URGENT!

What does the word URGENT mean to you?

To me it means some thing that requires a rapid response and quick solution.


Once again I find myself frustrated by the behaviour of others. I know I can not control the actions of others, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to shout, ‘Come on, get your act together!’

Over three weeks ago (in August) my CV was submitted for a job and then two days later I was asked to provide more detailed information about a particular time period. The advert said the person selected was required to start ASAP as it was an urgent requirement.

I’m still waiting to receive any further feedback on my CV or be asked to attend an interview.

I am going through an agent and I have followed up a couple of times. Today I was told it can take up to four week to receive feedback.

I would like to clarify my understanding of the word is correct and it is:  Dictionary.com defines the adjective, urgent, in three ways, but the most relevant one to this is use is;  'compelling or requiring immediate action or attention; imperative; pressing: an urgent matter.'


Considering the nature of the business that I have applied for; it worries me that urgent doesn’t seem to mean to them what it means to everyone else in the world.

If I had an emergency and I called these people for assistance, I would expect a rapid response, as would anyone else calling them. It’s likely that I would get one too; depending on want other emergency situations there were happening at the same time as mine.

Clearly filling the civilian roles they have advertised have now fallen from the top of the to-do-list due to drive by shootings, robberies, traffic control and kittens stuck up trees.

I understand these things are important, but it’s either urgent or its not?

Please say what you mean and mean what you say.

Picture borrowed from here, I had nothing to do with creating it!

Audition

I have 50 minutes to kill before leaving the office today. I may do some work in the time, but it’s more likely I’ll blog, read a story or two from the newspaper, but I’m most likely to try and learn my lines for the audition I’m about to attend.


Why am I going to an audition, you ask. Because I can, is my reply.

I may have mentioned this before but I’m not entirely satisfied with my current career progression. I think I know what I want to do and were I want to go, but in the mean time of making that happen I’m doing other stuff.

Can I cut it as a presenter on a TV channel dedicated to career development and work/life balance?

I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.

Welcome to WorksTV, I am your host, Jodie! [cue smile]

An odd question

I’ve come to the conclusion that some people have a strange notion of morality.

Today I was asked while making myself a cup of tea, ‘What would do if you found out a disabled child had Cara?’

Everyone in the office knows I'm looking for my dog and often it's used as a conversation starter. You know the sort, 'how was your weekend?' 'have you found your dog yet?' etc.

Today it was about my ethics.

It was easy to answer, ‘I’d take her back and give the parents a bollocking for teaching their child it's ok to take something that isn't theirs’.

The woman that asked me the question is the mother of an autistic child and thought it was awful that I would deprive the child of a loved pet and have the nerve to talk to the parents about how to raise their child.

I tried to explain that had the parents done the right thing in the first place the child would not have had time to get attached to the pet and therefore would not be suffering with her being returned to her rightful owner.

The woman remained adamant that I was in the wrong.

So I asked her. ‘What would you do if someone took your child and didn’t return it, and it become the companion to a child in the new house, what would you do?

‘I’d take my child back.’ She replied.

‘My point exactly.’

‘Oh, it’s not the same’, she said, ‘It’s just a dog.’

At that point I turned to walk away, but she called me back and said, ‘You treat your animals too much like they are human.’

All I could say as I walked away again, was, ‘at least animals aren’t arseholes’.

I don’t think she’ll be speaking to me in the kitchen anymore ;)

Helpdesk

I've been contracting for most of my career. I've had many contracts lasting a varied amount of time in a variety of industries, towns and countries.

I've worked for and with some amazing people that I admire and have made lasting friendships. As well as power hungry men and women who'd sacrifice their first born for a promotion.

I've gone from being a novice computer user using a VAX machine to PCs and Microsoft Word 3. I built my MS Word knowledge up to become an expert user and fell back to being a beginner when they brought in Ribbon menus.

I've had desks with a view overlooking Sydney Harbour and desks facing a corner giving me that 'I've been naughty' feeling. Hotdesks make me feel temporary and make me feel uneasy. Chairs have varied too...arms and no arms, straight back to a permanent falling off the back sensation.

I've worked with small teams and large teams. Small companies run by Ma and Pa to large multi-nationals in high rises.

I've travelled states, countries and the world for work, by trains, planes and automobiles, the latter being my favourite mode of transport.

I've met many people along the way in my career and worked with many technologies. Every single contract has been different in so many ways. These opportunities have given me so much to take away and learn from.

That said they all have one thing in common. Helpdesk has been the first additional folder in every single email program I've had, be it Outlook or Lotus Notes or that archaic green screen thing I had in VAX. The first email I've every had to keep has been a IT Helpdesk request number.

Technology. Fantastic, when it works.

Still Going

I’ve been working hard for the last few weeks, but I have failed to earn a single dollar.

I’ve completed a Funeral Celebrants course and started speaking with and visiting Funeral Directors in order to actually start performing funeral ceremonies and start earning cash. I’ve also gatecrashed a few to see how they go.

I have secured a job as a bus driver, through attendance of an open evening and two interviews, but it doesn’t start until 16th April.

I’ve been taking photographs like crazy (Jurassic Lounge, Street Fashion, comedy gigs) to try and get someone to want me to do a paid gig…naddar, nothing, zilch. I’ve raised awareness of my photography with my Facebook page. Loads of pavement pounding and conversations.

I’ve built up two Facebook pages to help build my celebrancy business and FC Images.

I’ve been to four interviews but I have yet to hear whether I’ve got the job., for any of them. Is no news good news?

I've been told I'm over qualified by Bunnings, coffee shops, cleaning firms, State Transit and a major supermarket chain.

Brock Talent Management have taken me onto their books and I’ve secured an extra gig to play either a barrister or a QC in an ABC drama. Unlikely that I’ll get paid for four to six weeks after the gig.

I’ve been trawling the internet and papers daily for job openings…private company sites, job boards, newspapers (local and national). I’ve applied for over 60 roles. Roles that fit my background exactly, roles that loosely fit, and roles completely left of centre. Each application has had a unique cover letter and CV tweak.

Tupperware now has me on the books as a Party Demonstrator. I can feel IQ points leaking from my ears at each ‘training’ session I attend, but you have to go to them.

Still not a penny inward, lots out though. At this point I’d like to thank GB and LK for helping me out with my rent.

This financial situation needs to change very soon before I become homeless, penniless and so despondent that I lose the energy and ability to continue this pursuit of employment. I’m having days and bad days.

For now though, the pursuit continues. Wish me luck!

Unemployed

On the 16th February at 10am I walked into a weekly update meeting and walked out ten minutes later unemployed.

My services as a change management consultant where no longer required as the client had decided they could run the change with internal employees. I've seen this before. The CM writes all the plans for change, communication and training and the business you're working for starts seeing you as an expense that can be done without. After all…any idiot can follow a plan.

Three or four months before go-live the client realises that the in-house change management was so what lacking and hires someone like me back to clean up the mess.

This is the nature of contracting and consulting.

This is all well and good when the market is buoyant, but when the job market is in favour of the employer, as it is now, it's on the sucky end of the scale.

In recent days I have been applying for change management roles that have had more than 100 applicants. In the last two week I've had time wasting agent interviews with only two agents.

Will work for tips.

A sense of belonging

For many years now I have been a contractor. This means, while I get up and go to a job on a daily basis, mostly, I’m not a full time employee. I don’t get paid leave, sick or any kind of benefits for turning up at the office each day, each week, each month.

Yes, I get paid heartily, but when I’m unemployed between contracts, which has been nearly a year out of the last three, the cash dwindles very quickly. Agent ask me why I only have contracts on my CV, my response is that a contract never gives you three months notice that it isn’t going to be renewed, so the next contract is the one I take. I’d love a permanent position.

Never more so than now. There are staff movements around the office. Supply Management are moving here, HR are going there. I’m being booted out of the desk I have and I won’t have a permanent home in either Head Office or out West. This disturbs me. One squat to another.

I’ve always had a desk before. Somewhere to keep my teabags, somewhere leave my hand cream and giant mug. Somewhere to lock my laptop so I don’t have to carry it home every night. From Friday I won’t have anywhere. I’ll have to ‘hotdesk’ at all times.

A few years ago I did some sums, around work hours and home hours taking into account travel time as work time etcetera and it looks something like this (i resurrected it and edited for today’s lesson);

Over the course of seven days or 168 hours, you send 62 hours at home awake, and 56 asleep (if you get 8 hours a night). You’re at work 50 hours if you travel one hour each way and do a five day week. This all adds up to:

37% of your week you’re awake at home
33% you’re asleep
30% you’re at work

That’s only 7% less time spent at work than at home, awake, doing things. At home you are surrounded by your stuff. Cups, plates, saucers, food, telly, family, pets, interesting things to do.

At work, with a desk, you can have a small piece of your personal life with you. A family photo, a nice mug instead of the manky grey thing from the cupboard, hand cream and a nice neat pile of files for important work stuff.

No desk, no life. No reminder that you have a life, not even a chair that is set up to the optimum seating position for you. Nowhere to keep the paperwork pertaining to you job, your work planning. Just a empty micro desk and a sore back and hip from carrying the laptop with you for that two hours of travel.

Most companies don’t allow for project contractors when arranging seating or when renting/buying office space, they count FTE (full time employees). I’ve been lucky so far I guess. If I can’t join the Sports and Social Club, can I at least have somewhere to put my box of tissues? If I’m going to spend nearly half my waking life in an office, I need a desk

Let the hunt commence.

Not-so-much-help desk

IT guys are generally considered to be smart.  They will often have the words, geek, nerd, or egg head banded about next to their names.  So you can imagine my surprise when I met one who was clearly smart, but acted in a dumb way.

Yesterday my laptop screen went wibbley.  In that it pixalited and the overriding colour changed to pink.  I’m not a big fan of pink, but it was the fuzziness that was caused the problem.  It made it difficult to read anything on the screen.  So I called the ‘Service Desk’ after performing a couple of standard first line support tests.  I rebooted it twice and tried resetting the display.

The local Onsite guy came to see me.  Apart from being kinda hot, he was useful. He accepted that I had done the first line stuff and went straight to having a look at the guts.  Turns out the cable between the guts and screen was damaged, so I had to take it away and see the ‘Acer’ guy, but in the meantime I needed to be given a monitor so I could do some work.

Today I’m working out of a different office.  When I got in this morning I had to call James (name changed to protect the idiot) to get a workstation on my desk.  I rag him, gave him directions to my desk, twice, and waited.  At 10.30 he turned up with a monitor.  He plugged it all in and when I suggested that it may be hard to see the screen if I needed to have the laptop in front of me.

‘So you need a keyboard?’  He asked.

‘Yes, please. That and a mouse would be most helpful.’

Half an hour later he turned up with a keyboard.  I’m still waiting for the mouse and it’s gone 1pm.

I’m having to use the track-pad.  I’ve got back ache now.

Lost Productivity

I tried to access a website today while at work. When I typed in the name of the site I was rewarded with a red screen and the words Prohibited, contravenes and blocked.

When I couldn’t access the site from my work computer (I just wanted to confirm something that would have taken no more than a couple of minutes) I referred to Safari on my iPhone. Reception of 3G isn’t what it could be when I’m out west working in the demountable building, what would have taken two or three minutes tops on the desktop connected to the network, took getting on for twenty minutes as I waited for pages to load. Then the looking the map up on whereis.com for directions.

I understand this blocking is preserve productivity of employees, so they don’t spend all day surfing the web, but sometimes you just need to check something when you thinking about it, rather than write a note to remind you to look later. I don’t understand how such a tight policy preserve that productivity. After all, I could spend the entire day reading the SMH or chatting with friends on LinkedIn, isn’t that worse than a quick check of the local doggie parks?

Did I mention all webmail is also blocked? Yet when I try to save an external contact (i.e. my agent) to my outlook contacts, it gets deleted each week. So I have to type in three addresses each week to send off my time sheet. Oh...and I can’t extract files onto a USB stick.

I know that companies need to have policies and procedures for the things that they do and do not allow, but it would seem that the company I am currently working for are a tad more paranoid about internet use than they should be. Afterall, we’re not making systems for the countries defence or planning security for the upcoming Obama visit. We are a private company mostly owned by the NSW Government (whom incidentally allow access to Facebook, I haven’t even tried to access that, I think my computer would implode) that has an average tenure of 23.8 years. This is not your regular, everyday internet surfer dude.

I know one senior employee that brings an iPad to work with outside internet access so he can effectually do his job. It’s the only way he can access some sites for research purposes.

I would say this, while it not my place to review your internet policies, I would say, it’s time for a change.

Confrontation

I've come to the conclusion that I don't handle confrontation well. It causes me extreme stress that knocks my immune system for six, allowing in bugs and illness to take hold. When illness is already in residence, the addition of stressors just helps the illness settle in for a longer stay and even bring his mate Cujo to stay as well.

After my weekend of strolling to the lavatory on a regular basis and either sitting or bowing to Harpic of the Bowl I really wanted to spend Monday resting at home and fully recuperating. I was still very weak in the morning after having only managed to add half a cup of dry cornflakes to my extremely tender tummy.

Due to work commitments I didn't have the luxury of having that extra day, so I arranged to go in a little later than usual and wrote the Key Message Comms document that was required by the end of the business day. I was a struggle because talking to the people I needed assistance from were extremely busy.

At 5pm I handed the document to the requester. 'It needs detail!'

So my question is this: If you're asked to provide Key Messages or Points would you submit, bullets or detailed paragraph?

I spent the next two hours trying to flesh out my bullet points and most of today working on it. I was and am particularly unimpressed. This isn't the first communications breakdown that I've had in this role and I have a feeling it may be the last.

I'm not going to pass all the blame, I may not have asked enough questions, but not being able to ask them has made that difficult. Of the six one-2-one I'm supposed to have had, I had one. I've been given seven projects to learn about in my short time. I have a pretty good learning curve, but I think I've found my limit.

Tomorrow will be a telling day. He wants to 'talk about your work'.

Chicken Gizzards

I’ve been at my new job long enough now, to be able to make what I believe, to be fairly sound comment on the working environment.

The office is in a part of town that is renown for it ethnic leanings. Most shops on the main street are labelled in Chinese before English. Being a big fan of dumplings, noodles and adventures in food land this isn’t really much of a problem. Where it does become a problem is if you want or need to buy anything (apart from food) of quality. The local shopping centre has a Best Buy, Franklins, and a Dick Smith (remnant warehouse). All the other shops, except the Post Office and leased out to market stall type shops that sell jewellery for a dollar and fry pans for four. The local butcher sells gizzards, skin, feet (of chook and pig) and the best cut of beef is blade. No Scotch Fillet for my dinner. Having said that, it does mean I can’t spend on M.A.C make-up (I’m sorry, did you say one dollar for the eye-shadow?) or clothes.

When I am at work, I have delays in computing. They are doing a roll out of new PCs, which is good, because when the machine can’t keep up with my typing speed you know there’s and issue. Stop. Plus I think I have the tiniest screen possible, it reminds my of the old DOS days when you have a massive off-white brick on your desk with a screen no bigger than a credit card. In my line of work, which currently involves extensive Copy/Paste activity I am really hoping I’m next on the list. However, I have feeling I’m going to have scraped the documents together only to find a geek standing at the end of my desk saying, ‘I’ve come to replace your tower’.

I’ve never been to so many meetings. Seriously. I swear they would have a meeting or ‘workshop’, … and I have put quotes around workshop because, often they have a ‘workshop’ to discuss things, but don’t actually have any workshop activities. I’m getting really close to widely distributing the definition of workshop.

Back to point. They have meeting for everything. So far I think I’ve been to three meetings that actually proved to be useful.

I do have a nice big desk.

Cara can come with me and be stealth, as she is today.

I can drive to the office in less than 45 minutes.

The people I work with are a nice bunch…I haven’t found any stand-outs as yet, but they are pleasant enough. I don’t have to work with the woman behind me, so she has no affect on me except I feel I need to channel warm, happy feelings in her direction. Being in such close proximity I haven’t seen any glimmer of smile crack, I am afraid though that I may cause damage if she does smile….so maybe I should stop that?

All in all, I don’t have a problem getting out of bed each morning at the moment. I even thought about putting my swimming cosie in the car for an after work swim at Homebush, then forgot this morning.

Things are on the up! :-)

Un-frinkin'believable

It was my day off between gigs today. I went to the doctor for a check-up and blood test. While I was waiting to see the delightful Dr. Rosemary, I got a text message from the mole;

‘Hi, sorry to bother you but I can’t find the updated training report and I need to provide it as part of the handover. Can you tell where you saved it? Thnx KB.’

So I did tell her and that I was at the doctors.

I went into the doctor’s office and had my blood pressure taken. 131/90. She wasn’t happy with that. My phone blipped again. I looked, like a fool.

‘Hope u r ok.When you r done, can you send me your network password and I will retrieve it. KB.’

MY NETWORK PASSWORD!! Are you frinkin’ kidding me!? No way in a million years!

My doctor took me BP again. It had gone up to 142/110, all from a simple text.

This is what I put up with for four months, the woman contacted me, an ex employee, who for once in her career had not left an employer with the words ‘If you need anything, call me.’ I couldn’t give a rats bottom where the document was, despite spending 2 hours updating it and including all her nit picky edits.

My Doctor expressed concern over my weight gain, then immediately said, ‘but if you’ve had that for four months, it will drop off now you’ll stop comfort eating’. What a wise woman!?

Anyway, after my appointment I had a blood test, so now have a bruise like I’ve been shooting up.

I got another text, ‘Unfortunately the last version on the shared drive was modified on 5 Aug. That’s why I need to retrieve it s I don’t think it saved.’

I ignored it, but rang my friend Bling Bling. ‘could you please sort this out?’

I’m pretty sure she did, because I didn’t receive any more texts or emails. But seriously, who the hell does KB think she is.

After that, Cara and I had a nice day wandering around town. I brought myself a book that reminded me of my childhood, and a t-shirt for the little lady. We popped in to see the Chocolate lady, but after being told by the doc I had gained 6kgs I declined the kind offer of some free Rocky Road.

Tomorrow I start my new job.

Exit stage right

It’s my last day in the land of the mole. I would like to say that not everyone here has been awful...just the mole.

Bling Bling gave me a very nice leaving gift of a scented candle and a bling bling peacock, which I have called Homer, after the actual peacock that I had a few years ago.

Knitter had a good ole giggle when I demonstrated the noises that CatTV make when they laid the eggs I had just given her.

Mr Benefits and the rest of the office near me enjoyed the truffles I made on the weekend, they ate the calories I cooked and will no doubt be glad when I am gone, because there will no longer be anyone cooking sweet treats in the name of research.

I finished up the couple of documents I had to do, cleaned out my inbox and bequeathed RubberBandBall MkII to Bling Bling and Knitter. It left it at 62mm in diameter; I hope it continues to grow. I buried a small note beneath its layers, it said: ‘A symbol to those left behind, you too, can escape’


As I was coming in from lunch, I saw mole. She smiled, and i hoped it was the last I’ll ever see of her. Some people just bring out the worst in me.

Have fun in my absence.

A night at the museum

On Tuesday night I was lucky enough to attend the 2011 season of Jurassic Lounge at The Australian Museum.

A few weeks ago I put my name forward as a photographer for an evening or three. I was asked to come along on opening night and snap away.

This I did. I went in not really knowing all that much about the event, but really it a marketing vehicle to encourage people who wouldn’t normally go to the museum to go. Having been to the museum, I was familiar with it, but to see it lit differently with games, activities, bands, DJs and artists or the painting and performing types amongst the exhibits, the whole place came alive, which was nice, because it usually has a kinda stuffed feel about it.

I would encourage you all to get along to one of the evenings if you can, it was really fun.


Burlesque eyelashes


Pluck those strings


Create your own 'zine


Skeleton gallery


Mayor Clover arrives


Self portrait by funkyfotobooths (careful, this site has music!)

More photos can be found here, including a few more of mine :-)

That’s not real!

Next week I shall start my new job with a government agency. I’m looking forward to it.

I preparation for the start, my new agency are asking me to fill in all sorts of paperwork. That’s pretty normal. What isn’t normal is being asked to complete an online learning module about OH&S.

I used to teach this going back a few years, so it’s not that I know nothing about the subject it just strange because in all the year since I taught it, I have never been asked to sign an agreement that I understand my obligations under the work place safety act.

While doing the module I came across a couple of things that made me think, ‘That’s not a real thing.’ But it turns out they are both real, only one is completely the wrong use of the word.

The first was during the page of information about wrist rests. It says, ‘Wrist rests should not be used while typing or mousing – only while resting’.

Mousing, what the crap is mousing? Oren does mousing, Puss sometimes helps. Cara plays with Mousey Mousey and I use a mouse. Being the curious bunny that I am, I looked up the word ‘mousing’ and found that it has nothing to do with the use of a computer mouse, but more to do with fishing.

Should I tell the agency that their eLearning module is wrong?


The second thing was Occupational Overuse Syndrome. WTF!? RSI has been renamed it appears. I don’t know when this name change occurred because it hasn’t been communicated to anyone but the internet and quite frankly, it sounds rubbish. Everyone knows what RSI means. It’s called what it is, a repetitive strain that has caused an injury. This makes sense to me.

It sounds made up, like runcible. When Edward Lear made that up in the 1870s he was ridiculed, and it still get picked up by spell checkers despite being in the dictionary, now it appears that making things up is fully acceptable. Benifer, sexting, mousing and OOS...please stop making names up for things that already have perfecting good names.

It makes me smile, because it’s given me something to do for twenty minutes and I enjoyed reading about the life of the master of nonsense.


Thank you to this site for the graphic image of what my cats think mousing looks like.

Creative time wasting

I realised today, as I added another 40 rubber bands to RubberBandBallMkII that I have become a master of killing time on the job.

I am usually a very productive employee, but on occasion there are times when a lull in work causes the use of imagination to look busy. We’ve all done it; we take advantage of the slow days to refresh the brain for the onslaught that is bound to happen due to poor time management (by others and yourself). Having said that, I don’t think the following has every interfered with me actually getting something done on or before the required deadline.

The following are a few of the things I have done to occupy my time during the hours of 9 – 5.30 Monday – Friday.

- Internet shopping (I curse Amazon.com)
- Make Christmas cards (yes, I actually made cards one year, many moons ago)
- Read novels (with the advent of e-books came the chance to read a saucy novel in .pdf format that looks like a business document)
- Complete Uni assignments, and therefore my Masters degree (I know I’m not alone with this one)
- Write blog entries :-)
- Make paper clip necklaces (one colleague actually wore one out)

It takes a somewhat active imagination to do some of these things...but I’d be interested to know what you do to kill that down time when you can’t just get up out of your seat and walk out and do something more interesting.

Incidentally, RubberBandBallMkII is now 47mm in diameter.

Seek and you shall find

I don’t have a full time job. As in, I’m a contractor, so not on anyone’s books from a payroll point of view. In the past this has caused issues due to extensive periods of unemployment, but in line with attempt of finding the positives in everything and my new mantra of ‘Mah Na Mah Na’ I have found the silver lining of being a contractor.



I have made many lasting friends.

Goddess, The Director, Tiger, Bling Bling, Knitter, Cat Lady, Pho, and a couple of others I can’t think of witty nicknames for right now. Of course I do have a few other friends that I have met through alternate means: interwebs, friends of friends and talking to strangers.

So despite have moments of desperate financial distress, I have become rich with friendship

Thanks to this site, for the image

Recommendation

I had dinner with a good friend tonight. He came into my life as an employer and boss, so it comes in handy to be able to give his number when I need a reference for a new contract.

Agent: And what would you say is Jodie’s weakness?

PH: She doesn’t like or handle being micro-managed very well. I found it best to give her a task and point her in the direction you wish end up in and you get results better than you expected.

Women!

Over the past few days I've been giving consideration as to why there's an issue with the woman I work with. I can't even begin to guess what's going on in her head but I do have a clear insight into my own.

While others support me by saying things like, 'she's insecure because you're better at your job than her' and 'she's a skank', yes, someone (other than SI) said that and while I tend to agree, not really all that helpful, but thanks.

My thinking and over-analysing has led me to this conclusion.

I don't work well with women.

History has taught me this, not just the current issue. Every time I've ever had an issue at work, it's always been a woman. Except once, when I worked for a guy in his 60s and he told me women should stay at home to cook, clean and have babies. That was 1999 for you.

Back to the ladies. I don't think like a girl. I've been told this by many a female and male acquaintances. I have no burning desire to prove myself capable of being able to hold down a full time job. I don't live to work. I work to live, but it needs to be a job I enjoy with people who know how to relax.

I'm pretty sure I've never manipulated anyone to do something they didn't really want to do. In any part of my life.

I don't have and have never wanted babies. I like other people's kids 'cause you can give them back when they start crying. I'm a sucker for a broken animal though.

If I have an issue with the way someone is behaving I try to address it. I do not passive aggressively try to control the situation. I wear my heart on my sleeve and deal with it, if it can’t be dealt with I will extract myself from the situation at the first possible opportunity.

Which brings me back to my point.

I speak up. And as I said in my last post, I internalise a lot.

Let me explain the history of working with ladies in reverse. Only a couple of things per person, I don’t wish to bore you too much.

LC: was supposed to hand over all project work and move to another project. Hasn't, is still directing me to do admin tasks, took me aside and bollocked me for doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Got me to do 'urgent' report then told me the data I'd been working from was incomplete and I had to number crunch again. Constantly chases me and makes a point of saying, 'GOOD MORNING', while looking at her watch.

RA: After 3 years of employment I started to report to a new manager. This one completely rewrote everything I wrote and started to check where I was. Luckily, I left before this one started to really became an issue.

DJ: gave me Whooping Cough because despite being really sick considered herself indispensable and coughed on me for two weeks before proudly announcing the doctor had officially diagnosed her. When I got back from three week sick she had a go at me for being behind in my work. She clock watched. She knee capped me in a meeting, I handed in my notice 20 minutes later.

Of course I always second guess myself and think I'm imagining this behaviour, am I just being paranoid? Until someone else spots it and brings it to my attention, I’ll torture myself that it’s all in my imagination, because what could they possibly be getting out behaving in such a manner? On the occasions that I have confronted passive aggressive behaviour, it just gets worse in the following days, such as yesterday's phantom report that prevented me from attending a training session for the project I'm working on.

I've never had these sorts of problems when working with/for a guy. I find if guys have a problem, they just tell you. Men are upfront. 'You're crap! Because of X Y and Z' and this conversation is likely to take place at lunch, in a pub.

Women, especially those with children, start talking to you as if you have an IQ of 10. They always do this in front of people. I apologise if you are not such a woman, this is from MY experiences in horror employment.

'Oh, well done, Jodie!'

Condescending Biatch!

They explain things to you as if it's a completely new concept to the world.

'Now, I'd like you to make up an address label for this box, addressed to XYZ and then, get a trolley and take it up to the mail room for posting'.

Really, I need to let the mail room know where I want it to go? Why don't I make the address label up for someone completely different, surely ESP will get it to the correct person?

Supercilious Biatch!



Now granted, I've got an attitude about this, but despite getting sick to my stomach with stage fright, I'm a good little actress when I need to be. I take it for the sake of reducing chances of escalation. Confronting it, always, leads to escalation.

I'll bide my time, perform like Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (and maybe a bit of Miss Congeniality) at any up-coming interviews and get the hell outta Dodge and remember, work with men.


Thank you to this website for the image :-)

Head over heels

Also known as arse over tit when you're falling over rather than in love.

I had such a tumble on Thursday whilst walking into a work site on my way to deliver training. I stepped on a manhole cover which gave way and my right foot disappeared down the hole. I tried to right myself, but as these things go, it happened very quickly and I ended up in a pile on the gravel ground. My right knee and palm caught the brunt on the damage but my left elbow impacted too as I attempted to stop the bags I was carrying from hitting the ground too hard. Cara was in one of them. She's fine.

The two big tough construction types out for a smoko saw me go down with the grace of a fairy elephant and came to my rescue. Meanwhile I was the colour of my coat.

I have a tiny graze on my palm, a bruise on my elbow and a tenderised knee. Considering the minor nature of my booboos the rest of my body feels like it's done ten rounds with the current heavy weight champion. I hurt.

The last time I feel over was in Coles about three years ago (I slipped on flower water). I didn't think I'd fall over again so soon.

It's true what they say, you really do fall harder the older you get, but only because you're not used to it and you don't bounce like you used too.