Space Whale!

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

Today was Caro's "Day of Beauty". She is going to fly up to the Bay of Plenty for the weekend, so today was all about eyelashes, nails and hair. 

For her. Let me just clear that up.

Since the whole procedure wrapped up around 4.30, I met her at the station so we could catch the train home together. We were just about to get on the train when - a tap on my shoulder....

PLEASE DON'T BE SMOCK 
PLEASE DON'T BE SMOCK 
PLEASE DON'T BE SMOCK 

It wasn't Smock.

It was Tiger! And as usual, he was full of fun and chat. His work sounds AMAZING. I told him this.

"Well, if it wasn't for the dickhead senior managers, yeah," he agreed. 

But really. I don't know how bad the management can be to counterbalance the sheer FUN they seem to have. Their stand-ups sound BRILLIANT.

I've been to a fair number of effing sodding bloody pain-in-the-arse painful stand-ups in my life. Tiger said that they brighten up theirs by making people do things. Like, today they had to give their daily recap in the style of a cheesy DJ.

"Heeeeeyyyyyy... so coming in yesterday at number one was some - ahhhhh - system testing going out to all the laaaaaydeeez right here at channel one...."

In another stand-up they arranged to have a McNugget eating competition. "There was sweet and sour sauce EVERYWHERE..."

So there's some ideas for ya.

It sounds like Tiger is good at having fun at work. When he worked in a call centre, he said they would set each other challenges. "On the next phone call you have to use the word 'inveterate' THREE TIMES." 

Unfortunately, this blew up when one of Tiger's team got fired for taking three calls with three different accents each time. (Spanish, German and Irish, if you wanted to know).

He also worked in the kitchen in a cafe in Cambridge. He explained that The kitchen and the front-of-house staff developed special code to pass messages to each other. Barking, bird-calls, meowing. It started off simple enough. 

But, Tiger explained, soon they ran out of standard non-verbal ways to communicate messages. They had to become increasingly elaborate. For example, if a particularly annoying customer they had named "No Foam Latte" came in, then they would communicate it by making the call of the Space Whale.

Space Whale? 

What does a Space Whale sound like?

Tiger confessed that this was difficult. They came up with the name before they came up with the noise. In the end, they imagined a whale as on the Apollo 9 mission.

"OoooowwwwoooooowwwOOOOOooo" - sssshhhttt-crackle -"wwoooOOOOOooooo" -ssssshhhhttt-crackle - "OOOOooooo...."

Tiger explained that the problem was that the noise went on so long, the customers would notice. Even "No Foam Latte" picked up on it. 

And then, if they were running low on scones, they would make the noise of the Hell Goat.

"I can't make that noise, not on a train," said Tiger, darkly. To be fair to him, Space Whale had drawn a fair amount of attention. 

And then we were in Paraparaumu and we waved goodbye to Tiger. 

I love our new neighbours. 

S.