Cold

What has happened to the weather?? It was so cold on the way in to work this morning. Last week I was in temperatures of 36 degrees and this week there are arctic winds (well maybe not arctic but it’s very cold...). Mind you maybe this is what December is meant to be like and we have just forgotten because we’re so used to global warming.

I went to the leaving do last night and that was ok. There were gushing speeches and people clapped at appropriate moments. The weird chap I work with, N, had to go to something else last night and so he made sure he was the first person to arrive and ate and drank as much as he could and then dashed of after about 20 minutes.

Earlier in the day we’d had some sandwiches left over from a meeting and when he saw them he took about eight sandwiches and then he saw some other food and piled that on too, then he saw some fruit and took some of that as well. He takes away people’s good will because in the past people often brought in cakes or biscuits but now because he seems to take most of them people aren’t so keen. On a few occasions I have had to speak to him about sharing – what am I, his mother??

He has also been complaining about the cost of our Christmas meal and wanted to negotiate a cheaper rate for himself with the restaurant, which we told him he wasn’t allowed to do. He’s worried about how much alcohol, will cost and sent a few e-mails to people to see if the managers would normally pay for the alcohol rather than everyone paying. I don’t know about the other managers but I have point blank refused to pay for any alcohol for him. I don’t mind for the others but he just sees it as an entitlement and just because we earn more than him doesn’t actually mean we can afford to pay for all his drinks. I just said to them that if he was worried about how much drinks would cost then he shouldn’t drink any alcohol.

Last night I chatted to the woman I will be managing when I move jobs. She seems really nice and it should be good working with her. I am looking forward to moving jobs. Morale seems to be slipping in my current team again. My boss seems even less interested in our work than ever and the belief is that our new head of unit is trying to get rid of him, so he’s just given up. I can’t wait to move on.