I’ve made a decision this week that I’m not proud of. I’ve crossed a line that I firmly drew in the sand and the emotional pain it’s causing me is almost causing me to feel the need to stab my wife 216 times. Almost, but not quite.
Have you checked out this guy Clayton Weatherston? I know everybody deserves their day in court but some geezers just don’t help themselves. The dude looks like a nut job and all he’s missing is the homespun to prove it.
And hey, I’m no criminal psychologist but I’ve read enough books on serial killers and all round nice guys to know that when you slice and dice someone 216 times then that shit is personal. As the saying goes it’s not manslaughter without the laughter and something tells me that this guy is a lizzer. Big time.
Anyhoo, I’ve taken to using the cell phone work gave me about a year ago which doesn’t quite put me in the same league as Weatherston but it does officially make me a two phone carrying mutha ucka. Oh the shame of it. Up till now I’d never even taken it out of the box because I have strict beliefs on this kind of thing.
Not as in the ‘oral is moral’ kind of beliefs but hey, that’s not one I don’t have too much of an issue with. No I’ve always believed there is a time for work and a time for life and as I’m not paid to work 24 / 7 I’ve never been prepared to be available 24 / 7 because switching the thing on is like waving an attractive girl in front of a psycho Economics lecturer.
Listing your cell phone number somewhere at work or on your business card is like writing your home number and something fruity on the toilet wall; you’re going to get calls and although some of them might just be phoning to ask if your anatomically correct artistic depiction is a scale drawing, some will inevitably want to talk shop.
Have you ever been with someone when they’ve gotten a work call out of hours? And how often has that person then had to say to the caller something along the lines of ‘I’m not actually in the office can I call you tomorrow…’? Often I bet and I’ve always wondered a) If you can’t help the caller why even be available to take the call and b) what kind of sad bugger makes business calls when no one is actually at their place of business?
And it’s for that very reason I have never used the work phone, never listed the number anywhere or made myself remotely available after hours. But why do so many feel the need to be on call even when we’re not? How many of us have life changing jobs where life and death decisions often need to be made out of hours?
Oh and there is the small matter of the provider being Telescum and don’t even get me started on them buggers.
However last week I did some work away from the office and regretfully I had to give out my personal mobile number to those that I did actually need to talk to. Needless to say I felt as comfortable dishing out my personal number to work colleagues as I did the time we went on patrol near the Cambodian border back in ’68 after all having the shits the day before.
If there is one thing Charlie can smell in the jungle its fear, particularly if it’s running behind your knee thanks to the Number 5 you ordered off the menu and ironically we spent the whole six hours crapping ourselves thinking that at any moment Charlie would get a whiff of us crapping ourselves.
Cellphones would have been a definite no no in the bush, even if you had the thing on vibrate because it would have rattled against something else and that would have made noise and if there’s one thing Charlie can hear in the jungle its noise. We were so careful with noise control that if you took a swig from your canteen you deep throated the whole damn lot because a half full vessel makes noise as you move. Ten minutes later we’d fill it again with urine, preferably your own, because an empty canteen when bumped makes noise.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and that’s why I’ve started using my work phone. Now I carry one in each pocket and it looks like I'm playing pocket billards the whole damn time. So call me sometime, even if it’s just to tell me you like the drawing I left in the first cubicle of the men’s.
And yes, it is to scale.
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