OUT for drinks with the office last night? Woken up under the burden of some confessions that, in the light of day, you really wish you could forget? These will always be there:
‘I used to snort about £600 a week’
The twitchy energy and stifled anger of the person that gave you a job without thinking it through is magnetic. And, after last night, understandable. Going axe-throwing with a dealer who’s now inside for murder? Getting talked into smuggling a kilo to clear debts? He’s now clean, but disappeared surprisingly early? Shit.
‘I can’t forgive Ray for cheating in the office quiz in 2009’
There’s always been an atmosphere, but the fourth round of Baby Guinnesses opens that can of ugly worms: Leanne hates Ray, Caroline’s slide decks are for shit, Richard slow-dances with men and grabs their buttocks with both hands, and Nicola got fired from her last job for embezzlement but won at a tribunal. So now you know.
‘You can sidestep the firewall and look at porn at work’
The nerdy guy’s knowledge of drinking culture around the world is fun, but two pints in he’s giving advice on VPNs and using Tor in the office. Another engineer covers him with crypto stories, almost as if the first guy has secrets that desperately need to stay that way. Deep, darknet secrets.
‘You’ll get mine won’t you, Ed?’
Payday blowouts exist to see who has leverage over the holder of the corporate credit card. And the new young hire, who everyone knows lives in an inner-city flat owned by her parents, appears to be getting free drinks in exchange for some key but unmentioned service. Proving it’s who you know and that diversity and inclusion course was bollocks.
‘I mean it’s anything not to go home, basically’
The office furniture bloke loves his ales, hates his wife, has retired once but took this job because he prefers being voyeur to a passive-aggressive pit of bastards than yet another argument about why his adult son still lives with them. Starts giving bizarre, unconnected advice about marriage, immigration policy and coin collecting after a Jagerbomb.
‘Yeah so I ended up doing a threesome on the bloody roof’
Vodka cranberries bring out the hedonism of a salesman insisting the workplace is essentially one long sex party. Hookups with the divorced HR boss, sordid activities with the on-maternity-leave receptionist, he’s done it all. Nobody believes him. The stragglers who went to a vague afterparty with him ‘for a laugh’ refuse to talk about it.
‘I could have been a f**king cruise ship singer’
Once thoroughly pissed, talk turns to failed dreams. The accountant whose trading channel was shut down for improper conduct. The analyst who went on Blind Dates to sell his energy pills. The procurement manager who would glass that Jane McDonald right now if she saw her. And you. What did you tell them, exactly? Oh shit. Not that. Oh no.
