You get nothing for free

I think it is something like eight weeks until Christmas, which means having to think about the work Christmas meal. Someone else in my team is sorting it out and has done a bit of a search on the internet and came up with a restaurant that generally specialises in fish but their Christmas menu has other things too. Anyway, she sent out an e-mail and asked people to vote on whether they wanted to go there and everyone said yes, except the chap who is always looking for something for free... His reply said something like “too much fish and you don’t get a complimentary drink, which is really normal when having a Christmas meal”.

First of all, I have never been for a Christmas meal where we have been given a complimentary drink and the reality is that you would pay for it anyway by them increasing the cost of the menu. The other thing is that the issue isn’t how much fish there is on the menu, it’s whether he would be willing to eat anything that is on the menu – whether fish or something else. We got the distinct feeling that he is expecting the venue to be changed because he doesn’t like it, even though everyone else was fine with it.

I have never known anyone to be so tight and out to get anything he can for free. If you’re at a meeting, he’ll take all the left over bottles of water or plates of biscuits or fill his pockets with the complimentary mints. If you go somewhere for coffee he’ll take all the sachets of sugar or take the shampoo and soap they give you in hotel rooms. I can’t even begin to tell you how devastated he was (and I do mean devastated) at not being able to go to a meeting that would have meant staying overnight in a hotel. He’d already planned his regime for the gym they had there. He was like a little kid moping about for days after that and kept taking people to one side to tell them how unhappy he was. On Monday he said to me that he went home feeling really stressed on Friday because he is *so* upset that he didn’t get to go to the conference. Fortunately my phone rang and that cut the conversation short because my patience is wearing thin and all I can say to him is that he needs to get over it. Now.

Anyway, today I am working from home. I do genuinely have quite a few work things I need to get done, but am not a huge fan of working from home because pretty much anything tends to seem more appealing than actually doing any work. Nut I need to be at home today so that my computer can be delivered. I’m also going to take the opportunity to go to my solicitor’s to sign some documents after which I think I will be able to exchange on purchasing the property (although to be honest I’m not entirely sure). Hopefully I will know more later. It will be kind of weird meeting my solicitor because he is someone I have spoken to quite a lot but have never met and you kind of build up this image of someone in your mind, but he is probably nothing like I imagine. All I really know about him is that he is quite a cheeky Liverpudlian, which isn’t a lot to go on.

I’m also going to do things like check out a local place where I can probably get some kitchen appliances delivered really quickly should I need them and I also need to drop my parents’ new computer (which is being delivered to me at the same time) over to them at some point too and if I have time, set it up for them. But I am going to get lots of work done too. Honest.