grah

So..

its like gone 4AM.. and I'm wide awake with what feels like a stampede trying to escape from my ear..

seems i've picked up ANOTHER sinus infection.. if only that doctor had actually listened to me, and my medical records on the operation I had a couple of years ago instead of going "OMFG BMI AM OVA 25!!!!!! NO OPERATE!!!"

Right..

Before I go into this, consider this a warning...

THE FOLLOWING MAY CAUSE OFFENCE, GO AGAINST YOUR PERSONAL OPINION OR NOT HAVE THE SAME POINT OF VIEW AS YOU HAVE.


All I can say to that is if you think the X Factor is super special awesome and cant bear anyone to say anything against it, dont open this post up fully.. and if you do, then get all self righteous and post some bitchy comment about how i dont know what i'm on about and you hope i die of something horrible etc dont be surprised if i delete the comment..

so without further ado...

Thoughts...

Wow.. what a shit week.

Spent monday night/tuesday/wednesday suffering from what might have been Norovirus.. went out thursday (hi sarah!) and came down late friday/saturday with a monster headcold..

so no updates this week so far..

figured i'd talk a bit about my plans for the coming week.. while drinking this lemsip and waiting for it to kick in so i can sleep without choking on muck running down my throat..

Day 1 - Monday

Today's big news is the sad passing of Leslie Nielson. the man always made me laugh with his deadpan delivery of completely crazy comments, takes a lot to be able to do that, and its a loss to us all that he's gone..


So in Job related news today i need to advise my debt management company of my redundancy, speak to citizens advice about some matters and book an MOT for my car.. wow first day of unemployment and already such a jet-set life..

Recently however, since the dawning realisation that I was gonna get canned began to sink in my creative urges have been increasing, why its almost as if the overwhelming pressure was affecting that aspect of my life..

I have several "proto-songs" in my head, little guitar tunes and half-lyrics, thankfully a little memory trick will help me recall them when I get the chance to expand upon them, and my dreams are reaching epic proportions in terms of creating writing materials..

recent dreams have included an incredibly dark psuedo gothic Victorian love story and some crazy epic superhero thing last night.. I'm gonna break down the basic synposis of the first one here because it was more coherent and suits an actual story more.

Attempt number one at updating via mobil

Attempt number one at updating via mobile... Not much to say really other than open university appears to be exceptionally expensive!! May look into local Unix courses and even getting financial aid to learn them.. I SHALL learn the one line of Unix that lets you take over the world!
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Right then, off we trot...

so today, friday the 26th of november, my job fires me.

its not really a random thing, there's been this whole economic downturn blahblahblah and that, and the department i'd been working in had been facing troubles due to bad choices made a long time ago.

This is the bit that gets me though. three and a half years ago I moved from a stable, full time 100% safe job to this department "to help out" and to learn more about the type of work that the company did. it was only ever meant to be temporary, and as the enormity of the task set me dawned on everyone, we realised one person couldnt do all that on their own in a few months..

in the end it took three of us a year.

I was shown the tools i had to use, and told what was wanted as an end product, that was it.. so off i went, beavering away, learning and adapting and dealing with ever-changing client demands (we want it THIS way... for 2 weeks, then we want it ANOTHER way.. for a week, now we want it THE WAY IT WAS, for a month..) and somehow managed to train 2 other people in how to do this along the way.

yes, i had help, yes i leaned heavily on the people i worked with for advice and skills.. but the core of that work was me.

So instead of going back to my old department at the end of that project, i was put on another one, to once again basically invent a way to quality check the data we were copying.. so off i went, beavering away with the tools and skills and methods i'd created for the previous project, did everything they asked me to do, trained 4 people in it (even literally wrote the book on how to do it...) and off we go.

two and a half year pass, the QC team in that time was also trained on outputting, the outputters were trained in QC and we all did our own little sections of the overall project..

The problem really began when we started getting someone else from the client asking for data.. one month we were asked to copy more data than we'd ever done before through the normal channels, and on top of that we had to copy about the same amount AS WELL, at the same time. We we given no leeway, it all had to be done, on time.

those 28 days, i worked 14-15 hour shifts, 7 days a week for 4 weeks solid, putting in 50 hours of overtime and was the only one in the QC team who did.. one of the outputters pulled some crazy hours with me but not quite as bad as i did.. but we managed it, just.. I was shattered, utterly exhausted.

my thanks for doing it? I was told off.

see, that should have been my first indication.. at that point i should have sat down and gone "whaaaa?" but i didnt.. yes i'd broken the rules by working more then 30 hours overtime in a single month, but if i hadnt done that, the work wouldnt have been done on time and i would have been in trouble..

After that my health declined.. I suffer from a fair few stress related illnesses and the insane pressure of that month coupled with no down time in it and no let up after it pretty much did me in. it'll be two years this march since then and i've not felt well since then.

So my sickness record went to crap, my work output went to crap.. i was tired and worn out and frankly struggled to keep up because it was always catch up.. in 2010 i've had a course of antibiotics roughly every 6 weeks because my immune system was fried and i caught everything going.. dispite letting my boss know the problems and that it was the stress levels i was experiencing causing it, he simply piled on the stress.. and in the end i was sent to a company GP, and warned that any further sickness would result in disciplinary action being taken against me.

Which leads all to the Redundancy..

See, the primary factors which they judged people on for this was productivity. ok they said it was "productivity and skills" but it boiled down to productivity.. of which mine was shot due to me being burned out.. coupled with the sickness time off.. which also went against me.. it left me in a situation where all the hard work i'd done in the past 3 and a half years counted for nothing compared to how much i'd produced in the last 6 months..

Bitter? does a catholic bear shit popes in the wood? frankly i feel stitched up..

But nothing can be done about it now, the new department forged from those not made redundant now appears to have its majority made up of yes-men and drones, who lack the knowledge, skills and sense to achieve the sorts of things we did in the past.. there's one or two who i know have the capability to do so, and who knows, maybe with those of us who thought, created and innovated that department into what it was out of the way now they'll step up and shine on their own.. but for the most part the production drones will still churn out sub-par sloppy work at high rates and shut down every time something "does not compute"...

To top all this off, I've had to stay silent and not warn a good friend of mine that all this was happening, because he went away on holiday the day before they announced this.. having to keep quiet, say nothing online that might "tip him off" about it has been eating me up inside.. I feel like i've let down a friend for a job that in the end didnt appreciate the skills i brought, never thanked me for the work i put in and chucked me out first legitimate chance they got..

simply put, i feel like i've been a bit of a cunt to my friend.



Well! thats the start of this blog then.. its reason for being.. i've kept blogs before, caused all kinds of rows and arguments and lost a lot of friends because of them.. because i speak my mind and refuse to just say whatever people want to hear..

i plan to keep a post of both the odd happenings in my brain and my soon to be ongoing job search and i try and locate somewhere willing to hire me.. I may even have to shave my epic beard.. there may be pics of that, you have been warned..


this'll probably be seen a few days after this initial posting.. i'll be quiet till then..