Bad day at the office? You ain’t seen nothing yet

I was explaining to a new client what was involved in translating her business card into Chinese. “It depends on where it’s going to be used,” I told her. “If in mainland China or Singapore, it’ll be simple form Chinese (Mandarin). If in Taiwan, it’ll be traditional Chinese.”

The lady wasn’t listening.

“Can you absolutely guarantee that the translation of my name won’t say ‘I think you’ve got a fat arse’ or something?”

For the 30-odd years that I worked in the translation business, I used to dream about writing a book. It was going to be called You Can’t be a Buddhist in Business. I still believe this is true. In just about every occupation, there’s something that will try your patience, unsettle or infuriate, and you’ll be sorely tempted to squash ants in your frustration or tell porkies to save face or swear like King Charles when his fountain pen flips out.

My chat with the Chinese business card lady was a mere blip in the day of a translation service. But it did have me intrigued about what a typical bad day looks like in wildly different workplaces and what people do about it. Like the drummer who forgets his drumsticks before a gig, or the AFL umpire who accidentally squanders a team’s finals hopes by calling a goal a behind.

I reckon bad days at work fall into three main categories: something you did wrong; something someone else did wrong; and something someone expects you to do right and “by yesterday, thanks”. Acts of God, like the flash-flooding of a carpet factory, are in another category entirely. (Acts of God are patently not Buddhist if it’s the big kahuna preventing us from enlightenment in the first place. You’ll need to speak to your insurance agent about that.)

So what does a bad workday look like for, say, the world’s most famous “firm”, the royal family? I think we all know it’s ghastly, my liege, almost all the time. The day the world learnt that Prince Charles wanted to be reborn as Camilla’s tampon was undoubtedly the nadir (even The Crown wouldn’t cover it). Nothing since, not the Fergie toe-sucking nor Meghan Markle nor Squidgygate, has shocked us more. How do you even come back from something like that? It’s just a “stinking” mess that warrants far fruitier swear words than “stinking”.

In occupations like medicine, a bad day can turn out really, really bad, if you get my drift. In his vet days, a friend was called out to a farm to castrate an overly frisky middle-aged pony (already a bad day for the pony). A lot was going on. These kinds of big-animal visits in the country afford no such luxury as a surgeon and an anaesthetist. The vet takes on all the roles. So, he’s super busy preparing the pony. The farmer’s kids are chatting loudly nearby while the farmer puts a cloth over the pony’s head to shade it from the sun.