30-Jul-07: Crackberry

“Touch that thing again and you’re gonna need surgery to remove it from your arse”. I have to admit that the force of my own words surprised me somewhat but not half as much as the salesman they were directed at nor the client I was in the process of presenting to. However, it was nothing the little tosser didn’t deserve such was his inability to stop fiddling with his Blackberry whilst I was doing my damndest to interest the bored-looking pension fund manager in my tedious sector.

We were both on a one day marketing trip to Edinburgh-based clients and in every meeting the salesman had spent the entire time checking his emails on his Blackberry. It was during the fourth meeting that I snapped and the look of shock on the salesman’s face was so extreme it was as if I had just asked him if his sister would be interested in giving me the rusty trombone. A muffled ‘sorry’ was all that I received in reply but it had the desired effect and subsequently the surgeons at the local hospital could breathe a sigh of relief as they narrowly avoided having to undertake a particularly tricky operation.

I don’t know which malicious no-life loser invented the addictive ‘Crackberry’ but if I ever catch him the pasting he’s gonnna receive will make him think that a brain tumour was a birthday present. Every front-office worker in an investment bank has one of these horrific inventions and because they act as our mobile phone too we have them on us at all times. The sheer evil genius of this means that no matter where we are we receive work-related emails continually. Hence, holidays are rarely truly relaxing as we neglect life-affirming things like romancing our better halves or playing with our kids to focus on tedious work-related horseshit.

We Brits already work the longest hours in Europe, Londoners work the longest hours in the UK and we in the City work the hardest in London. To think that some sadistic zit-faced spod has derived a way to make us work even harder makes me crazy as hell. Most City workers are sleep-walking to death anyway and now they have another excuse to avoid sucking the marrow out of life because they can convince themselves that they need to work 24/7 because all their competitors are doing so. What a bunch of suckers.

I firmly believe that this dreadful invention will cause more divorces and neglected childhoods than any other recent technical innovation. So please, for the love of God, take that Blackberry out of your pocket, throw it at your boss’ head as hard as you possibly can and then go home and make love to your partner as if the world were going to end tomorrow … because it might you know.