Some days

I must have done a dozen really, truly stupid things on Thursday. Without a word of a lie or even the slightest exaggeration. A dozen. So many I'd struggle to assemble them in my mind and recount them all in detail under optimum conditions. As it is one is such a colossal stand-out the others seem to have been obliterated from my memory.

I think I have before alluded to the office where I work, and our wonderful cast of characters. A master farceur would cut off several appendages for such rich potential.

The whole shooting match is presided over by a diminutive and slightly rotund figure in ill-fitting polyester suit and tie, with receding hairline, manic depressive wife who occasionally beats him up (vide the broken shoulder and the detached retina), gay straight son, anonymous daughter, the sort of mobile phone a teenage girl would have second thoughts about, a clapped out company car, no ambitions beyond his current fiefdom and a regularly requited lust for his second in command...

...who is a scrawny forty-something year old, married to a big burly builder with a tendency to drink and a capacity for violence when under the influence, together with whom she has two young adult daughters one of whom is at university and the other is trying to make it as a chef but can't cope on her own with making a train journey to and from London or with the demands of a city brasserie's kitchen and so rings her mother in hysterics at least once a week and hasn't yet held down a job for longer than six weeks at a stretch ... and so her mother turns for help to ...

her boss, and his gay straight son who happens to run a brasserie.

There are two other assistant general managers; one of them is a walking, taking hairdo who started life as a hair dresser and rose to her current position via supermarket check-outs, the other has risen to her position of authority via a long stretch as a pub cleaning lady and a stint behind the deli counter.

Three of the five department heads are male and two of them are known to be laws unto themselves - the third is a certain lazy fat bastard. There are two other women - plus me.

Absolutely everyone (in town) knows that the General Manager spends any available spare time with his face between his deputy's legs. There's a theory, in respect of the male department heads, that their apparent immunity from the normal laws governing the link between job performance and job retention stems from having a hold over the general manager arising from knowledge of the GM's affair with his deputy. In other words they've caught him at it and have him over a barrel (since the girlfriend presumably already has the short and curlies in her grasp).

Poor bloke's being torn in all directions.

One of the two female department heads is on maternity leave, the other spends most of her time making cups of tea for the GM's girl friend and taking her to the cinema in the desperate hope, most believe, that she'll get the next vacancy at Assistant GM level when it arises. The fact that she's complete crap at her job will, she hopes, be overlooked.

Only the fact that the woman she spends so much time with is screwing the GM has prevented the rest of us having a field day with the scrawny forty something year old and the big beefy short haired twenty something year old rugby playing female department head she spends so much time with.

Perhaps we're being naive. Who's to say that the GM's girlfriend isn't comfortable swinging both ways?

The GM is a serial womaniser who has a long track record of setting up one or other female subordinate as his 'bit on the side'. He did in his previous posting and the current girlfriend isn't his first since moving to his present post.

His gay son now has a girlfriend which has confused everyone.

His staff talk in code about his relationship with his assistant; Don't Mention It Directly being the Golden Rule - somehow by osmosis they absorb the knowledge with the rest of their induction material, or they're pre-warned by friends in town. The two of them are usually referred to as one being as in Bill'n'Ted or in their case MrX'n'A....

What his staff don't do is talk openly about it. In a way its more fun that way.

So I came in on Thursday, having already done several stupid things. And I really should have known, therefore, to tread very, very carefully.

I should have checked that the tannoy button wasn't stuck down before having a conversation with the only colleague I have with whom I can discuss the above described farce openly - the Fat Bastard who is my ex-husband-to-be.

The conversation started as it always does between any two colleagues with some comments about the fact that A was in so inevitably Mr X was also hanging about. I mentioned that he'd announced he was going upstairs for a nibble. I said something about never being able to think about eating in the same way after working in this environment ...

Then, after he'd left ... I noticed that the tannoy button was depressed.

Nobody has said anything to me which means one of two things ... either the volume button was sufficiently low, and our conversation sufficiently quiet that what we were saying wasn't audible throughout the entire building, including the public areas ... or else the Golden Rule is still being observed.

Some days, you just shouldn't get out of bed.