A while ago I posted something about how cool it would be if real life was more like a computer game. Well, I spent today doing stuff that characters in these games do, and it struck me as being incredibly stupid in a very funny way. Or possibly the other way around.

This is something I do several times a day at work. But today was the first day I realised how gamelike it was. One of my jobs on the ferry is loading and unloading cargo. Sometimes I get to drive the crane, but other times, like today, I'm sent dockside to move the cargo around to where the crane can get at it in the right order.

Cargo comes in giant crates. They're blue and each has a large number on the side. They come in two sizes - cube-shaped crates which are about as high as my chest, and tall-rectangle-shaped crates which are higher than my head. You can move them around on the dock by pushing them *really* hard, because they have little wheels underneath. The tall ones in particular are heavy enough that it takes a tremendous effort to get them moving, and both types never move the way you think they will, because the little wheels all have Supermarket Trolley Disease. Sometimes there's only one place you can put a crate, and if there are four other crates in the way, you have to rearrange them all first. And some will only go in certain directions, and others won't move at ALL, and half the time you finally create the gap you need only to find that the stupid crane operator unloads a new crate into it while you're pushing the intended one over to the gap. Often the only way you can get a crate to move is by spinning it around in circles in the direction it wants to go, and you have to try to make that circle intersect with the location you want the crate to end up in. Other times, once you get the crate to start moving, it will unexpectedly take off at high speed and attempt to flatten you against some other crate before you can stop it moving again.

I'm sure any of you who play computer games already recognise this scenario. The only way it could possibly be *more* like a game would be if I also had to use the crates to hide behind while eluding the heavily armed guards. I'm going to suggest we get some heavily armed guards for this wharf, solely because it would be incredibly cool to have to elude them by hiding behind the crates.

Brunnen-"sigh. Yes. I know I'm nuts"G