16 posts tagged “basement of discontent”

I cut class today.

Well not actually cut class. The lecturer did not arrive for the 9 am lecture and we eventually found out, well I walked back to the admin office and asked where the #%#%@#$ is she, but nice like, and they told me that she was ill. In fact she must be very ill as it as sooooo unlike her not to notify people earlier. Which is ok. I will let her be sick. We have the lecturer for our tutorial group following and so it was in the balance as to whether they could find someone to cover in an hour....hmmm let me see who we have in the cupboard...oh look the cupboard is bare of spare lecturers. The tutor from the other group said that we could join her group if we wanted. BUT and here comes the excuse, BUT she already had a full room so it might have meant sitting on the floor, NOT AT MY AGE THANK YOU!, and it was an old room where apparantly they have lost the remote to the air conditioner and the actual unit is too high for anyone to reach the controls, if we like knew where the button was on the stupid thing, and so there would only be a couple of poor old ceiling fans. AND THE WEATHER MAN SAID IT WAS GOING TO BE 35 DEGREES C TODAY.

So, I cut class. I went and bought myself an iced coffee - too hot for real coffee today - and went and sat in one of the shady park like areas at the university for two hours. They had the sprinklers watering the grass so I sat as close as I could to the sprays without getting wet so as to have the best cooling service I could manage. It was very lovely. VERY LOVELY for the two hours until I waited for the next lecture.

I got a text from The Assistant trapped in the Basement of Discontent. The Boss has quit. He spoke to no one, just left a letter on his desk and disappeared. I am waiting for gossip, I mean, details, at her earliest convenience. HA HA. I laugh in the face of their downfall. Ha Ha.

Time for a somber thought, so if you are not in the mood for it today, go away and make tea, get old, or something. We were watching a short video today and two of the facts that flashed up were that :

1. If you own a fridge, a cupboard to put your belongings in, a bed, and a roof over your head  then you are richer than 75% of the rest of the world.

2. If you possess a bank account [they said nothing about actually having money in it, but I guess you have to have the minimum to keep it open] then you are in the richest 35% of people in the world.

Gets you were you think, doesn't it? Change your day? Changed mine.

This Friday has been mighty good so far.

I started with an 8am tutorial. This one was with a male tutor, PM, who is a retired high school principal and really knew his stuff, and how to teach it. It was an all too short 2 hours. I learnt more in those 2 hours than I have in the rest of the week combined. The Gods of Education have been kind there.

Then I sent a text to The Assistant and asked her if she had time for coffee. The Assistant was chosen to remain in the Basement of Discontent because they knew from first sight that she would work for nothing and never complain TO THEM. She has sweatshop victim mentality ozzing out of every pore. She raced out to meet me before I had barely finished sending the text. I was her therapy couch for the next half hour. The ONES WHO TOOK OVER have made the classic mistake of assuming that whatever went before was wrong and so dismantled everything, got rid of  key leadership and any real corporate knowledge and not put anything in its place. Chaos and stress replaced process and procedure.

When I walked back towards the office with her, D and Q from the Sewer of Insanity - they were on a lower level than the Basement of Discontent, if you can believe that was possible, were out havinng a cigarette break and so I became their therapist couch also. They just needed smoeone to say "that is terrible" and "but you are so good at your job" and "oh no!" and I was happy to play that role.

D is a lovely man but the first week I worked with him I thought he had Tourette's Syndrome because he was always clapping his hands or slapping his arms or legs. I thought I was locked in with a nut case. After a couple of weeks I realised that he had a terrible skin condition and the slapping and hitting was a substitute action for scratching. Sadly it makes him very unproductive as he spends so much time slapping himself. More than once I would be speaking to an "outsider" and he would be in the background somewhere slapping and clapping and people would stop and ask what the noise was. Sometimes I used a fine form of charade to indicate that it was D so as not to have him hear me say "It is the freak in the corner" not that I would say freak but that is what he would have internalised me as saying. Q is a female with a ring through her lip and a penchant for clothes that appear that someone has taken a razor blade to them at some time. They work together and get on like a house on fire - odd couples do work!

After that I went and picked up an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbin for Son's birthday tomorrow. My BABY BOY will be 24! I then drove home and baked a carrot cake for him as well. So Sonny is getting two forms of birthday cake. I ordered an ice cream cake before classes started "just in case" I couldn't stretch to a cake - plus he loves ice cream cakes. Then the mother guilt set in so I baked a cake as well. So the Flamingo Dancer family will indeed eat cake this weekend!

On the way to uni I drove behind a car with the number plate SAD. Do you think it was a manic depressive? I am sad so please don't come to close to me... Maybe it was his initials but it was a poor choice if it was. Maybe he was a therapist who made house calls? I think I spend too much time alone.

It is 1.30 Friday afternoon - I may have a nap. I AM A STUDENT!
 

Lunch outside the Basement of Discontent was a painful affair. Long silences that I always seemed to be the one who would eventually jump into to end. The Assistant is still working there - at reduced salary, triple the workload, and in an open plan office that is also open to the public. She is dreadfully unhappy, but has built a long list of reasons why she can't even look for another job...so she can enjoy her own misery then.

She Who was Going to Kill Me with Kindness is working in the office of a certain religious army - not her own, I think - and the detail nazi that she is has a boss who "wants to get organised this year" and expects her to do things like knock on his door 15 minutes out from any meeting etc to remind him to move....she is also trying to tell herself that she will eventually be happy, and maybe she will. I think she will implode due to the stress.

Podwoman is kind of still with the original organisation but due to my absence her work load has doubled in some areas. She has been sad for a long time and is trying to make changes in her life but present circumstances are holding her tight. She is very talented and gave me a gift today - the most beautiful knitted scarf that is so fine that it looks like lace. Absolutely gorgeous. It brought tears to my eyes. She has a kind heart. Pity it was about 33C today as I would have been tempted to wear it home...today I would have died of heat stroke. I would have been a gorgeous corpse though. I suspect Mr FD would have chosen a glass coffin as I would have looked so incredible blue knitted lacey scarf.

So hopefully no more lunches. Maybe a hit and run coffee if need be. I was the most positive and happiest person there - so you can see how bad it was!

Afterwards I lined up with babies to get my student ID card. The Big Whatever was very kind to me, and my ID photo actually looks pretty good. Thank you, thank you! They had us leaving by a special door upon which they had stuck a big sign "PLEASE SHUT THIS DOOR WHEN YOU EXIT". The line snaked passed the door and as I stood on one side of it, three babies wlked out and left the door open. Good little girl scout me reached over and pulled it shut, just as one of the boys turned to walk back to shut the door. He said "thank you, Mam"...I felt like I was 104, there and then on the spot. MAM?  Madam...sigh.

The next three days are full 9-5 days full of intro presentations and workshops and lectures and library tours and all sorts of head spinning stuff. I expect to be very fuzzbrained by the end of each day. Starting to look forward to it all though. It appears that my timetable will be classes Monday, Tuesday - Wednesday off - classes Thursday and Friday. That is until April when we do the full prac weeks in schools

The End.

I went to THE UNIVERSITY yesterday to hand in forms for obtaining a blue card (checking that I don't have a police record so that I can work with children) and my preferences for what regions I would prefer for prac work. I also got a couple of my text books. I can't get my id card until Feb 16th - time to shed 5 kgs at least!

Unavoidably I met many people from my previous existence in the Basement of Discontent and despite my trying to keep a low profile - I know impossible for a Flamingo Dancer- I had to do an almost presidential meet and greet. Human curiosity, aint it grand? What are you doing? Student. How are they going to manage without you? Don't care. How am I going to manage without you? Sorry, but where were you when we needed supported to stop all this? How are we going to obtain..... Talk to the hand.

They were universal in saying how great I looked - and how tres beautiful my hair is. They all mentioned that I looked younger and more relaxed! I question their eyesight on that one. I have noticed that I have perked a little. And yesterday, and this will sound strange, but I have always been the type of person who will tear up over a dog food commercial and I am not all that keen on dogs! Yesterday ,I teared up during Obama Day listening to some of the African American people tell how much having a black president meant to them. I also teared up over a commercial. It was then that I realised that I hadn't done that for some months. Actually many months.

Silly isn't it? Somehow, I lost touch with some simple emotions. I guess stress, anger and uncertainty will do that to you. So in what will be my 51st year I am learning to be me again. Yes, it is frightening times, and we are close to personal  financial meltdown, but by picking myself up and shaking myself off and starting AGAIN, somehow I have opened parts of me that had shut down.

You can't help what happens to you, but you can try and make it happen the best you can...I will not let the bastards get me down.

p.s. OF COURSE MY MOOD WAS ENHANCED TO HEAR THAT THE OUTSOURCING HAS BEEN A COMPLETE DISASTER AND EVERYONE IS TEARING THEIR HAIR OUT. revenge, in whatever form it arrives, is sweet.

One less malcontent in the Basement of Discontent.

Packed up my stuff, cleaned my desk, wiped my name off the white board and headed out the door.

Once again, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life.

I have perfected bitter and twisted in the workplace to a fine art.

I may go on the road with it.

No job news – for anyone in the Basement of Discontent

Aries
There is a sense of rebellion in the air and you may feel the urge to get in your car and just keep driving - and we all know what that feels like especially if you have a car you can put the roof down on! Very Thelma and Louise! Just be mindful not to take any risks today and if you are driving, please take it easy on the roads. AstroZone

onto infinity and beyond....

SWKK is leaving today.

Ever one is getting very edgy at work. Some of it may be due to the sugar high we all got from the pre-pre Christmas farewell morning tea we gave ourselves this morning. SWKK wanted it and said “lets do food and gifts” next Friday and we all said yes,  okay, we will, in that weak voice you get when you are being polite, but completely lack enthusiasm of any kind. Then  I decided god damn it I am going to take my flex day on Friday after all and changed my hair appointment to Friday and said I can’t make Friday for food and gifts, and lo, SWKK said what about Thursday? and hence the sugar high.

We came with our little gifts – except for SWKK who said something about bringing hers tomorrow, next week, whatever. We of course handed ours over…I have no doubt that she will produce something for us before she leaves next week, but I suspect, I know, it will be of lesser value. The Assistant gave her a musical snow globe, from one of the cheap and nasty shops we all love so much, only when SWKK went to play the music there was no key with which to wind it , so she just got to shake it….poetic isn’t it! Best big jolly I had this week!

SWKK also made a pavlova. Now, a good Aussie pav is always filled with cream and topped with fruits such as strawberries, kiwi fruit, passionfruit etc. Well, the Assistant wont eat fruit. She was traumatized by a banana at an early age and so won’t go near any fruit item. So SWKK, in her milk of human kindness mode, flavoured the whipped cream with chocolate powder and put chocolate flakes over the top. We all went, mmmm mmmm, lovely. And it was to a degree, but it just didn’t seem right. A pavlova has fruit, and chocolate whipped cream just seemed like blasphemy. Maybe it is the catholic side of me again. Some things you don’t mess with…however it was nice.

Now, with sugar pulsating through every vein and artery, we feel like punching people out. Especially the people who feign empathy or sympathy but it is really just a guise to gather gossip. GO AWAY. GO AWAY NOW, BEFORE I SMASH YOUR FACE INTO WHAT REMAINS OF THE CHOCOLATE PAV.

The End – may it be soon.

Intranet message to all staff from SWKK : The label maker is with me

She got 9 instant replies : I hope that you will be very happy together.