Tag Archives: work

Ungrateful wretches

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Just had a performance review meeting which came as a bit of a shocker. Apparently they’re very disappointed in the time I have been charging and the internet gestapo have been having a snoop (farewell OBO). They’re apparently considering terminating my contract. Nice to know when I’m about to go on holiday. I’ve been begging them to give me more work (I only got an official allocation last week and have been picking up other people’s work) and was told off early on for not charging enough time to clients (I was putting research down to “technical reading”). I shall have to seriously consider my options.

In other news, have had a nasty cold but still made it to https://www.fakoriginal.com/fak’s_fotos/Honeystreet_2008/index.html, and https://www.fakoriginal.com/fak’s_fotos/2008_June_Party/index.html and also caught two performance of Sweet Life by the Gandinis (picture below).

Also saw some surprisingly good kid’s circus and tidied up the house to a state where I am happy for people to come and see it (including buying a new drill and attaching the mantelpiece yesterday).

Starting to get excited about EJC and thinking about what to pack. Fingers crossed the weather is good.

Work update – two weeks to go

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I bumped into an ex(but soon to be future) colleague on the way home last night. I checked what had been said about me coming back to see how that related to what I’d told them/been told, which was interesting.

It turns out that someone else who left in the last year is returning next week, which is the opposite of what is happening with my current employer. I found out today (by accident since the bean-spiller thought everyone knew), that one of the assistant managers is moving to Spain for personal reasons, and one of the managers is moving to a different department. This means that the number of people leaving this group over a 3 month period is 10 (1 secretary, 3 assitants, 1 assistant manager, 3 managers, 1 senior manager, 1 director). From a group of 30. Oh, and one of the senior managers who is left is planning on moving to Australia soon.

The person in charge of the group? Not bothered. Let’s see if their opinion changes once everyone has departed.

I also had a potentially interesting option come up in the last week which might tie in with the new job. None of them may come to fruition, but gives one something to think about.

Warning, vent ahead

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Just got another e-mail asking for a status update (from someone who sits behind me). Being incredibly busy I replied with a brief summary and advised them to check the software that tracks the status of everything for more info.

Cue snotty e-mail back about h0w I should be actively managing the process and apparently need to spoonfeed people the information because they are too damn lazy to look it up for themselves.

Fine, I’ll spend the next hour providing a full update for them. This means that I won’t be able to do any actual work, but hey, who needs sleep anyway?

Long Day

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Started off being woken up after not enough sleep. It had snowed again, which was pretty. Unfortunately that seemed to have caused havoc on the railways and we all got to play platform ping-pong for 25 minutes until a train eventually arrived which we could cram on to.

Busy day at work, with my entire afternoon (in fact 6 and 3/4 hours) being spent sorting out extensions (there are no minions). Fun, fun, fun. Meanwhile the other work piled up with people asking where there stuff is and colleagues offloading their work “Can you do this tomorrow, and this, and this?” I wonder what would happen if I said no? Stupid professional pride making me care even when I’m leaving.

They were also talking about weddings today, which as a soon to be divorcee (please let it be soon) isn’t something I can get excited about. But I kept my mouth shut and just raged internally instead. I need to get some space from the end of this relationship as it’s still very raw, but that can’t be done while we’re living in the same house.

Got naggeed into putting my MrBollox pattern on Ravelry, only to be told that I can’t use fak as my designer name as it’s too short and reserved in case a knitting machine manufacturer wants it. That’ll need thinking about. I do have a couple of other designs ready to go up, but don’t want to have to call myself fakoriginal again, and am definitely not using my real name (at least not if it is linked to my Ravname). Ho hum.

Time to go home and, well the plan was to buy food on the way but the walkable shops will be closed and I don’t think driving’s a good idea, so crash out instead. Better play with the cat a bit as I’ve just booked her into the vet’s for her vaccinations which entails a walk along a couple of busyish roads. She seems to like it once she’s there, though. Lots of things to sniff and knock over.

 Tired now. Knitting to do. 

Hmm

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Finally got the job offer I’ve been waiting for. It’s not quite what we discussed (being more temporary in nature), but it might still work out in the long run and would give me a chance to earn money to pay my parents back however much they’re going to have to lend me for the divorce settlement.

Am I on candid camera?

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It seems to me that someone is playing a trick on me to see just how much stress one person can take.

As if the run up to April 15th weren’t hectic enough, not only am I managing the people below me, and my own work, I also have to manage the people above me (which means that none of my work is actually getting done, particularly since I can’t work late without risking losing days in bed, ill). What I really needed, therefore, was for an argument about who was authorised for services on my main client to blow up. I was never involved in this but am the only person available to dig into it all and try and calm people down. Great.

On top of which I seem to have every client ever requesting status updates, which means that my time is spent chasing other people instead of actually doing work (when I’m not ranting on blogs, that is).

Divorcewise, I dutifully sent off the cheque and instructions (the previous 2 sets of which had been lost) to my solicitor on Monday, with a note for them to call me when the package was received (so many packages and e-mails have been lost). No call yet, so I phone the office. The person dealing with my case is on holiday, the person covering their work is too busy to talk to me, but they will send me a note if they’ve received my cheque. So if they haven’t, exactly how long is it going to take them to work that out? This is only the first counter-offer on the divorce settlement, which I instructed them about on 13 March, there could be several offers backwards and forwards until it is resolved and the divorce is supposed to be being finalised in under 3 weeks (with payment 4 weeks after that). The financial arguments could delay the divorce being finalised, or they might not. I don’t know how much money I’m going to have to raise, or in how short a space of time. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to get my house to myself. Oh, and my solicitor is on leave until a week on Monday, the 14th, just over a week before the divorce is supposed to be finalised. Marvellous. The other side are bound to get arsey because they won’t have had a response in a month despite the fact that I responded on the same day as I got the letter from my solicitor. 

All of which is delaying my pre-registration for EJC as names on credit cards need to match up. Swell.

Approaching deadline

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Oh, is there a US tax/work deadline approaching? Would that be in just under two weeks? Well, it’s a good job all of my clients find it necessary to remind me, otherwise I’d have clean forgotten about it. It’s a good job I’m fully healthy and can therefore work 17 hour days in order to both do the work and handhold these clients (and my staff both below and above me). Oh wait, I’m not. I’ve got post-BJC lurgy and shouldn’t be in the office at all. The choice is a couple of hours extra every day and recovering at some point after the deadline, or 4 hours extra tonight and I can’t work for the next four days because I’ll be in bed.

I shall restrict myself to swearing liberally and vociferously at by screen and try and keep the sarcasm out of my responses. Muppets.

Idiots

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I am surrounded by idiots. Not only are my solicitors a waste of money (losing letters, cheques, e-mails and not appearing to be putting my best interests first), but it appears that everyone at my current place of employment is incompetent too.

As part of the move to the new building everyone is required to log in to their desk by 10:00. This isn’t co-ordinated say through logging in to your phone or computer. Oh no. You have to log in either by scanning your barcode at one of the two kiosks on your floor (yes we all have barcodes now), or through the online system. I’m sure this would work fine if either of the kiosks worked, or the online system didn’t crash. So, having spent over half an hour trying to log in to my desk so that no-one else tries to book it as a hotdesk, I’ve been bumped out of it. That’s going to be a fun argument if someone turns up trying to work.

Technical issues aside, the people don’t seem any more sensibly wired. I’ve only been gone for 3 working days and yet had over 120 e-mails, most of which, having gone through them, are questions of the most idiotic type which funnily enough I can answer with minimal thought. On my biggest client apparently the senior manager had a right panic and infected everyone else with it over what turned out to be absolutely nothing. Goodness knows how they will cope when I’m gone (just under seven weeks to go).

I will post about the BJC later, but I want to do that when I’m in a good mood and not despairing at the future of the human race.

That Monday Feeling

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A bit of a Monday feeling about today, despite the fact that it’s Tuesday.

The Easter weekend was a good break, even if I did have to work on the Friday. I should have worked Saturday, Sunday and Monday too, but the incompetents who pretend to do work for me had done it all wrong, so there was nothing I could do. You’d expect that to be a good thing, except I’m off for the rest of this week at BJC and that means I will effecitevely be a week behind by the time I actually get a chance to look at stuff.

No word from either my solicitor or my old boss, so I have e-mailed the former and left a voicemail for the latter. I could do with some good news, but at the moment would settle for any news that allows me to make plans and not feel stuck in this limbo.

Packing for BJC has got as far as me throwing some clothes on to my bed as I got ready for work this morning. As with moving house or office, it’s not a big deal and I can get it done in about half an hour (provided I can find the important things, like Jungle Jam). 

The forecast for BJC has changed from bright but cold, to rainy and marginally warmer. Not sure which I’d prefer, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so hey ho.

The cat was ecstatic to see me after spending Easter on her own. She’d wolfed all of the food down for her (two pouches and a massive pile of biscuit), but must have filled herself up as she wasn’t too fussed when I put more food down. She was so excited to see me that she had to tell me at 4 this morning by wailing outside my bedroom door, then sitting on my chest, purring. I’ll take it as a sign of affection and not a form of revenge.

Must. Not. Kill.

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My day at work (so far) is notable for the number of internal e-mails to which the resounding reply has been “Fuck Off! Are you people not busy?”**, complaints about the air conditioning/heating (my colleagues are cold* whilst I am sweltering), and spending 40 minutes on the phone to IT – who couldn’t fix the problem.

 In lighter news, the vending machine gave me two Twix (Twixes?) for the price of one, so I’m going to spend my windfall on a packet of crisps. Oh, and I got sent a song earlier, which was nice.

I also texted my ex-boss to remind him about the job he was supposedly offering me. Fingers crossed that works out otherwise I might have to borrow more than the extra I need to pay off the divorce from my parents.

*well I say “my colleagues”. Of the four of us: I am overheating; one person is complaining of being freezing; another is going along with it; and the third is saying that they would be cold if they weren’t wearing a jumper. 

**Just received another one: Can you do X, Y and Z, I need it urgently? WTF? On top of the 17 things you’ve already asked me to do urgently for you today? Have you considered doing some actual work yourself, you lazy bastard? Seriously, where is my motivation to do this? I’m leaving in 9 weeks and haven’t once got a thank you when I’ve gone above and beyond (presumably because this happens Every. Sodding. Day). No wonder there are 6 people scheduled to leave in the next couple of months (from a group of 32).