The Table

Just to set the scene; the company was called PumpCo (not real name but the real name was equally unimaginative.) and they essentially shipped pumps from China to American and sold them. HQ was based in the UK for no other reason than the bosses lived there and they had a couple of share holders who manned the ship overseas. In addition to PumpCo the bosses also owned another company that was loosely in the same industry but essentially a totally separate entity. The only things they shared were personel and a phone line (this is a key detail as you will find out later.) I shared an office with two of my bosses who worked for both companies and 3 other staff members that worked exclusively with the other company so I was the sole employee of PumpCo in the UK. Following? Yes, I know it is complicated and I am not 100% sure I understand the whole set up myself.

The third boss lived overseas and would come in occasionally to ruffle some feathers and send the odd email requesting I send him accounts documents and pay his director fee’s but that was the extent of our dealings especially for the first couple of years. The other two bosses I worked closely with and I knew there was a lot of history not only between them but also with the overseas boss and none of that history was good as you will find out later. 

My job role was to do all the business admin so I saw all areas of the business which was both good and bad in equal measure. Certainly being privy to the company’s Cash Flow did nothing for my feelings of job security given that I thought we would go bust every month. 

I hope I have set the scene adequately here and it brings us nicely into my first story………

The Table 

I had my interview at The Table; a small round table with not many redeeming features other than it was useful for doing what it needed to do, which was to be a table. My favorite boss – Andy – sat next to it on one side and a boy called Liam who did the accounts sat on the other side with The Table sitting between both their desks bang smack in the middle. The office was small and there were doors on 3 of the 4 walls so space wasn’t exactly abundant and the placement of the table was pretty key in order to facilitate getting in and out of the room from the various doors. This in itself wouldn’t have been a problem had it not been for Liam being an almighty bellend. 

Liam was the son of the overseas boss – David. He was only working at his fathers company because he had left home at 16 with no GCSE’s having beaten his step dad up with a cricket bat and been chucked out of the family home by his Mum (on account of being a violent little prick.) Being a mother now I can’t imagine kicking my son out of his home but then also having spent many years working with Liam I can fully understand why it may have come to that with or without the parental battering. David rented a flat near the office and paid for it on the proviso that the little fucker worked for his company which was not only a punishment for Liam but also for all of those who worked with him. I am certain that had Andy and Mo – short for Mohammed and our other boss – known what would happen as a result of their decision to allow this to happen they would most certainly have said no. However hindsight is a wonderful thing. 

Liam didn’t speak much to anyone, he mostly only grunted and when he did speak or strike up conversation it was usually to say something mildly disturbing or to ask if there was any free food to be had. I personally had very little to do with him and he scared me a little bit. The rest of us would always comment when he had time off how different the office was, like a shadow had been lifted and we could turn the radio on without fear of him slamming a door or grunting under his breath about noise. 

Poor Andy had to share a small space with Liam and The Table was always a big bone of contention. As I said it sat equidistant between them both and really shouldn’t have caused an issue but if that was the case I wouldn’t have had any material for this blog as you will find out that most things in it follow that same theme of unnecessaryness.

The big problem with The Table seemed to be that Liam wanted sole use of it and would spread his paperwork out on it in lovely neat piles behind him (he had his back to it when sat at his normal desk) he would then swivel round on his chair in order to shuffle his neat piles or add to them with more piles of paper that I never actually saw him use. But his beef seemed to be The Table’s proximity to him because he not only wanted sole use of it, but he also didn’t want it too near him (perhaps it had poor personal hygiene?) So his answer to this conundrum was to shove it away from him when he thought no one was looking. This in turn meant Andy and anyone else hoping to move freely from one room to another had to squeeze by it and resulted in a hilarious and passive aggressive game of ‘shove the table’ as each time one of us walked through and found it had been ‘shoved’ we ‘shoved’ it right back. And so the game commenced and continued for probably a lot longer time than was necessary.

Once on confronting Liam on why he felt the need to constantly shove the table away from him he merely grunted ‘Cos I don’t want it too close’ and on challenging this rational he called us all a bunch of C, U Next Tuesday’s and slammed the door on his way out. The next morning he came in (late as usual) to find that we had in fact removed the table completely and taken it to a new home somewhere else in the building. You would have thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t because remember those piles of paper? Well he needed a new home for those didn’t he so instead of putting them on the table he placed them in exactly the place they would have been had the table been present but on the floor instead.