Hypatia Avenue

"Marcie, don't be a pussy. You are whinier than my livejournal"

This is not a livejournal but I’m going to start with a rant because I am experiencing residual fury and frustration from yesterday and it’s not going to go away unless I vent a bit. Skip ahead, by all means, but I’ve got to write all this down – it may be useful later if I choose to file some paper work of my own.

Well, work has been stressful and strangely personal of late. It's been bad and I've been fucking up but most people seem to understand that I am new to this and are pleased to see me making the job my own rather than directly replicating my predecessor. The people I work closest with seem to respect this and seem prepared for a bit of re-working, some frustration, a few mistakes and seem willing to leave me to it for now and we’re all prepared for it to be bad before it gets good, so that’s fine. I really want to be good at this, to be respected and trusted and to become valuable for what I think and for my methods.

Although the organisation is supportive, flexible and a beacon of good practice, there are two specific people loosely connected to the main staff (and with who I unfortunately have to work closely) who are promoting the idea that it was bad before I started here and it’s getting worse now I have arrived and I am personally evil and offensive. It’s so fucking infuriating coming from two people who work with us to promote best practice and supposedly train others to perform better and more constructively in the arts to write a complaint about me that offered nothing but a list of things about me that annoyed them. No constructive comments - "she walked out when the course started, even though not everyone had arrived yet" is just an attack whereas "it would be helpful if she stayed in the room to welcome late comers" is something I can take on board and build on. I am extremely angry about this complaint: it is highly subjective, personal and judgemental with no reference to my actual duties except "sounding quite put out on the phone" and offers me nothing but a sense of failure when 1) it's really damaging at this point in my settling into the job and 2) their training careers are about empowerment and best practice / best management.

I’m being punished and judged for not being my predecessor which is ridiculous and embarrassing for them – can't they handle change? Are they unable to register me as a person with a different personality and different methods? They are a bit of a joke amongst the staff here and thankfully, no one has taken this complaint very seriously – apparently they file one against every new person in the organisation. But I am still burning with rage that they dare to write such personal and subjective, unpleasant, whining formal complaints that will stay in my file and come up at every appraisal and do nothing more than attack and assassinate, working along a strange and harsh line of judgement that is deeply personal and unknown to us. Utterly unconstructive, overly formal and yet totally personal, they seem to have lost the plot when it comes to dealing with me and seem only to want to give me a bad time rather than help me to help them: I thought I escaped this kind of shit when I started working here, but alas, sadly not.

God, I hate them both. And it is clearly and officially mutual.

Okay, rant over. To more pleasant things: gay penguins! A truly lovely story about our favourite aquatic birds becoming same-sex parents. Aw. The empathy-egg made go all melty inside.

And then to redeem the Dark Side, an amusing look at a young girl’s descent into the evils of Gothdom and her eventual journey back to the light. See quote above – so very fabulous. Warning: no naughty pictures but still not entirely safe work if your colleagues sit close enough to read the naughty words. (Thanks to Venusberg at his temporary home, via the ever interesting and another year older Prandial. Ta muchly)

And then this: Chavscum! Courtesy of my bro, who has as little tolerance of the Chav as I do, if not less. Seriously, we can both suffer aneurysms when we come into contact with people like this, and sometimes have moments of soiling ourselves with impotent and formless outrage. Well, he usually manages to avoid this. Innit. Wicked.

Boatie Flatmate: if you’re reading this, just… don't.