Up the Workers

In all the time I’ve been a worker, I’ve accumulated a rather large database of people types, mostly in the mechanical engineering or aerospace industries. In the company I frequent at the present time it strikes me that, although there are five or six hundred employees at this one site, predominantly they can be categorized into a handful of personality types.

This will be a first attempt to create those categories, I’m sure that the definitions will evolve over time, either that or I’ll become disinterested in the entire process and start discussing calculators or Dinky Toys again.

Type I
This co-worker always appears to be extremely busy, even in times when there is zero work they will be seen clutching papers, rushing about the office, frowning and making a point of telling everyone that they’re far too busy and when will it all end? – If I was to characterize from a movie, it would be C3-PO from Star Wars.

Type II
In a bizarro twist, type II exist to cancel out the positive charge of type I, these characters survive on apathy, indifference and the inability to work to any “real” deadline. They can usually be found at the nearby coffee station discussing anything but work. They have at least one copy of Consumer Reports in their desk and know a lot about hockey.

Type III
The type III character is most probably the one in the office who creates lists about the other types. He is a very handsome young man, full of the zest for life, works well under most circumstances, a self starter who has a grasp of exactly what’s needed in the day to day running of the business, a reliable chap who has the company at heart and is willing to sacrifice all to achieve management goals.

Type IV
The fouth type drop into the lost boys category, these are the people who believe that they are destined to be great, but, after a decade or more in the business, have never achieved anything more than the concentrated loathing of their co-workers as they try to backstab their way onto the elusive first rung of the corporate ladder. It is this type that will always have a television that is one inch bigger than yours and usually paid twenty dollars less for whatever small appliance that you’ve just purchased. A Lord of the Rings character nicknamed Wormtongue comes to mind when describing this type.

Type V
These are the mid-management types who have, through hard work at company events and management barbecues, secured a first or second rung position on the ladder, I know very little about these types as they don’t talk to me any more.

I’m just scratching the surface, I’m sure that there are many more types and will update this vibrant, online, report for you as soon as I can. I’m confident that, between us, we can make the world a much better place.

All it will take is a good list.

Mid Life Crisis?

What the hell am I doing?

I’ve mentioned many times that I’ve been working for over thirty years, I know I’ve told you, you heard me didn’t you?, thirty bloody years. If I turn that on it’s head I’ll be seventy-seven years old, seventy-bloody-seven.

Hey, I’m not allowed that many am I?

Well, my dad wasn’t and my mum wasn’t. His mum and dad lived into their early eighties and her ma and pa were fifty-four and eighty-one respectively. Using my incredible mathematical skills I average it all out at seventy-three years for the six of them.

Three score years and ten, that’s what we’re allowed, I read that somewhere…..

So, alright, back to me, and it is about me you understand, you may be a reader (if you actually exist) but it’s me, me, me, not you, me. So, maybe I’ll squeak out my seventy-three years, which gives me about twenty-six left, twenty-bloody-six years. What was I doing twenty-bloody-six years ago?

I was twenty-one.

Well, that helps me a lot, twenty-one, I can remember that vaguely and not as though it was yesterday, it seems like a bloody age ago to tell you the truth, seems like a thousand years ago in some ways, I certainly wasn’t me back then, I was something, but it wasn’t me. It seems that the older I am, the less I know.

Well, perhaps twenty-six years left for the clock to run isn’t that bad, perhaps at the end of that time I’ll look back and find today’s version of me quite unrecognizable and far more cleverer than the endgame version, and to try to answer my original question about what the hell am I doing, I’ve decided that I’m just in the middle of my last half century and if things go according to the same plan as the first half then, by the end of the second half I’m sure to know absolutely nothing.

And on the other hand, because statistics can’t be trusted, that piano may just drop on me tomorrow.

Toy Show

The October toy show, held at the Skyway in Toronto, was another of those annual joyous occasions that has overtaken birthdays or Christmas in the excitement stakes for me now I’m in the autumn of my life. It is a pure coincidence that the October show fell close to my birthday, but it gave me the same excitement as those birthdays of my youth, and of course the chance to buy back the old toys that have long since disappeared from my life.

My mum and dad repeatedly said that “Christmas isn’t the same anymore” when I was in my teens and I think they were referring to those days when “me and my brother” Robert were very young and mad with excitement at having our pillowcases stuffed with goodies from the still believable Father Christmas.

It was a time of visits to T.J.Hughes and Lewis’s in Liverpool town centre, to their Christmas Festivities and fairy Grottos, to a magical place with a fifty foot Christmas tree and fantastic lights, to Saint Johns market with it’s tangerines, pomegranates, figs, dates and mixed nuts.

Granddad saved up sixpence a week so that Rob and myself could go to the company Christmas Party, to “win” a fancy bagatelle or Astroray and to eat cake and jelly off little paper plates while wearing daft hats. The evening then spent with the plink of steel balls on tiny pins and the daring shooting of cigarettes out of granddads mouth with the dart gun.

Then closer to Christmas, when visiting the Aunties and the Uncles, there were the great Christmas disappointments, the underpants, the socks, the pen sets.

But mostly the good stuff was had, and the pillowcase full of loot on Christmas morning was the grand finale of Christmas fare, the stuff that has vanished in the mists of time, the stuff that appears magically at the Toronto toy shows and of course, if all else fails, there’s always ebay available to offer an expensive, but essential, nostalgia fix.

As my mum said, "You can’t take it with you", which is so true, however I also have to agree with a toy vendor at the show who said "The one who ends up with the most toys, wins!"