When
I started writing Raven, my initial idea was to tell tales of the grinding boredom which
shop work inflicts on the human psyche. A
veteran of three years in September 2011, I was looking down the barrel of
Christmas, out-of-my-tree with worry over my ever-decreasing finances and distinctly
disturbed about working for the monstrous management. And so, with those 12 months behind me, I
feel more at peace having received my P45 from them, but leaving was never going to be easy, was it? My big
mistake was asking for my £30 bonus payment [in cosmetics of course] for the
incredible contribution I made to September’s sales figures. Imagine my inner joy when I received a swift
refusal from the under-management, thus;
“You
can’t have it.” Unphased by her
response, I turned down the volume on my attitude problem.
“Okay. Thanks for checking. Thought I’d ask … so bye.” As I turned to go, she called me back because
she’d gone to the trouble of printing out the official documentation regarding
bonuses and was determined to make me read it.
Waving it in front of me, she said,
“You
have to take it within a month of leaving, so you’re too late. It’s an HR rule.” That makes it alright then? I felt it was fair and right
to air my views.
“I resigned on the fifth of October
and as the fifth of November hadn’t happened yet, you could do it but … y’know what?
Don’t bother.” She was still
waving the bits of paper, no doubt trying to shoo me away from the til area
where the queue was getting ugly.
“You
don’t qualify.”
“I do but I’m so happy to be gone
that I don’t care … I can’t eat it, wear it or clean the car with it, so what’s
the big deal about a bit of crappy makeup or mascara that peels off in the
rain?” I left with a
strange sense that Dame Anita wouldn’t have given a flying fluff about my
bonuses either, or would the woman she sold her empire to … one of the richest
women in the world apparently, and owner of 1’0r34l. Ethical - my tail feathers.
Still,
I’m free and quite enjoying Job2.1 a bit more and rapidly coming to know a
whole new set of characters who qualify as ‘the management’. Currently I’m standing guard over the daycare
ward of a private hospital and gathering more paper cuts than Edward
Scissorhands. ‘Nuff said. One of my co-workers is lazier than a sloth
and known to all as Stephanotis, she thinks that manipulating others to do the
parts of her job she can’t be ar5ed to carry out is great fun. On Friday, I got a hail from the nurses’
station to get a barrow load of files from downstairs. When I got into The Bunker, she was incredibly
busy, shopping on Asos.com. So I enquired,
“Have you got two broken arms
perhaps?” This is a
hospital, remember.
“No?”
she chirped coupled with the big, innocent, stupid look which she must use on
her mother to get out of doing everything.
“Well bring them up yourself next
time because this is your job ... or we’ll be chatting to matron.”
It’s fun to sharpen my claws this way.
But
I don’t like sharing a computer. Ten years
of my own super-fast, virus-free work laptops have obviously marked my card and
I hadn’t realised quite how territorial I’d become. When it comes to letting others root around
on your desktop … well, to a geek like me, it’s like letting a stranger rifle
your knicker drawer. It’s not as bad as
my mate Dulux though … he’s a blond Raven, having hit forty and gone straight
through fair feathers to a really cool icy grey. Anyway, about a decade ago now, he went to work
for Rolls Royce at Derby as an IT project manager and had been perching there
for a few months when he enquired about the date his laptop would arrive, so he
could do some actual work, saying “… y’know, information technology stuff, a
bit of managing a project or two. I
filled out the forms … in triplicate.”
His boss slapped him on the shoulder and said “Don’t worry sunshine, it
usually takes about six months but you’re doing fine.” So fine that he’d left and got a better job before
the dreaded laptop arrived.
Tip
of the Blog: My final patient last night
was a pleasant surprise – gorgeous and smiley – and as we skipped upstairs to
the ward, I decided to polish up my chat-up lines.
“Been here before?”
I enquired.
“No.” He quipped with a wink. “This is my first vasectomy.
Instead
of saying something smart or funny like ‘it’s a snip!’
All I could manage was “Good for you.” in a strangled croak.
Raven
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