the mysterious world of work

Trying to explain my job to people is pointless – it's totally incomprehensible. But this is probably true of a lot of people's jobs. Part of mine is to monitor stock levels of items held in our distribution hub. Occasionally the staff there do what they call a 'physical stock check', as a result of which the stock level of a particular item may suddenly change as they discover that they have more or less of this thing than they thought they had. Sometimes the stock level will go from, say, 4 to -2. This fazed me when I first encountered it: they physically checked the stock and discovered they had -2 of something? What kind of scientific laws operated in their warehouse?

But then I realised that this only meant that they had two orders for this item that they were unable to fulfil, though not before I'd made an idiot of myself expressing my incredulity. Every job has its quirks and mysteries though – it's part of what makes life worthwhile. One of my job's quirks is the way names are reversed on e-mail accounts, so that the surname precedes the first name. This can have amusing effects, especially if your name is, say, Small or Strange. My favourite incidence of this concerns one of the facilities guys whose name is Jim Henry or - when he sends an e-mail - Henry James. I open an e-mail from him anticipating a long elegantly-phrased literary masterpiece, and get what might, at best, be considered a late minor addition to the canon: a terse announcement that the toilets have been fixed.

Nevertheless, the toilets have been fixed. I no longer have to trek halfway around the building in order to relieve myself. I should have included this when asked to name my 'highs and lows' of the working year in my performance review. Instead, struggling to describe a year with no peaks and troughs, I said that I had been 'flatlining': which may not have given the impression I had intended.

We have not moved yet, so it is still possible to walk to work, even from my Mum's house in Ingrave. Of late this has presented challenges, however, as the rape surrounding the path across the fields has closed in on it, so that ideally you need a machete to hack through it. But I can hardly emerge into suburbia at the other end of the path brandishing a machete: I'd be shot on sight. Suppose I might get away with it in Basildon though.