All you need is...

Customers are funny. I won't eat for a week and I'll take you to court, says one. I'm masturbating right now, are you going to hang up? says another. Listen here lady, I'm going to the Ombudsman and you're going down, says my favourite customer of the week. And the funniest one: I've recorded this conversation and I'm calling Channel 9. Lovely balanced friendly people, all. Which is why I love working in customer service. Love it. Love, love, love. Love. .... Love.

And just because my love for the service of customers is so great (servicing them with a knife, suggests Rachel), I worked extra shifts this week at my previous place of employment, a leading flower delivery service, recently renamed The Pits of Burning Hell. Catchy, huh? I'm there because, as you no doubt know, it was my favouritest of days on the calendar on Tuesday: Spend-Money-On-Your-Loved-One-Or-Else-He/She/It-Will-Know-You're-Having-An-Affair Day. Most people know it by it's shortened name: Valentine's Day. Working two jobs is fun. Oh yes. I love it. Love. Love, love, love. ... Love.

The day after SMOYLOOEHSIWKYHAA Day, I got a call at my regular, usual, oh-so-fun-I-have-to-keep-reminding-myself-it-pays-the-rent job, and the caller, a human male, said I had a lovely voice. I asked him if he had a mobile phone query I could help him with. And he asked me if I'm single, which is not usually something that comes up in this line of work. But it is called customer 'care', after all. He then proceeded to tell me he was looking for a girlfriend - and lucky me: through the random process of call allocation, that the call should come to my phone! But apparently he called back a few times and tried these successful lines on other call centre employees. I wonder if he tried them only when one of us lassies answered the phone - and what he did when a bloke answered. Shouldn't be too picky I say. And there are some very attractive lads at work, if I do say so myself. And some of them, too, have lovely voices. And we all love customers. Love them. Love. Love, love... you get the picture.

So be nice to people who work in customer service. Because we can buy knives and more often than not, we know where you live.

Voyeurism, verbal abuse and Lars von Trier

Ok ok, I modify my last entry. I don't *hate* working. I just don't particularly enjoy it, but that's probably because I haven't yet found or been able to get a job I actually like/care about/am interested in. But I'm planning to try and fix that. One day. I hope.

I am truly becoming an office nerd. Have taken to sitting at a desk by the window, opening the blinds and getting some natural light in through the dusty dirty windows. The office is on the ground level when you walk in the front door, but by the time you get to my desk at the back of the building, it's sunk to a metre or so below ground level. The floor of the office doesn't actually slope or anything. Weird, huh? Anyway, through the dust and grime of the never-cleaned windows, I get to see people walking past, all from a nice angle of below ground level, looking up. Not that I can see up skirts or anything. Well, not without a mirror. *Ahem* I mean, nothing. And the excitement of yesterday - this is where the office nerd part comes in - was seeing someone get a parking ticket. My life has new meaning. Next I'll be telling you about matching stationery.

Actually, more exciting than the parking ticket was having a charming gentleman customer swear his head off at me because his direct debit didn't go through because he didn't have the money in his bank account and hence couldn't use his mobile phone because he had no credit. And it was all my fault! Of course.

But maybe more exciting than that was my discovery of a chap who works there who looks so uncannily like Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier that I think perhaps he IS Lars von Trier and I am actually a cast member in a Dogme film, I just don't know it yet. This does give my working life a whole new meaning. I wonder will Emily Watson or Björk turn up one day? Or Nicole Kidman? Or Catherine Deneuve? Can I fool myself into actually looking forward to work? Can I now pretend I work in the filmmaking world?

Have I told you yet that the 'von' in the title of this blog is my homage to Lars von Trier? And the 'von' in his name was apparently acquired because when he went to film school, as a humble Lars Trier, he found the other students so wanky and pretentious that he added the 'von' to his name to take the piss.