Sexland

At work, Jeremy Vine was in Iceland; not the shop, the country. Contrary to expectations, Iceland sounds rather rude. Even when they (inevitably) started talking about volcanoes, it sounded unpleasantly biological, what with all the references to 'viscous ooze', 'wind problems' and 'big ones erupting so close together.' Or maybe it's just me: in a meeting on Wednesday I nearly collapsed into giggles when one colleague claimed to have 'front-loaded' another.

Iceland have banned lap dancing. The general view in the office was that they probably don't need sex clubs, as they no doubt get their rocks off by frolicking in the hot springs. There was some discussion about how the sex industry demeans those who work in it. I pointed out that we in admin are not that much better off, although admittedly we are not called upon to fire ping pong balls from our nether regions. Not yet anyway.

Carol said that she had seen this act in Thailand, and Lorraine picked up on it as a classic example of women being treated as objects. I wasn't so sure - surely the object in this case is the ping pong ball. I didn't mention my own experience on Grant's stag do in Amsterdam, during which I seem to recall actually catching something which had been propelled through the air in this fashion. I can't quite remember what it was, but it wasn't a ping pong ball. A cricket ball? Surely not a basketball? I'll have to consult my notes. If they aren't too smudged.

would you like a new kidney with that?

So I continue with my customer service qualification. This is the sort of course that sometimes feels like it's making you stupider rather than teaching you things. You are asked to cite instances in which you have communicated with people. 'Did you use words? What words did you use?' I'm making that last bit up, but you get the idea. It's like being asked to describe how you got out of bed that morning.

Although, when we attempted this in the office, we quickly ran into difficulties.

The one big problem that hangs over us still is the 'observation', meaning that our assessors have to 'sit in' and watch us using our customer service skills. This is fine in more 'hands-on' parts of the organisation, where you are no doubt continually hoping that people 'enjoy their liver' and telling them to 'have a nice bleed'. However, our job isn't a full-on customer service job - more a question of answering the occasional phone-call or e-mail - and this presents problems. The assessor may sit, and sit, and nothing will happen. She might have to watch us doing the written part of our customer service qualification.

In order to avoid this, there seems to be a need for some element of performance. So people are being recruited to ring in from an office down the corridor, to make enquiries about things. One member of staff has volunteered to wander in and out of the office in a variety of disguises. Getting carried away, I have agreed to write a script. There will be people falling out of cupboards. There will be goats and chickens running around.

It will be a bit like a farce; which some would say is fitting.

Sex Crimes In The Old Post Office, and other stories

Listening to Radio 2 at work, I was amused to hear that a school were asking their pupils to wear 'baggy clothes' in order to discourage paedophiles. Blimey, why not just disfigure kids if they are so dangerously sexy? Burn their faces off!

Surprisingly, nobody rang in to Vanessa Feltz to make this suggestion. The school were worried, it transpired, about a 'known paedophile', who was said to be 'operating from his home' in the area. Operating from his home? They make paedophilia sound like a full-time job, instead of - as I'd always imagined - a hobby. Perhaps he should have rented an office. Been 'transparent'.

Anyway, the upshot was, as one caller made plain, that baggy clothes are no deterrent to paedophiles. Apparently, they have x-ray eyes.

In this context, I note that Brentwood is slightly at odds with the Zeitgeist. While the rest of the nation considers forcing kids into burkhas, Brentwood now has a beauty salon for children, called Trendy Monkeys. The owner is accused of furthering the 'sexualisation of children', but she maintains that she is only allowing them to be 'princesses'. Fair enough - I'm not convinced that 'beauty' has anything to do with sex anyway, and people who complain that kids nowadays 'don't have a childhood' should probably realise that they still do, it's just different. Once upon a time, losing the stabilisers on your bicycle was a landmark childhood experience - now, it's your first botox injection. It's called progress, folks.

I do hope that the owner of Trendy Monkeys will persist, and realise that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Soon, I hope to see them offering boob jobs to the under-fives and discounts on 'full sexualisation'. And then at last the time will be right for Ross to open his much-anticipated new club, Sexcrimes, in the old Post Office. He's a Tory, so they're bound to let it through.

it's a lot like life

At work some materials being returned to our distribution hub had turned up with some unanticipated T-shirts and fleeces among them. When I informed my colleagues of this, Lorraine thought that I said, not 'fleeces', but 'faeces'. Not that she batted an eyelid: nothing surprises us. It was only a question of whether to assign the unauthorised excrement a stock code.

People think we have a cushy life in the public sector, but it isn't so. Only the other day, the soap dispenser in the Gents went AWOL. We were left with a bag of 'Unperfumed Antibacterial Liquid Soap' sagging by the side of the sink like a mollusc prised from its shell. You had to squeeze its little snout to get the gel out. By the time you'd done that, the water from the tap was usually too hot to put your hand in. It gets hot fast, that water.

And so I make my dissatisfied way back up the corridor, squeaking. That's my shoes, by the way - I got some new ones recently, and they shocked me by the noise they make against the floor of that corridor in particular. It's not just squeaky, it's sort of squelchy too. It sounds like Donald Duck coming up the corridor, ranting. There is a rumour going round that HR have forced me to wear these to stop me sneaking up on people - a slightly less humiliating alternative to bells.

It was I who started the rumour, which won't stop me reporting it to HR as part of an entrenched 'culture of bullying' in the workplace. Soon, everyone else will be dismissed and I, laughing and quacking madly, will be King of the Office!

I return to my desk, where I am once again aware of Norris eyeing me sceptically at the corner of my eye, from my Coronation Street mug. I'm sure that's having a negative effect on my performance...