The First Flirty Smile

So this was a workshop exercise from my 'how-to' book that I did while outbound calling at that hell hole :)

Isn't it lovely before it all goes hideously wrong with a new partner? The calm before the restraining order, I call it.

I think we should be more bureaucratic about it - like you officially register your interest in someone via email. Sod the romance, this is the technology age!

Surely there's an App for that. Integrate it into Facebook, whatever, I don't give a shit just get it done!

That was you just point your camera at somebody or enter their name and then you tick a box to say what you want from them. These range from Possible Spouse all the way through to One Five-Minute-Behind-The-Bins Stand.

Or there are the more obscure options:

I just want to follow you home

Let me lick your feet, or

Be my new mummy

Then the recipient (victim?) gets a little alert on their phone or computer with a cheesy picture of you doing the double-thumbs-up with a flashing message underneath it that reads:

PISS ON MY HAIR?!?!

That way you avoid all that awkward 'reading the signs' nonsense. I can't do that shit. It drives me crazy. Unless the girl is wearing a neon flashing sign with arrows pointed up her inner thighs that reads 'Get in me!' I really struggle to catch them.

I currently rely on the tried-and-tested British technique of staring, immediately followed by hiding. You look, they look back, you look away. You wouldn't want them to know that you liked them, after all, would you?!

That would be ridiculous. Then you just might end up happy, and we just can't have that. It's not on. We're British.

If we, as a nation, weren't constantly moaning, we'd be walking around like headless chickens. We need to vent, and thus we need stuff to vent about. Our heads would literally explode from the build-up of pressure if we didn't moan.

I mean, look at America, they go around being polite and nice and all 'have a nice day' and don't like to moan. They can't praise enough. Everything is awesome. Everything. But that pressure builds and builds underneath the surface. that pressure of being less intelligent that the person they're talking to, possibly.

And then, it builds up to such a level that they have to go and start a pointless war just to get it out of their systems.

Back in the Game

Okay, okay, so it's been a while. You missed me. I get it. I've been busy ok?

Stop laughing. I know anybody who reads this knows me and is well aware what a lazy sonofabitch I've been over the last few months but leave off - I was depressed. Not that that is a legitimate reason to stop laughing at the world, but it did make it harder to share things with you all.

But now...well I'm still jobless but I have at least remembered why I started this in the first place. Partly to craft new material for stand-up (yeah it's hardly going speedily, with me being such a wuss, but hey) and partly just because I love to write, especially like this. I don't have to worry about using clever words or using the correct sentence structure. Fuck that. I iz just gonna rite wot I want how I wants it. Blud.

Ok enough of that. But you get my point. I will at least endeavour to spell correctly with you all. Consider it a life lesson. Bad spelling ain't sexy. Well, not if you're trying to ensnare a wordy geek with sexy stubble and eyes you could get lost in, anyway. Ahem.

So on with the bulk of this thing. Not that I'm sure what that is. But I may as well fill you in on what's been happening in my life. I've done a lot of sitting. That was pretty fun. Sleeping is ace, truly. And my Xbox Achievments score has literally tripled. Take that, capitalist definition of success!

But aside from that, I did in fact work in a call centre for a bit. Yeah. Me. As I'm a freak boy I couldn't help picturing it as the brief for a slightly poor sitcom or film. "So yeah, you've got this guy, and he's all smart and stuff, and his life falls apart and he ends up working in a dead-end call centre with a bunch of orange morons and hilarity ensues. Then, by the end, he realises a few things about respect and not judging a book by its cover and walks out of the building on his last day with Don't You (Forget About Me) playing and, with the camera behind him, punches the air in silhouette." Fuck off, I love the Breakfast Club. It's an homage, it's not a rip-off.

That reminds me - everyone go download (or legitimately purchase...haha) Community season one. It's just genius.

So yeah, the call centre. It didn't start too well. We were training on Tuesday, with work starting on the Wednesday. Always a good sign. And apparently we were to be trained on inbound calling - this is for Debenhams by the way - and then the subsequent day, doing outbound calling. After not being trained. Yeah. I know it's not exactly rocket science, reading from a script, but we at least needed to be shown how to use the phone systems, you would have thought.

So I managed to annoy the two women "training" us before the end of the first day. I have that sort of talent. They were fucking idiots though. I wish I'd just said that to their faces. But I didn't I gritted my teeth. and then it got worse.

Fast-forward to Day Two. Outbound calling. It takes the techy team 2 1/2 hours to get everyone up and running, and thus, we are behind on our targets. Well, the management are behind on theirs, but, you know. So I'm making a call, reading out this fucking script about a new sale - yeah, we were calling Debenhams card holders to let them know there was a sale coming up, really - and this tiny little witch comes up and starts shouting at me to get my "wrap time" down. Now this is the time it takes from when you finish a call to the time you return to 'ready' and make another. In this time you have to 'code' the call -successful or otherwise - and click things in a sequence at just the right time to get back to 'ready'. If you do it too quickly, you remain in 'wrap' and someone comes and breaks your knees.

So I've bit my tongue about the first, ridiculous instance, and this fucking bitch won't stop. She decides that everyone is too slow - which is weird, because we're all so well-trained on the phone systems we're using - and makes us all stand up. Not to tell us off. To carry on working. Like a fucking concentration camp or some shit. Not impressed. We all have to stand until our combined wrap times come down to somewhere near 3 seconds. At this point I think you can imagine the sort of Itchy & Scratchy-style ultraviolence I wanted to bring on this woman. I'm talking Mortal Kombat rip-off-her-leg-and-beat-her-stupid-face-with-it levels of anger. But I managed to hold it in.

It was tough, but after that and her subsequent Worst Pep-Talk Ever, in which she stood up on a chair and said "I know it's been tough and manic and you've been getting to grips with it all...but it's not going to get better. It will only get harder." it was kinda hard to still be on her side. Mmmminimum wage :) Again, tongue bitten. Not sure how I still have a tongue really now, but thankfully I do. Otherwise this would be my only way of staying in contact with the world and, well, despite how grateful I am to everyone who bothers to read this, there aren't many of you, so I'd be quite lonely.

Ok ok so I'm basically just rambling...what are the chances?!...shut up schizophrenic sarcastic commentator voice on my life!

But I did meet some nice people. And some fucking morons. And drama queens. And orange people, lots of orange people. Though even if they were nice, they also did tend to come out with brilliant quotes. I don't remember them all but my favourite one revolved around a customer enquiring as to a possible delivery to Denmark. The girl calmly placed the customer on hold, turns to a few of us and casually asks: "Guys...where's Denmark?" ...pretty funny on its own, but ok, if you're talking specific location I don't really know. It's Nordic. It's Scandinavian. It's over there ->

But it was the next bit. Oh lordy. So we've had "Where's Denmark?" now follow it up, bring it home, fill us with joy..."is it in Sweden?"

BOOM! I laughed for a week. Seriously. Awesome ignorance. Just awesome.

Oh yeah and even though this isn't as funny I'm gonna share it before I go - a woman actually called up because she had bought something in a jar from Debenhams, and couldn't get the jar open. She didn't call a friend or neighbour. She called customer services. About opening a jar. That tickled me.

Ok so I'll try to do this more often for all your enjoyment, plus my own twisted sense of mind. I wrote some funny shit while I was there as well - I'll write it up later or tomorrow maybe. Get excited. It's actual jokes. No, really.

Much love.

Pro Life

So this is again one of my freeform blogs. Because the others were so clearly structured and considered.

I guess I have one or two things to talk about, but that being said, I'm not going to come on here and just bitch about my job. 1) Because I do that enough at work, and 2) Because now I know some people are reading this, it becomes slightly more than just my outlet for thoughts that probably won't turn out funny. And that would be selfish. That's what therapy is for.

Speaking of which, I gave that a shot. Well, there's the whole issue of my dad and my occasional overeating that I'd like to address, so it seemed like a worthwhile exercise.

You know when sterotypes smack you in the face? When you realise from whence they were born initially?
Yeah, well my therapy bloke came to greet me and couldn't have been more clichéd if he'd been Frasier Crane.
He wandered over to me in sandals, slacks and a 70s-style shirt, with a long, curly ponytail dragging behind him. Oh yes. Stereotastical!

He also kept talking in that annoyingly obvious "calming" tone, with lots of hand gestures like a hippy Tony Blair. And they're annoyingly simple. It's almost patronising, but of course they mean well. But talking about the difference between feelings and thoughts and behaviour...I mean meh. When I'm in a mood it's all three in a distorted mess. I don't fucking know.

So throughout this assessment and hypothetical further "treatment" appointments I have to put aside my somewhat layman's knowledge of psychology gleamed from years of being generally interested in it and self-psychoanalysis and talk in baby terms about it. "Dan made a boo boo. Dan sad." Fuck off, I seem to be better at your job than you are at this point. I may as well have an NHS-funded mirror at home.

Ok moving on from that, what have I done? What's been funny to me. Oh yes, you'll like this. I got my car broken into. Yeah, funny as fuck I know. The funny thing about it wasn't the act itself though. I mean I don't know why they chose my car, maybe ease or intrigue or they just plain liked the colour, I don't know.

What I do know is that they didn't take my radio. It's nothing special but it's a CD player and I guess it's worth more than nothing, at least. They also didn't take my (admittedly paltry) collection of CDs in the glove box. They opened it, looked at them and just thought "nah, I'm really not into old-school emo, I'll leave them. And the radio's been tainted by them, so leave that too."

No, they took my tent out of the boot. A lovely, eight-ish-year-old, slightly mouldy (honestly, what self-respecting man hangs up an already-packed-away tent once he's home?), £30 tent, two lighters and two boxes of Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes. Yep. And they left one box of those as well. They were on offer - £1 a box. Don't look at me like I'm weird.

Fucking tramps breaking into my car for food, shelter and a means of starting a fire. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I don't have to replace my CDs and radio...it's just a little bemusing. We live in the times when a car stereo is worth less to thieves than breakfast cereal. Think about that for a minute. It melts your mind, right?

So right now I'm currently sitting in my office at work - yeah, believe it or not I'm still holding down a 9-5 - and everybody else has gone home. It's nice and quiet. And I'm being paid to write nonsense for all you fine people to read, which is lovely. I guess that officially makes me a professional comedian, what with this being ostensibly a comedy blog and all. Bonus. No need to get on stage - I've already made it.

So as for this gig...whenever it happens to be (as I'm struggling to come up with a coherent full set from the vastly different conglomeration of ideas on here), the bookers want some blurb about me. So I've been tasked with writing my own biog - the industry term for biography. Yeah, us showbiz types know the lingo. Professional comic right here.

So basically that's your usual fluff about how "he blends postmodern wit and audience interraction with surrealist songs about badgers and artichokes to create a blissful, transcendent smorgasboard of comedic delight".

Yeah, for mine I was thinking about "If you're lucky he'll make you giggle 'til you wee a little."
What you think?

Professional comic. Right here.