My drawers are empty and ready to be deep cleaned! Friday 24 September 2021, Day 555!

A couple of weeks ago I was allowed to go into the office, even though it was only to clear my desk and drawers out, I was sooooooooo excited. Life has been pretty dull recently, so any change to routine is a moment to be cherished but when my pal said “you wanna fuckin calm yer spam doll” I knew that I had taken it too far in sending her 20 plus pics of me with my lanyard and name badge in different positions.

Leaving for the office I slipped my feet into a pair of wedges, bought February 2020 and hadn’t worn. In the 30 steps it took me to get to the front door my toes were bleeding and I had gone over my ankle 3 times. The wedges were papped and the trainers were on, pure bliss.

Driving along the Broomielaw I realised I hadn’t booked a parking space in the office, so with a sense of fear I headed to the car park near the Arc bridge. I hated that car park the guy that ran it was the Devil Incarnate, a Mean Bastard, a Prick, you get the picture, honestly if you parked a bawhair out of your space, he’d make you get back in your car and park again, and again and again until he was satisfied. The space was so tight I used to travel with an industrial size tub of Vaseline to grease myself up and slide out the door.

As I turned in the car park was empty, and Lucifer was nowhere to be seen, so in an act of defiance I parked across two spaces, then ran like fuck!

Everything seemed familiar at my desk but weirdly unfamiliar, I binned everything in my wire baskets, if I hadn’t needed anything in 17 months, I figured there was no point even looking through them. In my drawers I found old notebooks, 3 sets of Tupperware (clean), a little mouse with clogs on, a fruit salad do they ever go out of date? and a signed photograph of Fred McAuley dated April 2005 with a personal message just for me,❤ aye ok, I admit I fancied him, ye canny deny he has lovely blue eyes. but I tell you he’s off my WTS (figure it out) list! I took a pic of his pic and tweeted him saying “Fred I’ve a tear in my eye removing this pic of you from my office” no reply nothing, nada! and now I can’t even see him on twitter! Rude Bastard!

What really got to me was coming across a false nail stuck to an envelope. When I was in an admin job, I worked with the best bunch of lassies ever, we had this manager who ruled our team with two iron fists and woe betide you if you did something wrong. “Lynne, you start work at 9am not 9.00.47” “Lynne, you answered that call for Tom at 14.02 it is now 14.03 why haven’t you delivered it” “Lynne, (while dragging me across the floor on my wheelie chair) you never locked your PC when you left your desk, this is breaching security” “Lynne I see you made a typo in this memo, (ripping it up in my face) I expect better from my admin” “Lynne, Lynne, Lynne” FUCK OFF!!!

That might sound like a horrendous work environment, but we all have a good work ethic, and we had some great laughs, we even had a team tick that we kept in a match box on the windowsill, it was a sad day when he passed away.

Back to the nail so this manager always wore the same false nails, she tried to claim they were real, she thought we were daft! When she typed her fingers would fly over the keyboard and the noise clickity click, clickity click, clickity click was enough to drive you insane, one day she was furiously typing away, no doubt typing up a written warning for me and a nail pinged off, flew across the air and landed in the middle of the floor, well before she had a chance to move off her seat me and the other lassies made a dive for it, grabbed it and shoved it in a drawer. She pretended she dropped money on the floor and was looking for it, It was hilarious!

A month or so later I moved jobs, on my first day I received the nail in the internal mail, and it’s had pride of place on my desk for over 16 years.

In the offices I work in (or did) all the meeting rooms are named after Scottish rivers and run-in alphabetical order, now naebody EVER tells you that, they just assume you have a level of intelligence to figure it out for yourself. It was about a year in before that lightbulb came on in my head, I wasted many a five mins wandering around trying to figure out where the Almond or the Esk room was!

Although I am finally settled into a working routine, as I put the sign up "This desk and drawers are empty and ready to be deep cleaned", Realising that things would never be the same again I was overcome with sadness and I started crying wondering if I would ever be told again by our receptionist your meeting in the Tay and walking away belting out……….

Tay, tay, tay, tay, tay-tay, t-t-tay, tay, take or leave us, only please believe us, we ain't never gonna be respectable!