Stuff your RFID card, just let me through the damn door!

Open sesame, idiot

Perhaps I should explain: nothing, but nothing, annoys me so much as being prevented from going somewhere that I am allowed to go, invited to go or supposed to go. Normally I am a relaxed sort of fellow and let idiots be idiots around me without getting personally involved.

When I woke up, for example, the sun had come out, the birds were tweeting and I was full of the joys of life. My heart was light, my thoughts clean, my words gentle.

However, my feeble personality is such that if I am asked or told to be at a certain place at a certain time, all civility dries up if some imperious div dances around, getting in my way. This is especially the case when some giggling c**t (asterisks provided in order to protect sensitive readers) sticks his officious fat arse in my face and says I can't go there for some spurious reason and generally acts the c**t like the c**ting c**t that he c**ting well is.

Suffice to say, the morning has barely begun and I am not in the best of moods. Unfortunately, the day will involve working with and presenting demos to customers. Lots of them.

It turns out I am the first person in the office today. An hour later, I am still the first person in the office. Where is everyone? Where are the customers?

I eventually locate some of them looking baffled, milling around in front of the fat controller at Reception 1. The rest, I find listlessly walking up and down by Reception 2 like Day of the Dead zombies at a shopping mall.

Blonde boy tells me there are no spare electronic door passes to give them, which effectively makes me personally responsible for everyone. I have to let them back in every time they nip out for a phone call, grab a coffee, take lunch, want to "stretch their legs" or take a piss. The only way back in is for them to tap on the door until I hear them, walk down the corridor and punch the green button.

By now, I want to punch other things as well. There is no escape all day: I have become a doorman. I am Reception 3.

Halfway through a presentation, another security guard knocks on the door, pops his head round without waiting to be invited and asks me if I have any spare electronic door passes I can lend him. When I reply that we only have one pass between the lot of us, he looks at me disbelievingly and steps into the middle of the room to have a better look at everyone. For a few moments, it is like the dénoument of a Hercule Poirot mystery. However, the butler is not present and he leaves, disappointed.

At the end of the day, I am called to collect an urgent package from Reception 2. I respond with appropriate urgency. It is only when I return, weighed down by a heavy box of books, do I realise that I have left my door pass on my desk inside the office.

Neither blonde boy nor the fat controller has a spare, so I have to linger outside my own office door until a passing cleaner arrives to let me back in. The day has become a non-stop 'Chamber of 32 (Locked) Doors'. It is here. It is now. I am Rael.

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Finally, I stumble out onto the street, rushing late to an evening meeting across town. Every pedestrian who might be egotistical enough to share my pavement is transfixed by my mad stare, as I challenge them to say something or get in my way.

Up ahead is a small crowd of laughing Italian tourists outside a pub, causing an obstruction. I growl and they leap aside. They are no longer laughing.

At the evening meeting, at a trendy dumb-arse Tech City start-up, some fool who understands fuck-all about social media except what she reads in Metro and keeps using the expression "engaging young people" slags me off in front of everyone and continues on this theme for ten minutes. I am used to such things, of course, but she makes it worse by offering to shake hands afterwards.

Flinching, and with enormous self-control, I suppress the desire to tell her to stick her hand up her own smelly arse and go fuck herself with the potted cactus that's sitting in the corner. It's at this point a little voice in my head makes the observation that the day has not been a good one and there's a distinct risk that I might be about to get a little cross with people around me.

So, with not a little reluctance, I do what wankers such as her like to call "a sulk" and what insurance salesmen like to call "a cooling-off period": I make my escape without a word. It was either this or end up what I like to call "doing a Clarkson".

I still felt like enacting violence on passers-by on the way back home but refrained. I suppose that's not really doing a Clarkson if you're angry but don't follow through. It is best not to interact with others when you're in a foul mood. Never go full Clarkson.

Back at home, an email awaits, saying that customer feedback had been very good today and asking if I could return tomorrow. It also tells me there is now a box of electronic door passes stored in a cupboard in the office, and I am welcome to use them. Ah well, why not? That camera won't pay for itself.

The next morning, I return to the scene of yesterday's crimes, a renewed man with a spring in my step, laughter in my eyes and always a kind word on my lips. I dance past fat man, I skip past blonde boy, I almost cartwheel though the electronic doors. Now, where is that box of passes?

The cupboard is locked. ®