Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Normal service will resume shortly

Yesterday did not start well. I had forgotten to reset my alarm from the previous day’s late start and that feeling of something not being quite right sank in as soon as my alarm finally went off. The thing is that despite the extra sleep, I still felt so tired all day. Somebody at work even said to me how tired I looked yesterday. It’s not that I’m sleeping badly. I usually easily fall asleep at night and sleep through until the morning – and the peace and quiet since the boys went back to China is lovely. I guess maybe I just have stuff on my mind, so the quality of a night’s sleep does not necessarily match the amount of time I am asleep for.

When I got into the office yesterday morning, I still had my coat on and my bag on my shoulder and as I approached my desk, my head of unit said to me “Have you drafted that letter for me?” I couldn’t even bother to sugar coat it and just said “No, I haven’t done it”. I think she was somewhat taken aback by my response. I said to her that she had never bothered to have a conversation with me about exactly what she had wanted and that I had other rather more urgent things to deal with, which she knew about, and therefore hadn’t had time to do it. But whatever you say to her, it is never good enough. You could tell her that you’d been in a coma and she would still tell you that you should have done your work. In her usual style she then took my manager to one side and totally slated me and then did that again later in the morning - and I am guessing did the same with my new head of unit because that is exactly her style to do so. My manager spoke to me about it and I explained what had happened and that I had done all the work, but that finding the time to draft the letter had been somewhat elusive of late. My manager just said that my head of unit wouldn’t accept any excuses and I had better get on with it. So I did and I wrote the letter and someone else more senior looked at it and said that they thought it was well drafted and dealt with everything, but by then I was passed caring.

Most of the morning I sat there just wanting to hand in my notice and walk out, or at least sit at my desk with my head in my hands and cry. Someone, unprompted, even sent me a job notice and said I should think about applying for the job. It would mean leaving my current organisation and is vaguely tempting but I don’t think my unit would let me go at the moment anyway.

I think I must have looked somewhat out of sorts generally because a couple of people asked me if I was alright and someone totally unexpected kind of patted me on the shoulder while he was talking to me, as if to try and soothe me a bit. I just cannot bear being dismissed by my head of unit, as though there is no defence for anything, that whatever you might say she will never accept it. It is always your fault, never hers and she makes sure you know that.

I headed home last night and when I got home there were some people viewing the house. I went and had a shower and seethed about all my stuff being moved again and my possessions not quite measuring up to my landlady’s standards so that she has to remove my towels from the bathroom or the rug from my bedroom whenever someone comes round. It’s all about putting across the right impression and if that means doing things at my expense, it doesn’t matter.

It’s just been a bad few days, people asking things of me or telling me to do things - seemingly giving me choices when there actually isn’t any choice at all. Normally I just take it on the chin, but sometimes it all gets a bit too hard and I get tired of people demanding things of me or expecting things of me when all I want is a bit of peace and quiet and to be left to my own devices.

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