I wish I could say that last week’s blogging absence was due to my exciting, action-packed life. Sadly it was due to a combination of grumpishness and apathy – which appears to have extended its tentacles into this week.

During the past week at the Land of Freaks, Acronyms and Meetings (formerly known as nujob) I have had some rather bizarre encounters with a very bizarre individual, lets call her Selty.

Selty is in her late 20s and looks as though she is in her early 40s, chubby, loud, officious, lives with her sister, is single (has never had a partner¹), loves Bryan Adams, owns every Celine Dion album and is completely devoid of style. Selty has a senior-ish supervisory position in one of my departments (she does not supervise me), how she obtained this role is beyond me, because her people skills are non-existant.

Below is a likeness of Selty as she appeared last mufti day (note socks).

One of the least enjoyable parts of my role involves the organisation of cakes & cards for birthday celebrations – apparently this delightful task previously belonged to Selty – which she voluntarily handed over to me when I started. We’ve had 3 birthdays in the past 3 weeks, obviously they were not to Selty’s satisfaction, so she took it upon herself to tell me in no uncertain terms how the cake buying / card giving should be done.

1. I should not ask people what kind of cake they would like (as I had been doing), I should instead buy a plain butter-cake
2. I should not buy a big cake (even though there are 20+ people in my department) because some people want little slices of cake and there might be one or two slices of cake left and people in other sections might eat them
3. I should not buy individual cards, I should buy a cheap packet of cards and distribute them – the department had 2 cards left in an existing packet – one of which had a family of seals … on. the. moon. (I really need to bring that one home and scan it)
4. My boss hadn’t been able to locate the birthday candles in the kitchen for the past 2 birthdays, so asked me to pick up some more. After I had put the new ones on the cake, Selty enters, rummages through a drawer, pulls out a jar of candles and slams them on the table, spitting out, “if people would just look, they wouldn’t have to buy things”. My boss’s response? “Oh well, I like the new candles better.”
5. Today’s cake was carrot, at the request of the recipient. Selty asks, “is this carrot cake? I guess I have an excuse not to eat it” and sits frowning with her arms folded next to the cake for 30 minutes.

There are more, but the discovery of the grey hair (above) has cast everything else from my mind!

¹no, she is not gay – she drools over male movie stars