A typical work exchange

Boss: "I've had an email from China"

Me: "It's spam. We get them regularly"

Boss: "But I was thinking, do we need a Chinese domain name? How important is the Chinese market going to be to us in the future?"

Me: "It will be important. They're changing various laws at the moment in response to events in the west."

Boss: "So do we need a Chinese domain name?"

Me: "I think our priority should be to sort out our UK site for now."

Me thinking "Your priority ought to be sorting out those figures that I need so I can finish the annual report. Why are you pi&&ing about with Chinese spam?"

Boss: "But wouldn't it be more impressive."

Me: "They are being influenced by what goes on in the west. If we had a working website here we could always add a couple of Chinese pages to it in the future."

Me thinking: "Which bit of that didn't you get in the first place... influenced by the west....."

Boss: "So we don't need one."

Me: "Maybe if we had an office in China it would be different."

Boss: silly laugh

Me: "If we ever need something in China we can ask our academic partner if we can hitch some pages onto their site. They have a Chinese office."

Boss: "Oh yes. Good idea.

Me: "And the first thing we could ask them is whether to put it in Mandarin or Cantonese."

Boss: "Interesting. It's good to have your perspective on the importance of overseas domain names."

Me: (Thinking) "Just shut up and go away."

 

 

 

Based on an actual event

Work work work. Words word words.

I write for a living.

Hey, I can hear you say, that's great isn't it? I mean, you get paid for writing. Cool! (OK I know you don't all talk like that but you get the gist.) Well yes. I've done a few jobs in my time, catering, office administration, selling shoes, so I know just how mind numbing some can be. And I can appreciate that any job I have that involves writing is the best I can hope for. It beats cleaning out a commercial-standard deep fat fryer any day! But there's writing and there's writing to order. And most of my working life has been spent writing to order.

Back in nineteen hundred and frozen to death I went off to college to learn to be a journalist. It was a great time. I was young, but not as young as some of the people on my course. I'd already made a complete hash of a biology degree that I've since chosen to forget except in a few special circumstances. So I'd lived a little. I'd spent the previous year as a temporary whatever. That's when I sold shoes.

[A brief aside: 'Sold shoes'. Like 'soled shoes'. Reminds me of my O level English course and Julius Caesar. 'All that I live by is my awl' See more here.]

The journalism college was in Sheffield. Wonderful steel town of the North (except I come from further north than that so to me it was the Midlands) with a fantastic atmosphere and an availability of arts events and venues that I had previously not accessed. In fact it had lots of things that I had previously never tried and I had a great year learning and experiencing things and generally living the high life.

We studied law and public administration and shorthand and typing and English grammar (yes - I do know the difference between an adjective and an adverb and if I concentrate I can probably still remember what a gerund is) and a great subject called 'journalism'. It covered everything you can think of. This wonderful subject called 'journalism' was basically the same as the subject called 'life'. It was a wonderful preparation for anything that the newspaper business could demand of me over the next thirteen years while I worked as a reporter. It was also a great preparation for writing stories and novels since then.

I still work as a writer but nowadays I write press releases and newsletters and marketing brochures and I try to make my boss's complicated announcements easier to understand by normal people. I translate the jargon-ridden achievements of my organisation into words that my readership will understand but will still have the same meaning. It's not easy. And it isn't always fun. But it's way better than measuring smelly feet to fit them with shoes!

Postscript: The photo is part of a sculpture called Industry and Genius and it's a monument to John Baskerville - printer.
The stones represent letter punches and the word on them reads "Virgil" because Baskerville's first book was a reprint of the poet's works printed in 1757.
The sculpture is by David Patten and it's in Birmingham.