Although I’m not exactly long on this Earth (a mere 26 years), I’ve noticed during the course of my working life (a poxy 10 years) that the frequency of staff members showing up for work drunk and/or high has been in steady decline, freefall even. Around the turn of the millennium, it used to be that you weren’t expected to show up sober on a Saturday or Sunday morning, in fact, you’d usually be the odd one out if you did. I can remember (or at least partially remember) many occassions where I would get a taxi from a party straight into work. And I can remember at least two occassions where that taxi was shared with a female member of staff who was also at the same party who also got no sleep because i boned (or attempted to bone) them all night long.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but looking back now I see that this was the golden age of the whole Celtic Tiger thingy. Everyone, including our employer, knew that there was literally thousands of companies crying out for staff, so none of us gave even the slightest bit of consideration to our work and some even relished the prospect of telling the boss to shove his job up his hole. We might have had shit jobs and our employer might have had shit staff, but we had shit jobs that we could act the bollocks in and our employer had shit staff which was somewhat better than having no staff at all. Everyone was happy.

In the intervening years between then and now things have gotten progressively worse. First came the EU expansion which, in effect, meant we had to sober up or face being replaced by the no-nonsense, hard-working Eastern Europeans (Although I must admit the Poles kick our asses when it comes to being drunk in the morning) . Then came the poxy cunt that is the smoking ban and took away our precious fags too. THEN they bring in a drugs-testing policy at work so the fuckers can sack you when they know that you’re still off your head from the previous night. And before you know it, they’ll be looking to get us electronically tagged in case we spend a little longer than we should in the toilet. It’s like having a free gaff for the week when, suddenly, your parents get home early. They stop to have a brief chat with the Gardai that have been stationed outside the house for the last 3 days, kick the passed-out guy off the lawn, puncture the bouncy castle (who’s idea was that anyway?) and plug out the stereo. The party’s over.

But all is not lost, the news that there may be a recession has pricked my ears and, to be honest, I can’t fucking wait for it to happen! It’s been ’socially unacceptable’ to be on the dole at any stage for my generation because if you’re in that 1-2% of Irish nationals that can’t get a job people tend to think that you’re either a lazy, good-for-nothing cunt or that you must be mentally challenged. But, luckily, there’s no shame at all in being part of a 12-15% section of society that can’t get a job. And after I drink a couple of bottles of jack, snort a few lines, pop a few pills then show up for work in a near-maniacal state and proceed to screw the work experience girl, anally, and in full view of the boss whilst telling him that he can mimic the act I’m performing with his job and his own ass, I think it’s safe to say that I’ll find myself in that 12-15% for quite some time. Result.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 2:01 am and is filed under Genius. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.