Why are offices so crap?

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.

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Why are people shitty?

There are many reasons why people are shitty.  I started observing this quite early in life, so I have encountered a lot of shitty people despite spending much of my life avoiding them.

Regular readers following the sad story of SB will know that I have encountered quite a vast array of shittiness, for no apparent reason and despite trying very hard to over-compensate.

Ok so let us go back to the beginning of shittiness:

  • Personality disorder – some people are shitty from birth.  They cannot help being shitty, and the only thing you can really do about it is make sure they are unable to harm you any further, because they won’t stop as long as you allow them airtime.
  • Associated personality issues – some people do not have the faculties to deal with their surroundings, so they pretend to be stupid in order to function.  This can be quite aggravated and involve severe bullying and causing trauma to others to self-protect. It is far better to be the bully than the bullied, apparently.
  • Selfishness – in the event that you are smart yet corrupt then the obvious thing to do is take advantage of other people’s shittiness to further your own agenda.

Ok so that covers my family.

Further shittiness has been mainly work-related, since I do not choose to spend my time with people socially any more. I did not, however, find I had terribly many problems socially because from an early age I did not choose to commit to single social groups, mainly because it was so boring and insular.

  • Ambition – this makes people shitty.  Sometimes they will practice on a selected victim in the hope that this will benefit them later.
  • Attention – people can get shitty because they seek attention and do not know how to get it any other way.  This varies between personal inadequacy, lack of social skills, fear of emotion, or attachment disorders.   I kicked Wolfe in the shins for years for this reason.
  • Bonding – some people bond over being shitty to others.  The girl probably had a marginally easier time when being volunteered into being shitty, until it was far too late. Why SB needed to use me to bond her to him I do not know, since he clearly is the person with the power in that relationship, even from casual observation.  What seems odd is the complete denial that it even exists.  I doubt very much her conversations are relayed to his manager for perusal and shaming purposes.  (the attempt at shaming me was almost hilarious – “so, you are making a CHAIR”)
  • Curiosity – if you look remotely interesting or do not respond with the herd, people sometimes get shitty to try to persuade you to conform.  Don’t.
  • Self-limitation – this is a huge one in Scotland.  Anybody doing anything is ‘giving themselves airs’ or assuming some sort of superiority, even when all the evidence points to the contrary.
  • Assumed superiority – people often assume they deserve status they have utterly failed to earn.
  • Lack of self-esteem.  People are often shitty because they hate themselves. This can go back years and affect even quite major figures.
  • Paranoia – sometimes people are shitty because they assume you don’t like them, even though you don’t know them at all.

And sometimes people are shitty because they detect vulnerability and decide to kick you in the teeth for no reason other than they can.  I’ve had a lot of that since my mother died, and it is not forgivable.

So then, I think we are back to the point of the second video I ever made for Wolfe.

“If God had not meant for them to be shorn, he would not have created them as sheep.”

 

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Cute

Mature Obedient Woman wanted for Housemaid duties in a single bachelor’s large house based in the merchant city in Glasgow city centre G1

Cash in hand £10 per hour for cleaning only OR £15 per hour for home cooking and cleaning.

Weekend work, usually Sunday morning/afternoon for 3 hours if just cleaning or 4 hours if  home cooking and cleaning (occasionally Saturday morning/afternoon instead.)

Cleaning equipment will be provided and (if cooking) cooking ingredients/equipment will be provided. A simple home cooked meal is lovely and complex chef skills are not required.

I’m a good boss, patient and fair, wanting to make my house my “home, sweet home”.

 

How cute,  I think he might be better off with a personal ad.

LOL

I don’t think I can be bothered with the public today.

 

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Peace and Quiet

At last, the website is back to its usual level of nonentity.

Apart from a few unusual hits from London, which I am hoping indicates investigation of the company, and an unusually engaged individual looking at my actual work, we have peace and quiet once more.

Oddly a few contracts have just come up, all of which pay better and have better experience than the previous one.

Applied for probably sixty jobs yesterday, before and after my disastrous meeting with the ex.  I won’t be making that mistake again.

Now I am considering how best to deal with this apart from the obvious ones.

Most companies are too slow in this day and age.  If you will make it impossible for people to be flexible in terms of actually being able to eat, then you have to speed up employment processes.

Not sure how I feel about everything else, apart from that the world is a dangerous and nasty place, and it is getting worse all the time.  People can no longer survive on their own, which is neither prudent nor right.

If what I suspect is going on is correct, and the pointers indicate that it is, I still need to consider what more I can do to protect people in the future.

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How not to seduce your ex

First, make sure you are not at all interested in anything she has to say.

Then dominate the conversation with your imaginary superiority, based on half-assed references to things she might have heard of, or, if you are particularly dull-witted, things she might have seen on TV.

Ignore any concerns she may have or anything she might be feeling.

Allow yourself to be intimidated by anything she might have done that you are incapable of.

Don’t, for any reason, show any interest in anything she is doing or volunteer to be remotely helpful.

Refer to people she doesn’t like or know as if they are vastly superior.

Do not allow yourself to pay her a compliment or give her any reason to suspect that you are anything but the same lousy shit she dumped thirty years ago.

Then, after all that, try to go home with her on the expectation that she would find any of the above remotely attractive because presumably she is now bored and depressed enough to want to bonk you senseless.

 

Where is the kind and considerate person that wants to just be reasonably nice to me in a kind of biting and scratching context?  Where is the time-wasting passion?  Where is the interest?

 

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My mother is dead

 

My friend in the Gambia got in touch with me to ask how I was and try and worm his way back in yesterday.  I sent him a few computers last year, and I assume he thinks I can send him some more.

“How is your mother?”

“Dead.  They killed her at Christmas.  They tried to kill her in May last year, and I stopped them.”

“What?”  The idea of killing somebody when you don’t have to is astonishing when you come from a country where medical care is administered somewhat differently.

Ex-boyfriend number 1 also got a shock when he asked this question.  I’m heading out to see him today.

I, of course have been blasting my head with music pretty much constantly ever since it happened.  I am the world’s expert at distraction.

Every so often I think she is here, and I rush off to do something for her, and obviously then I remember.  She was not an easy person to get to know, but we figured it out eventually.  I wasn’t the daughter she wanted, but then the daughter she wanted didn’t give a flying fuck about her, which wasn’t terribly helpful.  She was brought up to be a little Tory, and little Tories don’t get help when they need it.  They just assume it happens by magic.  She was insisting even when we got to the palliative stage that she didn’t need a carer.

Aside from that, dealt with the work issue as best I could without it hurting anybody that matters.  I’ve done as much as I can do, which is more than anyone else would do. Now moving on to better things.

I think the main thing is not to let people get in the way.  Whilst obviously the newer short stories are more polished and coherent, I don’t think it was a worthy trade-off.  I really liked SB, thankfully not to the point of being stupid, or things could have been even worse.  I do wonder about the trade-off he has made.  The determination to be invisible and lack of connection is quite distressing.

I used to have an equally beautiful and discombobulated French-Lebanese boyfriend who adored me.  He was so shot up by the stuff that had happened to him that lengthy conversations about ‘nice’ things abounded, and I quickly found I couldn’t stand it.  I was quite relieved when he moved away. Poor Michel.  He had been through a lot.

Unfortunately, what happens to people with PTSD is that other people use them.  They use them because they can.  I don’t know who is yanking the chain in this case for sure, but whoever it is is not a person you want yanking your chains.

I am going to spend some time catching up with more serious writing, and then I will get back to work on the performance art.  At the moment it is more of a case of repairing the damage and trying to limit the amount that can be done in the future.  For this reason, I suggest he plays along with my proposed solution, which is by far the least harmful I could come up with.  I managed this whilst irate, which is a testament to my logical processing, really.

Anyway, must go socialise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Gee I really learned something today

Gee I really learned something today

So, what have we learned from our recent experience?

  1. People are not to be trusted, no matter who they are.
  2. The art of management is dead.
  3. Great brand names do not make for great companies.
  4. Manners do not maketh the man.
  5. People who appear friendly are often just gossip gathering.
  6. Never ever trust someone who doesn’t communicate.
  7. Never ever trust anybody.
  8. Giving does not mean your gifts are appreciated.
  9. Kindness is bad (we knew this already)
  10. Nobody cares what you have done, good or bad.  They only care if you will do what you are told without question no matter what it is.
  11. There is no point in hope.
  12. Carers find each other first in any given room.  This has become apparent since mum died, they always make a beeline for me.
  13. People who are in a state of terror do not act rationally.
  14. People who inflict terror get away with it.
  15. People like negative information.  The website hasn’t been this popular since the Brexit referendum.
  16. People like attacking other people, or seeing you upset.
  17. Family are poison (again not a surprise)
  18. It isn’t worth taking the risk anymore, so don’t try.
  19. Being helpful is a definite disadvantage.
  20. Terror does not help you learn.
  21. There is nothing nice outside this house.
  22. Everyone wants to rip you off or damage you, so avoid them.
  23. There is no point in trying to stop what is about to happen to the Uk because they are all too stupid and selfish to help even themselves.
  24. People who are more fortunate become proportionately more selfish and less thoughtful as time goes on.
  25. There is no point in trying to solve anything, because you will either be attacked or destroyed.

I wish I could tell you something more positive, but there ya go. Sorry Boris.  Sorry Wolfe.  Dem’s the breaks.

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Land of Disposable People

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.

 

 

 

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Sick Freak

“Isn’t it funny this chick really likes me?”

“She doesn’t know you.”

“Yeah, the problem is I only like them when they’re really scared.  I’ll have to scare her, and she’s bigger than me.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Ummm, well, her mother is dead and she has bills to pay.  I think I’ll repeatedly make complaints about her until she’s terrified.”

“Great idea!  That’ll show her.”

“Maybe I should go to the gym, too.”

“Uh huh.”

“And, apart from that, I could make sure she understands by humiliating and degrading her at every opportunity.”

“Fabulous.”

“Yeah, she won’t look so cheerful then, will she?”

“Nope, I guess not.”

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Is there such a thing as being too driven?

https://youtu.be/cPp19D38Djo

driven: adjective

UK  /ˈdrɪv.ən/ US  /ˈdrɪv.ən/

Someone who is driven is so determined to achieve something or be successful that all of their behaviour is directed towards this aim:

Like most of the lawyers that I know, Rachel is driven.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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