So, to set the story straight.  Here is what actually happened.

Staring Brat 1 decides on seeing me for the first time that I’m his gal.  I am grieving and in a new job, so I do not notice until he drags four people into the office and creates problems for each of them. Two are told that they must work extra hours, one is told that he is misusing his phone, which he isn’t, and I am told that invisible people are saying nasty things about me but he is there and wants to know about my home situation.  I smell a rat as he stares so much, inform the others that the problem is nothing to do with them, and tell him that I find the story ridiculous.  He continues to stare, never makes another attempt to speak to me but I know he is still staring.  He also makes several negative remarks behind my back, which I am well aware of, in an attempt to create situations in which I am likely to be frightened and which put my job at risk.  If he does not understand that frightening people is unlikely to make them like him, then he is seriously disturbed and requires treatment for SPD.

The dude is huge, but all I can see is a small child being beaten to a pulp every time I look at him, so I know that he is a bit inadequate, but this is no excuse for being frightening and creepy.

I am transferred, thankfully, to another team and meet Staring Brat 2, who seems like a smaller, gentler and somewhat wittier person, but then starts to become enormous very quickly after I tell him his seriousness is beautiful.  Nevertheless he is happy and continues the physical flirting until I see something with the beautiful girl, leading me to believe that he is with her. (it is very unclear to this day what is going on there)

When I offer to transfer off the shift so that they can continue their relationship in peace, he becomes furious, and continues to be furious right up until he gets me fired via his manager. I have seen several indications that this guy has extreme CPTSD.

His wife, whom I knew nothing about until I looked up his company, then tells me that Staring Brat 2 regards it as  ‘good and fun entertainment’ to carry out the instructions of Staring Brat 1 and punish me for not liking him because he is jealous. Seems like they are both a bit jealous and a bit stupid, to be honest.

Staring Brat 2 also appears to think there is some money in it for him, since he is the one that was making the enquiries.

The manager tells me that as long as someone is saying something is harassment, he is going to uphold it, that I am getting a warning for a problem I have already solved, and then the company expressly fire me for sending an email and having a perfectly respectable conversation, saving themselves the month’s wage they owe me in the process and ensuring that I cannot work for them again.

This is a disgrace.  If you employ this so called ‘professional financial services‘ company be aware they are far from it.  They apparently cannot even manage a couple of gym bunny team leaders, never mind your business.  Don’t think they will be getting additional contracts out of this. The source of risk was never me.

Well, after discovering that you now get more money cleaning or wiping bottoms for a living than you do in financial services, I am wondering what to do, really.

The agencies and inflated population have driven wages down to the point where one of the jobs I was doing twenty years ago now pays two pence less than it did then. A job I was recently doing paid £50 a day less than ten years ago for four more hours and a far more complex job.  You also get fewer days per week, so two people are doing the job one would have done previously, for less money.

I wonder, personally, how people are expected to live like this?  How can Tories expect the economy to work if most of the population are paid very small wages which then have to be supplemented in order to survive?

It is obvious that the European experiment was intended to reduce wages.  Deutsche Bank have been very good at funding schemes intended to encourage this, but really, what use is it in economic terms?  It just exacerbates the situation in which we all hand what money we have to the same twenty or so individuals who continuously get richer.

Conspiracy theorists like to posit that once the Turing test is passed, half of the population is going to be wiped out.  How does this work in terms of customer base to continue to feed these greedy companies?  Or must we assume that once the same few rich people have more money and power than could ever be useful or practical, that they no longer care?  How much is enough?  Do we recycle the corpses in order to grow trees for their improved planet?  Is that how it works, because the usual method of war or disease is not practical for fertiliser.

Today I sat whilst a presumably very lazy ned told me that all my experience was worthless and that unless I provided her with leads she would not be finding me a job.

This was half an hour of thinly veiled hatred whilst she told me how helpful she was being.  I patiently pointed out all the information she claimed was missing, and apologised to her for working three or four jobs whilst renovating a property and taking care of my parents.

It was very depressing, and I felt pretty awful as I walked home, right up until I emailed her and told her to take me off her database entirely, as she was unlikely to be any help to me.  This cheered me up somewhat.

So, fellow disposable people, bear in mind that you are likely to be paid less and less the more you let people like this have control over your life, and your children will find things much, much worse.

All for the sake of convenience and being too lazy to look at the alternatives.  Alternative sources of information, alternative sources of work, alternative sources of entertainment.  If you keep feeding the same people, they will keep spitting on you until there is nothing left.

All that I have got today for my trouble in terms of  recruitment agents’ fees from my doing short contracts for them is a whole lot of depressing cheek as this one wanted to know which agencies had which contracts.  When you know the game, you realise it is basically 100 days of Sodom, played out in underemployment.

Seriously, more money doing anything other than office work.  Office work, full of stultifyingly boring narrow minded little people who don’t like anybody.  Office work, where you are entirely likely to be replaced by a robot.  Office work, the least healthy option you could pick.

I think I will get on with the final exam for the job I actually do want.  Hopefully I never have to deal with any more nutters.  Maybe tomorrow I can get on with some real work.

Pays more than the last supposedly prestigious one, but that isn’t all that difficult.