DANCE OF THE BUREAUCRATS
Dateline: December 23rd, the Mackenzie-Potter office party - one last blowout on the company nickel before the familial festivities commence in earnest. It’s been another bumper year for the leeches in Mac P’s Regional Collections Team - if there’s one thing you can count on to provide a steady stream of revenue in even the toughest recession, it’s accumulated personal debt. With record annual profits having been announced earlier in the week for the fifth year running, this calls for a celebration. “Work hard, play hard”… it’s set to be a wild one.
After several hours’ warm-up, the room is pumping harder than a fuck-flick as the booze-sodden gang of banal fortysomethings and listless graduate recruits mingle aimlessly in shitfaced revelry. Roger from Senior Management models a ‘wacky’ balloon hat while perspiration teems from his receding hairline; frankly, he’s old enough to know better, and is defiantly not bringing “sexy back”. Nevertheless, he makes the best of his shabby lot by having a token seasonal crack at Maureen from Reception: a flabby, overweight grotesque with a face like dripping wax.
Up in the DJ booth, ‘Punter Knows Best’ is the name of the game. “Now, what it is, right, we’re on a night out...” witters some inane crone who looks like she’s stepped straight out of the puppet reject-closet on Spitting Image. Oh, fuck off and die, will you. You can tell from the defeated look in the DJ’s eyes that he’s already lost the will to live. He lowers his head in feigned absorption, barely able to summon the energy for a lone bout of withering sarcasm on the mic; frankly, it must be difficult to generate even the faintest modicum of enthusiasm when you hold your audience in such contempt. Going to have to sleepwalk his way through this one.
Sure enough, it’s the dregs. Plumbing heretofore-unchallenged new depths of pointlessness, some dreary no-mark from I.T. asks repeatedly for Put Your Hands Up by Reef – he only likes the one song, and didn’t even bother to learn its proper title. Make no mistake, this is the living end. The assembled masses don’t have an ounce of personality between them, but let that never stand in the way of the clappy bit from the Grease Megamix. Dancing Queen up next, is it? Fuck me. Looking at the request sheet, they’re all there: all the greats. Brimful of Cocking Asha. Don’t Stop Believin’. The Rockafeller Skank (included especially for the “old-skool” massive). Eric the office japester’s even asked for Piano Sonata in B Minor by Liszt. What a fucking card...!
“Oh, this one’s a banga!” comes an audible squawk as another retro classic drops like shit from the arse of a distended gull. It sounds suspiciously like Hall & Oates. Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up…
Like moths to the flame, they descend from all corners. Some lardy fuck no-one seems to recognise starts doing his ‘thing’ in the middle of the floor - presumably Julie from Accounts’ latest squeeze. He’s exhibiting all the co-ordination of a pissed-up Weeble from the 1970s, but let it never be said that he doesn’t know how to rinse one out good and proper as he lets fly with a thoroughly solid display to another camp disco classic.
“ - Waaah-hoooo…!”
There’s two old slappers bumping arses to Kool & The Gang: first time they’ve been let out in, ooh, a good fifteen years or so. A quick burst of the Bee Gees sets any daft fucker in flares sprinting to the tiles for a bit of Tony Manero action; frankly, Travolta would be proud. Alan’s made sure he’s picked out his best jumper for the occasion: still looks like a gift from his Mum, even at the tender age of 37. He should care, of course - in his plonk-addled mind, he’s Courtney-flippin’-Cox from the Dancing in the Dark video. Side-claps!
“Ohhhhh, we're halfway there... whoah-oh! We're livin' on a prayer...”
- Ooh, look out… here comes Jim! He’s man of the hour for bringing home the Soho account: 27 unpaid penalty notices lobbied in protest at the local borough council’s new restrictions on residential parking. “We don’t make the rules I’m afraid, sir; we just enforce them…” The stuff of fucking hero worship round these parts - Employee of the Month plaque and name in the quarterly newsletter a dead cert. Last month’s winner, Keith, unfortunately couldn’t make it tonight, but sends his regards.
- CONGA LINE…! “O-lé, o-lé, o-lé, o-lé… feelin’ hot, hot, hot…!”
Unmoved by this raucous parade of frivolity, company stalwart Ted Justice – a heaving, rotund doctrinaire with damp-encircled armpits waggishly dubbed ‘The Judge’ by his cohorts – rudely harasses the DJ for what he insists will be a surefire crowd-pleaser. He’s put in the hours this year, and is determined to see his late request for Donna Summer brought to fruition. The sullen mixmaster attempts to fob him off with a motioned whirl of ‘Later…’, but The Judge Won’t Budge. He’s lookin’ for some hot stuff baby tonight, and is up for the craic like the last four decades of popular music never happened. It certainly doesn’t appear to have done for the anonymous disorderly paralytic sloping listlessly against the bar, doing the Macarena with his top two buttons undone and rocking that Davey Van Day Dollar mullet as if it ever chanced its way into style.
“ – Aaaahhh’m horny! Horny, horny, horny…”
- Oop…! Dave’s up. So’s Sharon. Rachel’s shaking her booty like part of a Macaque’s mating ritual. This is off the fucking chain...!
“Apple-bottom jeans (jeans)… boots with the furrr (furrr)…”
- Literally no-one here is black. It’s all getting a bit too much for Alice and Gordo by this stage anyway, having knocked back a couple of sherries with a few cheeky vol-au-vents on the side. Best head out early – they’ve got the grandkids tomorrow. Meanwhile, Callum does his legendary David Brent impersonation - funny, really, he needn’t have bothered, since they’re his actual moves. Ooh, wait, is he gonna breakdance…? HE IS…!
Check out Marcus, the beady-eyed, porcine mouth-breather from Data Entry. The sweat that’s pouring off the sweltering cunt could probably power a small third-world nation for six months, and he’s absolutely murdering that dancefloor. Jerking awkwardly from side-to-side like a demented wind-up toy, it can surely only be a matter of time before his Himmler specs and Führer haircut – a flapping monstrosity partway between a Bobby Charlton sweep and a makeshift pubic wig - becomes dangerously, hideously unkempt. It’s clear that things are heading straight for the very darkest abyss, with no discernible way back.
Over by the punch bowl, Derek’s about to bust loose as his song kicks into life. “Turn-me-on, turn-me-on, turn-me-on... Sex bomb, sex bomb; you’re my sex bomb…” Throwing down his plastic cup in a truly audacious announcement of intent, he attempts an improvised Michael Jackson manoeuvre and promptly pulls a groin muscle. That’s him benched for the next half-hour at least: time for another Stella. Undeterred, Jane from Customer Services leaps up and does the splits, emitting a searing, unambiguous rip as her crotch is roundly demolished. Unsurprisingly, she can’t get back up again, and cheers gormlessly at her howling colleagues as if seeking some vague form of approval. She gets it. Receiving a gentlemanly hand up from Barry in Maintenance, she proceeds to teeter precariously on hopeless, unwieldy heels before losing all remaining semblance of balance and stacking it arse-over-tit into the buffet table. A delighted roar of “Waheeeyyy!” goes up as she cheerfully re-emerges with a faceful of trifle and a dress now piss-soaked in some indeterminate liqueur.
“Do you be-li-e-e-e-ve in life after love...?”
Unbeknownst to the feral horde, Karen’s getting royally cocked by Steve from Marketing in the gents’ toilets to the distant sound of Cher’s eternal masterwork. "I need ti-i-i-ime, to move on... I need lo-o-o-ove, to feel strong..." emotes the ageless, marble-faced battle-axe as she burbles aimlessly in the background like a fucked robot. A true picture of poise and refinement, Karen has one leg angled upwards on the bog seat, scrunts dangling gracelessly round her ankles, barking and screeching like a rutting chimera as Steve cudgels his blathering jabberwock into her rampaging steamcunt. That’s going to be one for the water-cooler on their first day back… BANTER!
Back in the main room, Gaz tells the one about the Paedophile, the Nun, the Rabbi and the Welshman. The set-up is majestic; the execution, sublime. What a fucking legend. It’s McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow all the way for him. After being informed for what must be the dozenth time in just under an hour that he’s a “bit of a one”, he goes back to macking on some tottering twat with a visible commotion bubbling away in her undercrackers. This should prove a nice easy prospect at the end of the night, but he slips one in her Breezer anyway just to make sure. Never can be too careful with these Gen-Z interns; they might turn out to be a feisty one and press charges after the fact.
True to perennial precedent, the evening reaches a tawdry culmination when Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 makes its inevitable appearance. Some do the Twist. Some do the Mess-Around. Mostly though, a series of ill-rehearsed custom routines are unleashed as the rowdy revellers form a large circle and all do the Irony Deficit. Whooping hollers go up as Tony does a quick bit in the middle – it’s funny, ’cos he never dances! And then…
“IT’S THE FIIIIIIINAL COUNTDOWWWWWWN…!!!”
- To what, exactly? The end of the night? The end of humanity? God only knows by this stage, but as Kirsty & The Pogues make ersatz Irishmen out of even the most devout Essexfolk, the doom-bell signals last orders and clear-out time looms large. “Whack it off, mate; the night is still young!” bawls a newly-recovered Derek, always the life and soul of these odious shebangs. Before long, it’s outside into a chunnering unlicensed Uber and off down the nearest ’Spoon’s for a riotous late lock-in and Round Fucking Two. What an absolute corker. Same time next year then, yeah...?
Forgive them, Lord. They’re idiots, one and all, and they know not what they do.
C.C. 21/11/11
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