Tough Day at Work…

Sigh. Had an email saying I'd got through to the next round of a process and to be ready for an exercise on Monday. 10 minutes later I get another email: "That wasn't meant for you. Sorry. Application declined." Lame.

Fucking hell, that sucks.

Order!

Really looking forward to quitting my job in 7 weeks. Been here in Andorra for 6 years and really I should have left last year. This work year has been probably the worst in a long while. I'm mentally exhausted, getting tired of trying to help/teach people who don't want to be taught, writing countless emails about behaviour but nothing really changes, none of the things I asked for last year to get me to stay were actually fulfilled and I've completely checked out.

I'm not sure if I want to continue in my current profession, I've applied for many jobs and my heart isn't really in it, but I've literally had no replies as it seems I do seem overly qualified and they're probably wondering why is this guy applying here.

And to top it off I have a random meeting with my boss that she set up to go over some of the projects that I did this year. I have no idea what it's about and I really don't even have the patience if it's to ask me to do more stuff that the staff don't really appreciate.

Yeah, I have been considering that but I don't really want to go back to the UK to live if I'm being honest and that's probably the only place I can go if I tried a new career path. I associate it with experiencing depression for a good amount of time from my early 20s upto when I left for Vietnam when I was 30 and whenever I've spent an extended amount of time back there it does make quite negative.

So I'm in a bit of tricky situation really. I don't really get stressed by work as I learnt to be aware of the warning signs before they appear and I try not let myself get involved in situations that could be stressful and usually stress occurs when people put their own shit on you and expect you to jump on their command and I just don't do that not in my personal life and not in my work life.

I would like to stay in Europe, due to wanting to be closer to family so I wouldn't see people once a year at best, but it's looking increasingly unlikely, plus an EU visa requirement which many employers are reluctant to provide, which leaves me in other parts of the world where worker's rights become a suggestion than a full blown requirement.

I have looked into working in Ireland which I was unaware I could work in. I might see how that pans out.

Ah right, fair enough. Makes sense I guess. To both replies.

Though that Ireland one might be worth a shot

See?

In this economy?!

Mr fancy buying bottles of cider.

Definitely the plastic bottle.

That's a sport, right? If so, then no

A colleague has cornered me today and asked if I think he should make an official complaint about the way one of the managers speaks to him.

Problematically, I had to tell him no, for a couple of reasons.

The first being that the complaints process is so heavily skewed in favour of the management that it will achieve nothing, and in fact leave him worse off.

The second issue is, the colleague who wants to make the complaint is a complete fucking bell-end, with frequent drug related mood swings, and his complaint is largely baseless to begin with, stemming mostly from being publicly told to stop acting like an annoying child in ways that not only irritate the piss out of but also delay everyone else.

I told him that the following would happen, in this order:

Rather than being dealt with by anyone from company HR, they will respond to any complaint entirely at branch level, and in what is obviously a huge conflict of interest, there is a very good chance it could be handled entirely by the manager who is the subject of the complaint.

He would be called into the office, where one or more managers would quickly talk him through why his complaint is not something they have any intention of taking seriously, and then use it as an opportunity to run through a pre-prepared list of every unrelated trivial infraction or fault they can possibly think of, which he will be completely unprepared for, and basically read the riot act for daring to complain in the first place.

He will leave the office feeling angry and miserable, which he will then project on to the rest of us every day for the next three weeks, after which he will get another warning, and the cycle will begin again.

I know these things will happen, because this is what I've seen multiple people go through over the years.

Trouble is, the bell-end colleague is now making noise about going over the branch managers and directly to the area manager about it, somehow seemingly ignorant of the fact that he is just another part of the same arse-covering, back-scratching old-boys club, so all that will achieve is a harsher tone from the managers when they call him into the office.

I am fucking glad to have stepped down recently, so I don't have to witness any of this shit directly any more.