Well, so far, I have failed to be sufficiently robotic for two competency based interviews.  The last time I had to extensively interview was some time ago, and I can tell you things have really been dumbed down for the millennials.

The humanity and any actual brain use requirement has been removed from competency questions, so now you are given a pre-selected format which you prepare in advance using the STAR format

Situation – Losing my job because of a wannabe Mr Ripley

Task – Having to start again in an alternative career because the stupid fucking moron managed to destroy any prospects whatsoever in the one I wanted by repeatedly bitching about his own inability to communicate effectively, backed up by weak management.

Action – Spending all my time looking for alternatives to the point of being unable to do anything else with my time.

Result –  Still looking for new opportunities!  How exciting! Thinking positive!

I have so far been insulted twice, once because my degree offended some minor office worker, who could not understand that people with degrees also have to work (there are a lot of those)  and the other several times because I looked after my mother.

Yeah, because being abused by moronic nurses who know nothing about nutrition, watching your mother being fed fucking poison and shrinking to a small white husk because her eldest daughter is a screaming nutjob and has an unshakable belief in Marks and Spencer ice cream is is hilarious.  Spending your best years stuck in a house twenty four hours a day isn’t work at all.

So yeah, things are going great.  I am halfway through solving half the problem, and about a third of the way towards solving another quarter.  We shall see if I can get the mobility and public-facing angle sorted at the same time, because that would be helpful.  For a painfully shy person, I am remarkably good at pretending to be larger than life when I have to.

This is something plebs don’t understand.  One’s ability to put on a show is unrelated to one’s level of confidence.  Quite a few people hated the constant sunglasses in my previous employment.  Only two people knew that the reason for them is because I was in tears quite a lot and it was the only way of getting to the computer, and it wasn’t the obvious people.

The rest of tonight is going to be spent on moving the not-leaving-the-house element of my new employment package on a step.  If I am fortunate the main income will also not involve leaving the house, in which case I do not need to bother with people ever again.

The public-facing element I might head into town and go and talk to them in person, because they are unlikely to understand the package unless I am there in person.  Hilariously, I tried on some clothing today and after losing 83lb, I am still a bit too larger-than-life, so I guess at least I will save money on any actual food.

Two banks are still sniffing at the door, both because of my snob value.  I quite fancy private banking, but who knows if that is even possible now.  My back problem is telling me not to spend all day in a chair, so we shall see what happens.

And then there is the wild card.  I hope he remembers me, because if he does I may have something very special.  I’m not hugely confident, because we last saw each other through a crack in a door, but we shall see how he feels about giving me a shot at his project.

Years ago, when in the upper echelons of one of the big utilities companies, I asked myself this question.  Why is it that office workers seem to guzzle gossip, delight in each other’s misfortunes, stab each other in the back and generally do anything other than work?

I was going to write a book about people management from the perspective of a chef back then, because of my perception that effective communication was direct communication.  Not necessarily in the style of Gordon Ramsay, (who actually isn’t one of the better chefs I have graced with my presence)  but why is it that kitchens function so much better than offices?

To give you some idea of what I mean, in the last office I worked in, ordering a meal would take around three weeks.  The garnish would take a full week to arrive, if you forgot a side dish that would take another week.  Nobody would remind you of what had to be on the plate, and if you didn’t know they would laugh at you.  Any guidance would be presented in the form of a large book which often sent you off on another recipe.

In the meantime, your head chef would be waiting to fire you, so any training anybody had given you would just be a useless expense.  No question of him helping you at all – that would be INAPPROPRIATE.  No, instead you would have to leave the kitchen and talk to one of the waiters, who would give you an offhand and disinterested answer because they would frankly rather be texting.

The chef de partie, in the meantime, would not listen or speak to you because he was trying to get the head chef to fire you on the grounds that you forgot the garnish and he was too frightened to speak to you.

Do you see how this works?  Offices are just about always like this.  I wondered at first if it was because people are sat in chairs all day.  Could it be that being stationary causes this malevolence?

Jobseeking is currently extremely tiresome.  I was earning 36k at 25 years old, running a team of older men as a head chef.  I actually considered applying for a job washing dishes at 18k this week, before I thought about it and decided that after everything I have been through over the years, I really deserve better.  Besides, I have a few things on the go that will be better than this option, but it goes to show how much I miss working practices that actually work.

It feels at the moment as if my personal life is over.  It has been over for years anyway, so nothing new there, but I really didn’t need another life lesson about crap people.  People are violent, selfish, nasty and back-biting as a rule, and no amount of high vibrational inspiration seems to be able to shake them out of it.  Wolfe has been right about so many things.  I still miss him terribly, but I would miss him more if he was around, so it is just as well really.

https://youtu.be/tdIZcw8YPLw

It is most interesting, how this is being regarded.  The idea now is to instantly forget negative things and push on to the next part of the conveyor belt.  Nobody cares what happens to you, nobody cares if you have any rights, nobody has any responsibility.

As a very old-school type that protects their staff, deals with their own problems, helps other people where they can, this never stops shocking me.  Everyone I met this morning at my breakfast meeting had a story.  The worst one was a legal financial services abuse story, about which none of the thousands of people who have to implement it are likely to do anything.

Hence, even before the Conservatives erode things still further, nobody has any rights, nobody has any responsibility and nobody cares.  From a situation twenty years ago where I was barking at companies for failing to manage their data properly, we now have a situation where nobody knows what management means, as far as they are aware it is something to do with having power over other people and making the paperwork look correct.

It is exhausting and terrifying living in a world like this, where people like SB are free to express their insanity by taking it out on other people.  I am a very bottom line thinker, and my feeling was that if we cut to the bottom line and dealt with the health issue, other things would subside.  It was not until I was told that the stuff I had seen related to probable coercion that I became furious.

So, there is still action to be taken, because in the normal course of events, any flow of information is now likely to be impeded by normal means.  Nobody wants bad news, and nobody cares what happens to anyone.

At least part of the problem is better, but I imagine some things will be worse.

Anyway, it certainly seems as if I should entirely ignore the implications of being falsely accused of stuff that isn’t relevant.

Sending an email and giving people books has never been causes for accusations and professional detriment in my experience, and I frankly want to see this company hauled over the coals for it.  They detected vulnerability because of my grief, and they exploited it.

I had already dealt with the immediate problem when they decided to make things worse, and I was told, as if this was some gospel truth, that they ‘had to be seen to be doing their jobs.’  Their job is not to make people frightened or make sure they have no income.  Their job as managers is to make it possible for people to work without being terrified by a mentally ill, corrupt individual who feeds on terror.

Ironically I had had a t shirt made ten days ago, ‘because we matter’ being the slogan.  It arrived today.  I didn’t find it funny.

https://youtu.be/cPp19D38Djo

So, today’s burning question is – is there such a thing as being too driven?

The answer is yes, but it has taken me decades to accept it and understand why.  During my first career nothing stopped me, however within 2 years of leading teams in my twenties I had many bad habits bashed out of me, including:

Over-discipline whilst being a soft touch:  People retain the bad bits and forget the good.  All that happens is that they are extremely surprised when you are nice to them. As I was saying about being double-talked – fear is not actually all that helpful for most jobs.  Tough benevolence is better in terms of your team’s perception than Soft Terror. eg.  Presenting yourself as being fun and very helpful will gather more intelligence and awareness of the team’s current strengths and weaknesses than austerity.  It also seems ridiculous to up targets when people are still worried about quality levels, however if you want to do this, you need to up the confidence level of the team generally, and you cannot do this without humour.

Presenting the negative before the positive: I used to work with an academic who teetered around the edges of the emotional intelligence movement – you may want to look up Positive Psychology for this one – telling people that “they must achieve or else” is far less effective than telling them they are doing a good job, and you want to help them get even better.

Not allowing people to have their own terms:  I have, in the past, been presented with carved vegetables from staff who absolutely loved me despite me working them into the ground twenty hours a day.  Be aware that even at your worst, if you are expressing something about yourself you are contributing to group effort rather than imposing a structure that is not necessarily helpful.

Class structures: In the UK in particular, we have to be extremely class sensitive.  I, as a posh person who happens to swear quite a lot, have had a lot of issues with staff who believed that they were working in a glorified death camp, with all the associated rules.

It is far better to retain a certain level of humility when managing, again this facilitates communication.  If people feel, as they did a few weeks ago, that they are contributing to a group effort they will put more work in than if they feel you are behind them with a giant socio-economic whip.  By this I mean, be careful of creating artificial structures which inadvertently exclude people.  People will follow your example, so you need to encourage a spirit of cooperation.  At one point I had a devout Catholic Irish boy working with an Apprentice Boy from Northern Ireland. (sworn enemies)  It was not easy, but I managed to make it work.

Dealing with Senior Management:  Whilst they do like you to recognise where you are in the food chain, senior management do not like a crawler.  Being too nice is as bad as not caring.  It is important to present a piece of less pleasant information alongside every good bit to present an image of integrity.  Failing to do so implies you are hiding something.

I will do a few more posts on this, but this will do just now.

Much affection,

Ina the rebel.

Ok in keeping with the rest of my life, it turns out the dude is a titanic dickhead that betrayed my confidence the first chance he got.  He is probably getting me fired as I write this to avoid feeling ‘uncomfortable.’

The fact that this has made me uncomfortable of course does not matter, as these people are all far more important and worthwhile than I am.  My embarrassment is not significant, my feelings are not important and anything that is done to me is fair enough.

This is normal, and is the reason I was in the state I was in when I first met Wolfe, so no changes there then.

I am beyond caring why he was flirtatious to my face and passing information on to his bosses behind my back.  Probably married, but it’s none of my business. I’m more worried about how I am going to survive as this is obviously never going to stop happening.

I told his bosses what an outstanding manager he is – he really is – and politely asked him not to speak to me again.  I don’t think I can manage to be more civilised than that.

You can see why I don’t like people very much, can’t you?