Jonah

Wherever I've worked, I always seem to have been haunted by some issue or other. A problem without a satisfactory resolution.



When I was at Channel 4, it was a noisy air-con unit which used to cause the occupants of the floor it serviced to complain daily. We could not - despite throwing inordinate amounts of time and money at it - seem to make it stop. I even resorted to working among the complaining group to see if I could pin-point the cause of the problem. But to no avail. As far as I'm aware, the unit is still screeching away now, and the good folk of Legal Administration (or whatever the fuck department it was) are still phoning in daily to moan about it.

Prior to this, there were a couple of things during my reign at Disney which made my life a living hell. One was a scenic lift. It persistently intermittently and inexplicably broke down, occasionally with some high-flying (no pun intended) executive or other trapped in it. I can look back on this sorry tale now and laugh (unlike the poor claustrophobic executive, sad to say) but at the time I suffered many a sleepless night over it, I have to tell you.



Worse than that - far worse - was a cracked window. It may not seem a huge deal, but this window was gigantic. Approximately 8ft square, located on the 8th floor, above the Hammersmith flyover. JG Ballard could have written my CV if anything had gone wrong with replacing that damned thing, and it took an absolute age to get it done. I remember that there were quite a number of broken windows in the building, and great efforts were expended to find out what had caused this odd fracturing, though there was some hesitation when it came to committing to the huge sums of money necessary in order to (possibly) resolve it.

I can recall an expert who came to look at the problem with me. He and I were looking at one particular office with a broken window. There was a female manager sitting there at that time, but she was not at her desk when we arrived. We deliberated, digested and cogitated for a few moments, with the requisite amount of chin stroking and inside jokes. And then she walked in.

"Hi Carol." I said (for it was she)

"Oh, hello," said my erstwhile companion. "We've just been admiring your cra..."

I have one or two extant situations for the final bizarre couple of weeks remaining at my current place of employment, mostly involving pigeons and leaks, but the biggest bloody sea bird adorning my neck, Flavor Flav style, is a lazer blue bastard, draped around there from an early age, and hanging around like a bad smell ever since.