_Noise_Conspiracy.jpg "The (International) Noise Conspiracy - 002-09-17: 9:30 Club, Washington D.C., USA")
First day at work
September 5th, 2006 at 01:23
Today I started a new job as a taxman. I still don’t actually know anything about tax, you understand, but I at least now know all of the stuff about the mission statements and where I’ll be working. I’ll be working in an office.
I can’t disclose too much about what I did there, because this time around, rather than just talk about my job on the internet and nearly get sacked for it, I can probably be locked up in the Tower of London by a Beefeater. I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act y’see- which puts me on practically the same parr as two fictional characters: James Bond and Tony Blair. The former was created by Ian Flemming and and the latter Peter Mandelson & Alistair Campbell.
This tax office lark is just a cover for some serious terrorist bustin’. I’ve spent most of the evening popping caps into cardboard cut-outs in the shape of terrorists and Brazillians (I was told to aim for the head).
One of the first dialemmas that I faced was what to wear. Don’t worry, I havn’t gone all female on you- I wasn’t given any guidance on the dress code. Playing it safe, I turned up today in a shirt and tie, and some uncomfortable shoes that I can’t actually drive in. In the end, I resolved this surprisingly tedious fashion anecdote by changing to my casual shoes to drive with, resulting in an appearance not unlike an uncoordinated version of David Tennant’s Doctor Who, who has decided to jack in the time travel and take on a temporary contract handling self assessment tax returns.
When getting ready to go out I hit an unfortunate snag- I couldn’t figure out how to wear my iPod and headphones without looking stupid. I even asked the internet for help. Usually I’d just run the headphones under my t-shirt, but this was impossible because I was being choked by the most unneccessary fashion accessory since socks: the tie. In the end I listened to glorious silence whilst a thin piece of material flapped about in front of me as if it was looking for a purpose or a reason to exist.
Anyway, when I arrived at work, much to my horror, some people had turned up wearing casual clothing, like jeans and so on, and I felt distinctly over dressed. Of the 90 people starting (!), there were a few people who like me had assumed that working in a tax office is like attending a funeral, so I tried to stand near them as to not look out of place.
When we were split into groups, I asked my immediate manager about the dress code and he explained that “smart casual” is the way forwards. I’m taking a liberal intepretation of this, and assuming it to mean that I can wear what I usually wear: a black t-shirt with an offensive slogan, and some sort of combat-esque trousers. I’m not sure if “smart casual” covers the front half of a pantomime horse, so I’m not going to risk it.
The trouble now though is that because I’ve turned up on day one all poshed up to the max, I’ve created a sort of expectation, and if I was to turn up tomorrow wearing my George Bush “INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST” shirt, it might shock some of my colleagues- so what I’m going to have to do over the course of the next week is sort of gradually tone down the formality of my appearance. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll go in without a tie, and the day after I won’t tuck in my shirt either. The day after that I’ll wear a bright green Hawaiian shirt, shorts, sandals and stuffed parrot on my shoulder, and then by Friday they’ll be pleased that I’ve turned up looking like I normally do.
Aside from all of this clothing bullshit, it was an interesting day of training. At one point, my manager got us to go around the group and introduce ourselves. I toyed with the idea of inventing an entirely new backstory for myself- these people wern’t going to know any difference, for the time being at least, and I would have been able to make myself sound much more exciting than I actually am. Unfortunately, as you might have guessed, I’m not as excellently extroverted as I make myself seem on this blog, so rather than confidently announcing in full seriousness that “I’m Buzz Aldrin, and I was the second man on the Moon”, I told them I was James O’Malley and I go to University. Damn.
I can’t really say anymore about today, as because I’m an employee of the crown, its really all a big injoke between me and the Lizzy II. You wouldn’t understand anyway.
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