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Dec. 1st, 2012 03:59 pmIt's not as hot today as yesterday (hardly got above 31 degrees) but it's a downright peculiar day. In the background all the time are storms, which means, even if they never quite hit, I get the benefit of feeling the incoming change. By 'benefit' I mean that I just took a nap and ended up doing a treasure hunt with a rhymed clue in various languages. I'd rather have the subject of my blogging in my dreams than the subjects I'd been dealing with just prior to resting.
I detoured from the work I was supposed to be doing and went through piles of papers. This is part of my aim to reduce my belongings by 1 cubic metre (or thereabouts) each week. This week's goal has been surpassed, because most of these will be in the recycling tomorrow and I also have a bag for the opp shop.
The papers were an unexpected surprise. The good bits were ancient copies of rare Arthurian texts (not going out!). The bad bits included stuff from a nasty period of my life when I learned about the Peter Principle in practice. I hadn't learned then that nice people can be incompetent and that incompetence can hurt, so I paid for other peoples' stupidity for several years. Also for my own incapacity to work outside rules when the rules are clear and when those in charge of me can't make the workplace operative using those rules (ie I tolerated inoperative workplaces when other people wouldn't). I'd forgotten that supervisor and that supervisor's supervisor and their peculiar brand of idiocy. The papers are gone, but I have more fuel for my fiction at some stage. These people are not as colourful as workplace bullies, so expect to find them trudging through a tale when I need an exotic setting to be reduced to mundanity for plot purposes.
What strikes me particularly is that I don't blame myself for everything any more. Back then both I did and they did. I can see where my personality was not the sort that should have been in that job, but I can now quite see where management went drastically wrong. I can see where being good and dutiful to a daft degree were my worst personal failings, but, looking back, I can also see a decided lack of pastoral care. I never had enough work to do, but they would not give me more work or give me my holidays. In the end, HR forced me to take accrued leave. I was actively looking for a transfer elsewhere and my then-boss said (in a letter) "But she never asked me!" I had asked him and he had told me my writing was impossibly bad and I would not be able to get anything. I needed to improve basic skills first. Time after time I offered this in exchange for that and the thing I offered was treated like a sacrifice to the gods and accepted and the thing I needed was refused. Very Public Service all round.
And now that I have explained it all in such detail, I'm going to have some coffee and do some real work.
I detoured from the work I was supposed to be doing and went through piles of papers. This is part of my aim to reduce my belongings by 1 cubic metre (or thereabouts) each week. This week's goal has been surpassed, because most of these will be in the recycling tomorrow and I also have a bag for the opp shop.
The papers were an unexpected surprise. The good bits were ancient copies of rare Arthurian texts (not going out!). The bad bits included stuff from a nasty period of my life when I learned about the Peter Principle in practice. I hadn't learned then that nice people can be incompetent and that incompetence can hurt, so I paid for other peoples' stupidity for several years. Also for my own incapacity to work outside rules when the rules are clear and when those in charge of me can't make the workplace operative using those rules (ie I tolerated inoperative workplaces when other people wouldn't). I'd forgotten that supervisor and that supervisor's supervisor and their peculiar brand of idiocy. The papers are gone, but I have more fuel for my fiction at some stage. These people are not as colourful as workplace bullies, so expect to find them trudging through a tale when I need an exotic setting to be reduced to mundanity for plot purposes.
What strikes me particularly is that I don't blame myself for everything any more. Back then both I did and they did. I can see where my personality was not the sort that should have been in that job, but I can now quite see where management went drastically wrong. I can see where being good and dutiful to a daft degree were my worst personal failings, but, looking back, I can also see a decided lack of pastoral care. I never had enough work to do, but they would not give me more work or give me my holidays. In the end, HR forced me to take accrued leave. I was actively looking for a transfer elsewhere and my then-boss said (in a letter) "But she never asked me!" I had asked him and he had told me my writing was impossibly bad and I would not be able to get anything. I needed to improve basic skills first. Time after time I offered this in exchange for that and the thing I offered was treated like a sacrifice to the gods and accepted and the thing I needed was refused. Very Public Service all round.
And now that I have explained it all in such detail, I'm going to have some coffee and do some real work.