First Impressions

When I walked into my office building this morning, I was confronted by a scene the likes of which I've seldom seen in all my days of office work: some jumped-up yuppie - either a manager in one of the other companies in the building, or just someone who considers himself important - was berating the guard on the front desk for presenting a poor first impression. Specifically, he complained about the way he looked at incoming visitors, and "all the leaning back, reading the newspaper", concluding that he was having a meeting with the building's managing agents, and fully intended to voice his complaints to them.

Um. OK...

First things first, the guy behind the desk is a security guard, not a receptionist. Meet and Greet is not part of his job description. He's there to ensure those who enter the building are supposed to be there, and if he offers visitors an appraising glance as they enter, that says to me he's doing his job. If he's not engaging everyone in happy conversation, he's ensuring he's not distracted by anything, giving someone the opportunity to slip by unchallenged (and they recently turned hardcore on security after a series of thefts from the offices). If he's reading a newspaper... well, everyone gets a break, and there isn't a break room on the ground floor.

And this guy - dressed in a 'Designer Faded' Superman t-shirt sandals and shorts, and with an unfortunate streak of mud on his backside that looked like he'd had explosive diarrhoea - wanted to complain to the managing agents because he felt that this guy was giving visitors a negative impression about the whole office complex?

Seriously, some of the folks in the offices on other floors are such dicks... and so far up their own arses, they can probably see out of their own mouths. And that's really not a pleasant image.

Moving on...

I've just been watching Team America: World Police on TV - having seen it once before in the cinema when it first came out. I still don't find it funny, except sporadically, and mainly due to the songs rather than the story. I particularly like the line from one of the songs "I missed you like Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbour"... and the use of black cats as 'panthers' at the end was inspired... but the rest of it just wasn't as sharp as it wanted to be/thought it was.

Right now, I'm settling down to watch 30 Days of Night... a very strange vampire movie, based on a very strange vampire graphic novel, in which the vampires don't so much drink blood as they do just spread it all over the place...