Happy days

So now I know what a beatific smile looks like ... it looks like the soppy, spaced out expression on the face of Senior Frustrated Novelist. She's off and for the last three weeks of her time with us she's going to endure torment from Yoda, miserable customers, cretinous head office folk, unreliable suppliers, decrepit technology, thieves, incontinent children, fractious management and nit-pickery from the Paper-Shuffler-in-Chief and absolutely none of it will disturb her.

And for this she's going to be paid about 50% more than she earns at present, with benefits added on.

You might be thinking that the exit interview will be quite brief. You'd be wrong. Exit interviews might lead to challenges being laid down and that would make everyone's life even more uncomfortable than it already is (see above) and no body can face that so, no exit interview at all.

The Big Swinging Dick was in fine fettle to day which possibly means that his errant wife has returned to the fold. If only he'd binned the Daily Express and read a real newspaper, or better yet had a chat with a french man (say Sarko) he might understand that a much needed wife's return is a mixed blessing at best and a recipe for nothing other than continued domestic discord in all probability.

Will the second last person

to leave the building please remember to switch off the lights.

Yoda will be too panic stricken to do so, and we mustn't squander all that electricity. The emergency lighting will kick in and she's used to blundering about in the dark anyway.

And while we're on the subject of Yoda, and meandering around to the actual point of this post, news has reached me that the nearest thing we have to a creative soul is about to check out for the last time. Senior Frustrated Novelist has cashed in her tokens and is off to join a utility (or her script has been accepted and she's about to become marginally less non-famous than me).

I've only heard this indirectly and I can hardly wait to go in to work on Wednesday and get the Paper-Shuffler-in-Chief's panic stricken take on this turn up for the books. I rather suspect that the general assumption about the place has been that SFN has been too depressed to do anything constructive such as secure alternative employment. In trading on that assumption they've left themselves stranded up that creek with a broken paddle.

A sensible bunch would set themselves to the necessary task of mending that paddle. This bunch are not sensible. What they'll do next is get into a wrangle about matters peripheral - things that are not entirely irrelevant but also not of vital and immediate importance. When they've exhausted themselves they'll not have addressed either of the two critical issues and they might find that in the squabble some one's knocked the not completely useless paddle overboard.

So now they're up that creek without any means of propulsion whatsoever. A girl can dream. A girl can also flog her CV about. Low pay and members of the management team who are either decrepit and bullying or malicious and incompetent; deal with those things and it just might come to pass that staff retention improves.

Also

I'm being encouraged by someone to apply for a job opening that has emerged recently ... will have a chat to the Big Swinging Dick next week when he's back from holiday. Still need to find out what the rate is ... could be worth me taking if I can keep a few hours with my current job.

That should put the cat among the pigeons.

What's happening?

Well the Bolshie Book Worm's rear end issue hasn't gone away and the topical solution time frame is drawing to a close. The alternative which she is facing up to is the surgical approach. That means cutting but packing rather than stitching and months of recuperation. Speculation is already rife about who will get the task of filling her boots. Her departure will coincide with the semi-retirement of the Cowman and that adds to the intrigue, because Desperate Dave's the second highest paid member of staff. The money freed up by his retirement will fund considerable additional hours within the business over and above the hours he'll no longer be working, such is the gap between what he's paid and the actual going rate for his job.

All in all the 'opportunity' I've enjoyed over the past few weeks to demonstrate my capacity to haul my arse out of bed by 4:30 and be compos mentis by 6:00 might well stand me in very good stead indeed. Do I want it? Yes actually. Very much.

And it isn't just a matter of the better pay. The fact remains the core elements of my current job amount to that pitcher of warm spit and the bits I enjoy most are the bits I get into when I've got those core elements out of the way. Just as I'm the sort who'll eat first those bits on my plate I least savour so I prefer to get the crap out of the way so I can relax and enjoy. I don't enjoy being locked away in a room devoid of fresh air and natural light, sometimes not seeing a friendly face for hours on end, at the beck and call of absolutely everyone. This would be a chance to have some influence over the way things are done.

Everyone's entitled to a dream...

Job Crap

I went to work in some trepidation but more hope that my catastrophic error of Tuesday night had finally been uncovered and a P45 had been prepared. No such luck. Another whole afternoon and evening of my life gone down the toilet for minimum wage (or actually a few pence above that because I'm not actually at the bottom of the heap).

The Big Swinging Dick was in a vile mood, though nobody's quite sure why. Perhaps working the hours he does is part of the problem but he will insist, quite unnecessarily on doing both the rostered morning shift and then staying on for the rest of the day to be The Hand Maiden's help mate. Like she can't run the place on her own.

Neither was anywhere to be seen when some preposterously tall prick baled me up with a complaint about our unreliable checkouts. Well, doh. Tell me (and the rest of the world, for that matter) something new. The crap we use was crap when it was installed. Now it's antique crap. Rumours abound that they're working up plans for a refit. The betting is that what goes in will be a job lot picked up off the back of someone's van, but only after Tesco and the others have fingered it.

T'wasn't all doom and gloom today. Someone confided in someone who in turn gleefully reported to me that I scare him. Excellent. Turns out I scare the whole fucking lot of kiddies. Not enough so that they actually earn their pay, but scaring them at all is enough to brighten my day somewhat.

How Lovely to See You

We had security on the premises all day today. How pleasant. How reassuring. Unfortunately they've only come down because of an epidemic of high powered thieves. We're not talking kids nicking packs of chewing gum or crisps, we're talking pairs of experienced operators filling trolleys with top of the range alcohol, brand electronics, prime meat and wheeling the lot out of the store not via the checkouts.

We're suffering a plague of thieves.

We're also struggling to remain fully staffed; between 5:00 and 6:00 we were seriously struggling in the face of high customer numbers. One of them forced his way into the walk-in safe to get my attention, an act of fool hardiness that might, if I'd not blinked, resulted in him explaining himself to the armed response team that is supposed to be at my beck and call, without divulging the inner workings of our security. Our security was upstairs at the time and didn't come thundering down to my rescue.

Instead I had to sit about and mull over what had happened, for almost three hours, and work myself up into a fine old state over it. Even now I know I'm a bit on edge about it.