Flexible working doesn't include DIY

Less than 48 hours after the despicable email from the despicable Assistant Director regarding my unauthorized repair of the toilet door, I received another email.   No, it didn't contain the word sorry at all.  This is what it said:

I'm looking for some positive versatile working role models - would you be happy to contribute?

Good Morning Linda,

To promote and support more versatile working within the I am developing some versatile working materials for inclusion on , in a brochure and/or on our external websites.  And I’m looking for some brave volunteers who’d be prepared to share their positive experiences of versatile working and be versatile working role models. 

I’ve attached some guidance and further information, in case you’d be prepared to contribute.  If you’re happy to write a contribution, please let me know and I’m hoping to receive them by Monday 2 December 2019, if that’s possible. 

Many thanks for considering this request and I look forwards to hearing from you.

Best Wishes

****  <-- a="" about="" and="" begin="" c="" does="" ends:="" even="" her.="" her="" i="" in="" it="" kisses="" letters="" mind="" name="" nbsp="" not="" number="" of="" or="" row="" s="" similarity="" springs="" t.="" that="" the="" think="" to="" when="" where="" with="" word="">

Poor punctuation and improper capitalization of words aside, is she having a fucking laugh?

I have had to be versatile in my 'career' here (laughable - it's not a career, it's just a job) because sometimes job descriptions change/teams change, and what was once pleasant and enjoyable becomes tedious and unbearable.  Like some of the people I've had to work with.  When that happens I look for another opportunity - not to further my 'career', but to stay sane, so being a role model for versatile working is a bit of a joke.  

I have not replied to the invitation ...

A new level of nonsense

I see from my last post that I've been quiet on the blog front for over 2 years.  That is not to say I have been quiet here at my desk, far from it!  I have challenged poor performance, poked fun at patronizing attitudes and all in all ensured that I shall never rise above the ranks of mere 'Assistant' Research Manager, although I manage to do everything that most Research Managers do and more besides.  That aside, the virtual silence needs to be broken because the petty bureaucracy in this place has reached new levels of lunacy (or fuck-wittery, as a dear friend would very accurately call it).

I'll try to keep this brief (although I am sorely tempted to reproduce the email I received from someone who should know better ...)

A screw came out of the handle leading to the ladies' loo on the 2nd floor - not into one of the cubicles itself, but the little room containing 2 cubicles and a hand-basin.  There were 4 screws in the handle, so one being missing did not affect the use of the door in any way.  Nevertheless, the head of Facilities (who doubles up as the Wellbeing Officer ...) put a 'closed' sign on the door.  Of course, anyone with an ounce of common sense  continued to use the loo which is just as well, because no attempt has been made to repair it so after two weeks I brought in a small screw from home and fixed the door myself in a matter of seconds.

Temptation and discretion have fought it out and temptation has won.  This is the email I received in response - I've highlighted the bits that have really annoyed me and added my own comments in blue:

I’ve just learned that you undertook repairs to a door handle in the first floor toilets; that you then took it upon yourself to reopen the facilities and return the out of use sign to reception.  Well, yes, I was happy to let them know I'd saved them a job!

I realise that you were trying to be helpful (patronizing cow) and speed-up a repair which I’m sure from your perspective seemed to be taking too long. No 'seemed' about it - it was taking too long!

However, the toilets are the landlords (if you would like a lesson in the use of the apostrophe, please let me know) responsibility and only the landlord can authorise and instigate repairs in their areas, using their approved contractors.  By undertaking the repairs yourself, you have made liable should any damages arise; Damages?  From inserting a screw into a pre-drilled hole designed specifically to take a screw? Get real. there is also likely to be an impact on our insurance, How on earth has the insurance got involved, has she gone running to them to say, 'A pro-active member of staff has carried out a repair, thus saving the organisation time and money and inconvenience' and if so, has the insurance company said, 'Well, you're in trouble then!'  and we are now having to explain and manage the consequences with the landlord – a relationship which is tricky at the best of times.   What consequences? Get a grip. If she has the same high-handed attitude with the landlord as she has taken with me, I'm not surprised the relationship is tricky!

There are very good reasons why all such faults are managed by the Facilities Team (Managed?  Managed?  I don't call 2 weeks without someone coming out to put a screw in a door handle 'managing') and why even that team is not allowed to undertake any repairs or even keep tools on the premises.  Shot yourself in the foot there, lady.  If they are not allowed to keep tools on the premises, how did they manage to REMOVE THE SCREW that I had put in the door handle?  Yes, you heard me, they reversed the repair!

So whilst I understand Do you?  Do you really understand? your frustration at delays for apparently small, simple faults – please do not ever again undertake any repairs or interfere with the working of the Facilities Team; it is completely unacceptable.

I hope you'll agree that it is the tone of her email that is unacceptable, AND the fact that a) she can't organize a simple repair and b) she has actually reversed a perfectly acceptable repair to make a pathetic point.  As for 'interfering with the working of the Facilities Team', if they were working, there would be no need for any intervention on my part!

The tears of anger flowed on Monday afternoon - the injustice of it all was heightened by the fact that I had just spent my lunch hour decorating said Ladies' loo with fairy lights, providing a scented reed diffuser and luxury handcream AND disposal sacs because frankly the sanitary disposal bin looks more like a butcher's block than anything else.  I have put the matter in the hands of my line manager, who has not responded, so I suspect that I shall have to get my revenge in my own way.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.  I can wait.

Adam Ant vs the Spice Girls

It came to me this morning as I was getting ready for work to go and sit behind a computer and look as if I'm working. I heard that 80s classic 'Prince Charming' on the radio and it suddently hit me, as I sang along. 

'Don't you ever, don't you ever lower yourself, forgetting all your standards.'  

I am Prince Charming in a world of Wannabees.  To me, excellence is something to strive for.  Unfortunately, I am one of a dying breed.  My colleagues - sadly, those higher up the pecking order with more clout than I have - see excellence as too much like hard work.  Instead, they strive for adequacy and, what is worse, they criticize those few of us who are still going for gold.  Brass will suit them very nicely, thank you, and they don't want anyone else wasting time on delivering a better service.

You would not believe the amount of time being wasted by people who earn £30K+ a year over a simple line in an internal document for MY meeting, which none of them attend (let me repeat that, an internal document for MY meeting).  That's not a line of text, by the way, that is a line, as in
______________________________________________

I've added it to MY document to break up a mass of impenetrable text (which they produce) into more readable sections.  So far there have been a dozen different conversations and a flurry of emails about why I did it (although no-one has asked me directly).  Why don't these people get on with some real work?  God knows they're paid enough ...

And now another song springs to mind:

We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
'cause girl, there's a better life for me and you







  

Excellence as standard ...

We've had some huge, brightly-coloured 'dots' put up on the walls of the office this morning, all supposed to be good, motivational stuff. There was a bright blue one dead opposite me (which wasn't quite straight - irritation #1) and then I noticed it read: 'Excellence - finding creative approaches that bust bureaucracv' Not bureaucracy with a y, no, bureaucacv with a v. I wouldn't mind, but it was on the EXCELLENCE poster...

I'm so glad we have a Communications Team of professional people to find new and inventive ways of wasting money that could be better spent on paying someone to proof-read their output ...

I love Paris in the Springtime

To tell the truth, I love Paris at any time of year.  I lived there in the 1980s and, although it is over 30 years since I turned up at the Gare du Nord with £400 in traveller's cheques in one hand and a suitcase in the other, it feels like only a few months ago.  I remember so clearly the excitement of leaving home to embark on a new adventure.  Within a week I had found a job - where I stayed for six years - and settled down in my adopted city.

It's hard to say, 'That's what I loved most' because there were so many things to love about the city: the easy access to anywhere I wanted to go (the Metro is great, you are never more than few hundred metres from a station), the flea markets, cinemas, shops, bakeries on every corner selling mouth-watering croissants and other delights.  I think it's easier to say what I miss most now that I am back in England.

I miss the beauty of the city.  I miss walking around it and smiling because even the simplest of neighbourhoods has a beauty about it.  I miss the light, the birdsong and the ever-present rumble of traffic.  I miss the elderly ladies in their fur coats, walking their toy poodles in diamanté collars and talking to them as if they were children.  I miss the casual disdain of shop assistants and waiters who never for one moment believed 'the customer is always right'.  

Most of all, I miss gabbling in French every day, the pleasure of getting a joke in a foreign language, the even greater pleasure when people had no idea I was English because I had lost all trace of my accent.

The shocking events at the Charlie Hebdo offices - walking distance from where I used to live - have brought memories of my life in Paris back into sharp focus over the past few weeks.  I loved my time there, but I was also well aware - even in those days - that it was tinged with an element of danger.  On a winter's night in 1983, a bomb was placed in the car belonging to Ara Toranian, leader of the National Armenian Movement.  He lived in the building next door.  When he put his key in the ignition around midnight, the car exploded.  Amazingly, Mr Toranian was only slightly injured.  I was hurt by broken glass as my window shattered above my head.  Despite that incident - or perhaps because of it - I always felt safe in Paris.  It could have been because after that CRS guards were posted outside the building next to mine and it felt as if I had my own bodyguards.

The best thing about Paris?  Being a part of it, and that's what I miss most - not being a Parisian any more, except in my heart, where it counts.

Is it a verb? Is it a noun? Well, it's not Superman!

I had a little wander down to our Conference room earlier today, as the Communications Team was holding an 'open house' session to find out what we thought about the restructure, and how the organisation had changed since they last took its pulse.  (If any of you work here, you'll know the answer to that one:  It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead, Jim; it's worse than that, he's dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead!)

Sitting around the conference table, puzzled frowns on their faces, pens and post-its in hand, were three programme managers.  Programme Manager (PM) pay grades go from £28,695 - £35,256 a year).  I am a lowly Assistant Programme Manager (APM) and unlikely to ever rise above that grade.  In some organisations the cream rises to the top.  In others, shit floats.  I'll leave you to make up your minds when you read the latest exchange:

PM1: 'What's the difference between effect and affect?'
PM2: 'I don't know.'
APM (me, ignored): 'It can vary, both can be verbs and both can be nouns.  What is your context?'
PM1: 'Does anyone know the difference?'
PM2: 'I'm not sure.'
APM (me, louder now): 'It can vary.  What are you trying to say?'
PM3 (waking up at the sound of unfamiliar words): 'Verbs and nouns?  I've never known the difference between those two.'
PM2: One is a doing word and the other isn't, but I'm not sure which is which.  I know the difference between a noun and a proper noun though, does that help?'

I'll tell you what would help: a cold compress for my head, which I banged, slowly and methodically, on the conference table.

These are English nationals, born and (ha!) educated here in the UK.  I guess they were smoking behind the bike sheds during English lessons.  They certainly weren't paying attention.

Competition information

It's been a while since I blogged, but I wanted to tell you about a competition I've just entered: to win a Kindle Fire 

The blog is true to its name, Given to Distracting Others, because although I only went there to enter the competition, I stayed for a good half hour reading all the other posts about competitions and giveaways.  It's definitely one to bookmark if you want a one-stop shop to find out about competitions!

I can see I shall be visiting it regularly!

Spell cheque

It's not that there haven't been examples of PPSp (Piss-Poor Spelling) since the bear/bare and past/passed debates, it's just that I have been in too much despair to even record them, but two came upon me in such quick succession recently that I have to share them because it's selfish not to.

Coming up to Burns' Night, I mentioned that I was going to be making cock-a-leekie soup for friends and had had a trial run, which turned out to be delicious.  New colleague asked if I would let her have the recipe so I duly emailed it over.  I got an email by return: 'Sounds yum!  I will defiantly give it a go.'

Am I the only one seeing a cartoon of an angry woman in a chef's hat, standing in the middle of a kitchen, hands on hips, fuming, 'I will give it a go, I don't care what you say ...' ?

Only an hour later, I had calendar invitation from a colleague changing the time of a scheduled meeting, stating, 'I hope you don't mind that I've reduced the length of this meeting.  I'm trying to illuminate time-wasting.'

Hm, apart from the thought that she considers our meetings to be a waste of time (frankly, so do I!) the image of said colleague fumbling around in the dark with a torch, shining a spotlight on the words 'time-wasting' did make me chuckle.

I guess they both ran spell cheque but it didn't no what they were trying to say. 

She's back!

I've just re-read my last few posts from over 6 months ago, and I'm happy to say that the situation has vastly improved since then.  Skippy and I get on better since she's realised I won't take shit from anyone, least of all her, and also since she has been coming in for a load of the brown and smelly herself from someone a little higher up the food chain than she is.  In fact, she is fast becoming as disillusioned and fed up as I am and my 1:1 'work catch-up' sessions frequently turn into a bitch-fest with few people safe from our despair and cynicism.

Despair and cynicism had no place in my world on Sunday, however, when my oldest and best friend and I went to see THE OSMONDS on their final UK tour.  Older brother Alan hasn't toured with them for a long time, as he is very ill with MS, and Wayne, who survived a cancerous brain tumour a few years ago, had a stroke just before the tour started, and he wasn't with them, so the line-up was just Merrill, Jay and Jimmy.   Hang on, what am I saying, 'Just'?  It was a superb show - a bit on the short side, granted, with an overlong first half of 'Osmond Trivia' on a massive screen on the stage and a warm-up band called The Dropouts.  The audience was comprised of mainly menopausal women: we did not need a warm up! 

The brothers played mainly old songs from the 70s, and hearing an audience of 2,500 people sing along was very moving (if a little out of tune!)  Kate and I were in the 2nd row, on the aisle, allowing us to dart up to the stage for a sing and a dance the moment they came on and, in my case, to hand Merrill one of the 800 wooden rosebuds I bought about 7 years ago in the vain hope that they would make me a fortune at car boot sales.  They didn't.  I still have about 750 left, but it doesn't matter!  Merrill Osmond now has one, and so does Jay.  And if you don't believe me, here is the proof - not one but TWO Osmonds, holding one of my wooden roses.  My work here is done.

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.

To promote or not to promote ...

That was the question, and the answer was no.

Remember all you've read about the numpties here who don't know the difference between bear and bare, and past and passed, before reading on.

I'm a level 3 here, which is 2 up from bottom feeder and 5 down from Director. I've been a level 3 for almost 2 years and I feel I've paid my dues, I've done my time (I've done my sentance, but commited no crime ... and bad mistakes? I've made a few. I've had my share of sand kicked in my face and I've come through ...) Sorry Freddie.

My interview for a level 4 post was good, so the feedback goes, my presentation was excellent BUT, they're not going to promote me, oh no. They're going to bring in someone who is almost half my age (HALF MY AGE!) and this child is going to be my new line manager.

Spitting feathers? You betcha!

I suppose I could just about swallow that (with difficulty, admittedly) but, as if to slap me back firmly in my place, I'm being prodded back down to the bottom of the pond with piles of bottom-feeder type jobs to do.

Sometimes it's all too clear to me why I made a break for freedom in the first place ...

Repeat after me, 'It pays the bills, it pays the bills ...'

We all have our cross to bear ...

One of the people involved in the great past vs passed debate earlier this week had another dilemma today and asked my advice. Keep in mind this person is a manager, earning shedloads more than me and has the responsibility for writing papers that are published on our company's website.

Manager : when you ask someone to keep something in mind, is it bear as in GRRRRR, or bare as in take your clothes off?

Now, maybe I have been a little short-tempered today, for a variety of reasons that I won't go into here and now, but I did manage to stay calm as I said to her, in the tone one would use to encourage a small child asking a blindingly obvious question for the 25th time, 'Well, have a think about it. What do you think it's likely to be?'

While she was umming and aahing a colleague, obviously as irritated as I was, said, 'Bear. It's bear. B-E-A-R.'

'As in GRRRR,' I said helpfully, just in case she couldn't spell, baring my teeth.

Tell me again, it's not me, is it? There is something wrong with someone who can't get the bare essentials right getting a highly-paid and responsible job, isn't there?

It doesn't bear thinking about ...

Is it me?

People who have not had the same educational opportunities as I have can be forgiven for the odd lapse in their grasp of the English language. People who are 1 and 2 grades above me at work, who have been to university, are English, and who earn between £10,000 and £20,000 more than me cannot.

This is a verbatim conversation between two such highly-paid individuals:

Senior Manager: 'I get confused between passed and past, can you help?'

Manager: 'Yes, of course. What are you trying to say?'

Senior Manager: 'When you run something by someone to get their opinion, is it past or passed?'

Manager: 'Oh, um, it's, it's PAST.'

Senior Manager: 'Oh, right, thanks.'

Manager: 'Don't worry, I always have to stop and think about that one, and the more you think about it, the more confusing it gets.'

NO IT DOESN'T! It's not confusing at all, it's very simple. Passed is the past tense of to pass. Past means (in this context) beyond or by, and if the senior manager had any doubts, why didn't she just say, 'Let me run this by you' instead of showing her ignorance by not knowing the difference between past and passed?

I could give her this example to help her remember:

'How the hell did you get your job? No, don't tell me, I'm past caring.'

Something fishy!

Yesterday I treated myself to a Fish Pedicure at Mermaid's Corner in Southampton, the first place in the city to offer the treatment, and I can thoroughly recommend it. If you're anxious about having your toes chewed off by miniature pirhanas, don't be! The lovely staff will be able to reassure you. They are extremely knowledgeable about the fish, and the history of this entirely natural method of pedicure.

Dozens of toothless Garra Rufa fish inspected my feet before tucking in to the rough skin around my heels and giving the cuticles around my toenails a good tidy up. The feeling isn't as ticklish as I thought, it was more like the pins and needles sensation you get when your foot has gone to sleep and then starts to 'wake up'. It was lovely and soothing, and I could have stayed there all evening, but after half an hour my feet were beginning to wrinkle, and it was time for me to lift my feet out of the tank. After I had dried my feet, moisturising cream was applied, and I left the salon feeling as if I was walking on air. When I got home I whipped off my shoes to have a close inspection and I don't think my feet have been as smooth and soft in years.

If I'd had any sense I'd have booked a toenail shape and varnish to top off the treatment, but I didn't think about it when I made the appointment. Never mind, that's a good excuse to go back and feed the fishes again!

If you've been thinking about having this done but aren't yet convinced it's for you, give it a try! It really is relaxing and the results are fantastic! Give Mermaid's Corner a try - you won't regret it!

Spring cleaning

Those of you who know me will agree that 'tidy' is not my middle name. In fact, it's not even in my vocabulary. My brother calls me Mr Trebus after the elderly gentlemen in the TV Series 'A Life of Grime' and, when I invited my neices for a sleep-over when they were tiny, he replied, 'No, they haven't had their shots yet.' When he brings his dog over he says, 'We like Aunty Linda's house, don't we? Lots of places to hide, lots of interesting smells...' He even put my name forward for Kim and Aggie to come and pay me a visit on their show, 'How Clean is Your House' but retracted the request after I gave him the death stare. My Aunty Janet, whom I love dearly (and thank goodness I do!) came to vist once (I'd tidied before she arrived) and declared, 'My God, look at the state of this place! I don't even want to think what your bathroom is like!'

So, you get the picture. It's not dirty, but it's untidy. I have too much stuff, I am a hoarder and I am not ashamed of that fact. So many of the things in my house that others may call rubbish have a use that has not yet been identified, or a value that has not yet been exploited. One day, someone might want a couple of hundred empty CD sleeves. One day, back issues of Psychologies Magazine, still in their cellophane wrappers, may become collectors' items.

No-one was more surprised than I was when I decided that the Time Had Come, the time to pick up everything that was lying on the floor and the stairs, and clear everything away for the Carpet Man to come and deep clean the carpets in the hall, lounge, stairs and landing. I spent a whole weekend moving furniture and bookcases and shoes and bags and piles of paper and magazines and boxes of stuff that I was going to sort out 'later'. The result? A fabulously tidy and beautiful lounge! I love it! And I intend to keep it that way.

Now, if I can just beat a path through the furniture, bookcases and shoes and bags and piles of paper and magazines and boxes of stuff that are now crammed into the rooms upstairs, I might be able to find my way to bed ...

Perhaps Mr Trebus was an accurate description after all.

It's me! I'm back!

I can hardly believe it’s been so long since my last blog entry!

After being escorted off the premises of my last so-called ‘job’ I went home and emailed my ex-boss from CooperVision, and one of the people who has written references for me in the past, just to let them know that I was back on the job market again and would be needing more references in the future. Within a few minutes I had an email back from my referee from the University (job before CooperVision) asking me to give her a call. We had a chat on the ‘phone, I met her the following week for lunch and she managed to get me a week and a half‘s temp work there …

That was very nearly 18 months ago.

Those of you who have been sharing this blog from the beginning will know that I started writing it to ease some of the frustrations I had working here and no doubt you will be scratching your heads and wondering why on earth I would put myself through the trauma all over again. In fact, I’m doing a completely different job, working with a different team, and rarely see any of the people who made my life so very difficult last time around. I really enjoy what I’m doing, I like the people I’m working with, we’ve moved to a new building so are no longer in the gulag known as ‘Mouldy Boldy’ or ‘Bolditz’ by those who work at this particular University.

And in between the highs and lows of life back in the private sector (the high being a fact-finding mission to Gran Canaria, followed by the Finance Conference there – a brilliant way of getting some winter sun in December 2007 – the low, of course, being made redundant) and re-entering academia I’ve got older, a little wiser and a lot more broke. I’ve been on holidays to Bergamo, Paris, Edinburgh and New York, and have the overdraft to prove the latter. I still have the beach-hut, which needs to be painted, and the cat, who doesn’t.

And I do have a wee bit more time because I actually take a lunch-break! So watch this space - you may be seeing blog entries on a more regular basis from now on.

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.