Gift ideas for the five people who work in everyone’s office

I work in an office now. I am an office worker. I’m not sure how it happened, but the other day I found myself annoyed at someone for hoarding staples and it dawned on me then, as she counted out fourteen staples and handed them to me, that I work in an office now. I am an office worker.

Whip-rounds are an integral part of working in an office, I have noticed. They happen all of the fucking time and even though Sue says not to worry about how much you put in and that obviously, she’ll put in a bit more because she’s close with Sally but that it really doesn’t matter how much everyone else puts in and that a bit of change is fine, the rest of your life in that office will be determined based on how you deal with that big blue envelope being placed on your desk. In general, I’ve found that the only change you should use is pound coins and fifty pence pieces. Twenties at a push. If you put in a fiver, Sue will remember and your present when you age/get married/have a baby/still work there at Christmas/leave will be good.

Of course, the annoying thing about a whip-round is that no one but Sue has a say in what the present is, so it’s always rubbish.

Well, Sue, you can fucking do one.

I’ve spent forty minutes coming up with a list of possible presents for the five people that work in every office ever and each gift is from Ali Baba, so it’s guaranteed to be much more fun, high quality and down-right useful than the set of decorative measuring spoons that you bought from TK Maxx on your lunch break. It is as follows-

For the colleague who’s busier than you
By taking a job in an office, you are automatically entering yourself into a competition with the rather catchy title of ‘Who’s the most busy’. I did not know this. I was like Harry Potter in the Goblet of Fire when his name gets spat out by that cup (also known at the Goblet of Fire, I believe), except with better hair and, you know, not a smug little prick. I naively assumed that there would be weeks when I would be busy and weeks when I wouldn’t be that busy and that would be ok, but it’s not – it’s not ok at all. Now, I have weeks when I’m busy and weeks when I have to pretend to be busy and am constantly shown up by this colleague.

They’ll ask you what you did last night, just so that they can respond with “Oh, I’d love to go to the cinema/go to Jamie’s Italian/read a book/have a bath, but I don’t have the time, I’m too busy.”

Next time they reach a milestone in their working life, throw this inflatable laptop float at their head, but wrapped, so that it’s a bit like a present and not a weapon.

Now they can have a bath and be busy. They’ll either get the company laptop wet (they don’t have the time to get their own fixed) and have to explain themselves to the boss or, alternatively, they’ll electrocute themselves. 

For the colleague who ruins every group meal
I’m not going to go into detail here, because we all know who I’m talking about. They’re the person who snaps at the bill like a hungry fucking hippo and says “Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got a calculator on my phone!” like that hasn’t been a basic function on a mobile phone since 199-bloody-8.

Get them an A3 sized red calculator. Not the weirdest gift, sure, and you definitely don’t have to buy it from Ali Baba, but if this doesn’t make them realise how ridiculous they’re being by trying to work out the individual price of a sharing platter (“Well, I only had a couple of olives, so that’s like, what? £1.20? Didn’t you have one of the mozzarella sticks, though?”) then nothing will. Nothing.

For the colleague who likes expensive stuff
This week I heard The Colleague Who Likes Expensive Stuff in my office say, when asked what the time was, “Well, this Rolex says it’s 11:40”, rolling his arm up from under the table and holding it firmly beneath his nose like he was in a Steps video.

The only scenario that permits a person to say “This Rolex says” is if they’re doing a Leonardo Dicaprio in those fucking Tag Hueur ads and are actually wearing two Rolexes at once, and need to specify which Rolex they’re looking at.

The thing with The Colleague Who Likes Expensive Stuff is, the stuff is never as expensive as it should be. The sunglasses are always Giovanni Almalfi, or whatever, and the Rolex makes the same noise as a cartoon bomb.

So, buy them an iWatch from Ali Baba. Yes, the iWatch isn’t out yet, but they won’t know that.

For the colleague who’s not funny
They send round Buzzfeed articles about offices on a group email, oblivious to the fact that everyone else just Whatsapps each other because you all exchanged numbers ages ago. They make you crowd around their computer to watch a 3 minute clip of a goat on a see-saw and make jokes about self-service checkouts.

It’s hard to buy a ‘joke’ present for this person, because your idea of a joke is not their idea of a joke. You have to go basic, and what’s more basic than a little figurine (think those Power Pod Micro Star things from the nineties) depicting the act of defecation? A caganer, as they are known within Catalonian culture, is that; it’s the shitting figurine thing, and there are, er, a shit tonne of them on Ali Baba.

Pretty much all political figures are covered, so if your colleague knows who Angela Merkel is, which they won’t, then they can have a figure of her shitting sitting on their desk. There’s also one of Spiderman, although the figure implies that the spidey-suit is a two piece, when I’ve always been under the impression that it was an all-in-one; a body-stocking, if you will. I’d always taken comfort in the fact that, after gettin’ the bad guys, Peter Parker had to peel the whole thing off, right down to the knee, to go to the loo, sitting their shivering a bit in the cold, like girls do every single time we wear a sodding playsuit.

There’s also one of David Guetta.

For Julie
Julie brings an insipid looking salad everyday in a Tupperware box, but you found half eaten Curly Wurly’s  in her top desk drawer when you were looking for staples.

Julie brings her Tupperware into work in a Little Brown Bag from Macy’s, or one of those bag shops that pops up in your local shopping center and is gone by the end of the week.

Julie ‘s glasses case is leopard print, with little handles, so that it looks like a handbag.

Julie’s had a go at nail art.

Julie wants to have a nail art night at her house – girls only!

Julie‘s Swarovski covered phone sits in a little Samsung-sized deck chair on her desk and plays Fergie’s Big Girls Don’t Cry whenever anyone rings her.

What. To get. Julie.

How about a little car for the Muller Light that she brings in for breakfast every morning?

“And so then they slid the camera up there…”

“And so then they slid the camera up there…”

I closed my notebook and clicked my pen back inside itself. I wasn’t going to be taking any notes in this meeting.

“It was about the size of a pen…”

I placed my pen quietly down on the table and looked at the clock. I had a deadline to meet in three hours and I was listening to a middle aged man describe having a camera pushed up his penis.

He wasn’t even being funny about it. I mean, there’s loads of scope to be funny with hospital stories, isn’t there? Especially if they involve genitalia. If you’re really struggling, go for the classic – “He asked me to drop my trousers. Then, the doctor walked in!” IT WAS THE CLEANER.THE CLEANER ASKED HIM TO DROP HIS TROUSERS. The joke has been made, we’ve all a polite little laugh and now we can get on with talking about literally anything else that has ever happened in the world at all.

So, as I listened to the Cystoscopy Chronicles and practiced my “I’m not thinking about your penis being kebab-ed by a camera” face, I began to think about what would happen if the situation were reversed – if I was to open a meeting with an over-rehearsed anecdote about an intimate medical procedure.

“Before we get into things, I want to talk about something that happened to me last week. Stick with me, it’s relevant, I promise.  So, I was having my smear test, right…”

Or

“Right, I just want to kick off this meeting with something that I think is really going to put things in perspective and have a huge impact on the results of this discussion – my period is, like, super heavy right now. I mean, really, I’m scared to move…”

I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but I’m definitely in the eighties when I say that someone, most likely the guy with penis problems, would have repeatedly spritzed me with water and put me outside, before vomiting down his shirt.

I think it’s widely acknowledged that men’s bodies have to be funny and women’s bodies have to be sexy. If it’s not then please, let’s all acknowledge it now so that it becomes, er, wide.

Women’s bodies have to be sexy - they cannot be gross. I mean, obviously, they can and often are, take it from someone who has one, but that grossness is supposed to be contained and never spoken of, let alone used as an opener to an inconveniently timed meeting. Weird blue alien blood is used in tampon adverts, because red liquid would make people want to press their thumbs into their own eye sockets, but I’m having to listen to a guy tell me about the stretching feeling he felt when a camera got pushed into the end of his dick? At work? I have to say ‘smear test’ on an in-breath, or with a comically exaggerated mime, when discussing my nerves with a girlfriend in a coffee shop, so as not to put someone off their poorly filled panini, but graphic descriptions of the end of this guy’s knob is judged as an appropriate…anything? If my body is anything other than small and quiet and contained then it’s going to make everyone uncomfortable. Much more uncomfortable than whatever was happening in this meeting.

Now, I’m not getting all down on the fellas, here. It must be hard having to accept that your body is, usually, nothing more than a comedic prop. I’m sure it’s hard when you want to be all sexy and stuff, and is even harder when you’re worried that something is wrong with it, something that could actually kill you dead. 

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been privy to numerous discussions in which men have recounted somewhat personal medical procedures, one of which was my own grandfather. Prostate examinations, vasectomies, I’ve heard it all (two, I’ve heard about those two things) and the man telling them always peppers the story with unimaginative, thin jokes. I don’t blame them for trying to be funny, I mean, if you can’t laugh at a stranger putting two of his fingers up your bum then when can you? I also don’t blame them for failing to be funny, I mean, if you can’t feel a little off your game when you’re going through invasive tests to see whether there is a tumour is in your body then when can you?

So, in short, it’s a bit shit for all of us. We’re all gross and we can all be nervous about uncomfortable medical procedures. And, in the time it took me to think about all of this and come up with pretty much no conclusion, the camera had still not been removed. He was still going. He was still going on with the story.

What to do when everyone tells you that your hometown is shit

I think Rightmove is trying to kill me.

I don’t know, maybe I’m being paranoid, I just really get the feeling that someone there wants me dead.

I’m currently flat hunting, and by flat hunting I mean that I spend my lunch breaks wearily trawling through Rightmove, bookmarking the same flats that I bookmarked yesterday. However, it seems that no matter what area of Birmingham I type in, no matter what postcode I’m seeking, Rightmove shows me a perfectly furnished, perfectly priced flat in Ladywood.

For those who don’t know, Ladywood is an inner-city area in Birmingham. It featured in Benefits Street earlier in the year, not long ago held the title for the highest unemployment rate in the UK and is somewhere that you could definitely get a gun if you wanted to get a gun. It regularly pops up in Bravo documentaries about gangs and I would last approximately three weeks if I lived there. Maybe four, if I got a gun.

In short, it’s not a particularly nice place to live. However, would I say that to someone who lived there? No. No, I would not.

That’s not because they’re all drug-dealing gun toting bad eggs, though. They’re not. I wouldn’t say it because I’m not a dick.

Lot’s of people are dicks, though and if you come from somewhere that’s not as nice as most parts of the south of England, then people will tell you that where you come from is a shithole. If they’re feeling tactful, they’ll pull a face. It’s basically a shithole or face situation.

I’m not sure when it became ok to take the piss out of where someone lives to their face. Personally, I blame panel shows. Seriously, watch Dave and take a drink every time Jimmy Carr takes the piss out of Wolverhampton, or Slough, or somewhere that isn’t the Home Counties. You’ll be smashed by the time they’ve stretched a 25 minute show into a 40 minute show.

The way I see it, where you live is like your sibling, or a grossly misjudged haircut – you can say whatever you like about it (or them, depending on how good your relationship with your sibling is), but everyone else has to stay quiet or else you’ll punch them.

Punching people ain’t cool though, so here are three tips to stop you from chinning the person who started having a whip round the second they found out you weren’t from London.

1. Accept that they will do the accent.
Seriously, make peace with it, because it’s like a fucking reflex for some people. I went to Sussex University, so I spent three years listening to kids from Watford try and do a Brummie accent. Some sounded Liverpudlian, some sounded Geordie and others sounded like they’d had a stroke. The most effective response? A patronising smile, with a head tilt thrown in for good measure.

2. Don’t bother trying to defend where you’re from.
Last year, my local newsagents had a sign in the window advertising half price ‘raping paper’, I’m pretty sure that if I ever sat in a café and tried to read a book I would be burned as a witch and a local pub has just started advertising it’s new pulled pork burger – that’s a little summary of Kingswinford, the town I live in. It’s where the King kept his pigs, according to one of my primary school teachers. I’m pretty sure this is total bullshit because surely, as the king, wouldn’t you keep your pigs close to where you live, just incase you wanted to see them or count them or roast them and eat them and stuff? And, as far as I know, no kings have ever lived here. The place my family calls home was once judged as fit for pigs to live in, so yeah, you could say where I live is a bit shit.
It’s also not that bad though. There is some pretty countryside near by, two branches of Five Guys have opened and Birmingham has some great pubs, so things are getting better all the time.
Would I launch into a passionate defense of all that the West Midlands has to offer, though? Draw a little map on the back of a napkin for the unimpressed North Londoner who asked whether you ‘can even get Tapas in Birmingham’?
Would I fuck. I mean, I’m not asking them to produce an off the cuff Zagat guide to Kent, so I sure as hell wouldn’t do the same.

3. Say this to them, in your head.
You know what? We can’t all live in London. It’s expensive and far away from our ill grandparents and there are too many bus numbers.  Other places that aren’t London are ok, too, for now. And you, you’re twenty-fucking-two; you didn’t strive to get a mortgage on a gorgeous little house in Tunbridge Wells, your parents did. You got lucky, so fucking shut up. Sometimes people just have to live somewhere, build a life there and be fine with it.
But remember, you say that in your head.

Maybe I’ll be in London in five years time, maybe I’ll be in Ladywood or maybe I’ll be somewhere in between. Wherever I am, though, when we get pulled into a conversation fuelled only by small talk, just promise me one thing. When I tell you where I live, promise that you’ll greet the revelation in exactly the same way that I greet yours - with complete nonchalance.

On bums - It's not in your ass, it's in your mind.

This week, I’ve been thinking about my arse, mainly. Probably thought about yours too, if I’m honest, because bums are, literally, a huge deal right now.

A fortnight ago it was Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda and this week it was Jennifer Lopez’s Booty -  whether it’s an arse rubbing against what I can only assume is the set of ITV’s popular children’s game show Jungle Run or an arse having a shit tonne of lube poured all over it, arses are really around right now.

As someone who got given a regular-sized* portion of ass in the chippy of creation, the recent focus on the rear end could, er, bum me out. We all know that, officially, there can only be one preferred body type for women to adhere to at any one time and at the moment it’s a body that I can only get if I do a Minaj and buy it or do what Iggy Azalea (or Iggy Iggs, as she seems insistent on calling herself right now) says she doesn’t do and rep so many squats that everyday, when I get to the stairs at work, I have to just throw myself down them, as that’s much less painful than walking down them in the grip of DOMS.

Should I be pissed off that Nicki Minaj says “fuck you skinny bitches” whilst in a hot tub? Should I be, er, butt-hurt that Jennifer Lopez  ‘wrote’ a song that, with all of the sophistication of a poem written by an average child in Key Stage Two, tells us how desirable a woman with a huge butt is? Should I start stuffing my jeans with Tena Lady maxi-pads? Should I bake that Camembert with rosemary and eat the whole thing to myself, then stay standing for 7 hours so that the fat goes straight to my ass?

Whilst I am prepared to consider doing the third option, I’m also gonna pass on all three for now, because I’m not a skinny bitch. I’m, to quote 2 Chainz, a big booty hoe. Kinda.

Because, here’s the secret -  you can act like a big booty bitch, or whatever, even if your buns have recently been judged to be insufficiently sized by a passing anaconda.

It’s all in the mind, mate.

I could’ve spent 1000 words defining what makes someone a skinny bitch and what makes someone a big booty bitch, or saying something intelligent about feminism and sexuality and race and stereotypes and stuff, but my mind is too full of ass, so, at risk of sounding like a late night episode of Sesame Street, I’ll just say this – to act like you have a big booty just do whatever you want. Dance how you want, dress how you want, sleep with who you want and say what you want.

Having a big arse is associated with the following character traits, apparently – sexy, powerful, sexual, sassy, highly sexed, intimidating and literally having sex all of the time, butt, obviously, all of these characteristics have fuck all to do with the size of any part of your anatomy. There just there, on the shelf, waiting for you to adopt them.

To me, a skinny bitch is a person who’s wearing an outfit that they’re uncomfortable in, in a place that they’re uncomfortable in, in a mind that they’re uncomfortable in and the only thing that they do feel comfortable about is taking it out on everyone else. So yeah, fuck them.  

Really, the whole thing is a bit like ‘being ballsy’. I do not have actual testicles. When I cross my legs, nothing gets trapped. If you kick me between the legs it will hurt because you’ve kicked me, not because something has just gone back into my body. There have, though, been times in my life when I have acted like I ‘have balls’ – i.e I have been assertive and powerful; all things that are good and are therefore, however problematically, associated with the essence of male that is the gonad, something that I do not ‘technically’ have.

So, if I can act like I have balls, why can’t I act like I have a big ass?

* For reference, my bum is a medium, I would say. You couldn’t rest a pint on it, or park a bike in it, or whatever other everyday tasks people hypothesise about doing to women’s arses over a pint, but I can shut a door by jutting my bum out by the slightest fraction, without the door making any contact with my back, so there – hopefully that gives you some idea of the size of what I’m working with.

Broadsearch - What happened when Arg off TOWIE went missing for a bit.

Arg scrolled through the #dailypussy, blindly feeling inside his Lonsdale satchel for the Pepperami that his mum had packed for the journey.

“Thanks mate!” he called to the driver, throwing a thumbs up as he climbed out of the car and headed towards departures, still scrolling.

Check in desk four, his mum had said as he left the house.

“Desk four desk four desk four deesskk…”he muttered under his breath, as he craned his neck to look towards the other end of the terminal.”..four!”

Arg joined the queue and began scrolling again, favouriting.

“OH MY GOD! It fucking is. I knew it fucking was! Arg! Arg!”

Arg hit the lock button, shoved his phone into his pocket before the girl could see what he was looking at and looked up. She was quite fit. Bit spotty, but great tits.

“Y’alright?” he chuckled.

***
“Fly hiiiiigh and let me go (let me goo-ooo)” Gary Barlow belted out from the diamante encrusted Samsung to an empty kitchen.

Patricia Argent sat bolt up right and looked at the time. It was 6:27.

It was James. Something had happened to James.

Patricia threw the duvet off of her legs and ran down to the kitchen to get her phone, the sudden movement jolting her husband Martin out of a particularly long bout of sleep apnea.

“James! Hello? James? It’s your mum…”

“Patricia, it’s Claire.”

“Oh. Is everything alright?” asked her son’s agent.

“Did James leave on time? Because if he didn’t Patricia, I swear to God... Look, he’s not here and we’re going to miss the flight. It’s embarrassing and, more importantly, it’s unprofessional and if there’s one thing that I’m not, Patricia, it is unprofes-“

“He left hours ago, Claire! I got him up myself. He left!”

***

“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t accept your ticket. It’s for a flight departing from Gatwick. This is Stansted.”

“But my mum said desk four! She checked on the internet. Desk four!”

“Yes, sir, this is desk four, but it’s desk four at Gatwick. Your flight is from Stansted.”

Arg’s mouth opened and closed a few times, no sound coming out. He shook his head, dropped his shoulders, and sloped off out of the queue towards a metal bench by WH Smiths.

“…tit” he heard someone in the queue say.

Arg sank down onto the bench and got his phone out of his pocket. Nothing -  he pressed the home button and got nothing but his own darkened reflection. What the…? Of course, the #dailypussy. He’d left the #dailypussy open.

***
“No, I’m sorry Martin, but I can’t be as calm as you. I can’t sit and eat Weatabix whilst our only child is out there,” Patricia swallowed, “missing!”

“We have three children, Patricia,” Martin said as he wiped milk from his chin.

“I meant son. Our only son is out ther- Yes! Hello? Hello. It’s my son, officer, he’s missing. He’s James Argent, off the telly. He’s missing,” she walked out of the kitchen into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

***
“You’re Argie from Geordie Shore! Eh! Babby! He’s Argie from Geordie Shore!”

Babby stood up, straightening his ‘Can-poon’ t-shirt and knocking the table of half-empty pints slightly as he made his way across Stansted’s Whetherspoons towards Whitey.

“Whitey you fackin’ dick head, it’s Towie he’s from! Ain’t ya? You’re Argie from Towie?” Babby quizzed, throwing his arm heavily around Arg’s shoulders. “Come and have a pint with us, Argie! Get ‘em in, Argie! Come and sit with the lads, mate. We’ll all have a pint and you can tell us about throwin’ won up Gemma!”

The group of men cheered, some of them leaning their chairs back onto two legs and slapping the table.

“Argie’s one of the lads! He’s one of the lads!”

Arg looked down to the sticky surface of the bar and smiled.

***

***

“It’s just, it’s the bow ties, officer. He wouldn’t have gone to Mallorca without them. He went to Norwich last week and took seven,” Patricia explained, opening her son’s bow tie drawer, her hand hovering over them. Don’t touch them, she thought, they might need them for evidence.

It was clear to DI Alan that the young man in question was very fond of wearing a bow tie. There was no doubt about that.

As he’d stood in the Argent’s hallway, waiting for the lad’s mother to make the tea, he’d looked around at the photos on the walls. They were all of James. One was of a young James, aged around 8, crooning into an old fashioned Mike whilst his parents acted as backing singers. Another looked like an iconic Rat Pack shot, but with a twelve, he guessed, year old James posing as each member. Others were of an older James and were more moody; the kind of headshots that you see in gents hairdressers in Walsall.

James, regardless of age, was wearing a bow tie in all of them.

“We can’t…” DI Alan lightly scratched his forehead and exhaled, “Mrs Argent, we can’t build the case on bow ti-“

The officer looked at the saw the woman’s lip tremble and coughed.

“We’ll make some calls and get your son home safe, Mrs Argent.”

***

DC Andrews changed gear and looked quickly at her boss as she drove them away from the Argent’s home.

“We’re not really going to have to do this, are we, guv? Investigate this?”

“I hope not, Rachael. I really fucking hope not,” DI Alan scratched his forehead. “It’s the end for both of us if we do.”

***
“Argie bhaji! Argie! Bhaji!” The lads chanted as Arg held the onion ball to his mouth and posed for a photo.

Once they’d put their phones down he bit into it. It was one of those reheated ones from Sainsburys. The ones that are always cold in the middle, no matter how long they’re in the oven for. The ones that suck all of the moisture out of your mouth.

Whitey staggered back towards the group. “According to the bird on the desk, we ain’t goin’ no where ‘til tomorrow morning, lads. No where til ‘morrow,” he burped.

“Fackin’ ‘ell’” the group took turns to sigh.

“We gonna kip here then?”

“Nah, mate. I’m headin’ ho-home. Come back in the morning, I think. Thas the best thing to do, innit?”

“You wan’ a lift Arg?”

***

The sound of the key in the lock. When it she heard it for the second time, Patricia knew her son was home. James always got confused between the back door key and the front door key, despite the smiley face key cover that she’d put on the front door key to help him remember.

James stepped through the door, slipping his shoes off using his toes and setting down the bag of Fridge Raiders Roast Chicken Bites that he was eating in the bowl of potpourri.

***

“But your bow ties, James! You left all of your bow ties!”

“I was trying something new, Mum! I wanted to try polos again, with the collar buttoned up. Like Dan wears.”

“But James, you look lovely in bow ties! It’s what they used to wear! I thought you wanted it to be your thing, you were going to make them trendy!”

“I just wanted to try something new! I don’t wanna be the joke anymore, Mum! I’m just a joke. To everyone. To Lyds. To the boys. To everyone!“

“Ok, ok, calm down. We can get you some polos tomorrow, it’s alright,” she said, stretching her arms around his shoulders and kissing the top of his head. “But James?”

“What?”

“Don’t do bandanas, ok?” Patricia said into her son’s hair. “Not like Charlie, alright James? Not like Charlie.”