The office - in reality
I seem to start all my latest posts by apologising and so to keep with the tradition, again apologies. I appreciate I am becoming as reliable as JK Rowling with posts and hope to rectify it in the near future.
As said in my last post, I've recently started working full-time which has not only been a shock to my system in terms of having to wear clothes requiring ironing but also in terms of not being able to stay up til 3am banging on about nothing to my antipodean friends as I still have to get up to get to work.
The job itself is not bad. But the front page of the news of the world will surely be "aussie loses grip on polite niceness and ends work colleagues" shortly. There's a few other temps who are hilarious and give me a reason not to commit hari kari most days, but I am currently working for a company where I have seen more organisation in a Jackson Pollock painting.
Organisation aside, the personalities of the office are starting to do my head in. There's the loud, slightly dim, must be revered by all character whose sole purpose for employment appears to be to reminisce about when she was thin, young and had a nose ring. Then there's the superhero character - here one minute, gone the next - and none of we temps reallly know what she does or why she is incapable of doing it at her desk. There's the quite nice guy with the mobile phone ring tone set to air raid siren level; which is the most annoying ring tone Nokia has produced - that one that sounds a little bit less quirky every time you hear it and after hearing it 20 times a day you have visions of grinding your heel into it without compassion. And the politicking in the office for attention is more dramatic than the US mid terms.
I've worked with some absolute gems across my life. The "you must respect me personally because I'm your boss" boss. A person who would spend hours reviewing whatever I wrote as I was "too liberal" with my use of commars. And my personal favourite, the always happy, "lets do trust falls and bond" boss who we all despised.
I've worked for people whose only discernible talent appears to have been to employ me so that they can then sit around and do nowt. But I have never worked for people I have wanted to expire more substantially. My email partner in crime, another temp, and I have started a list, in priority order, of who should be offed first.
I can effectively predict my daily routine. I will get to work, be given all the shite jobs no one else wants, which is the calling card of a temp,and which I will half heartedly complete, which is the revenge of the temp, and then a large portion of my afternoon will be occupied by what I can only describe as live theatre/soap opera as one of my colleagues will share with all of us in the cubicle farm information that none of us give a toss about. And not only will the story be dull and irrelevant it will be start from scratch, like an endless game of snakes and ladders with no ladders, whenever some poor tortured soul gets sent to the section.
The section is populated largely by middle aged women struggling to be 25 again, deeply committed to not dressing appropriately and swearing profusely. Don't get me wrong, I have a potty mouth, but I don't swear because I think it's cool. I swear because there are just some words that sound more emphatic than others.
All in all, it is doing my head in. I've asked questions relating to doing my actual job that 3 weeks later have still not been answered and I am having to make up bigger and better excuses to not go out drinking with the mid week. Soon I will be having to escalate my excuses to things like "having my kidney out for organ donation" just to give them no room to manuouever.
If they were funny it might be different. But they're not. I keep reminding myself that this is country the (original and good) office was set in, so the chances of discovering my very own David Brent are high. I just didn't think it would be my first job!
They went out for karioke last week and there appear to be threats of it happening again. It's only a matter of time before "freelove freeway" makes an appearance. I'll keep you posted.
As said in my last post, I've recently started working full-time which has not only been a shock to my system in terms of having to wear clothes requiring ironing but also in terms of not being able to stay up til 3am banging on about nothing to my antipodean friends as I still have to get up to get to work.
The job itself is not bad. But the front page of the news of the world will surely be "aussie loses grip on polite niceness and ends work colleagues" shortly. There's a few other temps who are hilarious and give me a reason not to commit hari kari most days, but I am currently working for a company where I have seen more organisation in a Jackson Pollock painting.
Organisation aside, the personalities of the office are starting to do my head in. There's the loud, slightly dim, must be revered by all character whose sole purpose for employment appears to be to reminisce about when she was thin, young and had a nose ring. Then there's the superhero character - here one minute, gone the next - and none of we temps reallly know what she does or why she is incapable of doing it at her desk. There's the quite nice guy with the mobile phone ring tone set to air raid siren level; which is the most annoying ring tone Nokia has produced - that one that sounds a little bit less quirky every time you hear it and after hearing it 20 times a day you have visions of grinding your heel into it without compassion. And the politicking in the office for attention is more dramatic than the US mid terms.
I've worked with some absolute gems across my life. The "you must respect me personally because I'm your boss" boss. A person who would spend hours reviewing whatever I wrote as I was "too liberal" with my use of commars. And my personal favourite, the always happy, "lets do trust falls and bond" boss who we all despised.
I've worked for people whose only discernible talent appears to have been to employ me so that they can then sit around and do nowt. But I have never worked for people I have wanted to expire more substantially. My email partner in crime, another temp, and I have started a list, in priority order, of who should be offed first.
I can effectively predict my daily routine. I will get to work, be given all the shite jobs no one else wants, which is the calling card of a temp,and which I will half heartedly complete, which is the revenge of the temp, and then a large portion of my afternoon will be occupied by what I can only describe as live theatre/soap opera as one of my colleagues will share with all of us in the cubicle farm information that none of us give a toss about. And not only will the story be dull and irrelevant it will be start from scratch, like an endless game of snakes and ladders with no ladders, whenever some poor tortured soul gets sent to the section.
The section is populated largely by middle aged women struggling to be 25 again, deeply committed to not dressing appropriately and swearing profusely. Don't get me wrong, I have a potty mouth, but I don't swear because I think it's cool. I swear because there are just some words that sound more emphatic than others.
All in all, it is doing my head in. I've asked questions relating to doing my actual job that 3 weeks later have still not been answered and I am having to make up bigger and better excuses to not go out drinking with the mid week. Soon I will be having to escalate my excuses to things like "having my kidney out for organ donation" just to give them no room to manuouever.
If they were funny it might be different. But they're not. I keep reminding myself that this is country the (original and good) office was set in, so the chances of discovering my very own David Brent are high. I just didn't think it would be my first job!
They went out for karioke last week and there appear to be threats of it happening again. It's only a matter of time before "freelove freeway" makes an appearance. I'll keep you posted.
