The Great Escape

Well it finally happened. After 4 years of complete hell at work I'm finally free!! I know I shouldn't really be happy about it – I should actually be really disappointed that I no longer work for such a 'fine establishment' …… did they buy that?? So there it is. I've joined the ranks of the unemployed. Not sure how that's going to pan out yet but it can't be any worse surely?!?!

As such I figured what's better than to do a retrospective on my time of being employed -- it's turned out longer than expected, but meh!! It wasn't all bad – it was MOSTLY bad, but not all bad. There is at least one person I don't want to lose touch with …… most of them can drop off the face of the planet as far as I'm concerned, but there is one person I'll miss at least …… and my lads. Kerry said it best when she said there were only two things that were keeping me at Spencer – my friend Joss, and my lads. Now the decision has been taken out of my hands. On the one hand it's a good thing – if they hadn't made the decision I would most likely have just stayed there becoming more miserable and stressed. By the other token it would have been nice to have made the move myself, but as I said I never would have. With a job I don't think I had the same dedication to finding a new one. The urgency just wasn't there -- I had one so unless it was something I really wanted I didn't really put the effort in and I never really found one of those.

Many won't know this tale in full and some will know parts of it that others don't. As I said, it wasn't always bad. When I started in August 2003 I was working as Maternity cover for one of the departments. It was admin so it wasn't difficult or really all that stressful. There weren't many deadlines and I liked my manager. Still do to this day as he always treated me with respect and I suppose looked after me – bit of a father figure I guess. The rest of the guys in the department were a laugh too. I got on with them and admittedly, at times maybe spent more time having a laugh with them than I should have. As my contract was coming to an end towards Christmas I did start stressing a bit about whether I would still have a job come February when the other lass came back – maybe should've taken it as a sign when it took them until the last week before Christmas to give me a sign. The news was positive and I had a job after Christmas. Unfortunately, it had to be put on hold for a week as that was the year my Dad died – but we've covered that before. When I came back in the new year it was all change at home so I was glad to a certain extent to be back at work where nothing had changed. That relief was short-lived, however, when the news came that the department was moving to Hull and there was nothing said about whether the admin staff were moving with them as Sarah and I were based this side of the water whereas the majority of the rest were based north of the river. By this time I'd started doing purchasing and was starting to clash with the guy above me – I had, in theory 2 managers and one role was beginning to bleed into another. At this point the Tracker for the vans had also come into being and I was responsible for that too. I had too much to do and not enough time to do it in so I was stressing something chronic.

Come the April of 2004 the department were moving and Sarah and I were staying behind. At this point my purchasing role had gone to a temp (a fact I didn't find out from management but as a slip of the tongue from one of the guys I was working with). Now the board had to find somewhere to deposit us. Sarah wound up in another department doing pretty much what she had been doing before, and I wound up in payroll and, for a while anyway, all was good with the world again. I learnt how to process the timesheets and was promised training in running the payroll from start to finish so I could cover if necessary, which seemed like a good deal. My first training came a fortnight before one of my colleagues (Gail) was due to go on holiday so it was a rush but I stumbled through and I think it turned out OK. That's when I first met Joss, she'd been brought in to cover my work for me while I was covering for Gail. When she came back Joss moved into Accounts and I didn't hear from her so much – there was a bit of friction between Accounts and Payroll, mainly on the Payroll side as the Payroll Manager (Debbie) felt that we weren't really anything to do with accounts – strange logic actually considering that all our work was concerned with figures and job costing which is inherently an Accounts thing!!

Things started to go downhill rapidly as time went on in Payroll. As a department we were seemingly getting screwed over. Debbie was after training which she didn't seem to be actively pursuing with management, expecting it to just happen, and that because of what management were asking for in the everyday running of things, the job was becoming more complicated and no-one was listening, so there came a point where we were all looking for new jobs and thinking how funny it would be if the entire Payroll department left en masse. In March 2006, Gail left for new employment – the first one to escape – and they brought in a temp. Again it was a mad rush as she was on holiday for 2 of the 4 weeks that were needed to train the temp up to cover. We were physically extricated from the Accounts department that April and moved into an office at the other end of the world. Although we were still part of the department there was no mixing of the sections which seemed stupid, but it kept Debbie happy. Again there was more friction. The temp seemingly wasn't pulling her weight and so it fell to me to pick up the slack. I was working practically straight through, doing more overtime, and still falling behind. It came to a head in August when I blew up at Debbie after she got on at me about something which hadn't been done simply because I didn't have enough time. I was marched down to HR for an intervention at which I burst into tears. The atmosphere was terrible after that. Debbie said nothing to me if she could help it and I spent as little time in there with her as I could manage. At this point Joss was looking out for me and talking to her manager (Vicky).

In September I was officially moved out from under Debbie and into the Accounts department proper under Vicky. Again all seemed to go well for a while. Unfortunately the stuff that had slipped under Debbie came back to bite me with a vengeance and it wasn't long before I was up for an unofficially official 'meeting' regarding my apparently appalling approach to my work. It was alleged I wasn't carrying my weight as far as the department goes and what with the stuff that had just been put back and back and not yet been done, well from that moment on I was a nervous wreck. Every little thing that happened became potential ammo for an officially official disciplinary, and as a result I felt my work was never good enough. What little confidence I had left was gradually lessening, and although my work improved I don't think I ever got any positive interaction. It was all negative. The positive's were swept under the carpet and ignored. I also became an easy target for hassle in the office. Every comment seemed to be a dig. I never felt comfortable saying anything about anything for fear of having the piss taken whether I was right or wrong. I had a habit of talking to myself simply because it helped me to make sense of stuff and the fact I hate working in complete silence. It also meant that if I ever did say anything it was, for the most part, ignored and as time went on I felt more and more isolated from the people I worked with. I had always enjoyed the interaction I had with my lads, and even this became an issue. I'd have a laugh with them and it brightened my day and I like to think they enjoyed having a goss with me. I found that I developed a relationship with them that meant that I got a positive response when I phoned them. I was more likely to get what I needed out of them, i.e. their timesheets. It also meant they knew if they had any questions about anything they could phone me up and I'd help them out as best as I could and not bullshit them about anything. It became known as my sex line and phone sex became the by-line for the time I spent talking to these lads. We'd have a chat and I'd give them the answers they were after and all was good, and then I'd get hassle from the girls again.

And so the cycle continued. My work was also seemingly considered unworthy of time to be spent on it. Many a time I would be asked to be finished as early as possible so I could help someone else out. I didn't really mind this, and credit where credit is due, Vicky would explain to people who needed stuff from me, generally the Tracker, why it wouldn't be done straight away, but it did seem that my work was considered less important – the fact that if they didn't get paid the lads wouldn't come into work on Monday wasn't at all important. It annoyed me, but all the same I was glad of a little variety – you can only do the same thing for so long before it starts to bring you down.

I honestly didn't think there was a problem and so redundancy was the last thing I expected. I'd been promised the opportunity to get involved with other things ….. involvement that had never materialised due to extenuating circumstances. On Monday Vicky was talking about getting cover for my job for when I wasn't in, Tuesday the Tracker had been moved into another department and I was to be the cover for that, Wednesday I was training someone up on it and telling them if they had any problems they could ask me, and come Friday my services were no longer required. I'll give the Financial Director (Paul) his dues, he didn't beat round the bush as there is no easy way to break something like this to someone. He has to do what is best for the company at the end of the day. However having a new person start in the department on Monday, and after a job opportunity was emailed around the support staff the same day, it seems a bit odd. Maybe it was just an opportunity that they'd been waiting for since my trouble kicked off in March, maybe it was totally off the cuff and unplanned. I don't know and probably never will. I'd say it was upsetting, and as you can appreciate Friday it was – I think it was the shock more than anything else, but as I've thought about it more and my friends have looked out for me and let me bend their ears, I'm beginning to see it as an opportunity.

As I mentioned at the start, I would have more than likely sat there processing my timesheets until doomsday had this not happened. Maybe given the chance now, my back trouble from my dodgy chair will ease off. I'm not on the breadline yet. I've got a nice bit of money coming my way as soon as I sign the paperwork, and they've promised me a good reference.

In the meantime, I'm going to spend a bit of quality time with myself and consider what it is that I want to do. If it means retraining so be it …… if it means going in a completely different direction, that's good too …… we'll see what happens. Until then you'll find me sat on the sofa, randomly surfing the 'Net, bugging you all while I've got too much time on my hands, and watching copious amounts of trashy talk shows – from Jeremy Kyle to Jerry Springer!! Wish me luck!!

It's a hard life innit??? Lol!!