Their attitude, my problem
One of the reasons I loathe this job so much is that this company cruelly and selfishly take away my reasons for loathing it with their complete lack of bastard corporate behaviour of which, through temping, I have grown so fond. I am the ultimate armchair rebel. You won’t find me throwing Molotov cocktails in the rioting streets but you will find me undermining productivity with my complete disregard for corporate process. It’s my way of making the world a better place. But it’s hard to rebel against no boundaries. It’s frustrating for me and makes me feel like I have no use in this world. Take this company. When I told them I was travelling to Edinburgh for over a month and wanted unpaid leave, instead of firing me like I was hoping, they said to just let them know when I’d be getting back. When I took the day off work on Thursday last week for no good reason other than I wanted to sleep in, they retaliated by giving me a pay rise when I walked in on Friday. Will they never learn? After years of being treated like office flint in various hellish temping roles, I have been conditioned into victim mentality – if I am not ignored and reprimanded and treated badly, then how do I know they care?
They made an effort with my pay rise on Friday, I’ll give them that. The department co-ordinator called me into her office and handed me an envelope marked ‘confidential’ along with the words ‘this is from both departments and we are all in agreement over this’. For one trepidatious moment, I thought I was being fired. The old feeling returned…perhaps I hadn’t lost my touch, perhaps my attitude problem had not been dissipated by maturity and life experience but had merely been on sabbatical. Glimpses of a future full of daytime television and unemployment benefits teased me. Memories came creeping back… of the time I’d been fired from a film company for a typo on an important contract that had been signed by all parties before the mistake was discovered…of the time I’d been fired from London’s premier newspaper for complete lack of respect for my job…of the time I’d walked out of a Shepherd’s Bush restaurant after yelling at the gay Icelandic manager (on a busy Friday night) that he was a f*cking asshole (which he was but in hindsight guess I could have expressed it with a little more subtlety).
Anyway, I haven’t gone 10 steps down the hallway before opening the envelope to discover a 10% pay rise.
Those utter, utter bastards.
They made an effort with my pay rise on Friday, I’ll give them that. The department co-ordinator called me into her office and handed me an envelope marked ‘confidential’ along with the words ‘this is from both departments and we are all in agreement over this’. For one trepidatious moment, I thought I was being fired. The old feeling returned…perhaps I hadn’t lost my touch, perhaps my attitude problem had not been dissipated by maturity and life experience but had merely been on sabbatical. Glimpses of a future full of daytime television and unemployment benefits teased me. Memories came creeping back… of the time I’d been fired from a film company for a typo on an important contract that had been signed by all parties before the mistake was discovered…of the time I’d been fired from London’s premier newspaper for complete lack of respect for my job…of the time I’d walked out of a Shepherd’s Bush restaurant after yelling at the gay Icelandic manager (on a busy Friday night) that he was a f*cking asshole (which he was but in hindsight guess I could have expressed it with a little more subtlety).
Anyway, I haven’t gone 10 steps down the hallway before opening the envelope to discover a 10% pay rise.
Those utter, utter bastards.
posted by belle de dayjob at 1:39 am
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