The good , the bad and the ugly- April 2013

The Good:  Life.


There seems to be so much bad stuff happening at the moment. So much hurt, suffering, sadness and death. From the Boston bombings, Earthquakes in China, ongoing starvation, ongoing war and on and on......through it all and perhaps because of it all, I am reminded of the fragility and the preciousness of life...

I am reminded to enjoy what we have while we have it.... and where we can and for those who need it, to help them so that they too can enjoy what life we have, what life they have.
For all we know it could be over in an instant.



The bad:  Inappropriate in-talk/code between friends

 I was reminded of this recently when talking to a friend about how we refer to each others dates by code name instead of by the date's actual name. I casually said 'I might blog about this', to which my friend screeched, No!!!  Don't blog about it, it will make us all look like arseholes!!!!!!  And when I thought it, this friend was right. I mean, how unfair that a man who wore tracksuit pants on the second date, was forever referred to by myself  and my friends as 'tracksuit pants man'... When I have referred to him by his actual name, my friends quizzically ask 'who?'

So now, all of our conversations about him go a little bit like:

'How are things going with tracksuit pants man?'

'When are you seeing tracksuit pants man again?'


Poor, poor, poor man, his only crime was a crime of fashion and a tiny little dating faux pas. I wonder if his gravestone will remember him as tracksuit pants man as well.

Would it be heartless of me to mention 'heart attack man', who had a heart attack early on in the dating game and has since passed away, bless him....or my friend whom a clairvoyant once foretold would next date a woman who was (and I am quoting the clairvoyant here) 'mutton dressed as lamb'... which meant that subsequently, every woman this friend showed any interest at all in, the rest of us would look over and consider if she was in fact 'mutton dressed as lamb'. Terrible of us I know... but I personally blame the clairvoyant.

There is also (and let me finish on a more harmless note), my friend who dated a man who had 500 cd's and was forever referred to as '500cd'. To this day I have no idea what his actual  name was......



The Ugly:  Work colleagues and  inappropriate disclosures.

Speaking of  inappropriateness, a while back an ex manager of mine bragged to the whole team that they regularly stole fruit and veg from the supermarket. What makes this worse is that this person was in a role where we were meant to be modeling appropriate behavior and enforcing rights and laws.

This manager bragged that they would use the self service at the supermarket checkout and scan more expensive items through as cheaper ones. For example, broccolini  was put through as broccoli. Truss and hydroponic tomatoes put through as standard tomatoes.This manager then disclosed that their partner would take hydroponic and truss tomatoes off the stems and pretend that they are standard el-cheapo tomatoes... once a supermarket staff member overseeing the self-serv machines pointed out that the tomatoes were in fact the more expensive hydroponic tomatoes, but my old mangers partner ARGUED this was not true and kept arguing until they got away with it... the manger then said, "what we learned from that was to go the supermarket during peak times so that there is less chance of being monitored and caught"....
Yep... My face must have given away my disgust, as my then manager said in front of the team  'oh Matthew doesn't approve'... Hell no! I don't, but in this instance I was more subtle and responded with a simple 'I didn't say anything'. No I didn't say anything, but my expression did.

Of course after this my friends and I referred to this manger in conversation as 'light fingers', 'the thief' or 'the self serve check out thief'. Can you blame us?