Dear Janie,

I can't believe you won't be here for Christmas this year. It won't be the same without you. I hope you're having a great time on your travels. Do you have any idea where you'll be when we're tucking into our Christmas dinner?

I could do with some warmth myself. It's been really cold here. The heating wasn't switched on until yesterday because when we merged with MegaCorp back in June the new policy said that to save money the heating would only be used for four months of the year - November, December, January and February. This was probably a really sensible policy once upon a time, before they were a global company.

Mr McAndrews, who moved here after the merger, spent forty minutes on the phone to HQ trying to explain to someone in Accounts about different parts of the world being colder than others at the same time of the year, and that even if the person he was talking to had come to work without a coat on, the temperature here was 46 degrees Fahrenheit. I think the person on the other end was mixing up Fahrenheit and Celsius because Mr McAndrews ended up slamming the phone down and yelling for his indigestion tablets.

Right now, though, I'm toasty warm. Remember Eric the maintenance man? Mr McAndrews told him what had happened, and Eric called his friend Jim who works at HQ and got him to turn the air conditioning in Accounts up to Arctic levels. When they asked Jim to fix it he said he couldn't see what they were complaining about - although their teeth were chattering and their fingers were blue - it was a reasonable 46 degrees. Someone called Mr McAndrews that afternoon and we now have the heating on as high as we want!

The funniest thing happened the other day. I didn't see it but Elaine in reception put me on speakerphone so I could hear. Pete in Sales was showing a new client around and he was boasting that the NotMe virus that was going around hadn't hit our company, trying to impress her with how great we were, and how responsible etc. etc.

Anyway, this woman gets out her mobile and calls her husband and demands to know if he's having an affair - all in the middle of reception! The guy on the end protests and wants to know who's been making up such stories, and the client hands the phone to Pete. He takes the phone and says: "Hello, Peter Windstrom" at which point the door to the network server room behind reception is flung open, and Michael from IT launches himself at Pete, nearly throttling him.

It turns out the client was only Michael's wife, Kath, and that Michael had spent three nights here without going home because people - Pete included - hadn't bothered bringing their laptops in for updating, and they had caught the virus! Peter was really red, even after Michael let go of his throat.

We had consultants in again last week. I still haven't worked out what they're meant to be doing. I did ask one but he didn't seem very sure himself. I think it's something to do with Time and Motion studies. One of them went to talk to Mrs. Emery about how she could improve her work. As she's been here longer than anyone else, she wasn't very happy at the suggestion she might not be doing her job properly. She looked him right in the eye and said: "Don't try to tell me my job, sonny boy, I've got shoes older than you." She made the poor consultant cry! He was only young, as well.

There was a bit of an office shuffle last month and I now sit next to Amy who is working for Uber boss. She's really nice, but a bit off the wall sometimes. Her favourite game is scaring telemarketers. You can always tell when it's a dopey sales call because they ask for someone who hasn't worked here in years. Amy has a list of all the people who used to do her job going back twenty five years, and the further back the person they ask for, the more awful she is to them! I'd feel more sorry for them if they didn't waste so much of my time. Anyhow, one rang up the other day and asked for Maggie, who left in 1981. Amy got back on the phone and said: "This is Maggie." and the telemarketer said: "Hello, Maggie, how are you today?" and she started off. "Ooh, I'm glad you asked that. I feel absolutely terrible today. I have aches in my back that I've never felt before, not even when I had that fall off the step ladder when I was in the library, something cruel it is and do you know, no one seems to care any more, not the doctor, not my colleagues…" and it went on and on and on! I couldn't help laughing.

My job is going okay. I felt a bit of a fool on Friday. They had got me a new monitor - a bigger one because all the executives have flat screens now - which I put on my desk and plugged in. It all seemed to go okay except for the picture being upside down. I tried turning all the knobs on the top, but nothing happened. I called IT and they came over straight away, picked up the monitor and turned it the other way up. Seems that those little knobs are actually the feet. Apart from that one little slip, everything is going along fairly smoothly.

Hope all is well with you - I'll write again soon. Send me a postcard!

Love

Kerry
xxxx