Sleeping on the job

Back in my working days I was a PR Executive, but after a while I cracked. I mean shit, you  know what, it was a strain being nice to people all the time, and do you know the hassle it involves, being an executive? You have to keep lots of sheer tights in your desk in case you get a ladder. You have to wear suits that have to be dry cleaned. You also have to wear makeup. You also have to turn up in the morning and act cheerful and go round to everyone in the office and ask if they want tea or coffee and actually remember who has sugar and who has milk while you have a hangover. Making tea and coffee for people is really one of the worst things about working in an office.

In any case, after eight years of this, I decided to get out of the rat race and just work as a temp secretary for a while. Which wasn't too bad actually. But in the year before I left London for the States, I had a secretarial job in which I lost it. I was working at a University doing, well, God only knows what I was meant to be doing. I was seriously underworked. I had to type about one letter a week. God knows I kept busy with Internet porn. I also wrote two erotic novels while I was there. I also organized a friend's art exhibition, designed and printed his exhibition catalogue and mailed it out to hundreds of guests using the University's postal system, meaning I got it free by scamming it. I also had an office affair with a man who was, quite simply, a challenge. When I first got there everyone was like, "Oh Dan will shag anyone." "God, Dan has slept with more people than I've had hot dinners." And it was odd, because Dan was really pleasant and nice looking and didn't look like he had herpes.

As you can imagine, I was angry. Christ, I was furious. He'll shag anything and he hasn't tried to shag me? Right, I'll have him, I thought. I invited him out on a date. And a very nice date it was too. He told me about what music he liked and how recently he and a friend had tried to reenact a scene from a porno with a girl who was dying for a threesome. It hadn't gone at all well. The problem might have been neither of the lads could get aroused in front of another man, maybe? I forget what the exact nature of the problem was, but I do know that the girl did not achieve her fantasy. In any case, it was all quite intriguing, and I thought we were getting on really well. Then at the end of the night, would you believe it, he walks me home and doesn't even try to invite himself up for a cup of coffee!

I was mad. I was fucking furious.

"I don't believe this, Dan," I said. "Everyone told me that you were a right ladies man, and now, what, you're not even going to try and kiss me? What the fuck's up with that?"

"I didn't think you were all that interested," was all he could come up with.

Interested! What did that have to do with anything? It was simply an experiment to see if he wanted to lure me, and the experiment had failed. Well, in the end I did get him into my flat and persuaded him that I was interested enough to give him a whirl. And very good it was too. But honestly, I've never been so insulted in my life. Is there anything worse than not being seduced by a man who you know would screw anything that wasn't nailed down? Although admittedly, looking back on it, I had gone a bit mad with boredom and probably wouldn't have screwed someone I wasn't particularly interested in, had I been feeling a little more sane.

Where was I? Anyway, I was busy doing all this stuff while at this job, but still it wasn't enough to fill the hours. I was going cuckoo. And on Fridays the temp agency I worked for would let you fax your time sheet to them in the morning (you filled in the hours you were planning to work on Friday). So one day after about eight months working there, I thought, right, I am not going to sit here all day Friday doing fuck all. For one thing, I have a fucking hangover and I want to go to sleep. So I filled in my time sheet for the week and faked the supervisor's signature and faxed it to the agency. Then I went home and went to bed and fell asleep. Well, some prick had obviously grassed me up, because the supervisor at the office phoned me at home and started to leave a message on the answer phone about, "Someone needs a letter typed up and no one can find you." No I didn't answer the phone. I'm not that stupid. I just got out of bed, took the tube back to the job, sat down behind the desk, and when the supervisor found me, told her I'd just been out for a long lunch, was anything wrong?

No, she didn't fall for it. I was fired from that job. Thank God. But at that point I realized I'd had enough of working, thanks very much. And I got myself up the duff and moved to the USA. And actually, truth be told, kids are harder work than those office jobs ever were. But after six years, yes, I do believe this lazy bitch is finally ready to take a job. Wierd how things change, isn't it?

I've done some other bad things while at work, maybe I'll talk about them sometime. I'm not sure whether going home to sleep while you're being paid to work is better or worse than actually sleeping under the desk, as some people I know have done. What's the slackest thing you've ever done while on the job?