I had to go to a meeting for work on Tuesday in Birmingham of all places. Muttering awful curses against people who arrange meetings to start at 1.30pm when I've got a nearly 3 hour journey to get home afterwards, I said to my manager that I was intending to go to Birmingham early so that I had time to have lunch before the meeting started, rather than grabbing a sandwich in passing. He agreed so I set off from the office in Spalding at 8.40am to catch the 9.00am train. It was a nice sunny day and all was right with the world - even if I wasn't looking forward to the meeting.
I arrived on time in Peterborough where I had to change to a train for Birmingham. But the 9.54am train to Birmingham was cancelled! Curses! So I ended up sitting on Peterborough station for an hour waiting for the next train. I spoke to a very helpful lady at the train information kiosk to find out which of the corresponding afternoon trains had also been cancelled - after all if a train hasn't gone up it can't go back again. Fortunately it wasn't the one I was intending to catch.
So I ended up grabbing a tuna salad sandwich - instead of having a nice relaxed sit down lunch. Grhh!!
The meeting was not good news but as I'm not allowed to talk about it I'll say no more. It was interesting to meet someone from another office who I last saw about 25 years ago when I still lived in Norfolk! That's the thing about working for a big organisation if you've been out of your own office and met other staff members some sort of serendipity ensures you will meet them again - usually where you least expect them. Probably because it's always the same people who get dragooned into attending meetings.
The journey back was better than the one going as I got back to Spalding just in time to catch the 6.00pm bus home as the meeting finished about an hour early.
Then today - again on a work front - our manager e-mailed us a memo which had us all saying 'What?? You must be joking!! Which planet do these people live on? Where do they get their information from and no one consulted me!!' Yes probably typical conversations in any office in any large organisation whether public sector or private. And no we weren't criticising our manager - just the source of the memo.
I know I mentioned a couple of months ago that we were getting a new manager but it looks like we shan't keep him much longer as he's moving on to something else. Now if people have a few days off they're likely to come back and ask who today's manager is!! It doesn't exactly make for a very settled environment in which to work.
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5 comments:
Sorry to hear things are dodgy at work - sending hugs and hope they settle down soon.
A
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Thanks Anne. It's probably a case of - early retirement, here I come, though at least that would give me time to write!!
Oh *£$$%^ ! (insert word of choice)
What is it that's so problematical about communication? Technology is available to avoid everyone having to charge about the country for a two hour meeting (or whatever), and the memo is clearly an instance where somebody in upper management should have come and talked to you all rather than just dumping it on your manager. In our place we sometimes find things in the media first, which is not helpful.
Hugs and crossed fingers for the best possible outcome!
N
Communication - yes tell me about it! Considering they can organise telephone conferences at the drop of a hat I fail to see why they couldn't have done it this time. But we seem to have gone into cloak and dagger mode with everything being marked 'in confidence'. Thanks for the good wishes folks - I am not down hearted as we are used to such storms where I work.
N - know what you mean about the media as well - we suffer from that problem too.
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