Oh, dear....
I could see where it was going when it mentioned upping the strength of the sanitiser and UV lamp. And the (viral) kill rate. Then the immortal line about "some old AI robot hardware somewhere in the basement" made sure of it...
BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns Looking back, lockdown may not have been all bad. On the one hand we had time apart from workplace human contact – the day-to-day pleasantries that add some spice to our otherwise mundane lives – but on the other we did miss out all the pointless conversations, the endless unsolvable …
"Well, to make changes to that finalised document without leaving what some people might call an 'audit trail', I'd need some pretty advanced Word skills – and they don't come cheap now that everyone's upskilling in their free time…"
:-) Nos10/11 have always an opening and desk waiting for you if you're extremely fond of and quite good at such as is really crass attractive deflective bullshitting.
If interested, one can always ask a DC clone/drone* about the likely difficulties and/or opportunities one is liable to have to deal with there on a daily zeroday basis.
* District of Columbia/David Cameron/Dominic Cummings
Okay, if it's a legal requirement, I confess. I am a Druid.
I'm a fully-paid up member of the Gorsedd of Bards of the Isle of Britain, Urdd Derwydd (order of druids) - green robes. I was inducted at a mysterious and ancient ceremony involving a big sword and strange oaths, in the former Dr Who Experience in Cardiff in 2018. Strange but true (it was raining outside)
"Even I don't have Space:1999 DVD's"
I've seen the entire collective in Sainsbury's. One of the bigger ones, not a little one.
They may also be on sale in other places but I don't shop there so I can't definitively confirm this.
From what I remember, they cost about 50p an episode or less but I'm not certain of that, either.
"U.F.O." was also on sale there for a while and may still be. That's the one where they thought we'd have a huge, peopled Moonbase or two in 1980. "Peopled" because they absolutely had lady astronauts. If I recollect correctly they wore silvery dresses and purple wigs for some strange operational reason - or directorial fetish.
I'm fairly sure that I also saw the complete "Captain Scarlet" [that's the one where humans finally reached Mars, came in peace, shot up the place and started a grudge match], too but that's drifting a little far from the killer robot theme.
I gather ozone is another popular ways of sterilizing office spaces, so perhaps the replacement robot could do that too.
Of course, it would require some method of allowing its high voltage discharge unit to reach up and sanitize desks and chairs when necessary, while producing sufficient gas to fill those large open plan offices...
I mean what could possibly go wrong.
My kids (who are now being homeschooled because schools are closed in NL) were wondering why I shouted out "YES, the bots are back"....
Still, makes me wonder why the boss (and his office) weren't sanitized as first, the Boss has been around too long, we need a new one.
The first mention of that bot from the basement made me recall some earlier escapades with that particular hardware, though I indeed seem to recall it being equipped with a chainsaw at the time. Also something about a particular manager being locked in a dark basement with that bot.
Can't go wrong with a bit of (murderous) nostalgia every now and then.
If we're being technical, that line was "I threw a 5 and a 2.", with no "which meant" on the end. In fact, I had to just rewatch that scene for accuracy's sake of course, and none of the rolls previously mentioned were a 3 and a 4. I'm sure this information was very useful to you. I haven't wasted my time, right?
As long as we're replaying Red Dwarf scenes, let us not forget the scene in Backwards that has the line "I'm addressing the one prat in the entire country who's bothered to get hold of this recording, turn it round and actually work out the rubbish that I'm saying. What a poor, sad life he's got!"
"On the one hand we had time apart from workplace human contact – the day-to-day pleasantries that add some spice to our otherwise mundane lives – but on the other we did miss out all the pointless conversations, the endless unsolvable problems and complaints fuelled by a corporate sense of entitlement."
But are there any downsides?
"the day-to-day pleasantries that add some spice to our otherwise mundane lives"
Although severance with these 'pleasantries' predates lockdown by about 15 years, 'pleasantries' I definitely wouldn't miss about the place I used to work if lockdown had've stopped me from experiencing them:
1) The open-plan offices with virtually unrelated functions able to see and hear other (thanks to reducing the cubicle wall from 1.5m to 1m as part of the teamworking push).
2) The woman who was a buyer, and whose job was 80% on the telephone, who conducted every single call on speakerphone at full volume. Sometimes, she'd make a call, and it would ring, and ring, and ring because no one was at the other end. When it terminated, she'd hit redial, and it would ring, and ring again.
3) The same woman, who - if she left the open-plan area to attend a meeting - would empty a full canister of 'Impulse' deodorant on herself, most of which would get sucked into the air handling system and get recirculated every fifteen minutes for the next three hours.
4) The guy next to me (my manager), who licked out his cup and anything else he was eating from once it was empty.
5) The guy opposite me who had a nervous habit of humming at a frequency similar to that of male elephants, and which I was able to pick up.
6) The guy who spoke quietly at another frequency that I was apparently immune to that meant it looked like he was miming whenever he spoke to you.
7) The guy next to me on the other side, who ate copiously at his desk, in spite of being built like a weasel, and made sandwiches out of fish roe and sardines, and who would think nothing of eating a whole home-grown lettuce (so quite small), bell pepper, or even an onion by cramming the entire thing into his mouth in front of a visiting customer he was entertaining. He also didn't wash his hands, and food was stuck all over his desk and keyboard.
8) The woman who I had deliberately chosen a desk as far away from as possible in my own department because of her clumsiness, who slammed drawers and cupboards, then did it even more (simpering glance mandatory after) once she realise how much it annoyed me. Annoyed? I used to shit myself sometimes when she did it!
9) The senior manager who frequently sent printouts to the networked laser involving car prices, holidays, and other personal stuff, and who regularly reminded us not to use the printer for personal stuff because of 'the budget'.
10) The people who brought in food to microwave at lunchtime in a container that, once rotating, had a clearance of about 2mm from any wall of the microwave chamber, and so took most of the lunch hour to heat up, even though the burritos or pies the rest of us had only took 3 minutes. Incidentally, the single 650W microwave was for the entire floor of about 60 people.
11) The people who didn't flush when they'd been in one of the stalls.
12) The same people who didn't wash their hands when they had not flushed either.