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Six things that f**k over your chances of getting out of work on time

HOPING to finish work bang on time for once? No chance. One of these twists of fate is about to royally screw you over.

The no-life boss

Your boss is recently divorced and now lives alone, and as a result works late every night. Unfortunately, he presumes everyone else is also a sad bastard with nothing better to do. He’ll call you into his office just as you’re about to put your coat on to talk sales projections, quarterly figures, and other bollocks that could have waited until the morning. And you’ll stay and listen because you want a pay rise.

That email you’ve been ignoring

A mandatory cyber security training course has been in your inbox for weeks, but you’ve avoided doing it because it’s so tedious. Queue the 5.25pm reminder that it has to be completed by 9am tomorrow if you want to avoid disciplinary action. You race through it, half-reading the questions, and getting it wrong, which means you have to start all over again. It wouldn’t be so bad, but you’ve spent all afternoon when you could have been doing it properly pissing about on the internet.

The distraught colleague

You’re nearly at the door and say goodnight to Karen, who has been quiet all day, so you ask in passing if she’s alright. Bad move. She’s now in floods of tears telling you how she’s convinced her boyfriend is having an affair. You can’t just walk away without looking like an insensitive twat, so now you’re stuck there for another 30 minutes handing her tissues and agreeing he’s a ‘horrendous bastard with a tiny penis’.

The wanker’s leaving do

You’d forgotten it was Colin’s leaving drinks tonight, mainly because he’s a boring tosser. Your more wily colleagues have pre-planned a bullshit excuse and are leaving with a brief handshake, which leaves just you, sad Karen and your boss going to the pub with him. The worst of it is that Colin promises to keep in touch because now he thinks you’re his friend.

The f**king computer update

Your laptop has had all day to prompt you to reboot and update software, but has it bothered? No, it hangs on until you hit the power off key to launch it. ‘Please wait a moment’, it lies, and you’re sat there watching the icon swirling away for the next 40 sodding minutes.

The cleaner’s life story

You’re all good to go and politely say a passing hello to the cleaner who’s just rocked up. This opens the floodgates and you have to listen to a rant about how their mother’s not been well, their son can’t get a job and the dog’s got an ulcer. You don’t want to cut them short, but deep down you’re wondering how the menial classes cope with such a vacuous existence. Which makes you exactly the type of snobby bellend they already had you down for anyway. Maybe that’s why they never empty your bin.

Butlin's, and Britain's other true no-go areas

RIGHT-WINGERS say parts of the UK have become ‘no-go areas’ due to immigration, but they’re wrong. Here are the British places you should never set foot in, simply because they are irretrievably dreadful:

Butlin’s

You might get E. coli from the waterslides or bedbugs from the holiday cottages, but the true horror of Butlin’s holiday parks, whether in Bognor Regis, Skegness or Minehead, lies in the fact that they are haunted by Z-list celebrities from the 90s who will crush your spirit by caterwauling at you during the evening ‘entertainment’. Don’t risk it.

Luton Airport

The town is horrifying enough, but Luton’s airport represents a true crime against humanity. Deceptively called ‘London Luton’, people accidentally fly here expecting to step off the plane right onto Oxford Street. They instead find themselves in the arse-end of nowhere and have to navigate Europe’s worst railway system to actually get to their destination, which takes a further hour and a half and costs £300.

Cheltenham Literary Festival

Cheltenham is posh most of the year, but it’s during the annual book festival that it sucks in the worst of society’s upper echelons. No normal person can enter a cafe without being deafened by a braying conversation between two women called Bunty, who both simply adored the latest Ian McEwan. And you can’t walk down some streets after dark without accidentally wondering into a dangerously middle-class discussion between David Mitchell and Fi Glover. Stay in your car and lock the doors.

The Trafford Centre

Huge, windowless American-style shopping malls fill most people with dread, and there is certainly no place more scary than this gaudily outfitted Northern shopping centre on the last weekend of half term. For people with a weak constitution, a single minute in the massive JD Sports could prove fatal.

Reading and Leeds festivals

Forget Birmingham, if you truly want to go somewhere it feels like your life is in danger, try the Saturday night at Reading or Leeds. Everything is on fire, everyone is off their face and the security team have locked themselves in a portacabin rather than face 50,000 drunk, marauding teenagers wearing Billie Eilish t-shirts and trying to push the toilets over.

The Royal Mile, Edinburgh

It’s crammed with people, the shops are stuffed with tartan-themed tat and everywhere you turn there is some poor bastard in a kilt trying to make a living by pumping out tunes on the bagpipes nine hours a day. On top of this are the hoards of Harry Potter freaks and American tourists convinced their ancestors were born in the castle. Go on holiday to Tower Hamlets, you’ll have a much nicer time.

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