Tempers fugit ...

... or, 'Flying off the Handle'

I've lost my temper countless times since joining Ron and Ron's Family Firm back in April. If you aren't familiar with Ron and Ron, this might jog your memory :

or this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YiWnwfWrcU


Ron & Ron, and Ron Senior, took me on as a PA and then gave me 2 years' backlog of filing, 5 years of archiving, a year's shredding, and about 200 invoices to raise. Some PA role that turned out to be! Never one to simply smile and keep my mouth shut, I think some of my tirades (albeit behind closed doors) were loud enough to be heard by Da Management. Ron & Ron, and Ron Senior made sure they were away from the office, and left the dirty work to Uriah Heap, aka, the cringing apologetic HR Director. My cell-mate - sorry, the person who shares my office - was given an hour off in the afternoon, leaving the way clear for Uriah to come in and tell me they were 'letting me go' as I hadn't reached the 'standards they expected'. How they could judge me as a PA when all I did was effing shredding, filing, archiving and invoicing I don't know but in a way they were right. I couldn't sink to their standards in a million years.


So I'm back on the job market again. Anything considered as long as the job descriptions are honest. Oh, and family firms need not apply ...

Excused invoices!

The Chairman of The Firm burst into my office today as I was shaking my head over another stack of invoices that had been emailed to me. If you are not up to speed with the invoicing saga, I seem to be bean-counter's apprentice and spend inordinate amounts of time raising invoices. I thought I was very restrained when 20 appeared in my email in-box this morning. I finished them all at 2.30 in the afternoon, and then 25 more appeared! So I was chanting my mantra 'it pays the bills, it pays the bills' when The Chairman appeared.

'Stop what you're doing!' he cried, slamming two full lever-arch files down on my desk. 'I've got something much more important for you to do!'

Well, I didn't need to be asked twice to stop doing the invoices!

He showed me the contents of the two files: a. 800-page document for a job we are going to be tendering for, which, if we win the contract, will net us about £10 million next year. Goodie goodie! And how can I help us win this important bid?

'I want you to make six photocopies of each file,' he said. 'Quick as you like!'

There were several reasons why I didn't hit him. One, it's grounds for instant dismissal, and in a credit crunch, any job is better than no job. Two, he's an old man. Three, he'd probably hit me back.

So tomorrow I'm going to be photocopying all day, apart from the time I'm going to be spending showing my boss how to do the invoicing. Not because he's going to take the job off me, no no no, he wants to see why it's taking me so long ...

Excuse me while I spit feathers ...

Fortitude and Forbearance

No, not a double act like Hinge and Brackett - although come to think of it ...

I have displayed a good deal of F & F since I joined 'The Firm' on 6 April. I have told myself that I am being taught a lesson in humility, that I am lucky to have a job, that it pays the bills - I have told myself all these things, and continue to tell myself a hundred times a day, but although all these things may be true, it still makes me feel as if I'm going to burst when some well-meaning pensioner who is still working says to me, 'Has someone shown you how to use the photocopier?'

Just to clarify: I am not on work experience during school holidays. I first started working in an office when I was twenty, and that was nearly 30 years ago, so I DON'T NEED TO BE SHOWN HOW TO USE THE PHOTOCOPIER, YOU SILLY WOMAN!

I'm taking a moment to calm down.

Fortitude and Forbearance may well be a very good name for a double-act, as it happens. My new 'roomie' - or rather, the person who shares my office, and my distaste for The Firm - can also be heard to mutter, 'I'm lucky to have a job. It pays the bills.' Spookily, we share several key hobbies and interests and have a pact: whatever is said in our office remains in our office. I don't know if blogs count. I'll have to ask him. I'll also have to ask him if he would rather be Fortitude or Forbearance.

The job certainly hasn't got any better, but the company has.

Lies, damn lies, and interviews ...

One in three adults lies on their CV when applying for a job, according to research published in The Independent on 19 February 2009. The figure emerges from a survey of about 1,300 adults.

I’ve yet to find any research about how many employers lie about the jobs they have on offer, although I can quote two cases from my own career history.

Take a well-known University, for instance, where I was employed as a PA to five senior programme managers. The other half of my title was General Office Secretary, although my interviewer assured me that this was really an office manager’s role.

He lied.

The five senior programme managers had never had a PA before and didn’t have the kind of work they could give to one, so that part of the job really existed in name only. As for the so-called office manager’s role, I seemed to spend most of my time reporting faulty light fittings and being called to look at blocked toilets. I took to signing my emails ‘GDB’ (General DogsBody) but no-one noticed.

I left that job as soon as I could and, while I was looking for another opportunity, I started this blog. My early entries show how fed up I was.

After two very happy years in my next job – where the role lived up to the promise at interview – I was made redundant and I’d either forgotten, or pushed to the back of my mind, the fact that employers lie at interview and in job descriptions just as much as candidates do on their CVs.

I took the first job I was offered after my redundancy and it didn’t take long before the lies became apparent. PA to Group Finance Director sounds good, doesn’t it? So you can imagine I was a little perturbed to be given a stack of paperwork on my first day and shown how to raise purchase orders and invoices. This, apparently, is going to be a regular part of my work. So is endless archiving (the Group Finance Director having done no filing at all since taking the job 5 years ago). And I was told by Group FD that the HR director was pleased I was on board because he had lots of work for me to do. GFD also told me that if anybody else gave me work to do, I was to do it. Hmm, so not just PA to Group FD then, more like – yes, general dogsbody.

Unlike the chief executive of a local authority who allegedly failed to mention she had suffered from clinical depression and then took 18 months off from her new job for it, I have mentioned on my ‘new colleague health declaration’ that I take Fluoxetine for depression. Much more of this job and I have a feeling that I am going to require an extended break. The new company pays eight weeks sick leave, and I think that would just about cover it.

Unless they’ve lied about that, too.

Guillotine!

It's just like waiting for the axe to fall. Even before I knew what was going on, the decision had been made, and no amount of telling me that I am merely 'at risk' can change the outcome: on or shortly after 18 March, I shall be told that I am going to be made redundant.

I am scared.

I am the only person bringing a wage into this household of 1 + cat. There is no fairy godmother to wave a magic wand and make up the difference between Job-Seekers (pitiful) allowance and the salary I totally depend upon. The local paper, which used to boast, 'Hundreds of Jobs in Today's Echo' every Thursday now shyly advertises 'Dozens of Jobs in Today's Echo.' In any given week, one or fewer of those jobs is suitable for me.

Employers may no longer ask your age, but they may ask when you received your qualifications: if you say you got your O levels in 1976 they can easily work out you were born in 1960. That can work two ways: either you are too old for them, or you may be over the age to ask for maternity leave, and that may be in your favour.

I'm 48, going on 49. I have no children, no dependants (unless you count the cat - and she will argue she is independent, although I have yet to see her manage to fill her own water bowl or open a pouch of Gourmet Perle - other cat foods are available) but I do have a mortgage, high credit card bills due to my desire to further my education - four years (part-time) at University has given Visa and Access a lot to be grateful for! I see my salary disappearing on or shortly after 18 March, and I see the president of the European sector of our business gleefully taking his annual bonus of £450,000 while he makes 65+ people redundant in the UK.

This is small beer compared to other companies that are closing, making their entire staff redundant: at least in my (soon-to-be-ex) company over 1,000 will be keeping their jobs. Good for them. Not good for me. It's hard not to be bitter. It's hard not to tell my replacement boss (my own has left - jumped ship before the rats were given their marching orders) to eff off when he asks me a 'favour' (not simply asks me to do something as part of my job, because he's pretending that job no longer exists: it does, he's just giving it to other people).

So I am facing the chop. It's symbolic : my head is to be separated (metaphorically) from my body, and that sums up my working life. My brain has never been fully occupied, my ability and my intelligence have never been fully utilised, so maybe it's fitting that my head is freed.

And, funnily enough, a very dear friend is a professional knitter. It gives me some comfort to know that she will be sitting by the guillotine as the axe falls, knitting furiously and crying, 'Guillotine! Guillotine!'

I shall smile at her as my head hits the basket.

Continuing the musical theme ...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl-ai9HuR60

Things can only get better?

Don't you believe it. Despite some reassurances from my outgoing boss, I'm still getting the cold shoulder from the incoming ...

Oh well, back to scanning the jobs pages, I guess ...

Soothing sounds

There is a song I've been playing over and over again, and I haven't tired of it yet. At the moment, while things are so up in the air at work, I'm finding it very soothing - in fact, I think it's doing me more good than Prozac! Because with Prozac you only know if it's been working after you've stopped taking it for a while, and with this song, it's like a 'hit' of calm whenever you need it. It's Mykonos by Fleet Foxes, and it's definitely going to be one of my Desert Island Discs ...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EeiRe4Qp9Dw

Bad manners!

I'll be the first to admit that I'm feeling just a tad sensitive at the moment. For some time now there have been things going on at work that have led my boss and me to think he's not long for this (corporate) world. A few days before my trip to Paris he confirmed that he would be leaving, but didn't know when, and when I came back from Paris there was an official announcement.

Now is not the time, and here is not the place to go into the rights and wrongs of it all. Suffice it to say, I am feeling pretty insecure. The person taking over from my boss hasn't had the courtesy to come and talk to me about whether or not he wants me to work for him (he's an internal appointment, so it's not as if he'd have to make a special trip - just walking up a short flight of stairs would do it). He has called a meeting to discuss the organisational changes, followed by lunch - was I asked to set up the meeting? Was I invited to the meeting? Or the lunch? Answer to all three questions is a resounding no. To my mind, that's just bad manners.

And a ghastly female with tenuous links to our department (not sufficient for her to actually sit anywhere near us, thank God) came upstairs today and started speculating about my future with the company in front of me. How I managed not to tell her to fuck off I really don't know, but while she was still in full flow with the rudeness she turned to my (pregnant) colleague and asked, 'Was it planned?'

I don't know about you, but I've come to the conclusion that good manners and courtesy are a thing of the past. If you have any evidence to the contrary I'd be delighted to hear about it.

This time last week ...

... I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, packing my wee small case for my £1 flight to Paris. Of course, after 'passenger fee' (what??) it turned out to be £10, but hey, who's arguing at that price? We had to book in on-line and we could only take hand luggage so it was a fun challenge! Now that I've been back for 3 whole days it seems as if I've hardly been away, but we had a lovely time. We opted to go to Paris instead of staying in the airport town of Beauvais and as soon as we hit the Métro I found myself walking taller, walking more quickly and with more purpose: I knew where we were going and I knew how to get there. It was great to be back - it felt like coming home, although it hasn't been home for over 20 years. My travelling companion was very laid-back and indulged my wish to go and see my old quartier and was happy to put up with my running commentary: 'Oh look, that was my post office, where I used to post my parcels and letters. That's still a bakery. That little lebanese grocery store's always been there. That's the bakery where I bought bouchées à la reine and didn't dare tell my guests that the 'meat' inside was lung ... Oh, and there's the park where I used to sunbathe, and there's ... '

A lot had changed since I left in Spring 1987, but a lot was reassuringly the same, and our final evening in Paris was a real trip down memory lane. I used to take all my visitors to a place in the Latin quarter called La Petite Hostellerie. The food was simple, but good, and reasonably priced. Tourists flocked there, but so did Parisiens - always a good sign. Not expecting to find it still there, I took my long-suffering friend along the narrow streets, again with the running commentary: 'That's the street where there was an Italian restaurant where I found a cockroach in my pizza ... that's where my brother and I ate when he came over for the Roland Garros ... and that's ... oh my God! It's still here!'

'Bonsoir mesdames, vous voulez manger?' We were greeted by a smiling middle-aged man in a beret which I'm sure he only wore to reinforce a stereotype. I started to tell him, 'Je mangais là tout le temps, dans les années 80 ...' and the words were barely out before his face lit up and he hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks and cleverly ushered us inside.

The décor hadn't changed. The menu hadn't changed. The cracked plates were the same - and the prices were still astonishingly low for Paris. We paid €15 for a 3-course meal. We'd paid that for an omlette in the brasserie next door to our hotel a couple of nights earlier. The head waiter sat down and chatted with me about the state of the British economy and it felt as if I'd never been away.

As we walked past Notre Dame and the Hotel de Ville - still aglow with Christmas lights - I wondered why I'd ever left.

Happy New Year ...

... to everyone!

Despite having a head full of snot for over a month now I started 2009 in a cheerful mood. With me, though, cheerfulness is a fleeting thing and I spent all last night trying to find a comfortable position in bed as I have a terrible back ache. I thought it could be sciatica (I've had that before) but I haven't got the agonising shooting pains down the back of the leg - instead I feel as if I've been severely kicked in the left kidney and I just don't know what to do with myself. Received wisdom (well, received from t'internet) is that staying immobile is not good, and that you should exercise. As something as 'simple' as getting out of bed took about five minutes, much groaning and swearing, and the use of the bedside table, I'm not sure that I'm going to manage anything approaching exercise at all today. I had to pour the cat biscuits into Bella's bowl from a great height this morning (she thought it was great fun, chasing her food across the kitchen floor) as I couldn't bend or lean to put the bowl on the floor.

Although I don't hit the big 5-0 until summer 2010, I am feeling every one of my 581 months today. It's no fun getting old, but I guess it's better than the alternative!