Office politics

The first day of any new job is a truly nerve-wracking affair, a sea of unfamiliar faces and a roll call of names that you'll instantly forget. One brief introduction over and you're waltzed onto the next person and then rinse and repeat. This is x and they do y. Maybe this is what being a royal feels like, day after day of endless strangers standing ready to shake your hand and pretend they're thrilled to meet your acquaintance when clearly they have better things to be getting on with in that moment.

Trying to remember dozens of names to faces is one thing, trying not to adopt force-fed notions into the perceived slights of someone's character is potentially so much harder. In a new workplace you're rarely allowed to make up your own mind and form your own opinion. Heaven forbid! Everyone already has their role assigned and their characters fully assassinated. Soon enough in the blink of an eye, you too will have been there long enough for everyone to have categorised you as well. Someday someone will be whispering into the ear of the new starter who you are and why you've been given the nickname everyone uses behind your back and of course never to your face. 

I've been here a shade over half an hour and I've learned that Phoebe is better known as boxer because she can't go more than three minutes without having to sit down and have people in her ears telling her how brilliant she is, forcing refreshments upon her and then sending her back into the fight. Laura is known as Neville simply on account of her surname being Chamberlain like the British Prime Minister who declared war on Nazi Germany. I figure that could have been worse. Chloe is known as onion. Chloe is for want of political correctness the office hottie. Chloe is also apparently somewhat of a complex character and the theory being the more layers you peel off the more likely it is for it to all end in tears. Emma is known as Bagpuss because she's erm… how should I put this delicately? Oh fuck it I'll just come out and say it, because shes fat and miserable. Look don't judge me, I've been here less than an hour, I didn't make that one up … or any of them for that matter. 

Cathy, they call her Tippex because everyone corrects everything she says or at least they did until they realised she knew exactly what she was saying and that she liked making other people look stupid. I think maybe I'm going to like Cathy the best. She told Steve, who they call R, short for R Sole, that she has a brain like a div. I think you'll find it's a brain like a sieve he said, correcting her, to which she shot back, no I have a brain like a sieve implies it has something in it to spill out. Mine's empty today, I have a brain like a div. Other such notable examples apparently include someone just thrill me, thrill me now. Because she didn't want to die, she simply wanted to be lifted out from the depths of her misery that day. 

Dennis is called Cillin and yes it took me about a second more than it should to have worked that one out. Katie, the relative baby of the office at 19 is known as Stanley which is short for Acronym Stanley, a play on the name of the football club from Accrington and so called because everything ends with a CBA, OMG or WTF. Kevin is called Nigel because he looks like an accountant called Nigel. This I'm reliably informed started getting really tricky when Nigel started working for the company about 18 months ago although Nigel is actually an IT technician and not an accountant. He is however still an actual Nigel. 

I don't think we'd even got through half the staff on the ground floor before my brain was ready to explode. Finally after an hour or more of traipsing around shaking hands, smiling, nodding et al I'm left at my desk whilst Robert, my guide, excuses himself to go to the little boys room. Paul sat to the left of me, swiveled his chair 90° to the right so he's looking directly at me, leans forward and asks "so what did you think of Queenie?" And points in the direction of the departing Robert. I don't even want to know. All I can do is shake my head, raise my hand to my head and rub the side of my temple with my right thumb and the centre of my forehead with my index and middle fingers. I dread to think what they'll be calling me in a week's time.