Blurred reality......

The Department of Pipes, Tubes and Strings had its bi-annual off-site today. Typically, for The Company and errr...The Department of Pipes, Tubes and Strings, the off-site was on-site. I need to determine whether or not if we have an on-site day, whether it'll actually be on-site or whether it'll be off-site, perhaps at a local hotel.

The last off-site was also on-site, as was the last Change Managers Forum off-site. In fact that off-site was less than 100 yards from my desk. I guess they should really be called virtual off-site's but I always thought the idea of an off-site was to remove you from the day to day distractions of being on-site. Unfortunately in both these recent "virtual" off-sites I have been collared by The Sandman or The Mysterious M as if I was actually on-site. Which of course I was, physically.

Of course you can't say to someone on-site that you can't talk to them or help them as they get a rather bemused, not to say occasionally angry look about them when you tell them you're unable to talk because in effect you're not actually theredue to being off-site. The inevitable conversation ensues regarding their view that as you are physically standing in front of them, or sat trying to eat lunch that you are, in fact, actually on-site. Arguments then ensue about physical presence and virtual absence. I usually end up putting across the philosophical argument that in fact until existentialism is proven, the possibility remains that in fact none of us exist and that we are all the subject of the imagination of an evil genius. Or perhaps no-one exists except the owner of the mind and as yet we cannot categorically associate the mind as being the inevitable consequence of the physical body, or the body as being a necessary vessel to contain the mind. Until someone returns with the "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am) argument so eloquently devised by Descartes (but not without its detractors) its an argument only I can win. But that's because most people I work with are fuckwits unable to lift their tawdry lives above the philosophical arguments posed by The Sun each day.

Of course, another winning end game is "Fuck off you cretin, can't you see I'm at lunch?" but this is rarely used anywhere today in a society that believes the culture of interruption is the behavioural norm, and that no-ones time is their own. Believe me, no-ones time is their own.

Maybe I'm mad but the object looks well and truly defeated when this off-site actually occurs on-site, and is therefore a virtual off-site. In fact, if I were the object, I'm not sure I'd even start the battle.

Later , GrocerJack