Last week, Louise had an unpleasant train journey when a rather large man decided to squeeze himself into the seat next to her, forcing unpleasant bodily contact, odour and perspiration onto her till she reached her destination. Brave, stoic little hero that she is, Louise resisted the urge to scream in his face "get out of my personal space you utter, despicable scumbag!"... which proved a canny move when, later in the day, she arrived for a business lunch with clients only to find herself face-to-face with the very same man.
If Louise had been Larry David, of course, she would have told the man exactly where to go... and lived to face up to the repercussions later.
This reminded me of something similar that happens pretty frequently in our office... so frequently, in fact, we've given it a name. We call it The Columbo Effect. Throughout the day, a variety of reprobates, deadbeats, ne'er-do-wells, miscreants, degenerates, scoundrels, dick heads and sales people make their way through our workspace. We smile and nod and give them what they want - as much as it's in our power to do so - for as long as it takes to get them to go away and leave us alone... and then, as soon as they're gone, we do what all sane human beings do... we slag them off.
"What a complete f---ing idiot," must be one of the most overused phrases in our office.
(However, our slagging-off isn't confined merely to calling people complete f---ing idiots. Today, we discussed a serious moral dilemma... if we had a gun with just one bullet in the chamber, yet we were standing in a field with Colleague 1, Colleague 2 and Boss X standing in front of us... what would we do? In the end we decided to try and line them up, with Colleague 2 at the front because he's the biggest threat to truth and decency, and hope that the bullet had enough power to take out all three. At least if it didn't, it'd still do some serious damage to Boss X - who'd be in the middle - and even if it didn't kill Colleague 1 on the end, at least he'd get splattered with two lots of blood and brain from the backfire. But I digress...)
Anyway, this is where The Columbo Effect comes in. The Columbo Effect happens when Mr. or Mrs. A.N. Noyingcolleague leaves your workspace and the slagging-off commences...
...only for them to return, seconds later, with a prime slice of Peter Falk: "Just one more thing..."
At which point, everyone in the office pretends to be talking about something completely different. "Oh, I know - pink custard - whatever happened to pink custard?"
Beware The Columbo Effect. You don't deserve the consequences...
(I edited this post for swearing in an effort to see if my liberal use of the f-word is responsible for my blog occasionally being deemed Not Safe For Work by google. After all, it is a public service for office workers everywhere...)
