Time to be brutal

There is no point relying or waiting around for anyone. Ultimately, everyone is looking after themselves.

Happiness will always find you, because you make it. It is not a coincidence or a chance happening.

Grabbing on to what is here and now making you happy is not a good strategy. Others will change. Allow yourself to change too. Otherwise you will be left behind, with regrets.  Think long term, not short. What is fun now will be boring in a few years.

Be selfish. No one else is going to do it for you. They are too busy doing it for themselves.

What I need now is to just get on with the things that I need to do. Read, read, read, think, think, think. Get a Phd. Everything else is unnecessary, distracting bollocks. Concentrate on the things that I can control and will not distract me.

Two things that are wrong about the company I work for

I quit my job about a month ago, and am currently working my notice period.

Predicably, I’m bored.

I quit my job because I no longer enjoy the work and because the company I work for and I are headed in different directions (I’m going up in the world and they are going down..) I’ve noticed for a while that the way the boss men treat us minions has changed and I don’t really care about the work I’m doing, and currently EVERYTHING on the net is more interesting than researching the European textiles market.

My annoyance today was two fold.

1. Treating members of staff as resources, rather than people

I was supposed to go and work on the south coast for several days. This involved travelling for five hours AFTER a  day at work, spending three days there, then travelling back for another five hours.  I agreed, despite it being a busy time for me, packed and went to work this morning. At about 3pm this afternoon it became apparent that I wasn’t going, due to a conversation my line managers were having which I overheard.  Rather than inform me that they needed me in the office for the rest of the week, they began to loudly ‘resource plan’ a few metres away from me.  I had to actually interupt the conversation and ask if it was me that was being discussed, and what the plans for my week were. This was met with the reply that I would be informed when it was sorted out.

Resource planning is fine, neigh, encouraged. However, unlike the projector that we invariably lose under the stairs, people have lives, plans and opinions.  They like to be consulted. If I am going to spend hours of my life working for you,  consult me on what your plan for me is. I may have preferences, and even if these are unable to be met, it is far likelier that I will go on my way happier if I at least THINK you have tried to accomodate me – even if you couldn’t give a flying fuck.

This is the crux of my disatisfaction with the company I work for.  When I started working there, they were much more successful, and as a result, the management was a lot more flexible.  People were encourage to take on resposibilies, treated like people and made to feel important.  Now, due to market slumps, we ain’t doing so well, and lower level members of staff are purely seen as resources.

I understand that, basically, I AM a resource. But treating me in this way is most definitely not the way to get the best from me.  It is the way to get a strop from me.

Which ensued….

As I was rather annoyed at this blatent disregard of my animation, I dragged the Director into the boardroom for a catch up and asked what was going on. When it became clear that it wasn’t clear what I would be doing that day, or the next, or the next. I politely informed him that I was unprepared to go anywhere at all.  I also asked to move forward my leaving day to the following Monday.

This didn’t go down well, and I was informed that I had a contractual obligation to work until the following week.

Annoyance the second…

2. Accepting that I am going to do no work, but prefering to pay me for it, rather than let me go a week early

This makes no sense.

I admit, I was having the sort of strop only an only child can have, but I was pissed off and offended.  I just cannot see why the company wants me there when they can be pretty certain that I all I am going to do is fuck around.  I have in no uncertain terms told them this, and offered them a get out.  There is nothing that cannot be done by someone else. The company themselves have taken the decision not to replace me. Why not save themselves my wages?

Rant over. For now.

Really, really nice filth website

Tickleberry

Good site, good stock and good articles.

I went home this weekend.

I hate going home.  I pretty much always come back feeling miserable. Amd split between 100% determined to succeed and resigned to curl up and die.

I come from a real shitty estate. REEEEAL shitty. So shitty that I can remember telling my A level maths teacher that, despite whatever he may think, I was the best at Maths in my year.  He asked me how I knew. I said it was because of my GCSE grade and he asked me what that was.  When I replied with ‘an A’ he seemed to think that I would have needed to know my exact grade to know that.  The sad thing was, I didn’t.

When I was at secondary school, there were 210 people in my year.  Of that 210 people, I know of 4 others that have degrees. And I left it for 2 years longer than normal to go to Uni that is normal (Not that that in itself is a bad thing, in fact, I think that leaving Uni out for a few years is ultimately the best thing you can ever do). I also know of 10 people that don’t have at least one child.  There are accidents.  There are things that you can do about accidents There are also people women that fuck up and have kids early on but manage to salvage their lives.  I met some of these at Uni. No one I knew at school seems to have had the….the…I’m not sure what, about them to lead a full life that didn’t revolve around their offspring.

I’m not sure what I am ranting about. The fact that most of the people I spent the first 16 years of my life with have managed to extinguish any glimmer of brilliance in them and sign on instead?  Or the fact that ultimately I am a council estate girl who is utterly and tremendously out of her league?  Maybe it’s the fact that I resent not having any kind of support.  Or role model.  How different would my life have been if I had had one single, positive, ass kicking FEMALE role model? A real life one? My point is not that I was surrounded by go gettng males….I wasn’t.

It would have just been nice to have a woman around that maybe didn’t have 3 kids. Or work in a call centre.  Or was afraid to be home later than 3 as she had to cook her husbands tea.

Just someone who could tell me that I could take on the world . And that I could believe because they had taken it on themselves and won.

This is what I’m working towards

teh uber j0b

Or something very similar

Self indulgent pep-talk

Lately, I have been thinking lots about quiting my ‘perfect’ job.  This has made me feel like I must be insane. I mean – come on- company car and pension. What more could I want?

Never mind the fact that my job has become mundane and pointless.  And that I can’t really remember the last time that it challenged me. It’s a good, proper job and I could do much worse. I would be stupid to quit.

WRONG! I am worth much more than this. I am going to go and do something that interests me, and screw the fact that I wont have a pension.  Yes, going back to Uni is going to mean that I am skint, but I have been skint before and I am pretty certain that I can do it again. To be quite honest – I have learnt in the last few years not to spend much, and my out goings are minimal. I am a cheap night out, and I rarely ever go out in the first place. If I am going back to Uni, I won’t HAVE time to go out I will be working and studying.

I can do it, because I want to do it.

Honesty and the employer

So…..should I?

Unsatisfactory training course

I was trained in ‘commercial awareness’ today, and I must admit, the geek in me was thoroughly looking forward to it. I work in a business, but at no point in my education have I ever learned about company structures, accounts etc, and have for a while felt that I have a few gaps in my knowledge. Plus, the little I do know about accounts suggests that maths is involved, and I like maths. So, I was looking forward to the course.

Sadly, it was shit. The course content was fairly good, and pretty broad, but the trainer himself wasn’t up to much. There were several ‘and if you could just spent the next ten minutes reading through the notes’ sections, which immediately fucked me off. FAIL! You could have emailed me something to read – you are here to explain things, and if you want me to read that, it ain’t going to take me ten minutes, it will take me two. You could have given me a hand out, and half an hour and I honestly think I would have learned more.

My favourite/ the most soul destroying part of the course however, was not a result of the trainers inadequacies, but the shortfalls of my own colleagues. We we asked to read a few pages, and make observations on a balance sheet. I read the few pages, looked at the balance sheet, then flipped over to find a page entitled ‘Observations’. The person putting together the packs had forgotten to leave this page out. I was the only person that noticed, or thought that reading this page might be useful. How can this be? How can people not be aware of the stuff that is around them? How can people have information arount them, but just not notice, or help themselves to it?

Pointless friend requests from people I can barely remember

I just received a ‘friend request’ from my bestest friend ever….when I was five, and who I haven’t seen, since i was five.

I realise I have a pretty unique name, and that if you Google/Facebook me, I am pretty easy to find, but really, whats the point?!

Wtf?

So many parts of this make me angry, for so many reasons.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/relationships/story/0,,2282188,00.html