The Italian Job (oh, shhhh)

After three weeks with nothing to do but read the English papers (all of them) I was ushered into my bosses room for a meeting.

Scary Boss: "So Chris, here is the project for you"

Me: "Oh great!" (the thundering hooves of misplaced optimism echoing in my ears)

SB: "What we would like you to do is contact everyone in the world working in education and ask them what they're doing"

Me: "Ok, sounds interesting... uhhh, give me the contacts list and I'll get cracking"

SB (arching eyebrow): "Oh no. There is no list, you'll have to find them yourself. Here's a list of countries for you to contact"

(hands over a sheet of A4 with a list of countries printed on it... and nothing else)

Me: "Oh! Oh. Well I wouldn't know where to..."

SB: "Don't worry. It's ok, you'll have help"

(hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!)

As anyone who's done a Graduate Internship will tell you, we're pretty much the bottom rung of the employment ladder (even the cleaners outrank us, because they know where the booze is hidden).

So cue several weeks of me sending out plaintive emails to regional co-ordinators, begging for ten minutes of their time, if they'd be so kind, to please help this project before it crashes headfirst into a rocky chasm.

No joy.

8 weeks later and, all things considered, remarkable progress had been made. I'd talked to Aborgines in the outback, fishermen in Nova Scotia and a peculiar woman in Germany who kept calling me 'Sir'.

A follow up meeting was called.

SB: "So, the project is now finished?"

Me: "Well... no, because"

SB: "But it says here on my plan (produces plan that bears little relation to reality as we know it) that you should be done by now"

Me: "Well in an ideal world it would be. An ideal world where people replied to my emails, sent things when they said they would and answered their phone"

SB: "This is... disappointing"

Now, my boss is Russian and, therefore, already quite terrifying. My dreams are haunted by a recurring vision of being shipped out to Kamchatka for letting the side down.

So, I've adopted a new strategy. I simply walk into peoples offices and talk to them until they give me the info I need, in a desperate bid to make me fuck off (all except one chap who, on offering me a drink at half ten in the morning, produced a whiskey bottle from his draw [I like him]).

I've also taken to producing reams and reams of print outs, in a vain bid to make myself look more productive than I really am.

The net result? I have to interview 20 people in the next week or we're buggered.

Salute!

Fucking salute...