The diaspora of Jesters

It’s soon going to be the end of an era at the Dark Satanic Mill. The complaints department, which was Jester’s home at work for something like 7 years, is moving to the Head Office in the New Year. This is due to a restructure and streamlining of the business and is nothing to do with the current financial crisis. “Tell me another one!” I hear you all shout and “This one’s got bells on!” Heckling aside, I have no reason at present to disbelieve the party line. There are to be a few redundancies from other affected departments but most of the people whose jobs are going south will be found jobs elsewhere within the business operation in this benighted town.

Not that it affects this particular jester very much. My appetite for complaints has been seriously reduced in the past couple of years and last month, I moved away from them completely and am now experiencing a job satisfaction I haven’t felt for about 2½ years. Don’t get me wrong. This was not a career move. I was dealing with complaints in a sort of outpost of a sister company that was moved back to its main office and I was moved into another department. I was given a choice of three or four departments and chose this as the lesser of the various evils. However, it turned out to be quite a good choice and I’m quite enjoying the new job. I don’t know if the job satisfaction will last beyond the honeymoon period but I live in hope.

So the complaints department is going to another office too. I think this will come as a blow for a few of my former colleagues. The job was demanding but there was a reasonable amount of flexibility about the hours they worked. This flexibility will now disappear and they will be offered a range of shifts for the various departments to which they are relocated, which will probably not suit. Whole days off during the week, for instance, will not be forthcoming. They will be expected to work weekends. Maybe just one day every three weeks, like I do, but they will have to do it.

They will have to get used to the “Calls queuing!” environment and the questioning of every move they make. These people have had a degree of autonomy that is not seen elsewhere within the business and they are going to have to get used to it disappearing completely. There is also the possibility that there may be some resentment of them as well. They will be paid more than their new colleagues for doing the same job and apparently, there have already been some rumblings about that in the call centre.

I’ve been lucky. I have had no difficulty adjusting to my new working environment but, unlike them, I was heartily sick of complaints and ready for a change. Most of my former colleagues love the job. The new environment will prove a bitter pill to swallow, I suspect. My new colleagues do not seem to resent my but then I’m not particularly well known on my new department and they do not know that there is anything to resent. I am not confident my former colleagues will have the same experience but I sincerely hope so.

Jester, Jessina and Ramadan

On Wednesday, Ramadan started. I used to think that Ramadan was simply about not eating between sunrise and sunset during the month. Not so! Last year, I found out from Jawad, a Muslim colleague, that he does not drink, not even plain water, between sunrise and sunset and I’ve since found out that smokers do not smoke and also dirty jokes and foul language have to stop.

Of course, non-Muslim Jesters continue to eat, drink, smoke, swear and tell rude jokes but I don’t think our Muslim colleagues are particularly unhappy about this. I sit next to Jessina and I get on particularly well with her so I decided just before Ramadan that I would have a support role this year. I have promised to keep my language clean and not to tell dirty jokes. I couldn’t promise to keep my thoughts pure, I think that would be an impossibility.

Jessina was delighted and so were some of our other Muslim colleagues. Then another suggested I try fasting for one day. Always game, I agreed and I have said I will fast on October 2nd, 3rd or 4th. I’ve chosen these dates because Mr Jester will be on lates that night and so will not get the opportunity to get annoyed with me and tell me I’m being silly. The sun will have set before he gets home so I can be there eating and drinking when he does.

This will be an interesting experience for me. I’m a very slim jester and have few reserves to fall back on (some of my Muslim colleagues try to lose weight during Ramadan and quite often they succeed). I also find it difficult to go five minutes between snacks without my stomach growling loudly. Also, I’m constantly drinking water. I drink cold and hot water. It’s just a foible of mine (except when I’ve had only 4 hours’ sleep the night before, then I drink coffee, coffee and more coffee).

I’ve already practised not using foul language and not telling dirty jokes and I have been generally successful. I’ve also been able to remind Jessina when she’s come out with the odd swear word. Jessina has been dressing rather soberly since Wednesday. She still looks stunning (she is one of the most beautiful girls I know) but just stunning in a more sober way.

I very nearly said something suggestive to Jessina yesterday and just stopped myself in time. She noticed my obvious distress and when she realised I was bursting to say something rude, she told me to tell Jehan, who is not fasting because she is pregnant, so not only is Jessina beautiful but she is considerate too.

Finally, Jessina and I had a great idea. We have decided that we should all bring in food for Eid. I’ve agreed to bake some Linzer Cookies (I’ve found this recipe online, which is the closest to the version I make but not the same), she is going to bake her chocolate cake and I know other Asian Jesters will bring in some absolutely fabulous food, including Jawad’s wife’s fantastic samboosas, which are the best I’ve ever tasted. We have e-mailed the suggestion that everybody brings in something home-made for Eid to our team manager, who has agreed in principle but has stressed that her only role will be to eat the food and not make it.

I have also made a mental note to get some cards for my colleagues to celebrate Eid.

I hope I’ve got this right:

Ramzaan Mubarak!

Llama, Llama

Read this blog and the comments. I read it and laughed. I think you will too! Thanks Inspector Gadget. As usual, you sum up the crazy world in which we live perfectly.

Jester, Pennywise and Delusional People

During the general chaos of the move the Dark Satanic Mill yesterday, there was an unwelcome visitor to our department and Jester received a call from an old friend.

We’ll start with the unwelcome visitor. Pennywise came in looking all tanned and healthy to hand in his sicknote. He is signed off until August 31st. This was like a red rag to a bull for most of the jesters and caused one of us, Madness, to become almost apoplectic, so she turned round and said words to the effect of “Aren’t you supposed to be off sick? You don’t look very ill to me.” Jester wouldn’t even look at him. It is so galling when somebody who is supposedly off with depression comes into work looking tanned, healthy and most of all happy, when his or her colleagues are there working their arses off. Infuriating!!!

Later on, Gary saw Pennywise in Asda with his two sons and his wife, laughing and joking. Fortunately, Madness was not apprised of this, so she will not be sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in the near future. Good job, really: I like Madness. I can’t say that about Pennywise.

Then, later, I had a call from my lovely delusional lady, who thinks she’s a criminal psychologist and crack a hardened paedophile in minutes, where it would take the police years. She is a lovely lady, although I am convinced she is a complete fruit loop (is that PC?) I wrote about her in a previous blog. When I realised who was calling, my face lit up. I know that because the office suddenly became brighter and I know there was genuine warmth in my voice when I asked the usually fatal words “How can I help you?”

She told me. She asked me to write a letter confirming that at no time has she ever handcuffed any of our engineers to her bath. Maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. This customer, let’s call her Julie, is diminutive. I have this on good authority, from Julie herself and from our very own Quality Assessor, who visited her house to inspect damage caused by our engineers. He told me (and this is in his exact words) “She’s a registered midget!” I have included the exclamation mark because it was there in his voice. So she’s small and birdlike.

She has a care worker and while her claim/complaint was going on, this care worker would be around the house, doing whatever she was there to do. One of the problems Julie had with our engineers (a common problem, unfortunately) was they rarely finished the jobs they were there to do, so once, she told me yesterday, she joked to her care worker that she should handcuff the engineer to the toilet until he had finished the job.

That seems a good idea to me and maybe when we issue policy documentation to our customers, we should enclose some handcuffs as a gesture of goodwill, although I’m sure any of our contractors who are reading this blog will blanch as they read this paragraph.

But I digress. Julie has not been very happy with her care worker and has criticised her and now, it appears that her care worker has had her revenge by accusing Julie of being a hostage taker and handcuffing the engineer to the bath. You should see me laugh while I type this (and the mistakes I am having to continually correct because I am shaking so much!) Julie has received a risk assessment of 4, which means that social services will not go into her house and she says she is suing the care worker and wants me to write to her to confirm that she has never handcuffed any of our engineers to the bath (or toilet for that matter) or taken them hostage.

I have agreed willingly. There is not much I wouldn’t do for such a delightful lady. I am not sure if what she has told me is firmly based in reality. As I said before, I am certain she is delusional, but the letter won’t hurt anybody, so I’ll write it.

Finally, she did send me the tapes. Four of them. Unfortunately, I have not listened to them. I have a CD player in my car. I hesitate to say this but I lied to her yesterday. I told her I had listened and they now had pride of place in my cassette collection. It was a white lie and I will listen to them oneday. It is simply a matter of time.

Not in my name

My husband told me yesterday that Chemical Ali has been sentenced to death. You can follow this link to the story on BBC News if you want. I find it very disturbing indeed because I thought the whole idea of the “liberation” of Iraq was so that the Iraqi people could have a Western style democracy. I can’t see where hanging, or any other form of execution, comes into it at all. Now, I know the US has a federal death penalty and that 38 of the 50 States have the death penalty bu then I really am unable to think of the US as a true democracy because of it.

I am proud to be part of the EU because of its unequivocal opposition to the death penalty. No country can become part of the EU unless it has first abolished it. I could not live in a country which executes its criminals, no matter how heinous the crime. People sometimes asks me how I would feel if my daughter had been murdered by, for instance, Ian Huntley. I cannot even begin to imagine how that would feel but I do not believe that it is a valid argument for the death penalty. My opinion would not count in such circumstances, anyway. How could I possibly have a balanced opinion if my daughter had been murdered?

Some of these people have told me that they would happily pull the lever, administer the lethal injection or pull the trigger on child killers. That always puts me in mind of a story I heard about Heinrich Himmler. He had gone to watch the mass killing of Jews in Poland. At that point, they were still being shot and he was said to have vomited after some brains from one victim splashed onto his coat. So, don’t say “I’d happily execute them” until you know what it entails.

My opposition to the death penalty is not well thought out anyway. I simply believe that nobody has the right to take the life of another human being for any reason whatsoever. We’re only on this planet for a very short time. To terminate a life before it has been completed is a dreadful thing to do. I don’t believe in any form of afterlife. I don’t believe that there is retribution waiting for “evil-doers” in some kind of firy hell or reward for “good” people in heaven. As far as I am aware, you are born, you live, you die. Full Stop. So how can we possibly justify the killing of anybody.

So to get back to Chemical Ali, he had no right to order the killing of the Kurds in 1988 but neither does anybody have the right to order his killing. He is on this earth for his short allotted span and, no matter how bad he has been, he should be allowed to complete it.

Keeping this side of insanity

Inspector Gadget wondered how I manage to stay sane and that got me thinking. My family don’t keep me sane, they make me more insane. Having said that, I know that I make them insane too so we’re even there. This blog keeps me sane because it creates a little bit of objective distance for me so I can see the madness that is the Dark Satanic Mill for what it is. Finally, what I get up to when I doff my cap and bells keeps me sane. Here is a pictorial guide to what Jester gets up to in her spare time.

Music:

Sport:

and yes, I am one of the dancers. I wear a different kind of cap and bells when I do this.

More sport:

And also:

and:

There are more but I think this is enough for now.

Jester and Jester Junior

I just wanted to offer my sincere apologies to my daughter, whose blog I pimp shamelessly on this site (okay, I’m exaggerating, I have merely put a link to it from this site). It took me three attempts to get the name of her blog right. Obviously, I am not the mother of PC Copperfield, Mr Chalk or Inspector Gadget. I’d love to take the credit of being the parent of my friends at Prawn Cufflinks but I cannot. However, if you do get a spare minute, please click on the link for The Journal of a Complete Groover. It’s quirky and lovely and I love reading about myself in it. I will also add other blogs of note to the list as I get around to it.