Where has she been?

You may well ask.

I have been teetering on the brink these last few weeks, between sanity and total meltdown, ever since the Child-Who-Would-Be-Line-Manager joined the organisation. How patronising to be told by someone who has been in the organisation for only 2 weeks that she will do all she can to help me progress - as if she knows what I am capable of or what I want to do. I've been working since before she was born, for goodness' sake. I thought that was the final straw there and then, but there were many, many more straws to come over the next few weeks, as my work got eroded, things that I took sole responsibility for just ended up on her desk instead of mine and, the final insult, absolutely the last straw was when I was told that I could only work on a particular project for one day a week. If it hadn't been for that project I'd have had no work at all, but Skippy, so called because she bounces around with so much energy and (misplaced)enthusiasm that I have been wondering if anyone has any Ritalin I can administer, has decided that I should be doing crap admin for someone who isn't even part of our team. Now, it all might just seem like semantics to the casual reader, but I am an Assistant Programme Manager, not an administrator. There is a grade and about £5K difference between administrators and APMs, and I am NOT going to be treated as a human shredding and photocopying machine.

It got to the stage where I couldn't speak to Skippy, or my previous line manager, for the lump in my throat, and eventually I gave in to common sense and went to see my doctor. The hurt and upset and angry part of me wanted to be signed off on full pay for as long as the University would allow (not long if you are a lowly APM - above that and you get a minimum of 6 months, no questions asked) but the bolshy, 'I'll show 'em' part of me was still just about alive, so I opted for going back on a full dose of Prozac.

The situation at work hasn't improved, but at least I don't feel sick the moment I wake up in the morning and realise I have to go to the office. I think, hope and pray that I can bide my time until an opportunity comes up in a different department where I won't have to listen to condescending children telling me what to do.

In the meantime, email me if you know where I can lay my hands on some Ritalin. Or cyanide.