Work vs. Slacking

Lately I'm finding that my work to slacking ratio is tilting in favour of the slacking. It's especially noticeable on a Friday, when two of my co-workers have the day off and the others conveniently have appointments with customers outside the office.

This leaves me alone at my computer, weighing up between working or slacking. Inevitably, i realise that the fact that I'm staring blankly at the screen weighing up these options actually constitutes slacking, and thereby my decision has already been made for me.

I do try to use my slacking time somewhat constructively, by doing things like increasing my vocabulary (playing facebook scrabble), honing my culinary skills (deciding what to have for dinner) and advancing my technological know-how (shopping for cool new gadgets online). So it's not really slacking when you look at it that way.

I guess you could say that my slacking is a vital part of my everyday routine. In fact i think i could go as far as to say that my Friday slacking is essential to my growth as a human being. Now all I need to do is convince the rest of the world about this and I'll never have to waste valuable slacking time worrying about whether or not to do some work.

Silent Movie

I’m watching the TV with the sound off and making up my own story. It’s a lot more interesting than the actual story. I have no way of backing up this claim, of course, because I can’t hear what’s going on, but the characters in the show tell me that my version is much better, so I can only assume that they’re right.

I’m not crazy and hearing voices or anything, I just put the TV on mute by accident and now I can’t see where I put the remote and I’m too tired to get up and look. It’s better this way, I think, because I get to have a happy ending whenever I want and if I don’t want a happy ending I can turn it into a heartbreaking melodrama in the blink of an eye.

The only real problem with this is that I’m watching one of the Law and Order shows, so it becomes hard to explain all the sudden deaths and violent crimes when you’re making up a love story. I guess it’s more of a tragic love story.

Swap a little small talk?

Today I spoke to one of the guys who installs the playgrounds at work. I’ve never met him (I think he’s based somewhere in Sydney) and today was the first time I’ve ever spoken to him. I rang him at the boss’s request and using the boss’s phone because work calls are free between mobiles. The conversation went something like this:

Him: 'Hi Boss-Man'

Me: ‘Actually it’s Torrygirl'

Him: ‘Oh, g’day Torrygirl, how’s your day going?’ as though we had been introduced and knew each other well.

I would love to be able to be that at ease with new people. I’ve thought about it a bit and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m no good at small talk. I seem to be missing the small talk gene. Maybe it’s something that skips a generation. I might end up having excessively chatty children and nothing to talk to them about.

It’s because of this hideous genetic deficiency that I always find myself at a loss when it comes to meeting new people. I think this is why my relationship with KJ has worked so well over the years, because my shortcomings are his strengths. He is a masterful small-talker. He can talk about anything, anytime and never seems to create the kind of awkward silences that I seem to be able to elicit from people.

A good example of this is a family function we went to. We don’t see KJ’s family very often, so it was a lot of new people, hence a lot of social small talk was required. I spotted a Great-Uncle sitting on his own and I gathered together some kind of flimsy small talk plan in order to give this ‘getting to know a new person’ thing a go. The plan mostly involved talking about the weather. And as that’s the strongest plan I could think of, you can probably see how pitiful my small talk skills truly are. Also, the fact that I have to plan my small talk is a big clue.

That conversation went a little like this.

Him: 'Hello dear.'

Me (Thinking that speaking as though we’d met before might help the conversation along): 'Hello, how have you been?'

Him: 'Oh, well I’ve been in to the eye hospital and my eye was playing up and blah blah blah pus, blah blah blah festering, blah blah blah seeping everywhere!'

Me: (trying not to gag openly) 'Oh um, er, well…'

Enter KJ to flex his incredible small talking skills to ask the small, conversation moving questions that even now when I’m thinking back on this elude me. See! I can’t even small talk on paper.

I need to take a small talk class. Or maybe there’s somewhere where I can change some big talk for a bunch of small talk. I wonder what the exchange rate is on big talk to small talk?

Does anyone have any pointers to help me learn how to master this skill? Or am I a sad, lost cause in the world of talking about weather, health and whatever else it is that people talk about when they don’t really have anything to say?

I have a window!

And that means i can see what a nice day it is for the first time in 6 years!

In need of a chat

The thing about working with a building full of men is that it has cemented for me the fact that when Men congregate, they are only able to talk about two things – their cars and the cars that they would own if they were rich.

As one of a smaller number of women who have a genuine interest in cars, I never really had any problem with this until I came to work in my new job. But even a V8 adoring, muscle car driving woman can have too much of a good thing.

Please men! Learn to talk about something else!

I’m finding myself getting a bit desperate for regular conversation. Work was always a bit social for me because I worked with a group of people around my own age, so we had plenty to talk about and we would go out for a few drinks after work on a Friday night. Now that I’ve changed jobs, my daily conversations have been severely limited and I’m finding that I’m writing long and wordy emails to anyone who I think will write back between the hours of 8:30am and 5pm.

I think it also has something to do with the reduced workload that I have in the new job – more spare time and nothing to waste it on I guess!

3 Weeks In

It's the end of my third week in the new job and I think I’m finally getting into the swing of things. It's still a little weird working with so many men, but I think I’m getting used to it. It's a lot less social than working with women - unless, of course, you fancy talking about cars all day.

It's also a bit strange because they have very different policies on things than they did in my last job. At the last place, you pretty much had free reign to organise whatever you thought the company needed. Here, they had an entire meeting because I suggested that perhaps having a company letterhead might be a good idea and they had to discuss whether having a printed letterhead would change the way their customers viewed their business. Personally, I have to say that I wouldn't think twice about a letter on company letterhead, but I would think twice about spending $60K with a company whose quote looked like it had been printed by a primary school student. So it's a bit of an adjustment trying to get used to fighting to get basic things done.

More interestingly, we started organising some of the more formal parts of our wedding this week. We spoke to the minister that will be marrying us and signed some of the paperwork. It was a truly weird experience, speaking to someone other than KJ about why we care about each other so much and why we want to get married. It's the kind of stuff that comes easily when you speak to each other, but it's a bit embarrassing when you have to tell someone else. Normally, people just accept that if you're a couple, then you love each other - they don't ask you to explain it all. I guess it's all just part of the whole wedding thing - in a couple of months we'll be saying it all in front of 140 of our friends and family, so I need to get used to it!

A Strange Day

Today was my first day in the new job. It was a truly surreal experience. I drove to a strange place, walked into a strange office, met strange people and sat down to attempt to begin a job that I know nothing about.

For as long as I can remember, I've been the person at work who knew how to do everything and that everyone came to for the answers. Now I have no answers and no idea what I'm doing. It's nice to have such a reduced workload, but again, it's all kind of surreal.

The other thing that was a little strange was that today I was the only female in the entire building. There were about 10 or so other staff there today, and all of them were men. It's a nice change from the bitchiness that can come out when too many women work together, but it was odd not to have the general Monday morning gossip that comes from working with a bunch of other women.

All in all if was a very weird first day, but definitely not a bad one. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings and if the weirdness fades.

It's Finally Over!

On Wednesday afternoon, 2 ½ days before I was due to finish up at work, I was unceremoniously booted out on my arse. Not so much as a 'thanks for the last 5 ½ years' or a 'good luck for the future'. Just a quick meeting to politely tell me that I’d handed over all I could and that they wanted me to leave. Wasn't that sweet of them?!

It made me laugh, because in addition to being paid to take a 2 day holiday and finally getting away from there, I also had the thrill of watching them pat themselves on the back for the grand point that they had made by booting me out - only to have the entire staff tell them that they are completely disgusted with the way I was treated and that it has made them all think twice about working there. If only I could have seen the looks on their faces when they heard that!

I've had a lot of really nice phone calls from co-workers that I didn't get to say goodbye to, and they're all completely disgusted with what has happened. And how can I feel bad about it all when everyone (aside from the 3 bosses) has been so nice to me?

So I’m officially free and I’m moving on. I got myself a new haircut and a new wardrobe in lieu of taking a break, to help with getting a fresh start.
Tomorrow is my first day in the new job and I’m really looking forward to it. It's going to be strange to walk into a different building and answer to different people. And it will be strange to be working with an entirely different sort of group. The last place was a very young company with a lot of people around my own age. The new place is primarily men and they are mostly a fair bit older than I am (about my dad's age, I think). It will be different, but I’m hoping it will be better.

I can't wait!

The Countdown Begins

One week to go. Five more working days and I am done. It has gone a lot faster than I thought it would, and my frustration at being delayed in handing things over has turned to a kind of stress that I won't get it all done in time. Deep down, I don't really care though. I just want to get away and start fresh. I'm looking forward to leaving the stress behind and being the person who doesn't know all the answers and sometimes has to hunt out some work to do. That will be nice.

In other news, one of my friends has decided that she finally needs to break up with her boyfriend of two years. It's something she has put off doing for the last few months.

Unfortunately, they live together in a unit with only 2 bedrooms, and the other is occupied by a room mate - a friend of her boyfriends. This means that she needs somewhere to stay while she looks for a place of her own. This means she is staying with us for the next 3 weeks. I'm happy to have her stay, because she's a friend and I want to help her out - it's just unfortunate that she is a high maintenance kind of friend and there is a good chance that we'll end up hating each other within a week or two. Also, I'm kind of used to it just being KJ & I, so it will be strange to come home to having someone else in the house.

I've never had a room-mate before; I went straight from living at home with my parents to buying a house of my own. I chose to do that because I didn't think I was the kind of person who would deal well with having other people around all the time. With KJ it's different because we are happy to share anything and everything. With a room-mate, everyone has different boundaries and I don't have the kind of patience necessary to put up with the crossing of these imaginary boundaries.

I will be an interesting few weeks, but hopefully with the new job and trying to organise things for the wedding (which is sneaking up scarily quickly) it will go pretty quickly.

Quiet time

I haven't posted much lately because of everything that is going on at work.
After resigning last week, my completely unprofessional boss has been making life very unpleasant for me(her answer to everything seems to be to involve lawyers), so I don't really have a lot to say that won't end in a giant rant about what I think of her and her total and complete lack of professionalism.

I have 3 weeks of my notice period left and I can feel that they're going to drag. I can't wait to be away from this place and the seriously questionable morals within it.