking advantage of Cinderella's weakened state by using it as an opportunity to crush her spirit and self-belief. I'm not a good man, and it passes the time.
12:41 Post! And a season ticket renewal each for Cinderella, and I. Crucially, there's also one for Mufasa. Mufasa is on the scoreboard with his first sale of the week.
12:48 Someone comes in to confirm the tickets I'd reserved for them earlier, and Cinderella steals the sale.
12:50 "I may legitimately use my lunch break today to have a nap". Cinderella, all over the blog today, is struggling.
12:55 There's talk of baked potatoes from Mavie's in Grassmarket. Mavie has earned his shout-out.
13:35 I give up my computer so Cinderella can complete a sale after her barely functioning computer has crashed. How does she repay me for this kindness? By viciously fraping me while I'm out buying the traditional chocolate Buttons. Apparently, I'm a "Salad Girl" at Hooters in Atlanta, Georgia now, for one thing. Associating me with salad is an abhorrent crime. A grave insult that shall not go without retribution. Sure, I once fraped her as she attended to a first aid emergency, but that was funny.
13:54 "There is no Cinderella, only Zuul". Curious development here, but it seems there's a new man in Cinderella....er....Zuul's life. His name is The Keymaster, apparently. Lovely name. I've asked if they have any cool plans for the weekend. Something about meeting a friend named Gozer? It's nice she's found someone else, and she's clearly happy. She's practically levitating. She doesn't look well though. I'm not sure goths are allowed to be jaundiced.
14:29 Presently engaged in an elastic band flicking war with Mufasa. Battles have been raging for approximately 15 minutes now. War is hell. Well, this is less a war, and more an example of what would happen if the United States started bombing one old man living in assisted care in Margate. I can't get my angles right, and I've been massacred.
14:35 I flinch whenever I hear that telltale ping, and yet my feeble cries for mercy fall on deaf ears. Mufasa truly is a monster.
14:37 As the dust settles, I've not seen this many bands lying around since Cinderella's last party.
14:57 A flock of new recruits arrive from a festival to have a tour of the venue. Not sure if "flock" is the most accurate collective noun for them though. A misery? A misery of new recruits seems more fitting. Problem is, we have a rehearsal going on in the auditorium at the moment. Mufasa sets off to show them everywhere the light touches.
15:31 Fuck it, it's Cards Against Humanity o'clock.
15:44 Cinderella has been routinely unable to finish a sentence without hyperventilating through horrified tears of laughter during this game.
16:03 A woman just wandered in, turned left and walked to the far end of the foyer. In the distance we could hear her asking "Is this the box office?". I'm not sure where she's gone, or who she was talking to, but I think they're bundling her into a van as I type.
16:06 Pocahontas is a dark horse in this game. So dark.
16:07 Everybody seems to have lost their powers of speech. I've not heard this many garbled sentences since the last Frock gig. Frock are Cinderella's band, named because "frock" rhymes with "rock", and girls wear dresses. I'm not making this up.
16:47 And the scores are in. With a last gasp Hail Mary, Pocahontas takes the win courtesy of "Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's....surprise sex."
Pocahontas: 13
Mad Hatter: 12
Mufasa: 11
Cinderella: 8
17:00 Quick, before the phone rings for the first time in several hours, kill the phones. Put the "closed" signs up, and fuck off home.
Time killed mostly with: Cowering in fear from volleys of elastic bands aimed directly at my eyeballs. Also, the relentless character assassination of Cinderella, even though she's lovely.
Total ticket sales
Cinderella: 9
Flounder: 2
Maleficent: 3
Deebs AKA Mad Hatter: 7
Pocahontas: 2
Mufasa: 2
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Perfect Dark Week: Part Deux
The continuing adventures of Box Office Man....and assorted extras, This is the second day of this week's five day blogging challenge to bring you into the world of working in a theatre when there's no shows on. On she rolls....
09:40 Functioning computer again. Success. Full cast of characters for today's events are as follows: The Mad Hatter (hey, how ya doin'?), and Maleficent at the front, with boss folk Pocahontas and the returning Mufasa in the back after two weeks of freedom.
09:53 Emails are working today, which is a nice change of pace. A not so short ramble sent just to me by a customer about a matter over which I hold no sway. Sorry mate. Good start.
10:02 A phone call? At this time!? Probably just a wrong number....No! Tickets? I can sell tickets! Customer is clearly mistaken in questioning our pricing for the....wait, he's got a point. Brochure misprint. Balls. Oh well.
10:11 Yes, I see you standing in front of me, trying to catch my attention like I haven't noticed you. You're about a foot from my face, and wearing a hi-vis jacket; trust me, I've spotted you, but I'm kind of in the middle of dealing with a customer's booking right now, so chill. You'll need to go to Stage Door.
10:13 Hark! A spider hath invaded! Maleficent is resisting my urging to kill Cecil, as she has named the bastard arachnid. "He said nasty stuff about your wee boy". A flicker of murderous rage is restrained when she considers the likely falsehood of my statement. So close. The spider lives.
10:29 Maleficent is sneezing. Further updates as the death toll rises.
10:30 A really tall lady just walked by the box office, waving heroically. As I know the really tall lady in question, I basically thrust my arms in the air like a child wanting to be picked up in response. She was outside and in motion so she did not lift me. Shame.
10:31 People are now starting to request changes to their self chosen Disney aliases. These things are binding, folks.
11:14 New show on sale. It's about films and stuff. I love films and stuff! Couple of seats on reserve for me so.
11:36 "Hi there? I was just speaking to a colleague of yours? She was a woman?". The upward inflection at the end of your sentences makes you sound very uncertain of certainties, madam?
12:03 We're now all gathered around a screen to watch cringe-worthy late 80s/early 90s music videos. Angry Anderson's Suddenly and East 17's It's Alright are so shockingly fucking enthralling.
12:11 Boyzone? I draw the line!
12:28 Boyzone dancing on the Late Late. This is....it's not good.
13:06 A call from [company name], confirming yesterday's reservation. Traci making the call today, but no mention of the fact that the call may be recorded for training purposes. They're slipping.
13:08 The first mention of an occurrence that is all too common here- an auld lad approaching the locked doors with a sign on them saying "Please use other entrance door". There's even a big red arrow pointing to the unlocked double doors beside them. In addition to being unlocked, these doors are wide open at present. He chooses to ignore this and vigorously shake the locked doors. We make eye contact. His face wordlessly pleads for me to grant him entrance to our theatre, as I simply point to the wide open space to his left. He instead fixes his gaze on the sign displaying our opening times, and checks his watch. Yep, we are supposed to be open right now. Indeed, we are open. There's an entrance beside you with children running in and out of it. He walks past them to the next set of locked doors.
13:10 Our confused potential customer has found his way inside, more through luck than judgement. Has he booked his season ticket already? Yes, he sure has. Grand so, and he's off. He walks to the locked doors and gives them a futile shake, before a gust of wind mercifully guides him out.
13:22 "I can't help you with that. Please call Stage Door."
13:30 Lunch. This won't be pleasant.
13:39 "Why are you not dead?" Mufasa booms. I reckon this means my frequent lunch choice of Buttons and crisps is not seen as an entirely health conscious choice.
14:11 The first grumbled mentions of playing Cards Against Humanity to kill time.
14:13 I have received a call from a woman who is clearly trapped inside a washing machine. Maybe it's just a bad connection? "IT'S JUST MAH PHONE'S MICROPHONE!" she bellows. She wants to know ticket prices for an upcoming show. "HOW MUCH!? AH'M NO AFFORDIN' THAT!". And just as quickly as she entered my life, she was gone. I'll miss the beautiful timbre of her voice most of all.
14:15 Mufasa is off to the shops to buy chocolate. A chant of "Mufasa's a hero!" fills the box office for all too brief a time.
14:18 Mufasa has decided against going out. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself to become the bastard who cried "chocolate".
14:19 Pocahontas is off to buy biscuits for the box office. Unlike that fake hero from earlier who broke our hearts, she follows through.
14:28 BISCUITS HAVE RETURNED! Also Pocahontas. And thus, Cards Against Humanity is afoot.
14:36 Incest card. Boom!
15:09 Many of these cards remind me of Cinderella's romantic endeavours. Like that one time she had a fling with the spiritual manifestation of the Japanese concept of loneliness, and he was pretty chill. Frankly we all expected that to be quite rough, but when it ended he was really cool about it. An all round good guy, really. We're all still friends with him, and think that, for an existential construct, he could have done a lot better than Cinderella anyway.
16:08 Well this got dark, surprising no-one. Courtesy of Cards Against Humanity's prompting- Vladimir Putin's favourite meal? Glory holes stuffed with the heart of a child.
16:14 Customer! Bertie Big Bollocks over here's just gone and sold a couple of tickets for a show in October. Get in! Still, if you confess that your attempts to book online have been hamstrung by your own inability to work "the bloody personal computer", maybe it's best not to take on a snarky tone when I read your address back to you and it turns out to be incorrect. The address that YOU ENTERED!
16:15 Game on!
16:48 And the final scores are in from today's Cards Against Humanity extravaganza:
Mufasa- 20
Mad Hatter- 11
Pocahontas- 6
Maleficent- 6
Good hustle, everybody. There has been a quantifiable increase in euphemisms and inappropriate humour marking Mufasa's return to the pride today. It being a coincidence is highly unlikely.
16:58 And like clockwork, one arrives. Sorry Maleficent, but you've got a customer.
17:00 Screw solidarity, I'm out of here. Phones are off, doors are closed. Mad Hatter out. Til tomorrow.
Time killed mostly with: So many horrible jokes about children.
Total ticket sales
Cinderella: 4
Flounder: 2
Maleficent: 3
Deebs AKA Mad Hatter: 5
Pocahontas: 2
Mufasa: 0
Day 2
09:40 Functioning computer again. Success. Full cast of characters for today's events are as follows: The Mad Hatter (hey, how ya doin'?), and Maleficent at the front, with boss folk Pocahontas and the returning Mufasa in the back after two weeks of freedom.
09:53 Emails are working today, which is a nice change of pace. A not so short ramble sent just to me by a customer about a matter over which I hold no sway. Sorry mate. Good start.
10:02 A phone call? At this time!? Probably just a wrong number....No! Tickets? I can sell tickets! Customer is clearly mistaken in questioning our pricing for the....wait, he's got a point. Brochure misprint. Balls. Oh well.
10:11 Yes, I see you standing in front of me, trying to catch my attention like I haven't noticed you. You're about a foot from my face, and wearing a hi-vis jacket; trust me, I've spotted you, but I'm kind of in the middle of dealing with a customer's booking right now, so chill. You'll need to go to Stage Door.
10:13 Hark! A spider hath invaded! Maleficent is resisting my urging to kill Cecil, as she has named the bastard arachnid. "He said nasty stuff about your wee boy". A flicker of murderous rage is restrained when she considers the likely falsehood of my statement. So close. The spider lives.
10:29 Maleficent is sneezing. Further updates as the death toll rises.
10:30 A really tall lady just walked by the box office, waving heroically. As I know the really tall lady in question, I basically thrust my arms in the air like a child wanting to be picked up in response. She was outside and in motion so she did not lift me. Shame.
10:31 People are now starting to request changes to their self chosen Disney aliases. These things are binding, folks.
11:14 New show on sale. It's about films and stuff. I love films and stuff! Couple of seats on reserve for me so.
11:36 "Hi there? I was just speaking to a colleague of yours? She was a woman?". The upward inflection at the end of your sentences makes you sound very uncertain of certainties, madam?
12:03 We're now all gathered around a screen to watch cringe-worthy late 80s/early 90s music videos. Angry Anderson's Suddenly and East 17's It's Alright are so shockingly fucking enthralling.
12:11 Boyzone? I draw the line!
12:28 Boyzone dancing on the Late Late. This is....it's not good.
13:06 A call from [company name], confirming yesterday's reservation. Traci making the call today, but no mention of the fact that the call may be recorded for training purposes. They're slipping.
13:08 The first mention of an occurrence that is all too common here- an auld lad approaching the locked doors with a sign on them saying "Please use other entrance door". There's even a big red arrow pointing to the unlocked double doors beside them. In addition to being unlocked, these doors are wide open at present. He chooses to ignore this and vigorously shake the locked doors. We make eye contact. His face wordlessly pleads for me to grant him entrance to our theatre, as I simply point to the wide open space to his left. He instead fixes his gaze on the sign displaying our opening times, and checks his watch. Yep, we are supposed to be open right now. Indeed, we are open. There's an entrance beside you with children running in and out of it. He walks past them to the next set of locked doors.
13:10 Our confused potential customer has found his way inside, more through luck than judgement. Has he booked his season ticket already? Yes, he sure has. Grand so, and he's off. He walks to the locked doors and gives them a futile shake, before a gust of wind mercifully guides him out.
13:22 "I can't help you with that. Please call Stage Door."
13:30 Lunch. This won't be pleasant.
13:39 "Why are you not dead?" Mufasa booms. I reckon this means my frequent lunch choice of Buttons and crisps is not seen as an entirely health conscious choice.
14:11 The first grumbled mentions of playing Cards Against Humanity to kill time.
14:13 I have received a call from a woman who is clearly trapped inside a washing machine. Maybe it's just a bad connection? "IT'S JUST MAH PHONE'S MICROPHONE!" she bellows. She wants to know ticket prices for an upcoming show. "HOW MUCH!? AH'M NO AFFORDIN' THAT!". And just as quickly as she entered my life, she was gone. I'll miss the beautiful timbre of her voice most of all.
14:15 Mufasa is off to the shops to buy chocolate. A chant of "Mufasa's a hero!" fills the box office for all too brief a time.
14:18 Mufasa has decided against going out. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself to become the bastard who cried "chocolate".
14:19 Pocahontas is off to buy biscuits for the box office. Unlike that fake hero from earlier who broke our hearts, she follows through.
14:28 BISCUITS HAVE RETURNED! Also Pocahontas. And thus, Cards Against Humanity is afoot.
14:36 Incest card. Boom!
15:09 Many of these cards remind me of Cinderella's romantic endeavours. Like that one time she had a fling with the spiritual manifestation of the Japanese concept of loneliness, and he was pretty chill. Frankly we all expected that to be quite rough, but when it ended he was really cool about it. An all round good guy, really. We're all still friends with him, and think that, for an existential construct, he could have done a lot better than Cinderella anyway.
16:08 Well this got dark, surprising no-one. Courtesy of Cards Against Humanity's prompting- Vladimir Putin's favourite meal? Glory holes stuffed with the heart of a child.
16:14 Customer! Bertie Big Bollocks over here's just gone and sold a couple of tickets for a show in October. Get in! Still, if you confess that your attempts to book online have been hamstrung by your own inability to work "the bloody personal computer", maybe it's best not to take on a snarky tone when I read your address back to you and it turns out to be incorrect. The address that YOU ENTERED!
16:15 Game on!
16:48 And the final scores are in from today's Cards Against Humanity extravaganza:
Mufasa- 20
Mad Hatter- 11
Pocahontas- 6
Maleficent- 6
Good hustle, everybody. There has been a quantifiable increase in euphemisms and inappropriate humour marking Mufasa's return to the pride today. It being a coincidence is highly unlikely.
16:58 And like clockwork, one arrives. Sorry Maleficent, but you've got a customer.
17:00 Screw solidarity, I'm out of here. Phones are off, doors are closed. Mad Hatter out. Til tomorrow.
Time killed mostly with: So many horrible jokes about children.
Total ticket sales
Cinderella: 4
Flounder: 2
Maleficent: 3
Deebs AKA Mad Hatter: 5
Pocahontas: 2
Mufasa: 0
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Perfect Dark Week: Origins
Another full week of box office theatre begins. I've told stories about the weird shit that crops up in this line of work before, but I don't feel that those outside it truly get what our days entail. So here goes the documentary process. One week in a theatre with no shows on. Welcome to my world.
09:39 Starting off on the right foot this week. Made it in time to use the computer that works. Boomtown!
10:00 The phones are on, the "closed" signs are down and we are all set for a big day at box office.
11:14 We just checked the phones to make sure they're working. They are. Still no calls.
11:23 RIIIING! Phone call! It's an internal call from the offices across the road. Apparently I'm to "Ask if that's done it". Done what? "She'll know". Well that was cryptic and helpful. Thank you.
11:28 We have a walk-in. Just about. Old lady with a walking frame wants two tickets for "the first show". She doesn't know what it's called. Bad start, She wants to go "for the Friday". Not getting better. Seats in the "upper grand circle". Shit, this is a terminal case. "For one of the £10 ticket nights". Christ, she's talking about the previews isn't she? She's 2 months early. They don't go on sale til mid-August. She'll be back, unless there's a sudden cold snap.
11:40 A renewal of a season ticket received through the post. They want the same seats as they had last year. They're a month and a half past the point where we'd hold their seats for them. Decent seats too. Centre stalls. HA! Good luck....fuck. How? Lucky bastards.
11:48 Some finance guy came in to the box office to tell me about....some finance stuff. Lots of nodding, and eye contact until he went away. Gave him the phone number of the people who would actually have anything to do with what he may or may not have been talking about. He came back to ask my name. The over-familiarity of it is galling.
12:07 Spoke with colleague about the tatters of her social life. Let's call her Cinderella. Seems she's dating a scarecrow made flesh by the whims of a demented wizard now. Brought to life to serve as his retribution against a world that has dared preach feminism, and who shall pluck out the eyes of all who stand quivering before him. Good for her. He may be the enchanted nightmares of a thousand screaming children, and clearly enjoys disemboweling crows for The Watch, but he does play a mean mandolin.
12:18 An old lady enters the foyer. Time stands still as we pray her vision is based on movement. Alas, no, and she has ruined youtube time in boxo. She rejects me, and chooses Cinderella. It stings. She just wants our brochure. Cinderella tells her where it is, and helpfully points to the location. I parrot Cinderella's words just to feel like I belong. The old lady is confused by rudimentary direction. She is lost now, brochureless and possibly in Narnia.
12:30 LUNCH! Chocolate Buttons and crisps. Healthy as fuck.
13.34 First real customer. She was collecting tickets for our Christmas show, and handed me her confirmation print-out without looking at me. She merely grunted. Her face looked as though I'd just stolen her last Rolo....and had sex with it in front of her. Man, I want more chocolate now.
14:09 The Rain Gods have made their displeasure known. Or is rain the sign of a happy Rain God? Fuckers must either hate or love Scotland so. Watching women in too high heels stumble awkwardly past with jackets over their heads. If your jacket barely reaches the bottom of your neck when placed over your head, it's not a fucking jacket! Still, this probably means there's graduations on next door.
14:16 Human contact from the outside world! A very confused young lady wants to know why she hasn't heard back about front of house recruitment. The painful journey from beginning to end of our conversation tells me she likely has not been hired for reasons of chronic cretenism, but I can't help I'm afraid. Stage Door.
14:25 "Scarecrow don't have no babies to pay for. Least not that I know of.". Oh Cinderella.
14:37 Kind of worried that my other colleague hasn't made a sound all day. Hope she's not dead. Checked with her. She's not dead. Sticking with the Disney theme, she shall be known as Flounder. Flounder's alive, likely dreaming of being Kanye.
14:50 The seagulls are massing outside the glass facade of the box office. They're plotting. If you're unfamiliar with the nature of Edinburgh seagulls, think Hitler with wings. Fuckers are just striving to find a Final Solution for all of us.
14:53 Further seagulls are approaching the original winged Hitlers. Shit's about to go down. I can tell they're not on the same page by the general West Side Story vibes being given off. The interlopers are clicking rhythmically.
14:55 Aladdin has ventured across from the offices to conduct an interview with a soon to arrive cast member from one of our upcoming shows. He comments upon my "famous wit". I've always liked that man. Charming and intuitive. Cinderella disagrees with his statement. Not on the "wit" part though, just the level of notoriety it has attained. The consensus is my delightful humour should be world-renowned by now.
15:06 Aladdin still awaits his interview subject. She is evidently running late. Al has now been gripped by morbid curiosity over what a seagull has dropped outside. The working theory is "some meat". Cinderella's suggestion that the offending "meat" be captured for posterity on Instagram has fallen on deaf ears.
15:11 "This is probably a stupid question....". A solid 40% of calls start with a customer saying that, and a far greater percentage would be accurate if they did. She was pleasant though, so that''s nice. Didn't buy any tickets, mind.
15:19 Did some filing. It's all go here.
15:29 "Can't help you with that, I'm afraid. I can give you the number for Stage Door. No, I understand that. Yes, that is unfortunate. This is still nothing I can help with. I can still give you the number for Stage Door". And repeat.
15:46 We've had a genuinely almost busy 20 minutes. Which is to say we've had about 5 calls between us. I think I need to lie down.
15:48 Face to face communication with an outsider. Yes, the youth theatre are rehearsing across the road. You're welcome. It's been a pleasure. Come again.
15:56 A woman enters, and proceeds directly to the leaflet stands. A nervous tension settles within the box office. Youtube is silenced. She may be a customer. She may be a seagull. We may never kn....oh, wait, she's just a woman looking to get out of the rain. Not a seagull. I repeat, not a seagull.
15:57 Probably not a seagull.
15:59 High point of the day- a dog has entered the foyer. She is cute, even if she is a poodle. Poodles are famously evil. A middle-aged lady is speaking to her in tongues, as another lady (Friend? Enemy?) mimics the dog.
16:04 A child nearby is masking his boredom through fart-trumpeting with his stupid little mouth. His mother has abandoned him. Good for her.
16:25 Is that SuBo outside!?
16:30 Should I grow mutton chops?
16:43 Maybe phones don't actually ring. Maybe customers don't actually exist. Maybe I don't actually exist. DO I REALLY EXIST!?
16:46 There's an old lady outside with the legs of a teenager. I mean, she's got the tiny, frail bird body of an elderly woman, complete with one of those heads that looks like it belongs to a novelty bobblehead toy sitting on someone's desk somewhere nodding at them as they relay another tale of how Margaret doesn't really understand them or their love of model World War II planes. Dude, Margaret doesn't love you anymore. She loves Tom. They've been at it for months. She resents you. You and that stupid vasectomy you had. Margaret wants a fucking family, Gerald! Anyway, this old dame. Her legs are like twice as long as her torso, and rippling with youthful muscle and sheen. It's quite disconcerting. I need to stop staring.
16:54 The home stretch. We can almost taste freedom. That's why the final 5 minutes of the day are so dangerous. You're nearly safe, but you know that, statistically speaking this is the time you are most likely to get a really difficult and annoyingly convoluted call to deal with*.
*citation needed
16:56 Checked in with Flounder. She hit her head against an open cabinet, and tripped over a ladder, but she's alive.
17:00 Slide my chair on over to the computer that controls our phone system, pray the floppy disk drive doesn't crash and shut it down. Home time! And tomorrow, we do it all over again.
Time killed mostly with: Reading football transfer gossip.
Total ticket sales
Cinderella: 4
Flounder: 2
Deebs: 1
Pocahontas: 1
DAY 1
09:39 Starting off on the right foot this week. Made it in time to use the computer that works. Boomtown!
10:00 The phones are on, the "closed" signs are down and we are all set for a big day at box office.
11:14 We just checked the phones to make sure they're working. They are. Still no calls.
11:23 RIIIING! Phone call! It's an internal call from the offices across the road. Apparently I'm to "Ask if that's done it". Done what? "She'll know". Well that was cryptic and helpful. Thank you.
11:28 We have a walk-in. Just about. Old lady with a walking frame wants two tickets for "the first show". She doesn't know what it's called. Bad start, She wants to go "for the Friday". Not getting better. Seats in the "upper grand circle". Shit, this is a terminal case. "For one of the £10 ticket nights". Christ, she's talking about the previews isn't she? She's 2 months early. They don't go on sale til mid-August. She'll be back, unless there's a sudden cold snap.
11:40 A renewal of a season ticket received through the post. They want the same seats as they had last year. They're a month and a half past the point where we'd hold their seats for them. Decent seats too. Centre stalls. HA! Good luck....fuck. How? Lucky bastards.
11:48 Some finance guy came in to the box office to tell me about....some finance stuff. Lots of nodding, and eye contact until he went away. Gave him the phone number of the people who would actually have anything to do with what he may or may not have been talking about. He came back to ask my name. The over-familiarity of it is galling.
12:07 Spoke with colleague about the tatters of her social life. Let's call her Cinderella. Seems she's dating a scarecrow made flesh by the whims of a demented wizard now. Brought to life to serve as his retribution against a world that has dared preach feminism, and who shall pluck out the eyes of all who stand quivering before him. Good for her. He may be the enchanted nightmares of a thousand screaming children, and clearly enjoys disemboweling crows for The Watch, but he does play a mean mandolin.
12:18 An old lady enters the foyer. Time stands still as we pray her vision is based on movement. Alas, no, and she has ruined youtube time in boxo. She rejects me, and chooses Cinderella. It stings. She just wants our brochure. Cinderella tells her where it is, and helpfully points to the location. I parrot Cinderella's words just to feel like I belong. The old lady is confused by rudimentary direction. She is lost now, brochureless and possibly in Narnia.
12:30 LUNCH! Chocolate Buttons and crisps. Healthy as fuck.
13.34 First real customer. She was collecting tickets for our Christmas show, and handed me her confirmation print-out without looking at me. She merely grunted. Her face looked as though I'd just stolen her last Rolo....and had sex with it in front of her. Man, I want more chocolate now.
14:09 The Rain Gods have made their displeasure known. Or is rain the sign of a happy Rain God? Fuckers must either hate or love Scotland so. Watching women in too high heels stumble awkwardly past with jackets over their heads. If your jacket barely reaches the bottom of your neck when placed over your head, it's not a fucking jacket! Still, this probably means there's graduations on next door.
14:16 Human contact from the outside world! A very confused young lady wants to know why she hasn't heard back about front of house recruitment. The painful journey from beginning to end of our conversation tells me she likely has not been hired for reasons of chronic cretenism, but I can't help I'm afraid. Stage Door.
14:25 "Scarecrow don't have no babies to pay for. Least not that I know of.". Oh Cinderella.
14:37 Kind of worried that my other colleague hasn't made a sound all day. Hope she's not dead. Checked with her. She's not dead. Sticking with the Disney theme, she shall be known as Flounder. Flounder's alive, likely dreaming of being Kanye.
14:50 The seagulls are massing outside the glass facade of the box office. They're plotting. If you're unfamiliar with the nature of Edinburgh seagulls, think Hitler with wings. Fuckers are just striving to find a Final Solution for all of us.
14:53 Further seagulls are approaching the original winged Hitlers. Shit's about to go down. I can tell they're not on the same page by the general West Side Story vibes being given off. The interlopers are clicking rhythmically.
14:55 Aladdin has ventured across from the offices to conduct an interview with a soon to arrive cast member from one of our upcoming shows. He comments upon my "famous wit". I've always liked that man. Charming and intuitive. Cinderella disagrees with his statement. Not on the "wit" part though, just the level of notoriety it has attained. The consensus is my delightful humour should be world-renowned by now.
15:06 Aladdin still awaits his interview subject. She is evidently running late. Al has now been gripped by morbid curiosity over what a seagull has dropped outside. The working theory is "some meat". Cinderella's suggestion that the offending "meat" be captured for posterity on Instagram has fallen on deaf ears.
15:11 "This is probably a stupid question....". A solid 40% of calls start with a customer saying that, and a far greater percentage would be accurate if they did. She was pleasant though, so that''s nice. Didn't buy any tickets, mind.
15:19 Did some filing. It's all go here.
15:29 "Can't help you with that, I'm afraid. I can give you the number for Stage Door. No, I understand that. Yes, that is unfortunate. This is still nothing I can help with. I can still give you the number for Stage Door". And repeat.
15:40 "Hi there, this is Andi from [company name]. How are you today?"
"Well, Andi, I'm...."
"That's great. Just so you're aware, our calls may be recorded for training purposes."
"That's great. Just so you're aware, our calls may be recorded for training purposes."
Andi proceeds to not buy tickets.
15:46 We've had a genuinely almost busy 20 minutes. Which is to say we've had about 5 calls between us. I think I need to lie down.
15:48 Face to face communication with an outsider. Yes, the youth theatre are rehearsing across the road. You're welcome. It's been a pleasure. Come again.
15:56 A woman enters, and proceeds directly to the leaflet stands. A nervous tension settles within the box office. Youtube is silenced. She may be a customer. She may be a seagull. We may never kn....oh, wait, she's just a woman looking to get out of the rain. Not a seagull. I repeat, not a seagull.
15:57 Probably not a seagull.
15:59 High point of the day- a dog has entered the foyer. She is cute, even if she is a poodle. Poodles are famously evil. A middle-aged lady is speaking to her in tongues, as another lady (Friend? Enemy?) mimics the dog.
16:04 A child nearby is masking his boredom through fart-trumpeting with his stupid little mouth. His mother has abandoned him. Good for her.
16:25 Is that SuBo outside!?
16:30 Should I grow mutton chops?
16:43 Maybe phones don't actually ring. Maybe customers don't actually exist. Maybe I don't actually exist. DO I REALLY EXIST!?
16:46 There's an old lady outside with the legs of a teenager. I mean, she's got the tiny, frail bird body of an elderly woman, complete with one of those heads that looks like it belongs to a novelty bobblehead toy sitting on someone's desk somewhere nodding at them as they relay another tale of how Margaret doesn't really understand them or their love of model World War II planes. Dude, Margaret doesn't love you anymore. She loves Tom. They've been at it for months. She resents you. You and that stupid vasectomy you had. Margaret wants a fucking family, Gerald! Anyway, this old dame. Her legs are like twice as long as her torso, and rippling with youthful muscle and sheen. It's quite disconcerting. I need to stop staring.
16:54 The home stretch. We can almost taste freedom. That's why the final 5 minutes of the day are so dangerous. You're nearly safe, but you know that, statistically speaking this is the time you are most likely to get a really difficult and annoyingly convoluted call to deal with*.
*citation needed
16:56 Checked in with Flounder. She hit her head against an open cabinet, and tripped over a ladder, but she's alive.
17:00 Slide my chair on over to the computer that controls our phone system, pray the floppy disk drive doesn't crash and shut it down. Home time! And tomorrow, we do it all over again.
Time killed mostly with: Reading football transfer gossip.
Total ticket sales
Cinderella: 4
Flounder: 2
Deebs: 1
Pocahontas: 1
Friday, May 8, 2015
Walls
So, somewhat serious time again. I'm assuming that the majority of you will have read and remembered my post from November. Yeah, that one.
Right off the bat, I'd just like to say thank you to every one of you, and there have been so many, who have asked about my mum in the past six-ish months (Six months? Fuck. Seriously?). I was blown away by the amount of messages I received then, and by all the people asking me about it to this day. It has meant, and continues to mean a whole bunch. Thank you.
If you have no idea what I'm nudging at with any of the above, here is the link to November's post about my mum. It's not a fun read, but worth it if you're going to understand today's update on the situation:
http://fooltide.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/mrs-doyle.html
No point drawing this out any longer than the month or so I've already held off on writing this, so here goes. Where were we?
"I don't know when she might be able to come home."
To put it bluntly, she didn't come home. Deirdre won't be coming home. As before, she's not dead. My dad has, shockingly, taken this quite hard. He has, on more occasions than I can count, mentioned the little absences. It's the weird things you miss. He's done a shoddy job of polishing the table in the sitting room, but there's nobody there to complain about it. It's an odd shaped hole in life, but it's there. Doesn't slow him down. Can't slow him down. Too much to do. He visited her every day, sometimes twice, in Tallaght Hospital.
"It's my wife, and I don't like to abandon her."
Nobody could accuse him of that. He didn't miss a day there, and I'm sure he won't miss a day in Peamount. As of just over a month ago, she has found a more stable bed in a specialist nursing facility there. The care in Tallaght was exemplary, as I trust it shall be in the new place. This is her home now. And she'll never be short of more or less daily visits from her Irish-based children either.
Christmas was fucking hard. Took a few weeks after that damn Wednesday in November for me to get back home. They didn't want me to see her that way; all manner of aggression, and paranoid confusion. She spent those weeks heavily sedated. I spent them drifting through my days in Scotland, with my mind already in Dublin. Still, Miriam kept me distracted as best she could. Then....er....things got worse.
Just under a couple of weeks after my mum was sectioned, Miriam's dad collapsed. I'm not sure what to say, and don't feel it's my place to do so here. I'm glad I met Robert, a genuinely warm-spirited man who just seems to have lived such a full and interesting life. I can only dream of experiencing even half as much. I'm glad I met him, and I'm sorry I didn't have the pleasure of getting to know him better. Everyone in that family has been so strong throughout those days, weeks, and the months that have followed. Orcadians, possibly inbred (I jest), but definitely tough.
From a personal perspective, it fucking sucked to have to decide to fly home to my mum's bedside at the potential expense of going to my girlfriend's dad's funeral....at Christmas. As it happened, I just managed both. Solemn a day as it was in Stirling, there was another wrinkle to it. Within an hour of the funeral, my dad called with the news I'd expected.
The working consensus is that mum had had a stroke in November. That was the catalyst for all that followed. Again, I can't go into too much detail here, but what went down that day is a cavalcade of things far worse than you'd imagine. Far worse than I could even, and I've been told.
One thing I know now is that I really want to thank my brother. What I have learned about the day my mum was taken away (even the part about her faking her death to escape a paramedic, which is hilarious), has led me to the conclusion that he's kind of a hero. So, thanks to you, Greg.
So, she likely had a stroke. And she wasn't going to recover. This was all she'd be. And so it is. Weird to take heart in the knowledge that it's not necessarily hereditary, but take heart I did. And then I returned to the iron-willed mourners in Stirling.
It's strange the things you miss. My mum used to say she never had any trouble with my brother, or my sister. Only with me. Her cheeky fucking son here was the bane of her parenting life it seemed. She often lamented the lack of effort I'd make in school. She knew I could do it with my eyes closed, so why couldn't I stop proving some point to myself and do it with my eyes fucking open for once?
When I first went to visit her in that ward in Tallaght, a nurse asked me if I was "David". Technically, but I'm not about to try to get my mum's head round calling me "Deebs" now, so I went with it.
"She's been calling for you the last few nights. Says you're not doing any work for your exams. Apparently you're nothing but trouble."
Shit, total honest truth time. That made me smile from ear to god damn ear. That, and the two or three times she's got pissed at the vague notion of me in her presence since, was one of the good moments. Of all the things that make you remember a person so fondly, it's weird for it to be her entirely warranted lecturing of me. The fact though, and I'm sorry if this hurts or offends any single member of my family who may read this, is that that isn't my mother. She's Sam Beckett, Quantum Leaping through time in her own life. And oh boy, she ain't got no Al or Ziggy.
She's not present. We get glimpses of her. That's it. We only see echoes of the woman she used to be. She's not there anymore. She's not in that bed-bound woman. It's sad, but it's true to me. No, I don't see the point of buying her a Mother's Day card. She never liked Mother's Day anyway. Most of her "conversations" are non-sequiturs spoken to the wall beside her bed, possibly from the midway point of a real or imagined conversation that took place four or five decades ago. We get the echoes though. Apparently, her son David looks like the me sitting beside her bed. His hair's all fallen out, and it's worse he's getting.
I exist in a book beside her bed. A book that plots out some broad brush strokes of her life. Her and my dad had started writing it in the weeks or months before this all came to a head. They didn't get it finished in time, but it's there, and I have my mostly accurate paragraph of life. It's so that her carers can decipher the former Deirdre Mary Miriam Doyle. I never knew her middle name was Miriam. There's too much I didn't know about her. Too much I never will. How the fuck did she make those cakes!?
I attached a photo of her as a nurse in November's post. My dad had no idea where it came from, how I found it, or where he could find it again. My mum hated photos of her. She told me once that she didn't see the point. Hell, if you're experiencing something, just experience it. Don't waste a memory trying to capture it, instead of living the fucking thing. Fair point to a largely agreeable extent. Yet, where are the pictures now? Where are the memories? I am often accused of being a poser, or a camera whore. Man, I really hate having my picture taken, but I do love that there are pictures out there. I would have loathed to have pictures taken of me wearing the head-brace I sported for some six months in my youth, but I wish I had some now. And I wish, for far different reasons, that the only way to sneak that picture from a shoebox buried in the back of my parent's wardrobe wasn't to surreptitiously photograph it on my crappy camera phone several years ago. And I wish this wasn't the only picture of most of the family together. Sorry bro.
The day I came home with a blue fauxhawk, less than a week before my college graduation, I walked up behind my mum and asked what she thought. She spun around and:
"FUCK!"
She covered her face with her hands and recoiled. I'd Elephant Manned her. Swearing was seldom her style, save for the occasional "gobshite" thrown my way. A few seconds later, she'd summoned enough calm and composure to look at me again.
"I mean....no....fuck!"
She got used to it. She even liked it in time. It was often her way to openly question how the fucking fuck she had birthed such a child. She usually said I was "odd" with just enough delicate intonation to let me know that it at least kept me interesting. Man, she did not get my hats. Or the horrendous shirts.
I came home to see her in March, and stayed long enough to fit in a film festival to keep me distracted. I landed with striped flares in Dublin, to be greeted by my bemusedly smirking dad and niece.
"Why are you wearing pyjamas?"
I heard that exact same bloody "joke" from my brother, sister, brother-in-law, other niece, and my nephew at various points within the next day. My sister-in-law likely would have gotten in on the act too if it hadn't been said in front of her on three separate occasions. When I walked into the ward to see my mum the next afternoon, she said aloud and to nobody in particular:
"That's a lovely dressing gown."
So close. Only echoes.
Still, as I set my top hat to a suitably jaunty angle before heading out for the closing night of that film festival, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself.
She would have fucking hated those shoes.
(Sorry about all the fucking swearing, dad....again)
Right off the bat, I'd just like to say thank you to every one of you, and there have been so many, who have asked about my mum in the past six-ish months (Six months? Fuck. Seriously?). I was blown away by the amount of messages I received then, and by all the people asking me about it to this day. It has meant, and continues to mean a whole bunch. Thank you.
If you have no idea what I'm nudging at with any of the above, here is the link to November's post about my mum. It's not a fun read, but worth it if you're going to understand today's update on the situation:
http://fooltide.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/mrs-doyle.html
No point drawing this out any longer than the month or so I've already held off on writing this, so here goes. Where were we?
"I don't know when she might be able to come home."
To put it bluntly, she didn't come home. Deirdre won't be coming home. As before, she's not dead. My dad has, shockingly, taken this quite hard. He has, on more occasions than I can count, mentioned the little absences. It's the weird things you miss. He's done a shoddy job of polishing the table in the sitting room, but there's nobody there to complain about it. It's an odd shaped hole in life, but it's there. Doesn't slow him down. Can't slow him down. Too much to do. He visited her every day, sometimes twice, in Tallaght Hospital.
"It's my wife, and I don't like to abandon her."
Nobody could accuse him of that. He didn't miss a day there, and I'm sure he won't miss a day in Peamount. As of just over a month ago, she has found a more stable bed in a specialist nursing facility there. The care in Tallaght was exemplary, as I trust it shall be in the new place. This is her home now. And she'll never be short of more or less daily visits from her Irish-based children either.
Christmas was fucking hard. Took a few weeks after that damn Wednesday in November for me to get back home. They didn't want me to see her that way; all manner of aggression, and paranoid confusion. She spent those weeks heavily sedated. I spent them drifting through my days in Scotland, with my mind already in Dublin. Still, Miriam kept me distracted as best she could. Then....er....things got worse.
Just under a couple of weeks after my mum was sectioned, Miriam's dad collapsed. I'm not sure what to say, and don't feel it's my place to do so here. I'm glad I met Robert, a genuinely warm-spirited man who just seems to have lived such a full and interesting life. I can only dream of experiencing even half as much. I'm glad I met him, and I'm sorry I didn't have the pleasure of getting to know him better. Everyone in that family has been so strong throughout those days, weeks, and the months that have followed. Orcadians, possibly inbred (I jest), but definitely tough.
From a personal perspective, it fucking sucked to have to decide to fly home to my mum's bedside at the potential expense of going to my girlfriend's dad's funeral....at Christmas. As it happened, I just managed both. Solemn a day as it was in Stirling, there was another wrinkle to it. Within an hour of the funeral, my dad called with the news I'd expected.
The working consensus is that mum had had a stroke in November. That was the catalyst for all that followed. Again, I can't go into too much detail here, but what went down that day is a cavalcade of things far worse than you'd imagine. Far worse than I could even, and I've been told.
One thing I know now is that I really want to thank my brother. What I have learned about the day my mum was taken away (even the part about her faking her death to escape a paramedic, which is hilarious), has led me to the conclusion that he's kind of a hero. So, thanks to you, Greg.
So, she likely had a stroke. And she wasn't going to recover. This was all she'd be. And so it is. Weird to take heart in the knowledge that it's not necessarily hereditary, but take heart I did. And then I returned to the iron-willed mourners in Stirling.
It's strange the things you miss. My mum used to say she never had any trouble with my brother, or my sister. Only with me. Her cheeky fucking son here was the bane of her parenting life it seemed. She often lamented the lack of effort I'd make in school. She knew I could do it with my eyes closed, so why couldn't I stop proving some point to myself and do it with my eyes fucking open for once?
When I first went to visit her in that ward in Tallaght, a nurse asked me if I was "David". Technically, but I'm not about to try to get my mum's head round calling me "Deebs" now, so I went with it.
"She's been calling for you the last few nights. Says you're not doing any work for your exams. Apparently you're nothing but trouble."
Shit, total honest truth time. That made me smile from ear to god damn ear. That, and the two or three times she's got pissed at the vague notion of me in her presence since, was one of the good moments. Of all the things that make you remember a person so fondly, it's weird for it to be her entirely warranted lecturing of me. The fact though, and I'm sorry if this hurts or offends any single member of my family who may read this, is that that isn't my mother. She's Sam Beckett, Quantum Leaping through time in her own life. And oh boy, she ain't got no Al or Ziggy.
She's not present. We get glimpses of her. That's it. We only see echoes of the woman she used to be. She's not there anymore. She's not in that bed-bound woman. It's sad, but it's true to me. No, I don't see the point of buying her a Mother's Day card. She never liked Mother's Day anyway. Most of her "conversations" are non-sequiturs spoken to the wall beside her bed, possibly from the midway point of a real or imagined conversation that took place four or five decades ago. We get the echoes though. Apparently, her son David looks like the me sitting beside her bed. His hair's all fallen out, and it's worse he's getting.
I exist in a book beside her bed. A book that plots out some broad brush strokes of her life. Her and my dad had started writing it in the weeks or months before this all came to a head. They didn't get it finished in time, but it's there, and I have my mostly accurate paragraph of life. It's so that her carers can decipher the former Deirdre Mary Miriam Doyle. I never knew her middle name was Miriam. There's too much I didn't know about her. Too much I never will. How the fuck did she make those cakes!?
I attached a photo of her as a nurse in November's post. My dad had no idea where it came from, how I found it, or where he could find it again. My mum hated photos of her. She told me once that she didn't see the point. Hell, if you're experiencing something, just experience it. Don't waste a memory trying to capture it, instead of living the fucking thing. Fair point to a largely agreeable extent. Yet, where are the pictures now? Where are the memories? I am often accused of being a poser, or a camera whore. Man, I really hate having my picture taken, but I do love that there are pictures out there. I would have loathed to have pictures taken of me wearing the head-brace I sported for some six months in my youth, but I wish I had some now. And I wish, for far different reasons, that the only way to sneak that picture from a shoebox buried in the back of my parent's wardrobe wasn't to surreptitiously photograph it on my crappy camera phone several years ago. And I wish this wasn't the only picture of most of the family together. Sorry bro.
The day I came home with a blue fauxhawk, less than a week before my college graduation, I walked up behind my mum and asked what she thought. She spun around and:
"FUCK!"
She covered her face with her hands and recoiled. I'd Elephant Manned her. Swearing was seldom her style, save for the occasional "gobshite" thrown my way. A few seconds later, she'd summoned enough calm and composure to look at me again.
"I mean....no....fuck!"
She got used to it. She even liked it in time. It was often her way to openly question how the fucking fuck she had birthed such a child. She usually said I was "odd" with just enough delicate intonation to let me know that it at least kept me interesting. Man, she did not get my hats. Or the horrendous shirts.
I came home to see her in March, and stayed long enough to fit in a film festival to keep me distracted. I landed with striped flares in Dublin, to be greeted by my bemusedly smirking dad and niece.
"Why are you wearing pyjamas?"
I heard that exact same bloody "joke" from my brother, sister, brother-in-law, other niece, and my nephew at various points within the next day. My sister-in-law likely would have gotten in on the act too if it hadn't been said in front of her on three separate occasions. When I walked into the ward to see my mum the next afternoon, she said aloud and to nobody in particular:
"That's a lovely dressing gown."
So close. Only echoes.
Still, as I set my top hat to a suitably jaunty angle before heading out for the closing night of that film festival, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself.
She would have fucking hated those shoes.
(Sorry about all the fucking swearing, dad....again)
Monday, March 2, 2015
An Ode to the Profane.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no more majestic a sound in nature than that of an Irish person saying the word "cunt".
It's been put to me on occasion that some would consider I swear too much. Most recently by my own dad, who told me how much he'd appreciated my post about my mum, but wished I hadn't cursed with quite such frequency.
"I wish you'd cut out the language."
"Sorry, but....fuck no."
And that's not because I don't respect him, or his opinion. It's the beauty of a well-timed, well-earned curse word. There really is nothing like it.
It's poetry. Fucking poetry.
As John Cusack once said in Con Air:
"The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by observing its prisoners." Dostoevsky said that, after doing a little time.'
As I see it, a far better barometer for judging the merits of a society is in their ability to punctuate a mood with properly placed profanity. There's a music to it that people often cannot hear or appreciate. There's such beauty in language that people need to cease restricting themselves to the "nice" words. Why the fuck would you deny yourself the full range of tone across this linguistic xylophone?
There are still rules to be observed in the pursuit of profane perfection. Don't dilute yours words' impact through overuse, or disproportionate anger. Remain in control. Pick your punches and throw out those verbal bombs as and when needed. Some would say that resorting to swearing in an argument means you've already lost. Not so, I would argue, if you are in control of your emotions when so doing. There's not so many more heartstoppingly decisive moments than a calmly, coldly and expertly placed "fuck", "shit", or "cunt-ficus".
I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been born, bred and branded in and by my country of Ireland. And my dearest Dublin has given me the ability to vocalise myself in ways that so many other folk could only dream of. Most notably, we are masters of industrial language. Even more fortunate have I been to have lived these last few years in Scotland, where our Celtic brethren continue to display similar (if moderately lesser) eloquence and mastery of the casual fuck you. We are nations blessed by the Gods of Motherfucking Malediction.
We have no equals in expletives, and the only way I will utter a retraction for calling you a cunt is if you can clearly and concisely explain to me how you are not, in fact, a cunt. Consider the following handy guide:
A customer comes into your place of work, and speaks to you as though you're something they've just stepped on when being led through their estate by the stable boy? Cunt's a cunt.
Your team pumps £150m into building a team of attacking all-stars who play like decrepit octogenarians? What the fucking fuck?
Your mother no longer recognises you or the rest of your family owing to a terrible and terrifying medical condition? Fucked.
You're navigating your living room in absolute darkness and your toe is blindsided by a cowardly coffee table with malicious intentions for your ability to walk? Motherfucking table's a piece of fucking shit.
You have now, or have previously worked in a location that's so disastrously mishandled and poorly run by a shower of cretins with a penchant for bullying your department that you face a daily struggle to fathom their ineptitude? Arseholes so adept at turning the venue into the RMS fucking Titanic that their particular skill-set could sink on shitting land.
Blessed are the blue.
In short, I'm sorry dad, but I remain voracious in use of my vocabulary of vulgarity. And some fucking situations just fucking call for it.
It's been put to me on occasion that some would consider I swear too much. Most recently by my own dad, who told me how much he'd appreciated my post about my mum, but wished I hadn't cursed with quite such frequency.
"I wish you'd cut out the language."
"Sorry, but....fuck no."
And that's not because I don't respect him, or his opinion. It's the beauty of a well-timed, well-earned curse word. There really is nothing like it.
It's poetry. Fucking poetry.
As John Cusack once said in Con Air:
"The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by observing its prisoners." Dostoevsky said that, after doing a little time.'
As I see it, a far better barometer for judging the merits of a society is in their ability to punctuate a mood with properly placed profanity. There's a music to it that people often cannot hear or appreciate. There's such beauty in language that people need to cease restricting themselves to the "nice" words. Why the fuck would you deny yourself the full range of tone across this linguistic xylophone?
There are still rules to be observed in the pursuit of profane perfection. Don't dilute yours words' impact through overuse, or disproportionate anger. Remain in control. Pick your punches and throw out those verbal bombs as and when needed. Some would say that resorting to swearing in an argument means you've already lost. Not so, I would argue, if you are in control of your emotions when so doing. There's not so many more heartstoppingly decisive moments than a calmly, coldly and expertly placed "fuck", "shit", or "cunt-ficus".
I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been born, bred and branded in and by my country of Ireland. And my dearest Dublin has given me the ability to vocalise myself in ways that so many other folk could only dream of. Most notably, we are masters of industrial language. Even more fortunate have I been to have lived these last few years in Scotland, where our Celtic brethren continue to display similar (if moderately lesser) eloquence and mastery of the casual fuck you. We are nations blessed by the Gods of Motherfucking Malediction.
We have no equals in expletives, and the only way I will utter a retraction for calling you a cunt is if you can clearly and concisely explain to me how you are not, in fact, a cunt. Consider the following handy guide:
A customer comes into your place of work, and speaks to you as though you're something they've just stepped on when being led through their estate by the stable boy? Cunt's a cunt.
Your team pumps £150m into building a team of attacking all-stars who play like decrepit octogenarians? What the fucking fuck?
Your mother no longer recognises you or the rest of your family owing to a terrible and terrifying medical condition? Fucked.
You're navigating your living room in absolute darkness and your toe is blindsided by a cowardly coffee table with malicious intentions for your ability to walk? Motherfucking table's a piece of fucking shit.
You have now, or have previously worked in a location that's so disastrously mishandled and poorly run by a shower of cretins with a penchant for bullying your department that you face a daily struggle to fathom their ineptitude? Arseholes so adept at turning the venue into the RMS fucking Titanic that their particular skill-set could sink on shitting land.
Blessed are the blue.
In short, I'm sorry dad, but I remain voracious in use of my vocabulary of vulgarity. And some fucking situations just fucking call for it.
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