Finally, I'm partly legit.
Security came through with my pass - so now I can actually access the office without banging on the door and hoping someone will break the rules and come to let me in. Still don't have my humungous national database card, or any of the correct permissions/desktop icons to enable me to do my job, but at least I can be in the office and not left out in the corridor.
My contract is being re-drafted to reflect my actual job/hours/conditions, my pre-planned days off have been authorised (COVEN OUTING IS A GO!!!), my badge is being re-made to show my correct job title - so that's all good.
Also what's good is, if today is anything to go by, at the end of the contract I should be an Excel wizard. The project involves the use of some really complicated stuff, involving pivots and massive amounts of formulae, among other things. I'm determined to make my self-imposed exile count, so I'm soaking up the opportunities as they present themselves. The person I'm working with is the Gandalf of Excel - and a VERY good teacher. She's 22 and she doesn't, unlike the Butterball, patronise. She's also not an eater of mug pasta with puke sauce. This pleases me greatly.
I really think, all fuckwittery aside, that this was a good move for me - although I AM looking forward to going home tomorrow!
Thursday 28 March 2019
Wednesday 27 March 2019
You shall not pass!
Today's fuckwittery;
The special key passes I need to give me unfettered access to a humungous national data base are still being processed, despite the request being sent yesterday morning - with the correct authorisation. Begs the question - they knew I was starting on 26th, why were the passes only requested yesterday?
I still have no personal log in or passwords, despite the request being sent on Monday, when I was being talked at in the crematorium room. Again, me coming to the office to start work shouldn't have come as any sort of surprise..
The bank staff blokeys who started in the same department yesterday already have EVERYTHING they need. They are receiving the same training as me, but they can do theirs in real time on a live system.
My photo ID badge was taken by security yesterday evening so that they could, overnight, encode me a door entry key for the office. This process should take around 12 hours, and I dropped mine off at 5pm yesterday. Wearing the correct badge is mandatory, as is having the correct entry card for the swipey door entry thing in the corridor, next to the hand sanitiser thing. I have now, only the plastic shell of mine and a lanyard. I have to keep the shell tucked down inside my clothes, with just the lanyard showing. God knows what will happen if I'm challenged. Other staff are not permitted to open the office door for a colleague - we all have to use the key card. The new card was supposed to be coded and issued within about 12 hours - Security have now had it for 24 and counting, and I was told they were too busy overnight to do it, so I might not even get it tomorrow. Not sure at all how busy hospital security people can be, tbh. Obviously too busy to stick a card in to a coding machine and press a button. They could do that while the kettle's boiling for their evening cuppa...or while they're stuffing down a pie.
I STILL haven't signed my contract or been able to speak to the right people about it, so I still haven't sorted out the contract hours discrepancy, nor the discrepancies between my paperwork and my badge/job title/DBS certificate. Apart from that, I did actually do some work today, buoyed up by some jelly sweets and coconut biscuits brought in by someone who'd been on holiday and whose name I've already forgotten. I think she's called Fossi or something.
The child who is teaching me is a little patronising butterball, with a voice like a cheesewire. She seems to live on low-fat toffee yoghurt and Belvita biscuits. In fact, every time I walked past her desk, she was stuffing her face with something. AND for lunch, she had a macaroni cheese mug shot, which smelled of puke. I could still smell it when I left at 5pm. If she told me once that she went to uni, and how much teaching experience she had, she told me fifty times. She's only about 25, if she's that. How much experience can she have had of anything? Still, I'm biting my tongue. i know I don't play well with others, so it's my mission to improve that - at least until the end of the contract. I thanked her prettily for helping me today. I shall probably do it again tomorrow, too.
Officially, I STILL don't ''know'' where the ''facilities'' are. As this fact is something that I am required to ''sign off'' on my training portfolio - presumably after being officially taken there - I'm not quite sure what to make of that.
On the plus side, though, the viburnum is fragrantly blooming out along the roadside, and Mum made faggots, peas and mash for supper for me and dad. I'm cooking tomorrow, in lieu of paying rent.
The special key passes I need to give me unfettered access to a humungous national data base are still being processed, despite the request being sent yesterday morning - with the correct authorisation. Begs the question - they knew I was starting on 26th, why were the passes only requested yesterday?
I still have no personal log in or passwords, despite the request being sent on Monday, when I was being talked at in the crematorium room. Again, me coming to the office to start work shouldn't have come as any sort of surprise..
The bank staff blokeys who started in the same department yesterday already have EVERYTHING they need. They are receiving the same training as me, but they can do theirs in real time on a live system.
My photo ID badge was taken by security yesterday evening so that they could, overnight, encode me a door entry key for the office. This process should take around 12 hours, and I dropped mine off at 5pm yesterday. Wearing the correct badge is mandatory, as is having the correct entry card for the swipey door entry thing in the corridor, next to the hand sanitiser thing. I have now, only the plastic shell of mine and a lanyard. I have to keep the shell tucked down inside my clothes, with just the lanyard showing. God knows what will happen if I'm challenged. Other staff are not permitted to open the office door for a colleague - we all have to use the key card. The new card was supposed to be coded and issued within about 12 hours - Security have now had it for 24 and counting, and I was told they were too busy overnight to do it, so I might not even get it tomorrow. Not sure at all how busy hospital security people can be, tbh. Obviously too busy to stick a card in to a coding machine and press a button. They could do that while the kettle's boiling for their evening cuppa...or while they're stuffing down a pie.
I STILL haven't signed my contract or been able to speak to the right people about it, so I still haven't sorted out the contract hours discrepancy, nor the discrepancies between my paperwork and my badge/job title/DBS certificate. Apart from that, I did actually do some work today, buoyed up by some jelly sweets and coconut biscuits brought in by someone who'd been on holiday and whose name I've already forgotten. I think she's called Fossi or something.
The child who is teaching me is a little patronising butterball, with a voice like a cheesewire. She seems to live on low-fat toffee yoghurt and Belvita biscuits. In fact, every time I walked past her desk, she was stuffing her face with something. AND for lunch, she had a macaroni cheese mug shot, which smelled of puke. I could still smell it when I left at 5pm. If she told me once that she went to uni, and how much teaching experience she had, she told me fifty times. She's only about 25, if she's that. How much experience can she have had of anything? Still, I'm biting my tongue. i know I don't play well with others, so it's my mission to improve that - at least until the end of the contract. I thanked her prettily for helping me today. I shall probably do it again tomorrow, too.
Officially, I STILL don't ''know'' where the ''facilities'' are. As this fact is something that I am required to ''sign off'' on my training portfolio - presumably after being officially taken there - I'm not quite sure what to make of that.
On the plus side, though, the viburnum is fragrantly blooming out along the roadside, and Mum made faggots, peas and mash for supper for me and dad. I'm cooking tomorrow, in lieu of paying rent.
Tuesday 26 March 2019
Learning about E...
E learning. The art of staring at a computer screen for up to seven hours on two days, whilst trawling through multiple choice exercises, clicking here, adding information there, reading screeds and screeds of information and, finally, after you've successfully completed your seven hours of E learning in front of a screen, being made to book to go on another two mandatory seven hour ''face-to-face'' courses on EXACTLY THE SAME SUBJECTS...that's what they do to you at Fuckwittery Inc..
Yesterday, a morning in a room resembling nothing less than a crematorium chapel, hung with grey, pleated floor-to-ceiling curtains setting off the fake wood walls and ripe with the smell of new carpet and corporate upholstery, we listened, politely, to talks on governance, spiritual welfare, hand-washing, charity involvement, Trust values, the Client Experience. A short break for some tea and a pack of biscuits whilst being bombarded on all sides by Union reps, academic librarians, charity chuggers. In the afternoon, in an airless room in the very bowels of the building, nine modules (each module containing up to five sub-modules) of E learning to complete; fire safety, health and safety, infection control, corporate governance, equal opportunities, data protection, child protection and preventing radicalisation. We even learnt how to wash our hands.
Lots of information, probably all of it useful to someone in the room, but certainly not me. I'm not a clinician - most of the modules were skewed that way. I'm not even going to be having patient contact.
I thought, as I stumbled out into the sunshine at 4pm, that that was it. Tomorrow (which was today), I would be starting my new job.
Nope. Today, I spent another seven hours learning E. Different E, but E just the same. I had a list of modules to complete. There were seven. Within those seven, the modules were LEGION. I lost count, but I practically filled a notebook with aide memoires...
Tomorrow, I have an orientation day. Perhaps, tomorrow, I'll find out who my colleagues are going to be, and where my desk is, and where the canteen might be, and where the loos are, and where I get a lanyard for my ID badge. Or perhaps not. Maybe there will just be more Es to learn. How many more Es can there be to learn? I'm only in post for six months...
Yesterday, a morning in a room resembling nothing less than a crematorium chapel, hung with grey, pleated floor-to-ceiling curtains setting off the fake wood walls and ripe with the smell of new carpet and corporate upholstery, we listened, politely, to talks on governance, spiritual welfare, hand-washing, charity involvement, Trust values, the Client Experience. A short break for some tea and a pack of biscuits whilst being bombarded on all sides by Union reps, academic librarians, charity chuggers. In the afternoon, in an airless room in the very bowels of the building, nine modules (each module containing up to five sub-modules) of E learning to complete; fire safety, health and safety, infection control, corporate governance, equal opportunities, data protection, child protection and preventing radicalisation. We even learnt how to wash our hands.
Lots of information, probably all of it useful to someone in the room, but certainly not me. I'm not a clinician - most of the modules were skewed that way. I'm not even going to be having patient contact.
I thought, as I stumbled out into the sunshine at 4pm, that that was it. Tomorrow (which was today), I would be starting my new job.
Nope. Today, I spent another seven hours learning E. Different E, but E just the same. I had a list of modules to complete. There were seven. Within those seven, the modules were LEGION. I lost count, but I practically filled a notebook with aide memoires...
Tomorrow, I have an orientation day. Perhaps, tomorrow, I'll find out who my colleagues are going to be, and where my desk is, and where the canteen might be, and where the loos are, and where I get a lanyard for my ID badge. Or perhaps not. Maybe there will just be more Es to learn. How many more Es can there be to learn? I'm only in post for six months...
Monday 25 March 2019
The Boomerang Kid...
Well, it's happened. At the ripe old age of...well, if you know me, you know how old I am...I have officially taken on a title more usually reserved for millennials. I am, for the next six months at least, that most sneered at of creatures; the ''boomerang kid''.
I'm back in my old bedroom at the family home.
It's a means to an end. Before anyone thinks I'm suddenly single for some reason, disabuse yourself, please. Mr A is safely still in my life, thank the gods, but remains in Sussex. After being shockingly and unceremoniously dumped by an employer last August (no notice, and after 6 years of employment), I've given up working for myself and have taken a rather nice job with Fuckwittery Inc.. It's only a 6 month contract, but none the worse for that. However, it's full-time and I didn't want to commute, so I've moved back in with my parents for the duration. I'll go home at weekends. Mr A is cool with it. He's already ''owned'' the bed and besides, it's not as though we're joined at the hip or anything. He's been without me before; I had a year studying at Leith's in London, a period working away in Bermuda, fourteen months in Belgium - and he's often worked away. It works for us. We look on the separations as a bit of a re-boot.
I'm not sure how it will pan out. It's odd being back. I have to get my head around having lived away from here for more years than I care to remember. I have to get used to being a (sort of) child again. I have to get past the idea that I feel I have to ask permission, or let people know why I am (or I'm not) doing things - don't get me wrong, it's certainly not expected, but it's still someone else's house and not mine. I have to get past the self-imposed guilt of not wanting to sit and watch television downstairs, keeping company. Do they care that I don't want to do that every night? Probably not, but it's an odd feeling. When I was considering taking the job, we did have a conversation about mutual expectations were I to move in - it was the grown-up thing to do, but I'm the eldest child and I still have that goody-goody sensible chip firmly embedded, despite my best efforts at prying it out of my psyche. I suppose it all comes down, in the end, to mutual respecting of space, and recognising that we all do things differently.
My parents are pretty cool. It'll be fine. And the lovely ''children'' next door are allowing me to pirate off their internet, which is an unexpected bonus. The modern age has not yet caught up with Lord and Lady Oakwood, and this house is normally a technology-free zone - although I do have a cunning plan to change that. We have lent the Old Folk a tablet -and my mission, which I have chosen to accept, is to get them confidently onto the bloody thing, and off the Cobbled Highway, by the time I return home in September. So mote it be...
So here I am, resurrecting the blog from my cosy (and rent-free-at-their-insistence) bedsit. Do please stop by from time to time...
I'm back in my old bedroom at the family home.
It's a means to an end. Before anyone thinks I'm suddenly single for some reason, disabuse yourself, please. Mr A is safely still in my life, thank the gods, but remains in Sussex. After being shockingly and unceremoniously dumped by an employer last August (no notice, and after 6 years of employment), I've given up working for myself and have taken a rather nice job with Fuckwittery Inc.. It's only a 6 month contract, but none the worse for that. However, it's full-time and I didn't want to commute, so I've moved back in with my parents for the duration. I'll go home at weekends. Mr A is cool with it. He's already ''owned'' the bed and besides, it's not as though we're joined at the hip or anything. He's been without me before; I had a year studying at Leith's in London, a period working away in Bermuda, fourteen months in Belgium - and he's often worked away. It works for us. We look on the separations as a bit of a re-boot.
I'm not sure how it will pan out. It's odd being back. I have to get my head around having lived away from here for more years than I care to remember. I have to get used to being a (sort of) child again. I have to get past the idea that I feel I have to ask permission, or let people know why I am (or I'm not) doing things - don't get me wrong, it's certainly not expected, but it's still someone else's house and not mine. I have to get past the self-imposed guilt of not wanting to sit and watch television downstairs, keeping company. Do they care that I don't want to do that every night? Probably not, but it's an odd feeling. When I was considering taking the job, we did have a conversation about mutual expectations were I to move in - it was the grown-up thing to do, but I'm the eldest child and I still have that goody-goody sensible chip firmly embedded, despite my best efforts at prying it out of my psyche. I suppose it all comes down, in the end, to mutual respecting of space, and recognising that we all do things differently.
My parents are pretty cool. It'll be fine. And the lovely ''children'' next door are allowing me to pirate off their internet, which is an unexpected bonus. The modern age has not yet caught up with Lord and Lady Oakwood, and this house is normally a technology-free zone - although I do have a cunning plan to change that. We have lent the Old Folk a tablet -and my mission, which I have chosen to accept, is to get them confidently onto the bloody thing, and off the Cobbled Highway, by the time I return home in September. So mote it be...
So here I am, resurrecting the blog from my cosy (and rent-free-at-their-insistence) bedsit. Do please stop by from time to time...
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