LUV & HAT

LUV - I know I’ve mentioned this before, but working from home is pretty sodding relentlessly amazing. I can attribute this to two key findings:

1 - PEOPLE ARE AWFUL.

2 - I JUST HAD A NAP. IT’S TWO THIRTY IN THE AFTERNOON. FUCK YOU.

However, both of these findings have downsides. The naps are nice, but it means I shuffle around with morning breath all day. And as awful as people undoubtedly are - and I’m looking at you here, buddy - sometimes they can be quite useful.

For instance, my printer recently broke. If I had a normal job I could have just phoned IT and watched as a daylight-hating troll lumbered upstairs, fixed the printer in a nanosecond and lumbered back to his lair of wires again. But I work from home - and I know precisely titty-squat about printers - so my attempts to fix it variously involved pressing ‘print’ 150 times, roaring at it like a concussed caveman, Louise Woodwarding the living shit out of it, staring at it really hard and then just getting someone else to print it out for me.

And then there’s the Secret Santa. Perhaps the thing I miss most about having colleagues is the Secret Santa. I’ve had jobs before that have involved Secret Santas, and they’ve always been wonderful. I mean, I like mugs and socks. And, as a boy, that’s all you ever get. Mugs and socks. It’s thoughtful, that’s what it is. How did you know that I require a receptacle to drink hot beverages from and/or have feet? You shouldn’t have. It’s all too much.

Secret Santas are such a genius idea, too. It’s so fair. You’re set a price limit, so that nobody can bugger up the system by buying anyone either a Lamborghini or a handful of Burger King napkins. Everyone gets given something. And nobody ever really likes what they’re given. It’s the definition of egalitarianism. It reinforces your sense of camaraderie. It’s important.

And, make no mistake, the Secret Santa is important. It sustains entire industries. I mean, has anyone ever - EVER - bought anything from Lush that wasn’t for a Secret Santa? No, of course they haven’t. Lush exists purely for people tasked with buying a Secret Santa gift for people they barely know. Lush is designed for people who a) think “She’s a girl, she probably likes washing her face, this’ll do” and b) don’t mind being blinded by the eye-watering floral equivalent of weaponised nerve agent as soon as they step into the fucking place.

But, fine, it’s not going to happen for me this year. I’ve got nobody to anonymously buy me a mug or some socks. I’m sure I’ll survive. Christmas really is the loneliest time of the year, isn’t it.
- Stuart Heritage

HAT - Isn’t it nice when you just click with people you work with? Isn’t it wonderful when the person you sit next to for eight hours a day turns out to be someone you can actually have a rewarding conversation with? Several rewarding conversations? And not just the woman you sit next to, but that guy with the hair in that other team down the hall. And your boss. Your boss’s boss.

Having loads in common with the people you’re thrown together with arbitrarily is an amazing piece of luck. Just being part of the journey that starts with faltering, mannered banter but leads to you looking forward to seeing your colleagues in the morning - and cackling in the pub together after work - is incredibly enriching. You feel valued. Not just renumerated for your efforts, or even professionally respected. When you get on with your colleagues you feel properly valued as a person - and understood as an individual - and it can do wonders for your quality of life and self esteem.

Then there’s an office Secret Santa and you realise that your colleagues think you’re a pink sparkly gloves sort of person, and it all goes to shit. 

I mean, you’ve spent time with these people. You’ve made them playlists. Playlists with the Shins on. They fucking know you just spent last weekend at a BFI Kubrick all-nighter and that you’re reading a fucking Dave Eggers book, for god’s sake, and they get you PINK SPARKLY GLOVES? What the actual monkey fuck? You went to the trouble of hunting down that vintage leaf-print scarf for the style queen who sits next to you, and you even went over the £5 Secret Santa budget, but - what’s that? She’s swapping her present with the guy with the hair in that other team down the hall? She’s swapping your thoughtful vintage scarf for a PURPLE RONNIE GIANT COFFEE MUG?

Fucking Jesus.

Now you question everything. When she asks if you want coffee every day at 11am, does the woman who sits next to you secretly despise you for never offering to make it yourself? Does your boss ACTUALLY care about what you did at the weekend? Is THAT why he’s always backing away when he talks to you? DOES YOUR BOSS’S BOSS EVEN LIKE YOUR RACY JOKE ABOUT THE PRIEST AND THE IMAM?

And that’s when you realise that your pink sparkly gloves have a) a floral motif b) a Tesco label on the inside c) a Tesco label on the inside stating that the gloves are PART OF A SCARF AND GLOVES SET, and that’s when you decide Secret Santa can fuck itself. In the eye.
- Robyn Wilder