Dirty Old Men Need Love Too....
Right, time to break the rules and chat about work. Just want to see if all this hullabaloo about the risk of bloggers getting fired is all it’s cracked up to be.
As mentioned before, both Lung the Elder and I are teckies, but perhaps the nature of our technical expertise was not fully explained.
I am in point of fact a chemist. Not the friendly-pharmacy-on-the-corner type of chemist but more the in-league-with-the-Hoofed-One type. As such, I naturally spend most of my working week throwing rocks at solar panels, blinding laboratory rats and putting dioxins into baby food. Hey, it’s a living, whadayagonnado.
This week I was touring some of the charming industrial wastelands around Barcelona pedalling my company’s wares to dubious manufacturing firms. Accompanying me was Rodrigo, a representative of one of our US suppliers. Now Rodrigo is a really nice guy, full of energy and enthusiasm for the job. That’s fine for one day but after several days of his loud professional euphoria, I began to feel like I was trapped in an elevator with a hyperactive mariachi.
Our last meeting was on Thursday in a rusty outdated warehouse plant that had probably reached its zenith of productivity when I was in nursery school. Our meeting was in the office of the plant manager, a cosmetically challenged 60-year old with bad teeth and an oily comb-over who squinted at us suspiciously over his bifocals as if we were about to grab his desk calendar and run off with it.
The plant manager’s computer was on a desk behind him and from where I was sitting the screen was just in my line of view to the right of his head. Now the creepy thing is that the screen saver consisted of a flashing series of photos of a very, very young Anna Kournikova. Anna Kournikova stretching to return a service with her little tennis skirt flapping upwards. Anna Kournikova wincing after missing a shot. Anna Kournikova modelling summer wear. etc.
This made the whole interview very off-putting. I spent the whole time trying not to look over this guy’s shoulder, but shit, it was the last appointment of the day and I was pretty knackered and thus vulnerable to distraction from flashing images and let’s be honest, nubile Russian maidens. It was also difficult to look at this guy straight in the face. Not just because it was the type of face that only a mother could love, but because he might have guessed from my expression what I was thinking, which was basically ‘YOU FILTHY OLD BUGGER YOU'.
Fortunately, at these meetings I can usually let Rogrigo drone on while I phase out and let my mind go awandering. I began to ponder on how unforgiving society is of elderly men’s carnal appetites. Nothing would be more natural than a pimply adolescent ogling over a poster of Britney Spears in his bedroom but when we see a pensioner glancing admirably at a pretty young girl in the park our automatic reaction is a shake of the head and a tut tut.
It seems a little unfair. Most of us hope to reach a ripe old age someday and it would be nice to think that we can still appreciate an attractive member of the opposite sex with a certain amount of impunity. So right there and then I consciously decided not to judge this old geezer for his little bit of office decoration. It would also have been highly hypocritical considering I was gawking at it so much myself. Let yee be the ones to cast the first stone for I shall not condemn him..........
............even though the geriatric old pervert refused to buy anything from us.
As mentioned before, both Lung the Elder and I are teckies, but perhaps the nature of our technical expertise was not fully explained.
I am in point of fact a chemist. Not the friendly-pharmacy-on-the-corner type of chemist but more the in-league-with-the-Hoofed-One type. As such, I naturally spend most of my working week throwing rocks at solar panels, blinding laboratory rats and putting dioxins into baby food. Hey, it’s a living, whadayagonnado.
This week I was touring some of the charming industrial wastelands around Barcelona pedalling my company’s wares to dubious manufacturing firms. Accompanying me was Rodrigo, a representative of one of our US suppliers. Now Rodrigo is a really nice guy, full of energy and enthusiasm for the job. That’s fine for one day but after several days of his loud professional euphoria, I began to feel like I was trapped in an elevator with a hyperactive mariachi.
Our last meeting was on Thursday in a rusty outdated warehouse plant that had probably reached its zenith of productivity when I was in nursery school. Our meeting was in the office of the plant manager, a cosmetically challenged 60-year old with bad teeth and an oily comb-over who squinted at us suspiciously over his bifocals as if we were about to grab his desk calendar and run off with it.
The plant manager’s computer was on a desk behind him and from where I was sitting the screen was just in my line of view to the right of his head. Now the creepy thing is that the screen saver consisted of a flashing series of photos of a very, very young Anna Kournikova. Anna Kournikova stretching to return a service with her little tennis skirt flapping upwards. Anna Kournikova wincing after missing a shot. Anna Kournikova modelling summer wear. etc.
This made the whole interview very off-putting. I spent the whole time trying not to look over this guy’s shoulder, but shit, it was the last appointment of the day and I was pretty knackered and thus vulnerable to distraction from flashing images and let’s be honest, nubile Russian maidens. It was also difficult to look at this guy straight in the face. Not just because it was the type of face that only a mother could love, but because he might have guessed from my expression what I was thinking, which was basically ‘YOU FILTHY OLD BUGGER YOU'.
Fortunately, at these meetings I can usually let Rogrigo drone on while I phase out and let my mind go awandering. I began to ponder on how unforgiving society is of elderly men’s carnal appetites. Nothing would be more natural than a pimply adolescent ogling over a poster of Britney Spears in his bedroom but when we see a pensioner glancing admirably at a pretty young girl in the park our automatic reaction is a shake of the head and a tut tut.
It seems a little unfair. Most of us hope to reach a ripe old age someday and it would be nice to think that we can still appreciate an attractive member of the opposite sex with a certain amount of impunity. So right there and then I consciously decided not to judge this old geezer for his little bit of office decoration. It would also have been highly hypocritical considering I was gawking at it so much myself. Let yee be the ones to cast the first stone for I shall not condemn him..........
............even though the geriatric old pervert refused to buy anything from us.
posted by Lung the Younger | 5:13 pm
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