Diary of Yoda

06:00 am oh, my god! oh, my God! We have no staff. I rush about and issue a series of instructions that put everyone else in a flap. Why is that infuriating foreign woman looking still looking calm? Perhaps I have a hair out of place. I go upstairs as we are about to open to check my hair, my lipstick and file a slightly ragged nail.

07:00 am we manage to open thanks to all enormous effort I put in. No one understands how hard I work. I'm sure that foreign woman is laughing at me. The Maltese one will be in later. She loves me. 'He' has left me with several deliveries to manage; I go out and stack kitchen roll to help clear out the warehouse.

07:30 my hiaitus (?) hernia is playing up. I abandon the store and go home to take a tablet.

08:00 some of the staff are cross with me. I think the foreign one is amongst them but she is smiling so I cannot be certain. I don't understand why they are upset with me. My instructions are always crystal clear. I haven't done nothing to upset anyone! I don't know what that kontradictory word I caught the foreign one using means. Perhaps the Fat One knows what she's talking about when she says she needs to bring a dickshunrary. What ever it is one of them seems to be something that makes working with the foreign one easier.

I haven't checked my hair for hours.

We don't have either of the Sue's in. One is falling a part and sucks up to me so that's ok. The other one is Trouble and gives me the shits. I bet she doesnt' really have them; she just wants to get out and do some Christmas shopping.

09:00 oh, my God! The Maltese one is in and I haven't raked over the latest developments in Strictly Come Salvage My Jungle Career yet. That should soak up half an hour; even longer if I attempt to probe her on the question of Secret Santa Presents. That should upset the smug foreign one.

09:30 I have remembered another way of upsetting the foreign one - I have started to enter an order on her computer. I have told her I will be back in a few minutes I just need to check something; I will leave her machine tied up for the rest of the morning. That will free her up to some of the thousand crappy jobs I like to torment her with.

10:30 I must pup upstairs and check my hair, lippy and nails. While I am up there I'll phone mum and have a cup of coffee.

11:30 I don't think that anyone understands how hard I work. That warehouseman is so rude and now he is saying that he will go home at two rather than help with the big lunch-time delivery. Who does he think he is? I'm not interested in his excuses about no longer being warehouseman but head of greengrocery; who does he think he is?

12:00 Victory is mine. I have succeeded in upsetting the foreign one. I don't know how, but I have. I can always tell. She stops smiling. She is so moody! What ever it was that upset her happened while I was discussing with Bolshie Book Worm how she and I operate our British Home Stores store cards and the discounts we receive and the sale they're having today and how long I've had the card and what I did when I didn't get my discount and what they gave me when I complained and what I'm planning to buy when we go shopping this evening and ... excuse me while I draw breath ... and how I use it there and also at loads of other wonderful shops and what I got last year and what I will be buying my gorgeous grand-daughter for her birthday and... oh, is that the time. I've just remembered something very important.

12:30 Only another one and a half hours until my shift finishes. I haven't done my shopping yet. What is it I planned to buy? A yes. Plenty of time to do my shopping before my shift ends and I stop being paid to be here.

13:30 my gorgeous little grand-daughter is in and being pushed about the store by my lovely daughter-in-law. She is the most beautiful baby in the store right now and if I go out and accompany them about the store then lots of people will come up to us and be really nice. We could make that drag out until two when BBW arrives to take over.

14:05 thankfully BBW has arrived on time and for some reason the foreign one has just shot out the office door and gone upstairs. Perhaps she has the shits? The Maltese one isn't back yet, but I'm sure the foreign one will come back down stairs and deal with customer service, the telephones and the inept check-out operators until she gets back from lunch.

What a hectic day I've had. In since 6 in the morning and having to deal with that rude, obstinate man. As BBW says since he's no longer the warehouseman, he's just a general assistant and he has no right to speak to us in that way. The kitchen roll section is looking well stocked which just shows what can be accomplished when you give a section to someone competent and hard working.

In my fantasy the couple who were left standing at the customer service window at ten minutes past two will write to the Manage and complain about service quality and I will be able to point out the Mr Big Swinging Dick that the Foreign One simply walked off without a by-your-leave or making sure someone else would be in the office to deal with such enquiries, clocked out and went home without even saying good-bye.

She really is getting too big for her boots and it is quite outrageous that she is paid as much as a third of the amount I receive for doing all the work what I do and which no one ever gives me credit for.

I am peeved

I am peeved at spending an insufficiency of time in the company of Yoda and that is perverse. I practiced saying "I hereby ram my ticket to the Christmas Ball up your arse" yesterday evening and then no Yoda. By the time I finished my shift everyone else had put me in a totally vile mood; I could have taken the head from someone's shoulders, anyone's shoulders. Still no Yoda. I feel cheated.

I must write more words without crashing to a halt short of the tape. The temptation to write move directly to stop without passing through the tedious business of writing another 5,000 or so words is intoxicating. I have a piece of paper with those last words sketched out. I must not. I must not.

Long overdue

I haven't shared a Yoda Moment for some time because, by happy chance our paths have crossed only very infrequently recently.

Yesterday she was on fine form. She loves Christmas and she seems to derive particular enjoyment from running the Secret Santa rigmarole that is undertaken each 'festive season'. As a concept Secret Santa was unfamiliar until I worked in The City and there it was a thing done within teams. There was a £5 limit and the idea was to buy a token and therefore meaningful gift.

In this place the management and admin support are the team and the limit is £20, which is up £5 on last year. I refused to participate last year and I've refused to take part this year: knowing my luck I would draw Yoda.

Having spurned the chance to take part I'm now prey to mixed feelings. On the one hand I'm not bitter at having to spend that much money on someone I detest. On the other I've deprived myself of the joy of knowing I'd slipped a crisp £20 note in her envelope; something which she would hate because she loves presents while also leaving her unable to drop poisonous questions as to the value of her gift.

And if she just once more in my presence points out to everyone else there that I'm the one mean-spirited person who isn't getting involved I shall tell her to take my ticket to the staff Christmas dinner (which I'm already dreading in case I end up near her) and ram it up her arse.

I hate Christmas and I don't need help from Yoda to do it.

An entirely nasty business

That gobby Maltese Terrier ran, as I suspected she would, to Yoda with tales from the crypt. Perhaps not straightforwardly. Perhaps Yoda took the mediteranean temptress to one side and confided 'not knowing what to do about her' and 'why' and the yappy rat let her in on some of what I'd been saying.

Any ho, the upshot was a seriously scary bonding moment, or I think that's what Yoda was attempting. She actually apologised for something, exhibited signs of hurt that I hadn't gone directly to her with my issue and offered assurance of a 'lack of intent'.

Today's best buddy is tomorrow's dart board. Sorry I don't buy it Yoda, but next time you need someone to stand on it is still as likely to be me as anyone else.

Darwin in the workplace

There is absolutely nothing wrong with what is currently going on, apparantly. The Big Swinging Dick is the supreme Darwinian manager - this is pure laissez-faire management. Let 'em loose. Except these are the hounds of hell and while they're sorting themselves out everyone else is buffetted and more or less entirely ineffectual.

The handmaiden will admit that she, the earliest appointee had the benefit of his careful attention during her early days in post and the most thorough grounding in the broadest range of elements of the role.

With each successive appointment the amount of attention he's given to ensuring the appointee is properly equipped to perform the role he expects her to carry out has decreased markedly to the point where the Bolshie Book Worm was essentially given the title and the pay rise and left to work it out as she went. She's learned the scope of her role through curt disciplinary memoranda usually left about for any number of people to read before she gets to it.

Typically she only learns how to do something the correct way after she's done her best and ended up doing things not the way he'd have it.

What makes this worse for her is that to some extent this is nothing more than personal preference (I feel like I've been here, and I probably have).

In the middle there's Yoda. How Yoda secured her promotion is a little mystery. Her strengths such as they are lie in the application of hair dye, bullying and paper shuffling.

She does have one other quality, though, and it is what's kept her in post: a remarkable capacity for shifting the blame. Her instinct for self-preservation is peerless, at least on site.

And so if I had to put money on any particular individual to be the last one standing it would be her.

Yet another Yoda thing

Among the many drawbacks of knowing and working with Yoda is an increasing familiarity with the tone and content of the Daily Express. Yoda dines voraciously on an undiluted diet of Diana conspiracies and the McCann saga, and the Daily Express is the conveyor belt for such trash.

Yoda has developed a number of work avoidance strategies. She has a remarkable capacity for trivia and left undirected can happily spend an entire shift worrying over something that makes not one penny's difference to the bottom line provided the effort results in something visible and measurable as an outcome. She'll cheerfully spend at least an hour of her shift on personal matters, when she'd tell tales and engineer the suspension of anyone less senior behaving in the same manner.

Notwithstanding the warning signs about the store that the telephone system of for business calls only she hide away in the warehouse and call all her family of an evening and as noted before she'll send staff off site to run errands for her.

In addition to speculating over the McCann business and worrying about Poor Diana there's what's rivetting on television to be gone over - a particular favourite is Strictly Come Mincing, but pretty much anything involving minor celebrities will do.

The next thing to do before getting on with any actual work is go over every minor illness and ailment she, her mother, and her husband are currently suffering from, with side references on slow days to something or other her strapping once nearly was seriously ill with. Grand daughter progress report has to be filed and if someone she likes is in the office their ailments, and those of their family must be raked over. This is hard work, and requires time to do properly. On a good day that can take Yoda right up to the time it is safe for her to hide out in the warehouse.

If really pushed she'll put out kitchen roll. That's her speciality on the shop floor. Kitchen towel and loo roll. When it comes to hard yards on the shop floor there's nobody like Yoda, especially down the paper products aisle.

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.

Clearing the backlog, part two

As mentioned I had to work the Friday shift with Yoda and it was not a pleasant experience.

I walked into the middle of a conversation between her and the Bolshie Book Worm, being conducted at full volume so I walked out onto the shop floor - and I stayed there until the pair emerged from the office. The conversation was work related in that it involved a couple of the less capable members of staff (employment as a 'care in the community' type arrangements).

Unfortunately after BBW clocked off Yoda came back in and entered into another protracted conversation with the Maltese Terrier this time. It was about holidays at first, then about hair, finally about depilation and their respective degrees of hairiness or otherwise. I tried ever so hard not to hear a word they were saying but I did catch Yoda's claim that her eyebrows no longer need to be plucked.

I'd be worried.

I couldn't bear it and left, drifing about on the shop floor as long as possible. Eventually I spotted her bottle blond barnet at the far end of the store and new it was safe to return to my desk. I was able to watch from the monitor as she engaged our uniformed security guard in a long conversation. A very long conversation. I'm not sure it was well advised to distract the security guard, but she's paid more than me - what could I possibly know.

Eventually she moved on. A little while later she came in having sorted out that her elderly mother was not, after all, entitled to a refund having been overcharged on something or other that should have been on offer. No mums (sic) had made a mistake.

Having covered depilation, perming, the new series of Strictly Come Dancing (that was it! - I knew there'd been a discussion about something on TV) and her mother's bill Yoda was finally at liberty to get on with what was the most important matter of the day: Dog Food.

Not filling the shelves of the pet food aisle, though. Oh, no. Yoda's pet pooch can only eat certain foods, many things 'make her toilet go funny'. I think Yoda means, here, that a lot of food gives her pampered pet the runs. Yoda faced a dilemma though; how to get to the vet before it closed when The Visit of the great and good might still happen.

The Maltese Terrier suggested getting one of the staff to run down to the bottom end of town on her behalf. So that's what happened. In essence Yoda purloined a company asset when she diverted an employee on paid time to run an errand for her.

Yoda moments

Yoda has a new hairstyle. Her bottle blonde locks are currently being style in tumbling loose ringlets falling to her shoulders. This is a ridiculous look in anyone over the age of two and a half.

Yoda reaches retirement age in the next decade.

Politics

My understanding of the theory is sound and my ability to analyse is well honed, but my application of its tenets is all over the fucking shop.

I have supervisor who could make my life unpleasant and seriously piss me off with a little gently delivered sugar-coated humiliation.

So why have I apparently initiated a one-woman campaign to nail her to the cross? Who knows. Yesterday I wantonly drew Yoda's attention to the exceptionally risky state of the safe - once her territory, now that of Paper-Shuffler-in-Chief.

Today I came in to take responsibility for the cash situation in the business. I did it. All on my own. From beginning to end, without asking for help from anyone. Second day in. Not too bad. Even spotted the deliberate mistake and worked out exactly how and why things had gone wrong.

The politically astute thing to do when PS-i-C rang to check how I was getting on and help me over the hurdle she expected me to have balked at was to witter "Oh, thank you so much for calling, yes I've managed everything else but there's just this one small thing and I've done this and I've done that and I can't seem to make it work out so thank goodness you've phoned. Blah, blah."

Did I do that? Did I Hell.

She'd hardly opened her gob before I explained that I'd finished, by building my very own ladder to get over that hurdle and this is what it looks like and isn't it perfect and aren't I clever. Oh Dear.

What a sad little show off I am.

That wasn't enough for me though. My monstrous ego trip (that's monstrous ego, not monstrous trip) led me into regurgitating the previous days' safe criticism and proposing a solution and ramming it through which preempted PS-i-C's second call to help me through the treacherous shoals of my new responsibilities. I'm the treacherous one.

Done that already dear. Leave me too it. This job's a breeze. Ta ta.

Yoda special

Yoda's night to cop the flack with this post.

Happily I've developed the knack of fending her off by entering into what are on my part at least entirely bogus bonding moments. Such as that which we shared over The Lake House which, IMHO, is one of the saddest squanderings of however minutes it consumed of my life I've ever wasted. What a total pile of drivel. Keanu Reeves is quite fine in Speed and was quite OK in the first of the Matrix trilogy. And apart from that?* And I haven't been able to stomach that woman in anything she's been in apart from Speed.

I've digressed.

Yoda thinks the film wonderful, so I enthused over it. And terrible actress that I am yet she is so dim she failed utterly to see through the sham. She thinks we're soul mates.

Just as well as we had to spend yesterday evening in one another's company. Dealing with irate customers who have sons who have paid over the odds for their bananas and young antipodeans who've had parking warning notices gaffer taped to their vehicles because they've used our (2 hour max.) car park as their parking lot - being too tight fisted to pay the going rate to pay in the railway station car park. Probably New Zealanders. Between them Stroppy Mum and Bolshie Kiwi kept her out of my hair for a good hour and a half.

Thank you. Though I could have done without having to endure her wittering "Oh God, why do I get them?" interminably.

*On a point of order here I must concede that KRs performance in Much Ado About Nothing was marginally less terrible than that of Denzil (Am I Not Fabulous?) Washington. That doesn't make him a good actor. And neither was a bad in that film as Michael Keaton who was so awful he was wonderful, being so quite utterly shakespearean in his awfulness. And he wasn't as bad as Branagh's ex-wife in whom, as an actress, I've yet to discover a redeeming feature. But she, unfortunately, wasn't entertainingly awful.

Several things

This is I suspect the first in a series of posts in which I do my utmost to get myself into deep shit, which is pretty much what I did yesterday and then again today, but forgot to recap on.

First up the Big Swinging Dick was about when I arrived yesterday. There were too many people in the office, including him and Yoda. Actually that was it. And the conversation turned to pay packets when the pay slips arrived via the internal mail. He's re-qualified as a First Aider and receives a supplement. He and Yoda shared a management bonding moment which revolved around how their pay has not risen at the same pace as that of those at the bottom of the food chain who 'enjoy' a pay rate at or very marginally above minimum wage - ie, mugs like me. On and on they joshed. On and on I maintained my grim silence.

"Ew, she's not going to rise to the bait", joshed Big Swinging. "Henny's not saying anything", trilled Yoda. No I'm fucking not. Not for your amusement, anyway. You two are the clowns in this outfit. Entertain yourselves.

Sexy Steve and the Slightly Pale Hallows

What a bloody palaver. One of the Wet Ones took today off as leave to read That Book. He went over to Xville to get his copy at midnight or one minute past. The police officer girlfriend of someone else had her copy delivered to her home at a similar time - the boyfriend has been warned to stay away until she's finished it.

The world seems to be divided into those who are immune to the infection and those who have totally succumbed. To my slight surprise the Bolshevik Bookworm hasn't stepped between the pages. I was slightly less surprised to discover that Yoda has no idea what the books are all about. Then again I'd me rather more surprised to discover that she had actually read a book. We have two copies and I've got about a quarter of the way through.

They were delivered into the store yesterday afternoon, minus the display stand we were supposed to be using and which was supposed to have been brought to us by Parcelforce earlier in the day. Also the promotional material announcing that the book IS on sale - to replace the promotional material announcing the imminent arrival of That Book - couldn't be found and I strongly suspect that one of the Wet Ones has taken it home and put it up on its bedroom wall.

So there I was locked away in my little office with five boxes of the most sought after piece of execrable 'literature' to come into existence since the last HP novel was released. All evening. I could have read the thing then, and no-one would have been the wiser since the BB had opened on of the boxes to confirm the contents and opened one of the inner linings so that she could torment the Wet Ones with a glimpse of the cover waved from the office door.

Sexy Steve had confirmed that the book was on its way to us earlier in the day, I think. It isn't always easy to tell with Steve. The only thing normal about him, as far as I am concerned, is that he fancies men. I mean, I do, why shouldn't he. I don't fancy women. Why should he. The problem straight men have with men finding them attractive baffles me. Don't they wish to be found attractive? Don't they find themselves attractive? Do they consider their wives/girlfriends sick for finding them attractive? On that last point I think the answer probably actually is, yes. But then most men don't think much of woman which is why it is alright for them sleep with men rather than women and do the things men expect of them. Now that I've tangled myself up in a knot I shall move on.

Steve sent an email out yesterday which mentioned a couple of Queens and a girl called Dorothy and we tentatively concluded that the HP book might be on its way to us. A short while later we took a call from a very slightly contrite and less deranged sounding Sexy Steve that sort of confirmed what we'd sort of deduced. Our suspicion is that Steve had had a rocket fired up his arse for distributing utter gibberish on the company intranet which would be a breach of any IT non-misuse policy we might happen to have. Personally I think that any such reprimand would have been harsh no matter how much Steve might have enjoyed it - everyone else has been using the intranet for the distribution of nonsense; why should Steve be singled out for censure?

So we got the book out after closing time yesterday and printed out some in-house promo. stuff. As I said we've got two copies in the house now. I dragged the offspring out of bed and up the road at Sparrow's Fart to buy them.

The little Tesco over the road, into which we popped for a couple of bits I'd forgotton is flogging the book at 1p more than us or £4.99 less than us - if you spend £50 or more. This gesture would be more gallant if there were £40.00 or more worth of other goods in our micro Tesco worth purchasing.

More anon concerning Mighty T and also an update on the Anal Fistula situation.