No. 48 The Idiot in the Workplace

Speaking of self-righteous pricks, one of the few pleasures that lifts Jeffman’s otherwise dull and dreary weekdays watching a wall in case it decides to change colour, is occasionally listening to the abject nonsense that spills with seemingly carefree abandon, and no due consideration for nearby animal or plant life, from the mouth of a man he is forfeit to share office space with.

We have met this particular character before. He was number five of Seven things you needn’t know about Jeffman. From this moment on we shall refer to him as Case M.

Not that he’d recognise himself were he to happen upon this page whilst scouring the internet for topless photographs of Margaret Thatcher or PDFs of the Daily Mail Guide to Social Justice and Enriching the Dispossessed Classes (Page 1, string the buggers up). Not even if I were to post his full name, his address, and the combined age and shoe-sizes of his wife, cat and dog. Such is Case M’s almost terminal condition of self-absorption, self-importance, and misguided self-belief that elevates him to the same pedestal of self-centred idiot presently reserved for the likes of Simon Cowell, Jeremy Kyle, Piers Morgan, and anybody who considers themselves worthy of a place in the Big Brother house.

Case M would have you believe, given half the chance, that it was he who discovered fire, fashioned the first wheel, put a bullet through JFK’s skull, and single-handedly raised the Mary Celeste with nowt more than a rubber dinghy and a fishing rod liberated from a passing garden gnome.

Case M could talk shite for England, were he not in the possession of a suspiciously French sounding surname, and even in the event of his inevitable loss, he’d either do his damnedest to convince you that his gold medal was in the post, or blame his failure on a pole-vaulting aardvark.

Sound familiar?

Well I’m relatively new to this office lark, having once had a real job, but I’m sure there are people like Case M in offices the length and breadth of the land, and indeed, the rest of the world. I’ve certainly come across the breed in other work environments. Workplace idiots!

It’s bad enough having to give up ten or so hours (travel included) of your free time in the first place – just to raise some capital for the next drinking venture – without having to endure eight of them in the company of the inhuman equivalent of a peanut lodged behind the eyeball.

Maybe it’s this close proximity for such a prolonged length of time that has riled Jeffman to the point of violently vomiting what you’re now reading into the bowels of his trusty word processor. Usually I would just ignore the problem.

But not this proud child of Thatcher. During the recent crisis of Jeffman’s £37 Billion Bailout, Case M could be heard clucking over and over again like a parrot with its beak stuck in the groove, “It’s socialism in its purest form”, as though he’d heard a new word on the news and was damned if anybody was getting out alive until they knew this. Not even entertaining the fact that part-nationalising these thieving banks was actually a case of the Government being unable to come up with any other alternative; as far removed from a system based on social equality and the equal distribution of the fruits of one’s labours as Bonnie Langford is from that BAFTA lifetime achievement for services to acting. Or Peter Mandelson from a heartfelt and honest commitment to the labour movement.

Funny word ’socialism’. It has long been weighted by those who stand to lose the most to strike fear into the hearts of the ignorant and the stupid, invoking macabre images of the decomposed husk of Uncle Joe clawing his way out of a muddy grave and biting the heads off of small children and budgerigars. When perhaps the only real fault that lies in socialism is it doesn’t take into account the capacity for human greed.

But I digress. If the sum of his parts isn’t enough already, there’s also the fact that Case M thinks he’s funny (stones and glasshouses, anyone?). I think it’s safe to say that running a comedy night at a nearby pub does not a David Mitchell ready-wit make. Nor does continually recycling other comedian’s gags and passing them off as your own, until the unfortunate recipient of said whimsy feels as though they’ve been beaten jovially about the head with a pre-cast-concrete balloon.

So, Jeffman. The two quid question. What makes you any better?

Nothing. I readily admit I’m an idiot. After all, is this not the Not What it Used to Be Journal of Idiocy? Indeed it is.

The idiots are everywhere. Your chances of becoming a success are directly correlated to how much of an idiot you actually are. Take a look at the so-called ‘leader of the free world’ for the past eight years. Case M should go far.

And so should a misanthropist like Jeffman. Some idiots raise the bar, others lower it.

To quote George Orwell’s Idiot Farm: “All idiots are equal but some idiots are more equal than others.”

I’m now off on a stag-do, and could be gone a while.

Next week, Jeffman will be levelling his sights at other prime examples of human devolution. Namely the sorry excuses for wankers who invite applicants for job interviews but lack the common courtesy to inform them their services won’t be required. Sour grapes? Possibly.

You have been warned.

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