Bill and Ben the Flowerpot men.......
It can be a bit of an "out of sight, out
of mind mentality back at "HQ" as far as we're concerned down here in 'darkest
Cornwall' (where fingers are webbed and welly boots are
high-fashion...)....
...well, Bill and Ron actually... the corporate
men..... A bit of background might be in order - I work at an off-site location
for a UK "arm" of a large American corporation. It can be a bit of an "out of
sight, out of mind mentality back at "HQ" as far as we're concerned down here in
'darkest Cornwall' (where fingers are webbed and welly boots are
high-fashion...) so every so often the "people in charge", Bill and Ron, pay a
visit to make sure we're behaving ourselves down here.... It's a chance I
suppose for the particularly career-minded to use it as an opportunity to, umm,
"gain some favour" but unfortunately I'm not your average employee and while I
do a good (nay, great and excellent!) job my work/life balance has a definite
tilt towards the right and I'm not very good at fitting the corporate mould. A
fact that in the past has caused a little friction between me and my then
American boss... who I have to say probably had the company logo tattooed across
his backside, though of course I never went looking. I would have asked his wife
- but she worked for the company too (gawd, it's all beginning to sound a
trifle incestuous!).
I'd better leave
this topic before someone sees it and I get into trouble (Bill and Ron are
actually really nice guys...) so instead I'll dust off my soapbox for my latest
rant at people and society in general....!
It
begins with a loaf of bread, not any old loaf but a loaf of Tesco's "Finest
Rustic wholegrain", but not my loaf (I prefer to bake my own these days). I'll
use it to illustrate my point... people are so bloody wasteful. It happens
everyday in the little kitchen in the office (there's no canteen on site, well
not one you'd use anyway)... morning, "typical bloke", henceforth known as TB,
brings in stuff for lunch including said loaf. At lunchtime two slices are
excised from the loaf and the rest put to one side. Next day the scenario is
repeated... the 90%-whole loaf from the previous day is still to one side but
falls one place to the back of the "queue" of unused loaves... and there it
moulders until it's either, well, mouldy or rock-hard at which point it might
get thrown out if it hasn't got pushed so far back it's hard to see in a dark
cupboard corner. Being sensible... so wasteful... I'm in danger of starting to
sound like my dad, his favourite phrase wheeled out nearly every dinner time
when I was child..."no waste, starving millions, enough to feed an Indian family
for a week that is"... At the time it was irritating but it irrevocably shaped
the way I live my life... i.e don't be wasteful and keep a small environmental
footprint etc etc.
I guess people will
never change and I'll go on swiping day old bread to freeze and use for toast,
bread and butter pudding and feeding the
birds.....!
Enough, sorry for not being
on much recently, other things in the works. Tomorrow I'm off to sunny Spain
(well, rainy Spain according to the forecast) with my bike for 4 days
R,E,R&R (riding, eating, rest & relaxation). I do this every year about
now, when the dark, cold, damp English winter is getting me down. It doesn't
always work out though, last year I merely exchanged it for a slightly less dark
damp, cold and snowy Spanish spring!
Posted: Wed - February 22, 2006 at 08:40 PM