Distinctly Unimpressed

To look at the situation from the outside you wouldn’t have thought I’d been signed off sick. Although I should have guessed this was going to be the way things always work out, with me running around like a blue bummed fly for everyone else.

I’ve been in “joint hell” since having to stop my main medication nearly a week ago due to possible liver failure. Even simple things like turning over in bed and typing are causing me grief. Today this isn’t being helped by a lack of heating and hot water. I’ve been awake since 3.30am and even taking enough tramadol to knock out an elephant didn’t succeed in gaining me any sleep, or much relief. I’d finally managed some kind of restful state after making up a little cocktail* only to be rudely yanked from it at 7.30. My mother decided that she needed to wake up half the street by f-ing and blinding over the boiler finally giving up the ghost. It annoys me as both my parents are incapable of making a decision and hiring a competent plumber. We’ve had nothing but problems with this boiler since day one. First it started to leak water; the plumber said he’d sorted it after a visit. Biggest joke I’ve ever heard. It continued to leak, had parts replaced, bits cleaned out, and then it started to flash its pretty red light. And that’s the way it has remained intermittently since July. Yes, you heard right, JULY!!!!!!! You should bear in mind also that we’ve only had the boiler since February last year.

When my mother had the bright idea of waking me and the rest of the street, up it was on the guise that the emergency department would come out from the boiler company as soon as they heard the immortal words, “gas leaking from it.” Fantastic, I got up, had a freezing cold shower (always perfect for those arthritic searing pains) and waited for her to call. She did. To tell me that they’ll be out on Friday.

Anyone want a lodger? I’m house trained….



*not of the alcoholic variety

Big Brother Is Watching You

Or at least Big HR Woman is. Although, she’s not big, but for a tiny person she is incredibly noisy. Her eyes are everywhere. And there was me hoping for a nice quiet year whilst the permanent fixture is off popping a sprog out. I can’t even breathe without her popping up behind, let alone get on with my games. Dammit!

Journalism At Its Finest

I’m a regular reader of online news, and generally like to catch up on local news whilst I’m at it. The people who are closest to me will also know that I’m incredibly anal when it comes to basic grammar. I don’t confess to knowing everything there is to know, or always putting it into practice but I do object to journalists who can’t even master the basics. The Watford Observer is usually the best place to catch these journalists at play, and their articles provide a good laugh for the population of Hertfordshire which can be noted by their comments at the bottom of the article.

http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/display.var.1985466.0.late_licence_dabate_deferred.php

Memory MIA

Errrr, what was I going to write?

All too often lately I find myself in mid-reach and completely unaware of what I was reaching for. Just now I was about to look something up and I have no idea what I was searching for, earlier I made a cup of tea…..or at least I thought I had. Giving it a stir to get some colour I realised I hadn’t put a tea bag in and I was stirring a cup of hot, weak milk. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything work related I was about to look up, but you can never be too careful.

Before I came in this morning I needed to go to the local supermarket to pick up some provisions for the remainder of the week. They’re not open till 8am on a Monday so I usually leave it till Tuesday, that way I can get my bits along with the newest copy of my trashy magazine of choice. Least that’s the plan anyway. I almost always forget what I’m going in for and end up buying what I can manage to remember. I hadn’t bothered to check before I went in if I’d had enough cash to pay for anything, so took a chance. Amazingly I did, and to my surprise I pulled out more that I knew I had. One time I don’t mind forgetting! Least now I’ve enough to pay for Thursday’s tickets. Bargain.

I’d even forgotten to tell my parents that my cousin was expecting a baby, well, not him, his wife is!

Now……who am I?!

It’s Always Good to Be Missed……..

……or not as the case may be. The only person to notice my absence for the majority of last week was the new, temporary, HR woman*. Whilst she’s a big improvement over the permanent woman she’s got the eye of a hawk, which somewhat scares me! I was at least expecting the boss to ask where I was last week as I hadn’t bothered phoning in. Unusually, for a woman, I couldn’t even be bothered to pick up the phone so I turned it off completely for the duration of my time off.

Following from my radio whoring a couple of weeks ago, in which I attempted, and failed miserably, to win a branded toaster, I was feeling quite perky – even for me. I’ve always tried to put a positive spin on feeling like death warmed up most days, but now I’m failing miserably. At the beginning of August 2007 I found myself unable to eat or drink without it exiting in a hurried fashion so I gave up trying, narrowly missing a trip to the hospital for a top up on the fluids. In that two weeks I managed to shift a whopping 2 stone in weight. Since then it’s continued to come off, and this weekend I hit the 3 and a half stone lost mark. Cheaper than any diet I’ve ever tried before! So now I’m back to not being able to eat, and whilst I haven’t been sick, I feel constantly so.

So you might think that the arthritis is easing up now I’m not such a Heifer. Wrong, so very wrong. But at least now I have collar bones!

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A total of ninety four emails awaited me when I came in this morning. Luckily most of them were just a case of noting that they were there, allowing me to move onto the more important ones, the ones that work email is meant for…..the joke emails. But one caught my eye in particular from another company, which I had been copied in on. A colleague had sent out some drawings via email (a practice which is frowned upon by anal document controllers such as myself) so they could be commented on – and commented on they were. One excerpt from this email reads,

“I'm afraid there are still quite a lot of technical errors with I'm
disappointed that you have not appreciated. Typical is the trench configuration
and switchgear support to the indoor switchgear and the transformer base size
given the cable configuration from the transformer. Between you, Powermann and
the packages of information already issued and used for Peacock Farm etc., we
should not be in this position.
Some how you need to gain more
knowledge/understanding to enable you to built it correctly. As drawn it won't
work.
I suggest that you, the architects, Powermann and SSE will have to get
round the table, not for another progress meeting but to work through the
technical requirements to enable you to comprehend the issues, together with a
site visit to a substation to turn theory into practical understanding..

Phil, Kevin, Nigel - please pick up this suggestion and arrange. -
If you need my help to be able to thoroughly discuss construction detailed
requirements then I'm happy to get involved.”

I’ve been subjected to this public slating by someone in the past, so I took exception to it happening to someone that I have a lot of time for. If you feel the need to be so vile to someone at least have the decency to grammar check it first. Although I’m glad he didn’t, it just proves what a complete moron he is.


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Meanwhile, the boss has vanished with previously said new HR woman. I can only assume this is to further discuss his bullying tactics. A wet dishrag – sorry - a colleague has accused him of bullying. Whilst I agree with some of what’s been said is bullying I also think a lot is down to the boss being a bit of a twat. He’s one of these people who has to constantly be “in” with everyone and appear to be “one of the lads”. Exactly the kind of person I love to hate. I have been on the receiving end of his comments (“you wallow in self pity”, “any cameras been shoved in you lately?”) but you have to take them with the intelligence they were spoken with….in his case, none. The saga is on going. The kid has been off now for a good 12 weeks, maybe longer, and the situation shows no sign of ending. He even had his mum in here last week to hold his hand, and even then he couldn’t last more than 3 hours. I cannot see them letting the boss go as they won’t be able to replace him, but on the other hand given the situation they can’t exactly tell the kid to leave. Only time will tell I suppose.

Eeek, negative post. Bah, where are my concrete boots?




* I’m hoping the permanent one is going through a long and painful labour. She’s not the nicest person I’ve encountered.

What To Do?

I probably shouldn’t even be writing this as yet, but seeing as only a few people I know are actually aware I have a blog it probably doesn’t matter.

Late morning I was accosted by one of our senior project engineers. I have a lot of respect for this man as he’s a great manager and a pleasure to work with. He doesn’t often require much from me so I was a little taken back that he wanted to talk with me. He said that we needed to talk to someone downstairs with regards to a few document control issues. I was a touch confuddled as I don’t deal with anyone downstairs on the project he claimed it was about, but all was to become clear.

He took me over to a woman I’ve seen around the building regularly, but I hadn’t a clue who she was. We sat in a small meeting room just behind her desk and from the looks on their faces I was expecting my P45!

For the purpose of this blog we’ll call them Bob and Sue.

The first thing Bob said to me was, “Don’t worry; you’re not in any trouble!” I must have looked scared! He said that they wanted to talk to me regarding a team member, who we’ll call Fred, and our boss, who we’ll call Nobby.

Anyway, Fred has been off sick for about 2 and a half months now, possibly more. Nobby has always suggested that Fred has mental health issues and that’s why he’s been signed off for so long. Today was to prove otherwise. I’ll admit, Fred is a wet dish rag and not someone who I’d have hired, but he probably comes cheap. It turns out that Fred has made allegations of bullying about Nobby, and this is the real reason he’s off sick. The kick off was back in July/August time when a new fella started and was introduced around the office.

Being a male dominated environment you can well imagine everyone has a nickname of sorts, ranging from the harmless to the potentially offensive. The name for Fred generally known in the office is “Snot.” Fred was out this particular day that the new guy was introduced round and Nobby had referred to him as Snot rather than his actual name. I can only assume that in his ignorance as a new person he’d mentioned this to Fred the following day, although I’m led to believe that other personal remarks have been made along the way which are really quite nasty.

So now I’m sat in the middle of this saga. Bob and Sue asked me in this meeting what I thought of Nobby. I wasn’t sure if they were meaning personally or as a manager so I gave them both sides, but limited amounts as I’m not a grass. Now I doubt as to whether I should have mentioned a lot more stuff as Sue took particular interest in me telling her some nasty stuff he said to me once.

As it happens I don’t think much of Nobby as a person, and even less of him as a manager. He really couldn’t manage a piddle up in a brewery.

Long Time No Blog

I rarely write in here these days, usually preferring to keep things to myself and deal with them in my own way, but perhaps that’s the wrong way to go about it.

It’s no secret to people I know that I’m not in the best of health but I thought, perhaps wrongly, that I dealt with it ok. The days where I am in total despair I prefer to sit in my corner, get my head down and not bring any attention to myself. I work in a big open plan office where privacy can only be gained through sitting in a toilet cubicle; but there you’re limited to eight minutes as the motion activated lights switch off after this time. The sensors only react to movement from the main entrance to the cubicle area so you have to use your time wisely.

Maybe I just need to vent in a massive way. Hold on to your seats.

The 3rd of August was my last proper meal, so that makes seven weeks living on yoghurt, rice, cous cous, chicken soup and tuna. I’ve lost over 2 stone in weight and, perhaps, my sanity. I haven’t been able to even think about eating most days as I feel constantly sick and every time I do try to eat something I’m overcome with horrendous pain. Not a drop of food, liquid or otherwise, was consumed in the first 2 weeks.

I don’t know what to put it down to. I’m taking some medication which was prescribed for my arthritis but also is used in my particular type of bowel disease; although it’s only used to maintain remission. If you haven’t reached remission it’s not going to be of much help. It has, however, been good for my arthritis. I’m less stiff and have less pain in my hip than before I started on these tablets so that has to be a plus. I’m still in constant pain with my back and have developed a couple of lumps in my side.

I have regular blood tests run as these tablets can have a negative effect on the liver but, surprisingly, the results for the set that I had done a couple of weeks after this all kicked off where fine. My inflammation levels were still up but were a lot lower than they have been in the last 3 years. An achievement in itself.

I really don’t know where this is going to bear with me.

I think the biggest problem I have at the moment is with work. My boss has taken it upon himself in the last month or so to be the biggest arse on the planet. Last week he sent me an email that basically blamed ME for someone else’s sheer incompetence. I won’t go into it now because I’ll just end up even more wound up, but today he actually said to me that I wallow in self pity.

Should I be feeling that I have to apologise for being ill? I hadn’t even said anything to him that was in any way shape or form health related.

I give up. I can’t keep having this battle on a daily basis as I have enough to put up with.