Shut your big yap!

Man, I hate it when people complain about things that can not be changed, or that they have the power to change, yet do not.

The Hippie (see previous posts) is one such person.

When I last posted on our office work assignments, I think I mentioned that us newbies are being rotated through the office, to give us all a break from being on the phones.

This has now changed. The newbies and one other older staff member are now located on the phones permanently. The main reason for this is because of office costings. The office that our team is located in is administered and budgeted by a business line coded the the actual physical office. This office is apparently over staffed by 5 people.

Our phone team is part of a larger team situated in a number of offices, and is therefore administered by a business line that is separate from the line of the physical office we are located in. Our phone team is not over staffed. In fact we are reportedly going to be growing.

So, in placing us newbies permanently into the phone roles, the office manager is protecting us from any possible redistribution of staff in the rest of the office.

The Hippie can not, or will not, see this. When she heard that we were no longer to be swapped around the rest of the office, her first reaction to proclaim that she did not know how much longer she could last on the phones. She did not want to be a "Battery Hen" for ever, and let just about everyone know it.

There was no acknowledgement of the fact that this situation may just save her job. She can only see the negative aspects of the situation and how they directly affect her.

Now, I am not too fond of being on the phones either, but I realise that someone has to be on them, and that by putting us on them, the office manager is guaranteeing that we will still be here in the near future. The Hippie just needs to get over it, and see what she can constructively do about changing her circumstances, not just winge and bitch to everyone who will listen.

She has also noticed that her flex time is in a negative balance of over 12 hours. That's 12 hours of time that she owes our work. She keeps complaining about it, concerned about how she will make up the time.

The annoying thing for me is that I have to listed to it, knowing full well that it is her own doing. First of all, she has taken a flex day when she didn't have the full hours in flex to cover it. Second, we are rostered to start at 8:30am. In the last two months, I have not once seen her come into the office before 8:50am. Third, and last: we get allocated an hour for lunch. The Hippie regularly takes at least 1hr 10mins for lunch.

Most times that she complains about it, I remind her why she has this negative flex time.

But this is what I mean. The Hippie just wants something to complain about, and doesn't want to look at how she can fix it, or acknowledge that there is no way to fix and she should just get on with it.

So either she fixes it herself, and then stops complaining, or she recognises that it can not be fixed right now, and she just has to deal with it, and stops complaining.

Either way, she just needs to "Shut her big YAP"

DPS

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Apparently this is true, although I don't expect anyone to come gushing forth with exultations about the joy they feel at my return to blogging.

Yes! I am back.

Now I realise that people will not have been waiting with baited breath for my next posting, but I do feel a certain amount of guilt for not posting for so long.

I have previously made reference to finding myself with not enough time to do things. Well, I am now at the stage of working my way out of this phase. Towards the end of last month, I was very busy. I was doing my usual full time work in the public service, but most evenings I was moonlighting for a few hours in another job. I won't go into specifics, but the area that I was moonlighting in is the area in which I would spend all my free time, if I could. But that issue is for another time.

What I found is that the time that I usually used for catching up on things, doing housework, looking after the kids, reading email, posting on my blog, etc., had disappeared! I also found that a hard day of mentally draining work, followed by a few hours of mentally energising, but physically draining work, was leaving me with no energy to do anything at all when I got home. I would get home, reheat my dinner (that was lovingly cooked by my wife hours before), eat said dinner, collapse on couch and fall asleep in front of the TV.

That was pretty much my life for the end of October and the beginning of November. Wake up, eat, work eat, work, work, eat sleep.

Anyway, I am through that period, but I still find my energy levels not what they used to be. I am gradually getting back to normal, but it may take a while.

So, essentially, I have not posted in such a long while, because I have been a lazy shit. Which I apologise for.

I will be resuming fairly regular posts from tomorrow. I have a fair bit of information to share with everyone about the Hippie at work, and also a few issues I wish to vent, and use my masses of readers as a sounding board.

Cheers,

DPS