Good evening,
Whilst programming, I found the following saved on my dropbox. It was written on the first day of my internship at the company I’m currently working for, which was about 4 months ago. I hope you enjoy it 🙂
-Matt
05:33
Begrudgingly, I opened my eyes to the dawn of another day in the life of my miserable existence. Shafts of sunlight fell through the folds in the curtains, and tiny dust particles floated in the golden light like dandruff in a swimming pool. Like a blind drunk, I patted the bedside table until my hand fell on my phone, and attempted to look at the time with my eyes half glued together with sleepy dust. Turning over, I checked to see if Marta was still where I left her, before allowing my head to sink back into my pillow. “5 more minutes” I thought …
06:40
“Captain, you can’t!” cried Rachel Riley.
“No … I must” I replied, donning my space helmet solemnly. A red light washed over the bridge like the tide up a beach, and a periodic siren howled against the background ramble of the crew. USS StarStripper the Third was falling out of orbit of a black hole, and I was the only one who could stop it. Probably.
“Matt” she said, tears streaming down her face and onto her skin tight jumper suit, “I’ve done the maths on this whiteboard. It’s hopeless”
“Can someone turn that bloody siren off please?” I asked, as the ringing in my ears intensified.
I opened my eyes to the sound of the alarm on Marta’s phone. Groaning, Marta climbed over my unresponsive body and turned it off. After pausing to give me a look of indignity, she marched off to the bathroom.
07:34
Breakfast had been and gone, and Marta had finally left the bathroom. She was currently in the process of packing her elaborate salad into a container for lunch. I, on the other hand, had taken two bits of bread, covered them in animal fat and put a slab of cheese in the middle of them. Job done.
Looking in the bathroom mirror I noticed something a bit strange. Due to the way my shirt had been packed by the good folk at Matalan, there were a number of fold marks right around my general man boob area. This meant, at a glance, it looked like I had 4 nipples. At that point I decided to keep my suit jacket on throughout the day.
8:02
We arrived at reception after navigating a busy roundabout, and given visitor passes. My bowel felt strangely empty as I sat on the maroon coloured sofa with Marta. Many people entered the building before the next interns arrived. They took one look at me and decided to sit on the sofa adjacent.
9:34
After a tour of the office and a glass of water, it was time for the first test. Normally I would have been thrilled at the prospect of assembling a computer, but in a work environment under pressure I was less than happy. I looked over to Marta’s desk, and noticed her computer was pre-assembled and working. With a pang of jealousy, I dug into the cardboard box containing a monitor, and set to work.
11:04
As it turned out, my computer booted first time without any problems. Unfortunately for my now colleague, his decided that the on-board graphics would have a fist fight with the dedicated graphics card, and hence produced a BIOS error message. After helping him fix this problem, I realised I’d forgotten the Ethernet cable. Luckily, it connected to the network fine and all seemed well. However, after starting Outlook it became apparent everything wasn’t fine at all.
The server couldn’t identify the configuration for my email account, leaving me without any of the induction paper work I was required to read through and fill out. After someone else’s manager phoned IT for me, he left telling me it was my problem now. Wonderful.
12:26
Lunch time! Since the Outlook horror, I had done the square root of sod all in terms of work. I asked my manager what I should do, and he replied “sit and wait”. So that is what I did. Literally. I sat and stared at a screen, occasionally hitting retry on the email configuration tool.
However, lunch was very good as I got to talk to Marta and Omar (some other guy on my course, very good artist, great teeth / body) over my lovely cheese sandwich prepared before my bowel clearance that morning. Towards the end of lunch, another intern Seb came over boasting about being invited to a meeting. I wondered briefly if my emails had been fixed yet.
14:07
Emails were still knackered. Seb and some other bloke had left for the meeting about 10 minutes ago, and I was still sat there drooling at my monitor. Which by the way, had a bit of a fault.
See, if I adjusted the angle of the screen so that I can see it comfortably, it turned off. This was because of a dodgy power cable, which had a tendency to arc on the contacts. Excellent design feature there. So I was left then with really quite good posture as I strained to see what I was looking at.
15:46
“What is life?” I pondered, watching the seconds of the day slowly go by on the clock face. Before I could turn my attention back to my monitor, my esteemed colleague (the one with the fighty GPU) asked if I wanted a copy of the induction documents via a USB stick. Beside myself with gratitude, I said “yes please” rather too quickly.
16:07
A nice man from IT phoned me and explained why my email wasn’t working. Apparently someone else in the company already had that email, which caused the server to go “I dunno lol”. He said he was going to set up a new account for me which should be ready by the following day.
16:32
Technically, I should’ve been allowed to leave at this point. However, due to various factors I reasoned it would be “professional” to remain seated behind my desk for an extra half an hour. You know, just in case.
Somehow I had blitz through the paperwork and without realising it run out of stuff to do again. So, for the remaining minutes of the day I read through the “work ethics” booklet enclosed in the induction paperwork in excruciating detail, until I knew what I could and couldn’t say off by heart.
17:14
After an unreasonable effort, Marta finally managed to put the front door key in the lock, and rotate it in such a way to open the door. Bounding over the threshold, I dumped my bag, my shoes and the majority of my formal clothing on the floor within the first few steps. Letting out a sigh of relief, I allowed my balls out of their sweaty prison and sat down on the sofa. “Pea” Marta said in that voice, “my parents are going to be here in half an hour. Put some trousers on”.
19:26
“Oh bollocks” I swore quietly under my breath. The supposedly convenient ready meal (“spinach pasta”) we bought the other day turned out to fill the entire saucepan, leaving approximately 3mm on top for some boiling water to sit. Meanwhile, many Spanish words were flying around the living room, a few of which I recognised.
“Ahh Matt ….. something something …. cocino …. something “ said Marta’s dad enthusiastically. Are they calling me a chief?
“Marta, are your parents calling me a chief?” I asked as she entered the kitchen.
“Yes they are, why?” she replied.
“Just wondering” I mumbled back, prodding the uncooked pasta with a fork.
19:45
We sat and ate dinner in the vast shadow cast by Marta’s tomato plant. The salad we had prepared before they arrived was torn apart, with many bits of cutlery fighting for that extra tomato. I politely took some leaves after they’d finish competing, which turned out to be raw spinach. What did you have for dinner? I had spinach with extra spinach.
“Ahh Matt” Marta’s dad gasped between mouthfuls of food, “this is mm very nice”.
“Thanks” I replied, “I got it out of the package all by myself”.
21:30
By this time, I was feeling completely exhausted. Marta’s parents had left by then, and we had both slumped down onto the sofa cuddling.
“Can we sleep now?” Marta asked quietly.
“Uh hu” I replied. “But before we do, guess what”.
“What?”
“We get to do it all again tomorrow”.
Dragon Egg Games 