Working 9 to 5

With so many historical secrets, deemed unreleaseable to the public at the time, the hour comes round when their need for secrecy expires and they can at last be revealed to the adoring public. Similarly, I am now able to Plog about things which, at the time, for work reasons or otherwise, wasn't appropriate. All anecdotes are at least two years old and most names have been changed. A bit.

We shall start with a list of Characters I have Worked With:

- Jurrassic Mark - a 60-something, massively overweight colleague who would regularly have two cans of Coke and two croissants for breakfast, whilst telling everyone he was on a diet. The monitors on the floor used to shake as he'd walk past.

- Tommy McFlop - the guy was as reasonably normal as someone who works in banking ever could be, but with just a very strange name. Whenever I had to write an email to him, in my head I'd be saying "Tommy McFlop has only one sock". I couldn't stop it. It was weird. I suppose, given the name, I could have chosen a worse rhyme.

- Picky Nose Percy - as you would expect. Had no shame about it. Did it in meetings. I suspect when he had his photo taken for the department website, his hand had to be forcibly removed from his nose.

- Arrogant Aaron - I'd crawled into work to deliver a training course, despite being on antibiotics for a severe kidney infection. At lunchtime, when I started passing blood, I decided it was time to confess all to my manager Aaron. His response, not, "What can I do to help?" or, "Do you need to go home?" but, "What's our business contingency if you have to go to hospital?"

- Terry Munbling - who talked very quietly, in a whisper, but had somehow been promoted to the head of a department. No-one could ever hear what he said. One unfortunate moment occurred when I sent an email out to the entire department regarding one of Terry Munbling's decisions, and I auto-spellchecked. The email went out to the department telling everyone who worked there about the decision of Terry Mumbling.

- Repeatedly Racist Kate. Was racist. Repeatedly. Was also called Kate.

- Billy the Cunt - the manager I had who was supposed to be responsible for my personal development whilst I was on a graduate scheme. At the end of my first review, he used the sentence, "I could tell you what you was doing wrong, yeah? But then you wouldn't learn nothing, yeah?"

- Berty's Botty - Berty had the lovely habit of standing with his hands down the back of his trousers, having a good old rummage. Every so often, he would extract his hands, inspect his fingernails (which were inevitably caked with - I hope - dirt), give them a good sniff, then put them back down his trousers again.

So these examples have passed through the annals of history and are now safe to reveal. I knew there were perks of working with absolute tossers. Who knows what future secrets will be revealed?