Yes indeed, I have been in the office today again. I haven't spent to much time there lately, after the vacation & some parent leave. Can't say I miss the office as such, but I do miss the regular interaction and social relationships with some colleagues etc. I have probably seen more of the Office on TV (Channel 9) during this period. They are running the old episodes from both the original English version and the American copy, more or less every night. I was a big fan of it when it was first shown on TV some years ago, with Ricky Gervais as the magnificant super-mix of manager & comedian = David Brent.

For me, this was more or less a true story, since I spent 2 years (in the late 80's) in a very similar office in the outskirts of western London, not in Slough but very close. My experience was even a bit more extreme. It was at British Telecom in Osterley, where I was contracting as an IT support analyst/programmer during a major conversion to a new IT business application platform. I had a team leader called Andy, that actually looked like D.Brent, but double as fat and never ever serious. Most jokes were far below the belt and most of his time was spent across the road at the rugby club's private pub, where all we at BT where members. I had many lunches there myself consisting of one small bag of potato crisps and 3-4 pints of lager. Andy was there every day together with some other middle managers, with the same values in life. When they dropped back in to the office again between 3 and 5 PM, Andy was sitting in the middle of the office space, burping, farting, laughing, repeating old bad jokes and just needed lots of attention from everyone else. His manager, Dave, was another joker, but with much more style (John Cleese type), also a happy drinker, but his speciality was to be away on lots of important activities most of the time and it didn't take me long to realize that he was doing non-work activities outside the office. The top manager, Bob, was an old guy waiting for retirement, so he didn't really care at all or knew what was going on. For me, this was a gold mine. Because in the end, someone have to do the work and it didn't take many months before I was more or less indispensible. They also treated me extremely well and I felt more valuable then ever before. It also paid off nicely on my bank account ;-) There were lots and lots of funny incidents and when I see the TV serie about the Wernham Hogg office in Slough, it's like a nice memory flashback.

Tonight, it was an episode from the American version, where Steve Carrell is playing the Manager role. It's not at all as funny as the English version and it shows very much, according to me, the difference between British and American humor.

By the way, when I talked to an old colleague (Sid) some years later, I was told that the Osterley branch had been closed down or merged with another BT branch, due to overcapacity & low efficiency. The success of the new IT system that I was working with was not mentioned. Yeah, yeah, yeah ... get on with the story please.

I guess that some new management had stepped in with sober eyes. No big surprise regarding the end of the story and also very much just like the final parts of the TV serie. All fun has to come to an end ... Cheers David Brent & Andy Crompton!