Our Sales and Marketing department have fish. Four fish. Not the most beautiful fish in the world, but every fish is a fish. Two are black, two are gold, and they have huge beady eyes which intimidate me.
Well, they used to have four fish. One day last week, there was a population drop of one. That’s the nature of things, I thought. Fish come, and fish go. I remember when I was really young my family had a fish. Really really young. Its name was “Fish”. Clever, that.
I remember when Fish died, no-one noticed. Feeding it was a chore, and nobody noticed that the amount of uneaten food in the filthy water was rising. It finally came to light about a week later, by which time Fish was fossilised into the walls of the tank. None of my family seemed to care, so that was that.
Back to the present – so here I was, tussling with Nature and all the big Questions, and how Golden Fish #1 had gone off to a better place when I was informed that there is actually a perfectly unnatural reason why Golden Fish #1 is now in 5 Second Heaven. A trained eye would probably have noticed the absence of fish food anywhere in the office.
At this point I excused myself and went to the supermarket, silently cursing the laziness of my peers, and how they would work a 13 hour day if it meant more money, but picking up some fish food while they were getting two pints of milk for the coffees was just too much thought.
Why don’t people notice when a job needs doing, and do it?