Diary of a Grumpy Old Git (26 page)

When I got to Trevor’s office this morning, he was sitting behind his desk and grasping a yellow tennis ball.

‘I take it you were under the influence when you wrote that email?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Well, I will hold it against you,’ he said. ‘But I won’t tell Josh. Not if you play ball.’

He threw the ball at me. It bounced off my forehead and back on to his desk, and I rubbed the spot it had hit.

‘Fifty points,’ he shouted.

‘What?’

‘Don’t tell me you don’t remember “Trevor Chalkley Dodgeball”,’ he said. ‘You invented it. Everyone had to throw a tennis ball at me and I had to try
and dodge it. You got ten points for hitting my arms or legs, twenty for hitting my body and fifty for hitting my head.’

I picked up the ball.

‘I do remember it,’ I said. ‘But I thought the rules were different. I thought you got a hundred points for this.’

I threw the ball at his face. He ducked out of the way, but his chair overbalanced and he crashed to the floor.

When he got up again, his face was red. ‘That’s it! The account’s walking! I’m going to call Josh right now and tell him it’s all your fault.’

‘Yeah, about that,’ I said. ‘I regret to inform you that we’ve been awarded the DDS Waste Solutions account so we’re going to have to resign this one. But I’d
like to take this opportunity to thank you for working with us and wish you all the best for the future.’

‘DDS?’ asked Trevor. ‘You can’t work for those crooks. They won’t pay you, you know. They’ll leave your invoices lying around for years.’

‘I’m afraid the decision has already been taken,’ I said.

‘What are they paying you?’ Trevor asked. ‘I’ll match it.’

‘You couldn’t afford it,’ I said. ‘DDS are the biggest industrial bin suppliers in the south-east. Bar none.’

I walked out of the office, and Trevor came scurrying after me.

‘Get back here,’ he shouted.

I kept walking. Some of Trevor’s staff poked their heads out of their offices.

‘This meeting isn’t over until I say it is!’ shouted Trevor.

I felt something whip me on the back of my arm.

‘Ten points!’

I turned round to see that Trevor was lobbing whiteboard markers at me from a box. A crowd had gathered behind him, and some of them were filming it with their phones.

‘Twenty points!’ he shouted. ‘Fifty points! A million points! I win! Because I’m a winner and you’re a loser!’

‘Course you are,’ I said. ‘Course you are, Chalky Balls.’

Josh briefed me on the DDS Waste Solutions account today. There’s a lot to do in a short time, but I’m determined to get through it. I’m going to write a bin
brochure so brilliant that all Trevor’s clients will switch their business right away and he’ll go bust. That’s got to be worth working through lunch for.

I went out for a drink with Jen again after work. We’re trying to keep it secret from everyone in the office, but it’s not exactly difficult for them to guess. Jo complained about
Jen’s muttering this afternoon, and I said it was hardly surprising if she was stressed, as she was doing more work than the rest of us put together. Jo and Jez looked at each other, did a
childish ‘woo’ noise and burst out laughing.

I’m sure those youngsters find middle age hilarious and disgusting, but they’ll know all about it soon. It won’t be long before they find themselves grunting when they pick
things up, going to the chemist’s just to browse and discovering strange new facial hairs whenever they look in the mirror. And then some smug little bastards will park themselves on the desk
next to them and snigger whenever they mention ridiculously antiquated stuff like Facebook or Starbucks.

Go ahead and laugh, kids. You’ll be here soon.

I was all set to work through lunch when Jen suggested we go to the Italian restaurant around the corner. I thought about my plan to work hard enough to put Trevor out of
business and then I thought about pizza. There was no contest really. I’ll take food over revenge any day.

When we got to the restaurant, Jen ordered the chicken pesto salad, but requested so many changes to it that she might as well have barged into the kitchen and made it herself. I’m always
wary about suggesting changes to chefs. Catch them on a bad day and you’ll find that a side order of phlegm is the only modification you get. They didn’t seem to mind Jen, though. She
actually smiles and looks at waiters when she speaks to them, which seems to result in much better service. It’s not something I’ve ever really tried.

I should have got her to ask them to turn off the background music, which was annoying me. It wasn’t that it was good or bad, it was just inconsistent. In the old days, an Italian
restaurant would play a CD of Pavarotti or Dean Martin all the way through. These days all restaurant staff just hook their iPods up to the speakers and put them on shuffle. So today we had pop,
opera and rock all jumbled up. It was only the Fellini posters and breadsticks that reminded me what sort of restaurant it was.

I managed to ignore it and told Jen about my workload on the DDS account. She said she’d take on some of the work if I wanted. It’s weird. I used to think she worked hard just to
crawl to Josh. Now I know her better, I’m convinced she actually enjoys it, in the way that a normal person might enjoy eating pies or watching TV.

Should I ask Josh if she can take over some of my work? I want to, but I don’t think it’s acceptable to ask your boss for less work these days. It’s like drinking pints at
lunchtime. You just don’t do it any more.

When the bill came, I noticed they’d done that annoying thing of adding a service charge to the total and also leaving a space for a ‘gratuity’. Are ‘service
charge’ and ‘gratuity’ different things now? Would you like a tip as well? How about I just hand over my wallet and you grab money out of it until it’s all right for me to
stop feeling awkward?

I suggested to Jen that we cross the service charge off the bill and put nothing in the gratuity section, but she said the waiters were such ‘sweeties’ that she didn’t mind
paying both. Probably another reason her food doesn’t get gobbed in.

When I got back in the office, Josh asked if I could keep my desk tidier. He said it will make things easier when we all start hotdesking. I was hoping he’d forgotten about that and moved
on to some other voguish nonsense like constructing a breakout beanbag brainstorming area in the corner of the office. I can’t have my screen facing away from the wall. That would be
unbearable.

I bumped into my old boss Steve after work tonight. It turns out the old fart is off snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. I hope they don’t mistake him for an ancient
undiscovered species of turtle and stick him in an aquarium.

I thanked him for telling Josh I was a good worker and he almost collapsed with laughter.