The Working Hour

I'm a bit fed up. The useless one I had to sack has been brought back as a sort of freelance casual, despite there being no need for her.

I've just had a client on the phone asking why something promised to them hasn't arrived. I can't say I'm surprised - that's merely the second thing so far today I've become aware of. There's bound to be more - but she's not employed by me, or set any tasks by me so I'm only partially aware of her failures.

This particular one is apparently due to sunbathing, which she has to do whenever the opportunity arises because she suffers from SAD.

My mother has finalized her redundancy package. She'll never need to return to work. Sadly, many in the aviation industry won't either - and weren't coming up for retirement anyway. Thanks to her union lawyer, the deal is not dependent on no future legal action, so she can freely sue for the destruction of her health. Hopefully she can keep her drinking under some control. She's decided - lockdown permitting of course, to get back to the gym as soon as possible, stepping up from three times a week to six, and to go to college. We think that sounds quite sensible. Her coronavirus test came back negative this week.

The only cloud is that the package is in sterling. Just over four years since this currency became an irretrievable basket case. Now I read in the FT that foreign banks, ratings agencies, etc have advised investors consider sterling to be on a level with the Mexican, Brazilian, and Russian currencies - as an unstable bet, shrinking, swinging too wildly to hold in reserves, no longer indicative of a developed world currency.

I have said before I think our future is Turkey or Argentina* - former glory, political instability, economic underperformance, regular currency crises, one impressive megacity to give an illusion of desirable modernity, large areas of dereliction elsewhere, no influence, all surviving but tattered public services and the majority of the population stretched beyond capacity even during brief upswings. Half the country can pat themselves on the back at having so comprehensively destroyed the economic base we were all reliant on.

*A little known but fascinating fact - Argentina spent the first half of the 20th century as one of a handful of the richest countries ever known, with living standards and public services at Swiss levels.

I briefly tried to convince her to train up as an electrician, because my flat needs rewiring and the quotes have been extortionate. She's quite fluent in Italian so she thought she might build on that and go into history or psychology with a view to taking a joint degree in either of those with Italian literature or whatever. It's the best idea she's ever had - most of her moves in life make me look like a strategic master planner of controlled emotion and calm logic.

cosmictanya wrote:
The only cloud is that the package is in sterling. Just over four years since this currency became an irretrievable basket case. Now I read in the FT that foreign banks, ratings agencies, etc have advised investors consider sterling to be on a level with the Mexican, Brazilian, and Russian currencies - as an unstable bet, shrinking, swinging too wildly to hold in reserves, no longer indicative of a developed world currency. [

I agree with your cautious attitude to sterling. I've hedged my bets by putting half my portfolio in non-sterling inflation-linked bonds.

I made a little profit due to converting US dollars back into sterling due to the initial plunge into freefall. I was going to be doing so that day anyway so it was accidental - with the twelve figure emergency liquidity the BofE required that very morning (ignored and seemingly forgotten by those who caused it), it was safe enough to go ahead. More than lost money and value on everything else ever since, so no comfort to be taken.

Istanbul and Buenos Aires are both fabulous and vibrant places, so at least London has good examples offering hope. The rest of the country not so much - but as they've been screaming, it's what they wanted and they knew they wanted exactly this (whatever that particular this turns out to be after the smoke clears) - so let them have it. May they enjoy every last consequence.

I've been working for three hours today, but just been told we're closed today and that we've got the day off

I might as well carry on now

This is the second day in a row that I've been working so hard that I forgot to check the NHOTW till after lunch.

The third!

And I had to work till 5.55pm yesterday

I am wide awake and my mind is racing with anger.

I have a former colleague turned competitor, who used some very personal things I'd confided in her as background to her own pitch. I wasn't there, so I don't know the precise context, but she told me openly, afterwards, that she'd sort of incorporated these events and insights into what she took to them - with her name all over it. She didn't seem to think there was anything wrong, and I was too hurt by it to react when she regaled me with her success at a friends party.

She even made sure I knew that those very pieces of info were what swung it for her. A video I'd stupidly allowed her to film as practice, of her asking me questions I'd prepared on subject matter of her specification and my candid answers, was used and therefore seen by everyone at her pitch, and was subsequently broadcast in edited format at a f***ing conference.

Lockdown was a relief, because I was able to avoid all social and work occasions connected with her, likely to have her present, or where mutual friends might feel compromised. Every time I think about it I feel hot and sick. I know she doesn't think she did anything wrong - she's pretty dog eat dog, but I did think she had some loyalty.

She actually rang me months ago to say she'd 'been told' I wasn't pleased, and demanded that I refrain from ever repeating my grievance and risk making her look bad. Rather than apologise, she then rather indignantly explained that she'd had to do it to advance to a position she'd coveted for a long time - as if that was a reasonable explanation. I really think it's one of the grubbiest things anyone has ever done to me. I'm finding my anger about it to be as intense as it ever was.

Even after this, I sent her son a very popular magician (and a specially made Ferrari shaped cake with a domestic firework to explode from the exhaust) for his birthday. She sent mine a two word birthday email, via my work account.

I've had the most disorientating experience today. My remote working PC wouldn't let me log on, so my boss ordered me to drive to campus and turn it off and on again. (Luckily I'm not currently in Scotland).

I cleared out my office 4 months ago but my PC is still located there. When I got into the building I found the door open and a woman working in there, on my PC if you please. 'Hello,' I said, 'I'm Fangirl Three, and this is my office. And who - er - ?'

She replied that her name was Claircut 100 and that, au contraire, it was her office as she'd been told to work in there.

I was beginning to be afraid that I'd fallen into a parallel universe where I never existed, but luckily the infrastructure manager appeared and apologised profusely for not letting me know about the whole office takeover thing.

When I got home I immediately put in a statutory request for permanent 100% remote working, partly because I knew management would be on the back foot after letting me down, and partly because I don't have anywhere to work on-site any more.

Fangirl Three wrote:I was beginning to be afraid that I'd fallen into a parallel universe where I never existed, but luckily the infrastructure manager appeared and apologised profusely for not letting me know about the whole office takeover thing.

That's what they told you to keep you thinking you haven't.

Did Claircut 100 look suspiciously like Sharon Stone and was the infrastructure manager called Dr. Edgemar and did he ask you to swallow a pill for example?

I have just conducted a remote work meeting from inside my storage unit.

One of the accounts I oversee is clearly headed up by a psychopath. Had I known the extent of the damage he's done in previous roles - and now in this one - I wouldn't have taken it on. I did so as a personal favour to someone I owed one to. No good deed goes unpunished.

After enormous payouts at tribunals and lost lawsuits, he's still issuing statements on directly connected matters, bleating on like someone who's never heard of the Streisand effect. It's impossible.

He is now leaving - having inexplicably found another three organizations to slither into, but his nominated successor is his adoring protege, and has issued her own statements and remarks, despite (and because of) a judge declaring her to be an 'unreliable and not at all credible witness'. Newspapers have rightly slaughtered them, the institution, and former staff have happily added their tales of being bullied, driven to suicide attempts, being turned into gibbering wrecks.

This man has already driven a prominent institution into the ground. There are reports thirty years old that some boarding school he headed the board of had a habit of covering up rapes of the girls boarding there. There's no doubt he covered it up - in one of his recent off the cuff statements he offered a combination of 'old news', 'different era', 'blown out of all proportion'.

From 5am this morning I was worked my way through a very damning 93 page court judgement for one of his most recent f*** ups. The judge in this case was thorough, and scathing, but completely fair. All I can say is 'say nothing'. He won't listen.

I'm relieved. I have formed a more helpful and sympathetic view of the one waiting in the wings (mentioned above). She's ambitious, and did what she had to in order to keep her job in a very difficult environment, and to finally end up on top. Everything else ticks all the good boxes, and I believe in her ability to make as clean a break as possible. I can work with that. She has some lovely plans and goals.

I was on a course all day today, I haven't had to work so hard in years. In the afternoon I was falling asleep just like at school.