Aaaaaand Breathe

I received my P45 in the post today.

No notes, no phone calls, no accusations that I didn't work my notice.

This has all worked out in my favour, I'd like to acknowledge that!

Too Many Skills Spoil the Broth

The people I work with, who never get the opportunity to use the wide range of skills they have between them, are a good, but downtrodden, bunch of people.

One of them worked for the country's biggest healthcare products provider for several years and ran various warehouses simultaneously in different cities across the UK, travelling between them when necessary. He obviously knows what it takes to run more than one successful warehouse. On his second day in work (last year) boss asked him to draw up a plan to improve the warehouse. He then denied that every suggestion was possible (i.e.. "I don't want to spend any money or change anything at all"), and ignored the whole thing.

Another of my colleagues is a woman who worked for IBM for a quarter of a century. She now thinks she is too old to get another job, but frantically applies for anything advertised. She complains on a daily basis how crap this job is and encourages everyone else to get the hell out. 

I also work with an ex-professional footballer, who re-trained as an IT professional and worked for Intel for years. He now wears a coat all day in minus temperatures in the warehouse, which is said to be made of asbestos and is told exactly when he can and can't have a cup of tea. His is also on his "fifth final written warning" because, every now and then, the boss pushes him so far that he sticks up for himself. He has been in the role for 11 years and thinks he is too old to get another job.

The question is - what's worse, staying in a job and complaining about it on a daily basis, dragging your mood and life down, or leaving it at the risk of not working again in the short or long-term?

Is the status of 'dole scum' really that bad? 

"Oh Mr Gepeeettttooooooooooooooooooooo"

So, my boss.

H.

You may have gleaned from the information here that he is not only a 'difficult' boss, not only an 'annoying' boss, not even an 'almost impossible to work with boss'. He is literally a deeply troubled individual, both professionally and personally and qualifies as an unstable control freak, the like of which I have never seen before.

Can you come into my office please? 

He likes to tell you to do something, then checks on you a couple of times a day (if it's a long job that will take more than a week) and will often stand behind you when you are in the zone and watch you for as long as possible without saying anything. This is because he wants you to turn around and acknowledge him. 

When you do, he feigns surprise, like "ah, ***, what are you doing?" Erm, what you told me. Then he smirks and his head wobbles from side to side a bit and he tells me some useless fact that only HE knows and is usually wrong anyway, making sure everyone has heard - he looks around the room at everyone else as he says it - then he leaves again. 

He gets hair-brained schemes that are completely useless and impractical. He likes to make the chosen ones who will 'help' him with these schemes stop what they are doing IMMEDIATELY (even though he has told them to do it urgently) and join him (read: humour him) in his office and bore them with the completely useless details. He will then think that he knows absolutely everything about what he is talking about, so actually, he needs nobody to even advise him. He just needs them there to talk at and think he is a genius. Then, everyone has to waste hours, maybe even days, 'finding out' things they already know, to report back to them with so he can disagree with them about it, overrule them and just do what he was going to anyway. I've seen this happen several times now. 

This makes him an inefficient time-waster who is strangling his own company by hiring people with all manner of expertise, then not allowing them to use them. A very disheartening prospect, even for someone only looking for a temporary stop-gap. 

This probably makes no sense without examples. 

Last week, he started me on a very long-term project - updating a thick catalogue comprising of nothing but information laid out in a spreadsheet format. All facts and figures and products with very specific codes - it's going to take months. This is fine, no problem, it's what I'm here for.* 

*Actually, it's not really, but as the company has no website (his daughter is doing it, nobody else is allowed to even discuss it), I'm not doing too much in the way of literally marketing, which was allegedly my original job title. 

In the middle of the week, he comes down from the wooden tower that is his crappy old office and throws a large, heavy bag of plastic cable ties on my desk, on top of the work I'm in the middle of and says "find prices for those". 

No more information, he just grins and his head shakes a bit under the weight of his superiority. Something like this maybe, but not funny, just nerve-searingly irritating....

I don't even know who this man is

He obviously thinks he is throwing me in at the deep end, it's a new job, right? It's also a new product, we've never sold these before. It's a challenge. Which would be true - if he would give me any more information when I ask a question, but he doesn't, he just walks off. I can SEE how clever he thinks he is, his sense of himself is almost a physical presence. 

So, I attempt to ask questions, but by this point, he has decided himself exactly how I'm going to go about it.

"Go back downstairs to your desk and print off the price list of ***, a competitor, and we will decide what we sell them for ."

OK, easy enough. 

I log on, I find the website, then I'm in the middle of searching for the said product line. Then my desk phone rings. 

"Come upstairs please".

I go upstairs. He hands me a print-out. 

"What is this?" 

It's the competitors' price list. 

"But I was just in the middle of printing that...."

"Go back to your desk and have a look through it, then we will discuss the prices."

Hmm...can't we just do that now? NO! That's not the way he likes to do things. Go away. Print things off. Have paper in your hand. Come back again so I can write "NO" all over it in red pen.* Thanks.

*It's true, he actually does.

Everything must involve printing off lots of unnecessary information you can see on a screen. Bad, as the company does NOT recycle paper (unbelievable in 2012). And also you must go upstairs and down a few times before we can discuss anything, because that is the procedure around here! 

Read the rules I never gave anybody that are etched into my skull and change daily!! Is that too much to ask?!?! What the hell do I pay you for?*

*This is an imaginary, but probably realistic conversation we could have had. 

So, I went downstairs again, great stuff, then back upstairs to his right-hand man and head of accounts (who also hates him and tells me on a daily basis), and said I needed to work out how much we should charge for a large assortment of cable ties that we have never sold before but need to go out on special offer for one week. 

 I will call his right-hand man P. 

We looked at the figures and decided that we could sell them for either £12.99, £13.99 or £14.99 a bag and still make a good profit with any of these options, there wasn't a huge difference.

P asked me to decide independently "what I would say to H". I reasoned and said, well, I would go for £12.99, as its a new product, so the priority is drawing attention to it. Also, as the offer only lasts one week, it would be easy to feature the same offer again in a few months time and raise the price if necessary as most people would have forgotten the previous price by then. Also, any new customers attracted by the new product would be engaged by the discount. 

He grinned and seemed happy, this was also his opinion, which was nice and gave me a bit of faith in myself. 

So, we both went in to smug old H and I explained why we would sell the bag for £12.99. 

"No." He said. I could see that he had decided, even before he came and threw the bag at me, exactly what he was going to do. "We are going to sell them at £14.99."

Me

Then he pretty much told us we weren't needed in his office any more and to go and try and remember what we were doing before he engaged us in this highly amusing game of dangling his power on a stick. 

His only explanation of why he decided on the higher figure was that he wouldn't be able to raise the price in the future, but he could drop it if he wanted, without any complaints from customers.

Bullshit. People don't argue with promotions, it's a part of life! One day a packet of biscuits is £1, the next it's £1.20, then it might be 80p a month later. People aren't idiots, they know and accept the concept of a promotion. 

Besides, if that's a promotion, then what are you going to claim the standard price is?

Anyway, that is just an example of how this man will never allow anybody else to overrule him. He's the king, you're a shit head. Even if you're EVER right, then he will go against you anyway, because the important thing is not working together and having everybody's input contribute to a successful endpoint, but to realise that you're a shit head. And he is great. 

I think this man should just clone himself twenty times and employ himself in the office and warehouse. That would just be the best thing all round. 

So, yeah, my new job is going well. Thanks Jobcentre advisors!

No Encore

"No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent" - Eleanor Roosevelt

I've decided to leave my job, for various reasons. Before I became unemployed in October, I might have said that that three weeks is the shortest time I've ever lasted in a job.

However, I only lasted for one hour in a local cafe in October - not because of the work (it was fine), but because I did the maths when I got home and sadly, realised I could pay the rent on housing benefit, but not working in the cafe. 

I'm leaving at this point because....

1.) I'll be able to afford Christmas, my birthday and New Year if I work until the end of next week.

2.) The boss chooses to close the office from Friday 21st until Wednesday 2nd January. For the week in the middle, he doesn't pay us for days other than bank holidays. We all have four days taken from our holiday allowance to stop him losing money during this time. Therefore, I could count this 'forced week off' as my notice period.

3.) I'll get out before I become pathetic, self-pitying and depressed and worse still, unable to realise these things about myself. That is worse than being unemployed.

4.) I won't be able, or particularly want to, go through the dole again. Suddenly finding myself without an income at all will mean I have to step up my efforts to get a job to the maximum. Starting 2013 with a bit of a challenge....can't be bad.

Hmm, I wonder if there are any medical trials starting in January.......

STOP

On Wednesday, the boss (H) had gone out in the morning. It's easy to tell when he isn't in the building, as the office room (where I work) was a lot more relaxed and the folks who work in the freezing cold warehouse come in and out more often for chats.

One of the women I work alongside (K) started telling someone a story about how he shouted at her last week and made her cry. 

To put this into perspective, she's not an overly emotional person and has worked for the company for six years. She has been there the longest out of everyone. He has made her cry twice in six years, so at the moment, it seems he is being particularly evil. 

Anyway, as K was chatting about this incident she said "then, I went over here and H did this, then when H saw what I'd done, he went over to the cabinet and...."

Then, J, head of the warehouse, shouted "STOP!"

K said "what?!?!"

J: You almost said his name 3 times!

Ha ah haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Errrrr.....can you bugger off please? Thanks. Await Further Instruction.

This is a true story. On my second day at my new job, I sensed some kind of unpleasant presence around me as I was typing. I turned around after a minute and my boss was standing over me, smirking over his glasses.

I'll have to come up with a name for him, lets call him H for now. This stands for Hitler.

H: Ah. Come up to the office for a chat.
Me: Ok.

We went upstairs to his dark brown, faded yellow artexed office, a playground for dust and depression and I sat down opposite his lordship at his desk. Which, by the way, has one of these on it*:

*I'm not joking

Then this happened....

H: We have some important things to go through today, to do with your new job and we'll have to discuss...

The phone on his desk started to ring. He picked it up.

H: Hello! Oh, hi! Ok. Ok. Just hang on one moment.

H put his hand over the receiver and looked at me.

H: Erm, this is a private call, so.....do you mind?

Me: OK. 

H: Can you close the door on your way out?

I closed the door on my way out.

How do you make these again?

So, My First Week

I have made a grave mistake.*

This is the recipe for my new boss = 

*Actually, the JobCentre has made a grave mistake by forcing me to take this job regardless of the distance/duties/environment just to get me off the dole. Thank you Jobcentre for my early birthday and Christmas gift all in one.