Chatting on Office Communicator* this morning with the girl from the highways design team two floors up from me. I hit it off with her when my manager did the obligatory “this is the New Girl!” walkaround in week one. She said that “some of the Younger Ones” sometimes go for lunch so I said I’d drop her a line to find out next time they were going to the pub.
The worst thing about starting at a new job is being a Norma No Mates. Even if it’s temporary because you are The Most Sociable And Likeable Person In The Whole World. The first few days are spent talking to yourself and pretending you ‘just want to go for a walk to explore the area’ and find your way around.
So after the hullabaloo of the first couple of weeks died down a little, I sent Goomba (as shall be her new nickname for she drives a Ford Ka and they look like Super Mario Goombas) an email to effectively bully her and the design team into a lunch date in a local pub. Maybe I have no shame, but if someone displays even the slightest hint of friendliness towards me when I am new to anything, I grab it like a kid with a Chuppa Chup and hold on for dear life. Maybe it is the social equivalent of rape – forcing oneself onto others – but it works for me and has been how I have made friends in the two huge companies I have worked at.
Anyway, here we are this morning chatting online and sorting out lunch and I warn her that I had a glass of wine too many last night and out comes the smacking my alloy into a kerb story as explanation for needing something to drink. And that leads to:
Goomba [09:18]: so you’re going to pay a bloke to knock your rim back into shape?
Soupy [09:18]: I’m going to pay a bloke to give my rim some much needed TLC after the bashing it took
Goomba [09:19]: Ha, that should be a saying when someone is being guffy… “Cor, who bent your rim out of shape?!”
And so a new saying – and friendship – is born.
Quick game of Spot The Difference for your Friday morning:
Goomba?Ka?
*Yeah, so work actively encourages the use of this chat program to communicate with anyone in the company. With in the region of 16,000 employees, that’s a lot of people to natter with when you’re supposed to be writing a newsletter article about a biosolids digestion plant.
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