copper blues
How long will I have my job? So many threats seem to be looming that trying to guess what will happen is like trying to guess how the world will end. Will it be a fireball from the sky or a plague of mutated frogs escaped from a lab? It's anyone's guess. For example, the company that now does all the print work for the NHS is reaching out to us to take some of our 'less demanding' jobs off our hands. Unfortunately, the less demanding jobs are just the kind of jobs I do. Why can't they do the more demanding ones? They are, after all, more demanding. Well I shouldn't worry, because soon enough, I fear, they will be doing the more demanding jobs too, as well as all the moderately demanding ones, leaving us with nothing to do at all. And no chair or desk either.
The ongoing relocation of our office is still ongoing. Obviously they haven't found anywhere scummy enough yet. Last week they were 'testing the generator', a process which involves clouds of noxious fumes being released into the car park, fumes which seem to reach us even through firmly closed windows. The rumour soon started to circulate that we were being gassed - someone up top having realised that dead people are easier to relocate than living ones. The group of workmen outside kept looking up at the office window as if to check that signs of life (never very apparent at the best of times) had finally ceased. They were wearing ear defenders, which seemed less likely to protect them from the effects of poison gas than, say, gas masks - but that is exactly the kind of institutional fuck-up that we have come to expect.
The gas proved innocuous. Green flakes of copper have been appearing in the tea, however. On first noticing these at the bottom of my mug, I had simply assumed that one of my workmates was trying to poison me. I've been there long enough now. However, everybody seems to be affected. I read a list of the symptoms of copper poisoning from the internet - nausea, headaches, paranoid schizophrenia - and everyone nodded gloomily in recognition. But then someone pointed out that copper bracelets are considered to be good for rheumatism, and the subject was dismissed.
I went back to looking at the BBC Health News. Breakfast Skippers 'Seek Out Fat' said one headline. This means simply that people who do not eat breakfast tend to eat more later in the day, but that was not immediately apparent to me from the headline, which instead brought to mind images of buccaneers sailing the seven seas on big plates of bacon and eggs and shouting 'Fat ahoy!' when they spy a glistening iceberg of lard in the distance. Did they intend me to think that?, I wonder. Or is it the copper getting to my brain?
The ongoing relocation of our office is still ongoing. Obviously they haven't found anywhere scummy enough yet. Last week they were 'testing the generator', a process which involves clouds of noxious fumes being released into the car park, fumes which seem to reach us even through firmly closed windows. The rumour soon started to circulate that we were being gassed - someone up top having realised that dead people are easier to relocate than living ones. The group of workmen outside kept looking up at the office window as if to check that signs of life (never very apparent at the best of times) had finally ceased. They were wearing ear defenders, which seemed less likely to protect them from the effects of poison gas than, say, gas masks - but that is exactly the kind of institutional fuck-up that we have come to expect.
The gas proved innocuous. Green flakes of copper have been appearing in the tea, however. On first noticing these at the bottom of my mug, I had simply assumed that one of my workmates was trying to poison me. I've been there long enough now. However, everybody seems to be affected. I read a list of the symptoms of copper poisoning from the internet - nausea, headaches, paranoid schizophrenia - and everyone nodded gloomily in recognition. But then someone pointed out that copper bracelets are considered to be good for rheumatism, and the subject was dismissed.
I went back to looking at the BBC Health News. Breakfast Skippers 'Seek Out Fat' said one headline. This means simply that people who do not eat breakfast tend to eat more later in the day, but that was not immediately apparent to me from the headline, which instead brought to mind images of buccaneers sailing the seven seas on big plates of bacon and eggs and shouting 'Fat ahoy!' when they spy a glistening iceberg of lard in the distance. Did they intend me to think that?, I wonder. Or is it the copper getting to my brain?
posted by martin at 1:09 PM
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