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I find it easiest to pretend that a don't need to work, don't need to work for the company that I work for and if I only made the effort I could easily do anything I wanted, if only I knew what I wanted to do. In reality, I've been doing the same shit for the past 6 years and 3 months and have been complaining about wanting to leave for the past 6 years and 2 months.
Knowing that at the end of each day I'll see my woman, and that I'll get to see my mates most weeks is what keeps me alive.
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I cling to small, easy to achieve dreams and aspirations. Sometimes I am aware of them and have planned them (Friday night wine, Saturday afternoon delight, Sunday morning read-a-thons). Other times they appear, gliding towards me unexpectedly. Like yesterday. I had to go to a meeting with a bunch of people that I now have to kind of oversee. They are known as being 'difficult'. I wasn't looking forward to the meeting at all but went into it determined to stand my ground. One of the group seemed to take an instant dislike to me. Whenever I spoke during the meeting, she sighed and tutted, rolled her eyes heavenwards, pulled faces and mimicked me. I became pretty annoyed. At the end of the meeting, I called her to one side and I pulled her up about her behaviour. I made sure that I pointed out that she is going to have to work for me for the best part of a year and if she can't find a way of doing that in a constructive and positive way, I won't accept it. She immediately back tracked, flustered and apologetic. I didn't like confronting her but I did feel better for it - at least I didn't spend an unfortunate amount of time seething about it afterwards, as I would have had I not done anything. That kind of gave me a boost and a small Hitlerish canter to my step that I hope will see me through the next week.
Next time: how I rounded them all up and shot them.
-------------------- They give you a pen as fat as a modest cock and you're expected to dab it on the page, as though you were mopping the dregs of an afternoon Tommy. Posts: 1847
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Were you wearing a power suit and looking ravishing when you dished out this stern ticking off, Sindy? I need to touch up the image for later.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: If ever anybody says that they want a quick chat, I always assume that I'm about to be given a warning about the internet.
lol, yeah I hear you there man. Mind you, the only way they will bust me screwing around is to go direct to the ISP and that's unlikely. But a a bit of healthy paranoia never hurts.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: This is likely to be my last weekday on TMO
This is indeed sad news. I, for one, will miss you, as I can only post during the work week. I think this news raises the question who's going to step up and fill the void left by your absense? I'm not going to kid myself into thinking it's me. I don't have it in me. But I've seen it in a lot of you. So who's it going to be?
As far as getting through each miserable workday goes, I'm driven simply by the knowledge that one day death's sweet caress will remove all my pain.
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The place where I work sent round a message warning about internet useage a few months ago. I thought the game was up and they'd finally sussed me out. I stopped using the internet at all for about two days. Then dipped into the BBC news site for five minutes one lunchtime. Then checked my Yahoo Mail very very quickly. Next day I thought I'd sneak a look at TMO and a couple of other forums. Anyway, I've ended up forgetting all about the warnings till you posted this thread.
Depends how big your organisation is I suppose but, as Ben says, you're not the type of offender they're after. There's always a serial gambler or a top manager looking at porn in his office or some anarchist passing on access details to the firm's head office. Lie low for a couple of days then get your ass back on here.
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I'm sorry if I was a bit harsh on you Benway, I'm probably projecting a chunk of self-loathing in your direction. I've just scrapped the project I've been working on for the past couple of years as a bad job and am trying something different. At times I get quite excited about that second thing - but I sometimes fret that it's just a coping mechanism for dealing with the larger failure and won't actually amount to anything.
As for this weekend, a couple we know are coming round 'for dinner' tonight. I'm quite looking forward to it as we rub along reasonably well with them and D's friend is heavily pregnant with her third child and therefore likely to look quite stunning. However - the last time we met up, she and I ended up having an almost-row about whether kids should be brought up to be socially adept (conforming, in with the right crowd) or socially self-sufficient. The evening will therefore probably be like one of those Raymond Carver short stories - What's In Alaska?, maybe.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: If I go home before I come out, I will.
Excellent.
Ben, don't apologise for having a go at Benway for his darklybrokenanselfloathinginabedsit shtick, although it may be worth considering the idea that he's actually fishing for such responses.
As far as your own projects, is it not worth simply side-lining the first rather than abandoning it entirely, is it not something you could come back to later?
-------------------- Some people stand in the darkness, afraid to step into the light... Posts: 3770
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quote:Originally posted by Boy Racer: Ben, don't apologise for having a go at Benway for his darklybrokenanselfloathinginabedsit shtick, although it may be worth considering the idea that he's actually fishing for such responses.
quote:Originally posted by ben: I'm sorry if I was a bit harsh on you Benway, I'm probably projecting a chunk of self-loathing in your direction. I've just scrapped the project I've been working on for the past couple of years as a bad job and am trying something different. At times I get quite excited about that second thing - but I sometimes fret that it's just a coping mechanism for dealing with the larger failure and won't actually amount to anything.
Ben - do you think you call this thing a coping mechanism just so you don't have to take it seriously, and actually icommit to doing something to believe in. Also is that "project" the book you were writing? I wouldn't get too bogged down in the quality to begin with - just get it finished, and remember that the real trick is in re-writing it. It's a lot easier that way.
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quote:Originally posted by Boy Racer: Ben, don't apologise for having a go at Benway for his darklybrokenanselfloathinginabedsit shtick, although it may be worth considering the idea that he's actually fishing for such responses.
Also - I don't think this is true. At least half the pleasure in complimenting Benway is the fact that it clearly makes him uncomfortable.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: is that "project" the book you were writing?
Yes. I know what you mean about re-writing, but I've been getting more and more frustrated with it over the past six months - even as my workrate has increased and held up well. The fact that I've got a reasonable amount to look at and think about has made me more dubious about the worth of continuing than otherwise - which is pretty bleak, in a way, but I think I've learned a lot in the process so it hasn't entirely been a waste of time.
It can be horrible when you have a lucid moment though and realise that you really are a pointless waste of space. I try and avoid those as best I can.
This is exactly how I feel at the moment. Destined to never know what I want to be or do when I grow up. I keep hoping that my (obviously) latent talent will suddenly emerge giving me a new purpose in life. I'm 30 years old and I'll still be hoping when I'm 60.
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quote:Originally posted by jonesy999: I was hoping for a flurry of posting to take us up to 5. Especially from Thorn, who should go out in a blaze of gory.
I have a new thread, but it's not as good as I hoped.
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This time three years ago, it would have been all 'meat fm', and that shaky nerves feeling. Now, I feel like I'm just going to get lambasted by Boy Racer for being a sell out, and ignored by all of VP's real friends.
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In fact, sorry, this was the worse time to write a thread. Half past four on a Friday? A friday before a meat? Everyone is going to be 'yo what it is my bitches' and having a larff and all that. Fucking Hell.
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I'm having one of those days where I don't really feel like I should be interacting with anyone. I sit here in a square of four desks, all facing inwards, with my colleagues. We were chatting earlier, basically just having a laugh. I was really holding court, making a few jokes, telling a few anecdotes, and it was all going really really well. The girls were laughing heartily and I was thinking to myself how great it was being in as job where I didn't feel like my co-workers thought I was strange, or creepy, or unpleasant. So we're sat there laughing, and I was telling them about the time I had a drunken conversation with Chris Tarrant, and how I came out looking like a twat, and how difficult it is to have a conversation with chris Tarrant and come out looking like the twat. and one of them, laughing, kind of collapsing on the desk says through her giggles "Oh Thorn - I just don't know about you sometimes!"
And I replied "That's true! none of you know anything about me other than what I've told you!"
The laughter's kind of sputtering out and there's a giggly "what do you mean?", eager for more funny.
and then, deadpan, "Well. I could be a sex offender for all you know."
And then there was just stoney, uncomfortable silence. And everyone put their heads down and got back to work.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: This time three years ago, it would have been all 'meat fm', and that shaky nerves feeling. Now, I feel like I'm just going to get lambasted by Boy Racer for being a sell out, and ignored by all of VP's real friends.
It could be worse. You could be so out of the loop you're destined to not understand what anyone's talking about for the next fortnight and have to do some work instead.
I'd like an annotated photo story, preferably with name badges worn throughout. Ta.
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lol. i did one of those the other day. i had a particularly annoying customer on the line, who just wouldnt accept that she hadnt actually been apying for her service for something like 9 months, and that far from complaining on and on and fucking on like a half- dead mule about insert my employer's brandname here>>>> inefficiency she should actually just put the phone down, count all the money we hadnt asked her for and shut her stupid fat fucking idiot maw. on the seventh time of explaining this to her i suddenly could take it no longer, and found myself making these HUGE ARCING PUNCHING MOTIONS WITH MY FISTS AND MOUTHING 'JUST FUCKING SHUT UP YOU TWAT!!' at my monitor, with my face all scrunched up wrath- style. when i stopped i looked up to see my supervisor and six team mates sitting staring at me heads cocked to one side, openmouthed, with the supervisor actually rearing back in his seat with confusion. jesus, youd think we didnt work in a call centre or something.
-------------------- evil is boring: cheerful power Posts: 1655
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Career. Don't get me started. Oh. You have. Being freelance gives me great opportunity to pretend to myself that my big break is just around the corner, and I could start writing a column about hummous any day now, and become an adored part of the media melieu, and get invited to parties and get given free stuff. However, in the 18 months since I stopped working for one body, with a boss and targets and a woman with a whip, I find myself doing the sort of work I was doing five years ago, as if I had no ambition or gumption or get-up-and-go. I tell myself that it doesn't matter, as I'll be having a baby soon and that a flexible working life is just what's needed to fit in between baby yoga classes and making rice pudding with my own breast milk. Then I remember than I'm old and wizenend and a more likely scenario is no baby and no career, and then I poke my eyes out with my own ovulation-predicting kits.
Howevs, I have just started doing PR for a rilly cool architecture practice, and am re-filled with enthusiasm for my cheese shop idea, so hopefully this temporary rosy burst will keep me from the edge for long enough to find something else mildly diverting.
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The only thing that has kept me going is the thought of getting out of my job. I definitely ain't `Mr Customer Service' and the thought of working in an office for another twenty, thirty, forty years taking shit off someone who shouldn't be allowed access to an Etch-a-Sketch, never mind a laptop doesn't fill my heart with joy. The line of work I have been in feels utterly futile, pointless, unfulfilling and doesn't stretch me in the least.
So, I've been working on it. This last week I have spent my days driving round to schools talking about the R*mans and Saxons, being paid for it and having a laugh. For the first time in about five years I felt job satisfaction.
It feels like I am doing something meaningful. Yesterday afternoon, I could have spent my time changing a password for someone, or configuring RAS. I could have listened to my colleagues bitching about the boss, the prick they've just had to deal with or someone from senior management going on how we should either show a `passion for service' or work for another company.
But I didn't.
Instead, with Mrs Stefanos I taught Anglo Saxon riddles. We read the story of Beowulf in a darkened hall with only candle light for illumination, the children sitting around us, rapt, clamouring to ask us at the end where they could get a copy of the story.
Next weekend I will be selling stuff that myself and Mrs Stefanos make, networking furiously to get more work and having a great time.
My choice is to accept that I spend my working life working with computers, worrying about the last arsy user complaining to my boss because I couldn't recover data from a hard drive he has intentionally deleted, worrying about the `quick chat' mentioned above because of internet usage, worrying about if my contract is being renewed and worrying why my `career' seems one step forward, two steps back.
Fuck that! I'd rather take my chances running my own business. At least if I arse it up, it's down to me and not some prick salesman who negotiated a ludicrously undervalued contract just so he could get his fucking bonus. I've got more faith in my abilities than a lot of cnuts I have had the misfortune to work under.
Of course, I have to spend my time fixing fucking computers and no more school talks until November, but I can hold on...
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To get you through Friday? Well its 9am and the couple of hours work yesterday I was supposed to do ended up as being 14 hours, and I've been working already an hour, with no end in sight. And I'm no doubt back in the office tomorrow being Monday.
It wouldn't be so bad, but for one incident yesterday - at about 4 in the evening I'm on a conference call with participants from France, Madrid and Holland of at least 5 nationalities. I'm asked to explain what has happened as far as my installations failing which I do, then later in the call, the director of our department (a Dane) apologises to our development partners in Madrid about the language used at the beginning of the call. After the call, I speak to the release manager joking about who that was aimed at.
5 minutes later I get a call from one of the managers - apparently the director was apologising for my use of language - but it was not like I swore, or used any profanity or even expressed any dismay or anger, yet somehow I'm suddenly embroiled into a mess of inapropriate language. The person the apology was aimed at I called and asked if I had offended, to which she replied most definatley not (she is someone I deal with regularly) and yet now my name is shit with the IT director, who obviously just does not like the way I talk english.
So my weekend is screwed,with no end in sight, I am developing a nsaty headache and plus now I'm probably going to face an inquisition about how I speak my own fucking language, even without the normal profanity I reserve when not at work. I've been in this industry long enough and been a corporate whore most of my life to know to watch my P's and Q's when in meetings. I spoke to another manager who was on the call who could not understand the problem either.
Friday? I just want to get through today without losing my job because some stupid executive who I've never even directly spoken to in the 12 months I have worked there doesn't like my brand of "International English" (IE English for all, not peppered with slang or complex words, but at the same time, not condescending to the people on the call whose excellent command of English as a secondary or tertiary language, does not require me to speak to them like Basil Fawlty to Manuel).
Perhaps I should just tell him to "Sut min behaarede roev, din vatpik" in a language he will understand. If my brand of Tact and Diplomacy is inadequate, well Fuck it. If I'm in line for a stoning, might as well shout "Jehovah" eh?
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stefanos can you please keep an ear out during the reenactors' raffle and upd8 me here on monday, as i have bought one ticket and im feeling lucky. those samurai swords/ hand- stitched braies/ acres of fruit jerky are so mine, mother!
-------------------- evil is boring: cheerful power Posts: 1655
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The important factor in being a jet-set fancy pants like moi is to burn yer bridges. Columbo did it when he discovered American TV, and there's no motivation like it. It's the numero uno in terms of getting up off your arse and finding another country to play with. Gernerally about a month before a contract ends I have already made provision. If there is anything which can be tied-up, red-taped or just blatently ignored until after you've buggered off it must be tied-up, red-taped and ignored, and if possible, interfered with. Spend your time wisely, sending reports to managers about how the everything you've just developed is shite and could be done properly if it wasn't for them personally interfering. If there is anything that is going to take more than a month to do, do it, well start it anyway - and then arse it up. If anyone mentions references, or favours, or being a team-player - fuck um - they're all just prawns in your intricate game of Ludo.
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