Sunday, August 31, 2008


On Bribie Island if someone is wearing a company-issued name tag it is perfectly acceptable to call them by their first name every day for over a month without ever introducing yourself.


11 comments:

  1. So everywhere you go, you're hearing, 'G'day Sam' even when you're not at the Coffee Club but at the chemist, looking for Anusol instead?

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  2. God that sounds like my sort of place. I wish everyone would wear name tags

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  3. Kath - Especially when I forget to take off my name tag after work. What's Anusol?

    Squib - Actually, if everyone wore name tags it wouldn't be a problem. But when you're part of the service industry and people use your personal name as though there were more of a connection than just you not spitting in their coffee, I find it unconscionably rude.
    "Good morning, Sam!"
    "Good morning, Fatso!"

    Kath (again) - Just kidding. I get it.

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  4. I was going to say simply allocate them a name based on a negative feature of their appearance, odour or demeanour, but 'fatso' seems to cover that nicely.

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  5. My Dad would agree with you Franzy. As a youngish teacher in the seventies, his hair had unfortunately pretty well disappeared. A teacher 'mate' kept calling him Kojak during their pool games. Dad endured this for a while because, what else can he do without appearing like a humorless git but did kind of resent the fact that he could reply back with, "Nice shot, shortarsed fatso."

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  6. Ooops. "Could NOT reply back with..." Kind of ruins the effect a bit.

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  7. The thing is that I call pretty much everyone I know "fatso" - especially the girls. I think it actually challenges you to reconsider what might actually be a pretty serious case of body dismorphia. Hopefully by going "Hey! I am not fat!" in your head, it will actually stop you from really thinking that you are at a later date.
    Unless you are actually overweight and unfit and just need to exercise. Then I lay right off.

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  8. You're off to a good start with your Single Sentences. Looking forward to the rest of the month.

    I hate wearing a name tag. Every single day perfect strangers use my name as though we're bosom buddies. I prefer to be this friendly only with people that I've come to know and like.

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  9. Plus for girls there's the extra indignity of giving everyone a(nother) semi-legitimate excuse to give The Twins a good ol' once over.

    "Gooooooooooooooood morning, River. Just the milk thanks!"

    Eugh.

    I've come up with a novel, non-insulting solution though:
    "Good morning, Sam!"
    "Good morning, Regular Customer!"
    *awkward silence*

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  10. Franzy - I tend to find "You're welcome kind sir" tends to send shivers up a few peoples spines - let alone getting weird looks from others. Although I must say bar tenders prefer to ignore you when you ask for your next pint of coopers.

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An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32