Читать книгу That’s Your Lot - Limmy - Страница 7

Donnie started a new job, at an office. When he got there, he sent a group email to all the staff, introducing himself. It was a short and informal thing, nothing more than a few sentences. Most people replied saying hello back, putting in smileys or saying funny things in return. Some people didn’t reply, but then they said hello in person later.

But this one person, called Toby, only replied to correct his grammar.

There was a bit in Donnie’s email where he said ‘should of’ instead of ‘should have’.

Toby had replied to it, copying everybody else in, to say: ‘should *have*’.

Donnie thought of replying with something a bit cheeky, a bit funny, because he hoped that’s how Toby meant it as well. He hoped Toby didn’t mean it the way it came across, because the way it came across made Toby look a grumpy cunt that enjoyed embarrassing Donnie on his first day. And Donnie didn’t want to work with somebody like that.

In the end, Donnie just replied with ‘Oops. Thanks!’

He hoped for a jokey reply, something where Toby would say he was only joking, or maybe having a bad day. But he didn’t get a reply.

Donnie wondered who Toby was, and he walked around the office until he heard somebody mentioning Toby’s name. Donnie turned around and expected to see some kind of Oscar the Grouch, or some kind of anti-social Mr Bean. But Toby looked all right. He looked about 40, just an average sort of guy in a suit. He didn’t look grumpy either. He was chatting to another member of staff, smiling away. And that made Donnie feel a bit better somehow.

A few days later, Donnie had to send another email around, this time something to do with work rather than introducing himself. This email wasn’t for everybody in the office, but it was for a good number of them, and one of the people in the list was Toby.

Everybody replied normally, saying things like ‘Good idea’ or ‘I think we should discuss this further.’ But Toby replied again, simply to criticise Donnie’s grasp of the English language.

Donnie had accidentally typed ‘there’ instead of ‘their’.

The full sentence was ‘We could cut the cost of printing their brochures if we print it at the same time as we print there pamphlets.’

And it was an accident.

Donnie knew the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’, it was just a slip-up. He got the first ‘their’ right, so it was obviously just a slip-up, just a normal mistake that anybody could make. But there was Toby on it again, making Donnie look incompetent for the second time in his first week on the job.

Donnie just replied with ‘Thank you, wordsmith.’

By replying with that, he wanted to gently suggest that Toby was being a smart arse, without it looking too sarcastic. It was Donnie’s first week, after all. He didn’t want to go in hard with the cheek when he’d barely got his feet under the table. But he also didn’t want to be picked on. He wanted his reply to be just enough to put Toby off criticising him in the future, knowing that Donnie would fire back.

But as it turned out, Donnie wasn’t being picked on. As time went on, Donnie discovered that Toby did it with everybody, all the time. But nobody else seemed to mind. They would either reply to the corrections with ‘Thanks, Toby’ or say nothing at all.

Nobody even seemed to bitch about him, not in front of Donnie anyway. If anything, they would defend Toby, even if they were the victim of Toby’s cuntishness. Like when Toby corrected Alice.

Alice had sent an email where she said the word ‘colour’s’ instead of ‘colours’. She was talking about the colours in the colour printer that they had up the back of the office, because it wasn’t working properly. She’d said ‘And there’s something wrong with the colour’s on all of the printouts.’

Toby had replied with ‘The plural of colour is colours.’

Donnie asked Alice how she felt about that. It was verging on nasty, as far as Donnie was concerned. It was one thing to correct somebody’s grammar, but another to type a reply like that.

Alice said that it was okay, because Toby corrects people’s mistakes all the time. But Donnie said that there was a difference with this particular reply. It implied that Alice didn’t just make a typo due to typing fast or autocorrect or losing concentration; it implied that she didn’t know how to make a word plural, like she would make the mistake again because she just didn’t know to do it, like she was in nursery school.

That’s the impression that Donnie got, and he wanted Alice to be upset about it. But she wasn’t. She just shrugged it off and said it was okay, and that it was a silly mistake anyway.

Donnie said that somebody should say something, but Alice said that it really was okay and that Toby was a nice guy. Just leave it.

Donnie tried to leave it, but when you’re seeing somebody correcting everybody’s grammar on a daily basis, you just want to say something. You just want to tell the guy to give it a rest with the corrections. What does it matter?

It’s not as if the mistakes are being printed on the pamphlets and sent out, resulting in embarrassment for the company. It’s not as if Toby was some kind of copyeditor or sub-editor, where it was his job to correct everybody’s spelling and grammar before it went to print. He worked in accounts. His job was to do with numbers, not words. Just stick to your fucking job, mate.

Donnie tried to leave him alone, he tried to forget about him. He tried to ignore his ways.

He managed it for almost a month. He told himself that he wouldn’t react or bitch or try to get anybody else bitching. He’d just be like everybody else and take no notice. Almost a month he managed it.

But then it all came out at the office party. They’d all booked a big table at a restaurant, and they all got drunk.

Donnie wasn’t sitting near Toby, but he’d look over to Toby now and then, and try to listen in to his conversations. There was nothing interesting to listen to, but then Donnie heard something that he had to jump on.

He heard Toby say ‘It depends who you send it to.’

It was a mistake!

‘Wait!’ shouted Donnie, pointing at Toby.

Toby didn’t hear, but Alice did, and she stopped talking to see what Donnie was doing. It didn’t look good to her.

‘Toby!’ shouted Donnie again, and Toby looked around to see Donnie smiling and pointing. When Donnie saw that he had Toby’s attention, he asked him, ‘What did you just say there?’

‘What did I say when?’ asked Toby, looking at everybody else.

To Donnie, Toby seemed sober, while he himself felt drunk. He knew he probably wouldn’t fare well against somebody so alert, but this might be his only shot. It was too good an opportunity to miss. Even with the rest of the staff looking at him with their straight faces, looking concerned, he knew that they’d appreciate somebody just telling it like it is.

‘What did you say when?’ asked Donnie, grinning. ‘What did you say when? I’ll tell you what did you say when. You said, and I quote, “It depends who you send it to.”’

Toby gave a confused smile, and searched the faces of everybody around to see if they were equally as confused. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Well,’ said Donnie, raising his eyebrows. ‘I’ll tell you what on earth I am talking about. You said “It depends who you send it to.” But should it not be something like “Depends to whom you send it”?’

Donnie was half out his seat, and somebody put their hand on his shoulder to gently put him back down. Some people were asking him to just leave it.

Toby wasn’t smiling anymore. Donnie reckoned he looked caught out, that’s what he reckoned. He looked caught the fuck out.

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ said Toby. ‘And you’re right. But …’

‘Ahhhh!’ laughed Donnie, pointing at Toby, looking at Alice, looking at everybody around, at his audience. ‘I’m right. And therefore you are wrong! Ahhhh! Not so perfect after all, is he? Not so fucking perfect after all.’

Somebody said ‘Don’t, Donnie. Don’t.’

But there was no way he was letting this one get away. And he knew that he spoke for everybody. For whatever reason, nobody wanted to say a thing, they were too polite. But Donnie knew it was doing their heads in, bottling it all up. Well, this was it. This was it.

‘Seriously, Toby,’ said Donnie. ‘Seriously, mate. What’s it all about?’

‘What’s what all about?’ asked Toby. He looked at Donnie and the others. He tried to smile the confused smile from before, but it was without the same confidence. It was forced, and Donnie could see right through it. He had Toby on the ropes.

‘The grammar thing. The spelling and the grammar thing, the fucking emails. Ever since day one. Ever since day fucking …’

‘Just leave it,’ said Alice. ‘Please.’

‘No chance,’ said Donnie.

‘Look,’ said Toby. ‘I just think it’s important that certain rules are followed, certain consistencies are kept so that …’

‘Depends who you send it to,’ said Donnie, repeating Toby’s mistake. ‘Depends who you send it to. I don’t think that’s in the rule book. Let me just check …’ Donnie licked his thumb and leafed through an imaginary rule book and said ‘Nope’.

‘Sure,’ said Toby. ‘Sure. I take the point. But language evolves and …’

‘Oh!’ shouted Donnie, his eyes lighting up. ‘Oh! Did you hear that, everybody? Language evolves.’

‘B-b-but,’ stuttered Toby.

‘B-b-but?’ said Donnie, taking the utter piss. Alice stood up and walked away.

‘But,’ said Toby. ‘Certain rules should be obeyed, or at least …’

‘But not by you, eh, Toby? By us, but not by you.’

‘By all of us,’ said Toby. ‘S-s-so there’s some consistency, so there’s, there’s, there’s …’

‘Why?’ said Donnie, banging his hand on the table.

‘Because,’ said Toby, looking flustered as fuck. ‘Because without, without knowing what, what, what …’

‘Why?’ said Donnie again, giving the table another bang. He looked at the people around him. They were neither joining in nor trying to stop him. They were looking down at their drinks in silence.

Toby stuttered on. ‘Because … because … b-b-because …’

‘Why?’ asked Donnie, his eyes wide. ‘Whyyyyyy?’

Toby stood up sharply, bumping the table with his legs and spilling the drinks around him. Then he shouted at the top of his voice.

‘Because it’s all I’ve got!’

The pub, which was previously loud with chatter, fell silent.

Donnie looked at the rest of the staff to see if this was some kind of act. He’d never seen somebody shout like that before, he thought people only snapped like that in soap operas or on a stage. Not in real life.

Donnie looked at them all, waiting for them to laugh. But none of them looked up from their drinks.

Toby spoke again, but this time, with the pub being silent, he only needed to whisper to be heard by everybody in there.

‘It’s all I’ve got.’

Toby picked up his coat from the back of his seat and left.

What Donnie didn’t know, but what he found out later, was that Toby’s wife and kids had died in an accident.