Christmas and work

Sometimes I wonder about the advantages of being yourself, or how anyone can even be him or herself when there is so much influence from everyone else, even subconsciously. I guess that’s one of the reasons why teenagers are so keen to fit in a lot of the time, because they are still discovering who they are /random thought

I had a lovely Christmas, thanks for asking It wasn’t anything particularly special, and yes we all got far fewer presents this year, but it also meant they were a lot more thoughtful, and I can use every single one of them and will do willingly. New Year will probably suck because I can’t go anywhere due to lack of transport, but Laura is supposed to be coming to visit me which will be good.

I’m back at work now; first day back was today and the office was dead. There wasn’t even a receptionist around: our usual one, Janet, has been off ill, and there has been a subsequent stream of temps, all of which I’ve called ‘Other Janet’, topped off with a guy who I’ve nicknamed ‘Manet’ – his real name is Matt. So I took advantage of the situation to take loads of stationery, since there’s always something stealing my pens (I know my life is thrilling these days). I had to recruit help in the form of a woman who I’m now sharing an office with as our teams have merged. It was ridiculously complicated – you need a key hidden in a drawer to open another drawer which opens the stationery cupboard. Yet the cupboard with all the private mail is left unlocked next to it. It’s beyond my understanding, but I guess it shows where my co-workers’ priorities (and my own) lie!

Work these days has got a lot more complicated as there is a crazy amount of managerial strategy-ing going on. I do my copy, my manager alters it, her manager alters that…sometimes I wonder why she just doesn’t do it herself. I feel bad for Brad and Lee though, as they now have about 15 people looking at every homepage they do for every website (8 a week) and giving their corrections and opinions. I’m not entirely convinced this is helpful, and I’m not entirely convinced that using a slightly different shade for the background of a temporary banner will suddenly mean people rush out and buy hundreds of the product, but hey, what do I know. If 15 people have to discuss it and give feedback on it, that’s up to them.

The worst thing about it is that the smallest thing gets snowballed into a giant catastrophe blown out of all proportion. Trust me on this one, if I’m not that bothered, it really isn’t worth getting bothered about, as most people who know me tell me I overract, should let things go more easily, etc. etc. And it’s true. So if I’m pretty laid back about it, the average person wouldn’t give a flying shit monkey. But yeah, you’d think world war three was breaking out or something. Hopefully once we all settle down together they’ll realise that our team’s jobs are like this. A lot of things go wrong a lot of the time, we don’t always know why they happen, yes we do know who to talk to about it and usually we can figure out how to fix it, but no, even if we make the changes now, they probably won’t be live for a few days. There isn’t anything more we can do. No, there really isn’t. Yes, we have made all the right changes.

Just yesterday I felt like I’d been away for months, yet by the end of today it felt like I’d never left. Yay?