Tuesday, November 13, 2007

On being an international man of mystery

Well dear bloggers, whoever claims to live a dull life has never spent a day in these moccasins! For I, over the next two days, will be working under an alias. Yes, I am going to work, incognito.

It's not nearly as exciting as I am making it sound. I'll be working a function for the International Platinum Association which a good friend of mine has helped organise. The reason for my disguise is that I am not in the good books of the company for whom he is organising this function, not by anything that I did wrong. The problem all started a while back...

I was asked if I'd like to work for them for a day, doing some phoning around and inviting people to this function/confirming their attendance. I said that I'd be interested and they then said that they would contact me about it at a later stage, which they did. However, by this stage, things had fallen apart in my life, as they often do, and I was no longer able to work for them. I did offer a replacement, my sister, who they gladly used. However, their favour for me dwindled rapidly. They were apparently furious that my name was now on their contract and I was, in fact, not going to be working for them. So, instead of doing the rational thing and just changing the name on the piece of paper, which nobody had yet signed anyway so it would have not made a stitch of difference anyhoo, they simply decided to hate me to the day that I die.

Luckily for me, I didn't have to deal with them directly. I was doing all of these dealings through my good pal, David.

So, a few weeks ago, when I received a call from David asking me if I'd be interested in working the function, I said that I would be very keen to do so. At this stage, I didn't actually know that I was loathed by these people. David then explained that I would be able to work with them, provided that I assume a different name as they didn't like Luke Duncan and were very angry at him. Given that these people had never laid eyes on me in their lives before, I figured it would all go smoothly. I stand to be corrected on this but, touch wood, I doubt that I will.

So, today I went to a meeting with the employers who hate Luke Duncan. It was the most hysterical and tense meeting of my life! David, my two sisters, Duncan and Candice were there with me. All was going well until they asked for our names. David had decided that my alias was to be 'John'. So when it came to giving my name, I said just that. From that point on, every time my 'name' was said, I'd feel a wave of terror shoot through me as thoughts like, 'Do I have a "John" face? I DON'T! They'll figure it out any second now!' frolicked through my mind. Another side effect of being given an alias is the urge to giggle every time your name is mentioned. NOT a good thing, trust me! Luckily, I soon found out that I was not the only one who suffered from this compulsion, as immediately following the meeting, we all convened to discuss how funny it had been.

So, the next two days should be rather interesting to say the least! I shall let you know who it is that eventually slips up and let's it out that I'm not actually John...

To make things worse, it appears that a Prof. John Duncan may be attending this function. I really hope I don't bump into him!

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