Thursday, November 01, 2007

Randomness during an H&S exam

Hi peeps,
I'm at that Scientiam place again today, you know, to do some more "get you back to work" training.
Ha! The laughs on them, cuz I don't wanna work.

I was supposed to be in a lecture/role play about interview techniques to day, BUT, there was an opportunity to do another health and safety qualification and in order for me to be entered for the exam I had to sit and pass 2 mock exams. It's all multi guess anyway, it's not rocket science. This one is aimed at getting you the basics needed to be safe on construction sites, not that I'm going into construction that is. No it's just another nice to have certificate.
There are loads of levels and areas of engineering and construction to do the exams at but we are only getting the basic one payed for (better than a kick in the bread tray), so I did three dummy exams and got 37/40, 36/40 and 40/40, bored now.
I know I'll do one at manager level, Hmmm, oh dear, how embarrassing 26/40 (FAIL!).
Right lets see if I'm still clued up as a supervisor for my last job, hmmm, really? hmmm, OH! 38/40, yep I still got it.

So that went swimmingly.
Ah, but I haven't told you about the randomness yet.
You know those little symbols that sit at the bottom of the screen next to the clock, the Q for quick time, the volume icon, network icon and the rest, well when I turned this computer on (I'm still at the place but it's OK it's lunch time), I watched with only half an eye on what was going on, you know, as all the little icons start to appear as their programs become active and as the network connection is established, there goes the messenger icon. Ah at last it's booted up and the hour glass has dissapeared from the pointer, right lets put the CD in the drive and start these dummy tests.
I'm on about question 7 on the first test when the conversation bar starts flashing it's head off, wtf? so out of curiosity I look at it and the name is just a load of random letters and symbols, but hidden among all this mess you could just make out the words "having a baby girl" and "gobsmacked" and "lol", as I watch it dissapears back to the system tray. I think, "Some people don't so much mangle the English language, it's more like sneaking up behind it and beating the crap out of it."
Any way next question, "What colour is a 110v ac plug?", it's yellow isn't it?
Messenger box does it's nut again, but this time I click on it, well it'd be rude to ignore it a second time.

If I thought their on-screen name was an affront to the language, their conversation was worse, it was text speak! Oh gods this girl has to be under 20 (or at least mentally). She got it into her head that the last person to use this shared computer was on line, but when I tried to tell her I wasn't who she thought I was, she then decided I must be some boy called peter (I left off putting the capital P there because she did).
"No, please try to understand. I'm not jamie or peter, I'm Ed and I'm in the middle of an exam."

"wot u is teecher thn"

(silently WHAT?!)"No, I'm one of two people in this computer room sitting online exams, the young man opposite me is called Elliot, and we're both doing the same exam and we don't know the peter or jamie you speak of."

"na its u pete"

"Look I'm a 41 year old ex service man who is doing a retraining course at a place that helps the unemployed get a job."

"pis of its u jamie"

"Seriously I'm not either of those two lads, and would you happen to know the correct method of lifting a box from above head height to the floor?"

"fuck off ur at scul and ur 41? and ur nt the teecher?

"Correct, look I have to go, bye now."

And I logged out.
A little while later I decided to mess with her head and logged back on briefly, but didn't type anything, I got this response.

"fuck you jamie it is you, but if its pete miller wants to chat"

I just laughed and logged off.

4 comments:

Pinkwool said...

Text speak makes me crazy! I play World of Warcraft and these kids start posting messages in chat and I literally have to decypher what they are trying to say. It's no wonder kids these days can't spell to save their lives, all to busy hacking the crap out of the english language with text messaging. Punctuation? Capitalization? Utter mysteries to these people.

Ed said...

In truth I have to be careful, glass houses and all that, but I try.

Unknown said...

I suspect this young MSN'er actually talks like that...while smoking, drinking tea, spawning kids and whereing baseball caps for posh occassions...oh I do love a bit of pigeon holing. I understand the use of a shortened language for space saving on text, it has its place, but its making society crumble innit yeh?

lol (oh the irony)

Eryn said...

LMAO - Oh the irony indeed!