LOW THRESHOLD FORBOREDOM AND BULLSHIT

A unique collection of genuine documents detailing acrimoniousdisputes between me and my fellow man (and woman).

By DAN BLUNT

INTRODUCTION

Over the last few years I have come into conflict with my tutor, landlord, an Ebay seller and a variety of managers. Needless to say this rundown only includes disputes that have been conducted on paper, for which evidence exists that I can collect in the following pages for your entertainment. If I include face-to-face fracas in my assessment, like the morning I came within inches of having to brawl with my postman on the doorstep in order to get my letters, then the list interminably goes on. It's not that I like causing trouble exactly, it's just that it helps to pass the time and I'm quite good at it. I guess we're all good at something.

I would like to be able to argue that my ire and the resulting battles of words were a justifiable reaction to the transgressions of others, but a careful look at the various examples reveal that this is only occasionally true. Although I can be forgiven for getting bored whilst working dead end jobs, I am clearly guilty of being irritable and over-reacting in a range of situations, not to mention of having a macabre imagination. I apologise for that.

Naturally, whilst sitting at my desk trying to wade through a seven hour shift of insurance related telephone calls my mind would wander but I had a number of persuasive strategies that could keep me going; apart from daydreaming about female colleagues one favourite was to deliberately (and unnecessarily) inform annoying customers about disagreeable clauses in the policies they held, simply because I knew they'd find it infuriating. I also struggle when it comes to showing the people in charge their supposed due deference. During training my team leader once said to me, “Remember, you can hear a smile!” I asked him with mock innocence if that was really true. He replied that it was. So I said, “Is it possible to hear the difference between a forced smile and one born of genuine contentment?” I think we both knew that I didn't have much of a future there, particularly as I hate being expected to actually do the work I'm being paid to do.

I have provided a commentary to accompany each of the assaults on my character, sometimes to present my side of the story but more often simply to clarify and explain. The nature of this book demands that in all cases the original handwritten or typed documents should be included for you to see, and every effort has been made to optimise the scans for quality. However, in order to read the numerous verbal attacks carefully it will still be necessary in some cases to utilise your PDF reader's magnification tools. All of the documents are authentic and unaltered. Names have been changed but not to protect the innocent, rather to protect me from potential legal ramifications.

Although some readers will undoubtedly think my behaviour is unbecoming, and in some situations I would agree, I hope that you will nevertheless find the world of raw emotion depicted both intriguing and amusing. I would like to thank everyone who has lost their patience with me over the years for making this book possible.

Kind regards, Dan.

CONTENTS:

UNACCEPTABLE MATERIAL p.3THE NORWICH UNION CYCLE p.4-5

UP TO MY NECK IN IT p.6-8ENJOYING YOUR JOB IS UNPROFESSIONAL p.9

TEMPER! TEMPER! p.10-14

(c)2010 BLUNT SHANK PRODUCTSwww.bluntshank.co.uk

UNACCEPTABLE MATERIAL

This is the feedback I received for a short story that I wrote as a creative writing student. Besides possessing one or two redeeming features it was a piece without any real narrative merit, and either way it would be inappropriate to reproduce it here. It was certainly violent, but whether it qualified as racist and misogynistic pornography is a matter of opinion. The writing aside, to the concerned among you let me say in my defence that I have an axe to grind with almost everyone, but I do not feel a need to single out anyone on the specific grounds of race or sex. Similarly, I find the suggestion that this piece of writing constitutes an example of “snuff” to be intriguing because the term “snuff” only has any real meaning in the context of film, unless the tutor honestly believed that the rape and murder was taking place in front of me and rather than intervene, I sat there with pen and paper taking notes.

For me the most pleasing thing about the situation was that despite it being considered “unacceptable material” I had fulfilled all the submission criteria which meant that I was able to re-submit without penalty. I found out from a friend who took this woman's creative writing class the year after me that she spent several minutes during the first session complaining that she'd just had the worst summer holiday of her life because she'd had to justify her course content and guidelines to both the internal and external moderators. It was all down to little me! Of course given that she'd obviously read the story she could have put aside her disgust, marked the thing anyway and none of that would have happened. I guess that's the price of integrity.

Before you begin reading I feel duty-bound to mention that this is not the first time I've fallen foul of the censors. A short piece I submitted to the 6th form magazine in high school was once rejected and returned to me with the words “Sorry – just too dreadful, OUT” written in pencil at the top of the first page.

THE NORWICH UNION CYCLE

If you think that my behaviour in this life has been inexcusable, I would argue that the fact I've found it necessary to work for NU on two separate occasions implies that my behaviour in any past lives must have been far worse. Anyway, the emails below speak for themselves.

On the following page you'll find some earlier ones. I'm including a brief glossary that should help you understand them.

GLOSSARY:

“Memo” - Norwich Union's internal email system intended for work related use only.

“Memo abuse” - a crime which was (as you can imagine) very common amongst NU staff, namely using the Memo system to discuss with your friends what had been on television the previous evening or what you intended to do the following weekend. Memo abuse was taken very seriously!

UP TO MY NECK IN IT

Although the letter to my landlord is replete with ingeniously constructed insults, it strikes me as a bit embarrassing now. Not only did I help to mess up his house but I mercilessly ridiculed him for making a minor mistake, and despite this he was still keen to avoid animosity and was willing to return £60 of the money he was previously intending to withhold. I realise now that he wasn't such a bad guy.

In mitigation I will say that myself and my fellow tenant would never wantonly damage anything, and we spent several days clearing up (I had to literally dig up the patio in the back garden! It had completely grown over!) but it wasn't enough. I have a vivid memory of midnight the day before we were due to vacate when we realised to our chagrin that we had run out of Mr Muscle and couldn't clean the oven. I was lying my ass off about the smoking thing too – we did that all the time, myself in particular.

The response I received via the letting agent (see p. 7 & 8) makes the house sound like an absolute shit-hole which is odd because I don't remember it being that bad. We certainly weren't guilty of all the damage that was attributed to us, but I have no interest in going back over it all now. I suggest you enjoy it for what it is – two people on the offensive, and bear in mind that money was involved.

To the landlord's credit he also entered into the spirit of the game somewhat by cracking a few jokes of his own (see references to chocolate money, “specsavers” and chamber pots) but deprecating humour clearly isn't his forte, and to be fair I probably had more time on my hands. We ended up losing most of our deposit. I'm a far better behaved tenant now.

ENJOYING YOUR JOB IS UNPROFESSIONAL

This is what happened when I moved and got my first job in Brighton, for an out-sourcing company that offered its clients bargain basement call centre services. One job I was given, among many, was listening to recordings of my colleagues selling breakdown plans for a well known product and assessing whether they had conducted the transaction according to the rules.

It was a dreadful job, to the extent that during one particularly depressing afternoon I took off for my break and didn't go back for several days. This is the only time that I have ever gone AWOL, and although they ended up keeping me on I was obviously deemed to be a bit of a liability after that. I know this because a few months later I asked my team leader if I could take my break and she initially agreed, but upon seeing me pick up my coat and bag she suddenly ejaculated, “You are coming back?”

The call at the centre of this minor controversy represents one of the few times I found myself absorbed in my work, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.

I have chosen to transcribe this slice of negative feedback in the interests of clarifying who said what. The text in black is what I had to say about the recording of the telephone call I'd just listened to. The comments in red were provided by the guy who had to assess my assessment skills. It was his decision to put certain offending sentences in bold when he copied and pasted my text into the spreadsheet. “VA” stands for “Verifying Agent”, ie. me.

Comments from VA VERY unprofessional – “This one was quite amusing. There seemed to be a great deal of confusion and uncertainty regarding whether debit cards could be accepted, to such an extent that the customer started to mock the agent. The script wasn't followed in the right order, but that was because the customer already had some kind of plan and she didn't know whether it was the same one that the agent was trying to sell her, or whether it had expired. The agent didn't say the, “OK, your debit/credit card will be charged with £xx.xx within the next couple of weeks...” bit. Hence the fail. Overall, however, this was most entertaining...” Have amended. Also have scored call as misconduct as cust said she already had plan and agent still sold it.

TEMPER! TEMPER!

I've saved the best, and most overtly abusive, until last. All I did was buy a DVD from Ebay.

I must admit I was surprised by the tone of the seller's response because I had considered my opening missive to be quite conciliatory (given that he'd misinformed me about the quality of the item I was intending to purchase) but he chose to go for the jugular from the outset and I rapidly followed suit, and what ensued was not exactly a battle of wits, more a battle of wit and witless. Anyway, these messages are self-explanatory.

Incidentally, film geeks with a penchant for open wounds would be well advised to try out Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981) if they haven't already. The limited edition scratched version is best avoided.

I thought it would bring this little saga to a neat conclusion if I were to show you how the other seller responded when the dispute was resolved by PayPal in my favour and I left him negative feedback. Annoyingly it does mean that he got the last words, which he used to call me a “muppet” and an “idiot”. I could retort but I'm above all that. I'm just happy the problem was resolved to the satisfaction of all parties.

CREDITS

LOW THRESHOLD FOR BOREDOM AND BULLSHITPublished JULY 2010 – CAT NO: BSP # 1

WRITING / DESIGN: D. BLUNT

To visit the website: www.bluntshank.co.ukTo see Dan do stand-up click here:

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(c)2010 BLUNT SHANK PRODUCTS