Friday, September 28, 2007

Bolshy



It’s Friday. Yay! G and I are going out for dinner tonight. Yay! We should get 50% off the meal. Yay!

This new found excitement does not reflect me having returned to ‘normal’ more that I am just glad to have made it to the end of the week! Yesterday went ok though. I was talking to my boss and C, the woman who works for me, yesterday morning and we were discussing how the meeting had gone and all concluded that it had not gone well. I think all of us were kind of subdued about it. I do a lot of work with another organisation and that other organisation had suggested that maybe the way to make progress was for me and C to go and work with them on a semi-permanent basis. I said that I didn’t think this was a good idea. We were down enough about it already without being punished by having to go and work over on the dark side. I think it will be discussed again next week but I think my boss is not keen on it happening either so hopefully it won’t. I actually do a range of work that has nothing to do with that particular project so just practically it isn’t the right way to deal with it. I just hope we have a choice in this. C seemed very subdued yesterday though and I asked her if she was ok and she said she was but had just got quite a lot on her mind. She’s actually on leave for a week now so hopefully she’ll feel a bit more positive by the time she gets back.

I also got summoned (in a nice way) to go and speak to someone who had been at the meeting and he wanted to make sure that I hadn’t been upset or offended by what he had said at the meeting. I assured him I wasn’t. He is very nice and I didn’t disagree with what he had said at all, it was just one of those things. I did also achieve some things at work yesterday too which was a good sign.

I haven't turned into sweetness and light though. Yesterday I touched my oyster card on the reader at the barrier and went into the station and some bloke came through the barrier right behind me. I turned to him and said “Did you just come through on my ticket?” and he replied with a somewhat aggressive “Yes” and basically asked what my problem was. I then stood there and told him in no uncertain terms (!) that I had paid my fare but I hadn’t done that so he could travel for free and that I didn’t appreciate him going through on my ticket. We then both proceeded to walk down the same escalator and he must have thought I was following him (which I wasn’t, I always walk down the escalators) and he then said “what do you want? 50p? £1” and I just replied that I wasn’t following him and was just walking down an escalator. I think in many ways I was actually more bothered that he had to walk through right up behind me and that was what I disliked more than the actual fare evasion side of it, although I didn’t see what he should get away with not paying. I was talking to G about it later and did say that one day I may well get stabbed to death for being a bit bolshy. As I said to G, always assume that each time is the last time we’ll be in touch, just in case.

2 comments:

Spudgy said...

Crumbs its not wise to tackle fare evaders (I know some revenue inspectors and could tell you tales that would make you hair stand on end!!)

Woman you need a coffee.......!

Random Reflections said...

spudgy - I didn't really mean to confront him, I think I was just so put out that he had come into contact with me as he followed me through the barrier that I asked him what he was doing and it sort of went from there...

I'll drink more coffee and maybe invest on a stab-proof vest.