Tuesday, 19th August, 2008

I started to analyse the jobs I have done over the years. I have been an employer, a manager, a clerk, a waitress, a chef, a cleaner, a barmaid, a secretary (no idea how I conned my way into that one as I never learned to type properly), a programmer, a telephonist, a coder, a researcher, a writer, a graphic artist, a translator and various other weird and wonderful things in between.

Once I was a data entry temp, taking numbers from handwritten reports from engineers and entering them into a database system for analysis. It was a weeklong gig. It involved lots of words like 'density', 'viscosity', 'screen size', 'volume', and 'liquid/solid content ratios'. I finally asked one of the bosses, 'What exactly is this? What does this company do?' Made him laugh when he realised that I had no idea what I was working on. 'We make screens and filtering systems for sewage plants, you're entering the records of sh*t we need to process.' Which, come to think of it, pretty much sums up the last job I had - heh heh! See last paragraph of this article.

Another of my more stellar and typical 'Carolyn at work' moments happened when I was a barmaid at a nightclub. We used to get raided fairly regularly to check for underage drinkers, not really surprising as the police station was directly across the street. The same thing happened every time. The barstaff went upstairs (the club was in a basement) and waited, 'guarded' by a couple of policemen, while the rest of the police checked the punters' I.D's and removed any that were underage. On a Monday night that was about 95% of them but I digress. I am sure you are all familiar with the Great British Bobby's uniform, it involves a funny shaped hat, goes up to a point and has been the subject of thousands of stand up comics' jokes over the years. So I'm sitting there, bored witless - as will be very apparent as I relate what happened next - and as the police team came up to tell us that we could go back to work I looked at this very nice young police constable and said .... oh before I say what I said, have you ever heard words in your head and just know they are about to fly out of your mouth and even though your brain is screaming 'STOP!' they go anyway? - so I said to this lovely young thing 'Can I hold your helmet? I have always wondered how much they weigh. ' He went bright red. His colleagues were in hysterics. He solemnly handed me his headgear, I took it, and then said 'Thank you, it's lighter than I expected.' And handed it back. By which time the rest of the policemen were pretty much wetting themselves laughing. I still wonder if I destroyed his career and if he ever managed to live down the story that must have gone round the Essex Constabulary after that………..

The funny side of getting canned......

I have been downsized, canned, let go, made redundant numerous times over the course of my working life. It's not unusual, most of us go through it every now and then. But my most recent 'restructuring' this is apparently the latest term for it - grin - was so surreal it was hilarious. As some of you know, I have been telecommuting since the mid 1990's. I had worked for this particular company for quite a while. I had not had an annual review since the arrival of my latest supervisor about 3 years before but it was clear from day one that she did not really enjoy the concept of trusting telecommuters to actually show up for work. Which was pretty ironic for a web based company. In early 2008 she emailed and asked "Where is your nearest Starbucks?" I replied that there is one in the back of Chapters in Belleville. She said: 'We will do your annual review in person this year, be there tomorrow at 11.00 a.m.' Now I am not a rocket scientist - though I do know one, Hi Mischa! - but even I could read the writing on the cyber wall. Got there, saw no sign of anyone I knew, ordered my cup of tea. She appeared. Waited until I had paid and said 'We're round the corner here.' I turned the corner and saw the HR person. Was told to sit down on the windowsill at the back of Chapters. There were members of the public less than 5 feet away looking at books. She then handed me an envelope and said 'We are reorganising and you are terminated as of right now. This is your package.' and then they left. I tried a sip of my tea but it was still to hot too drink and I realised that the book I had been kind of staring at in the middle distance was called Internet for Dummies and I started to laugh. A very nice man looking for books asked if I was OK because he had overheard the whole thing and I said sure, yes, I'm fine. He said he could not believe they had just done that in public. I could, oh could I ever! LOL. Apparently the concept of renting a conference room has not entered their twilight zone. So if you get walked out a building don't let it bother you, at least it wasn't in the back of a book shop sitting on a windowsill in full view of the book-buying public having paid for your own cup of tea :o)