Normally if I was without job I would freak out.
Not this time though. I knew something good would happen sooner, rather than later. And after six week of waiting with some very dodgy temp work in between, a couple of muggings to make ends meet, a trip to Shakespeare Grove to see if I could cut it as a rent boy (actually forget about that, I was just cruising), something good did happen.
Yep, that’s right folks I am now the Curriculum and Projet Manager of a commercial visual arts college here in Melbourne.
Yay me. Clever me.
I start next week.
Ahh, how the mighty have fallen.
Once I was a high flying training administrator looking after a former half-Colonel at a multi-national petrol company. (He recently resigned after he was demoted for idiocy and belligerence).
Now I am a humble temp worker, cataloging books at a second-rate educational institution. And now matter how much fun that may be – my rate of pay, which is slightly better than working for the dole but not quite as lucrative as selling the Big Issue, leaves much to be desired.
So, to get me out of the shit I have decided that I need a sugar daddy and real fast.
So dear reader, this post is a call to arms and I am now considering all applications.
I am not particularly fussy and I can guarantee all applicants for this position, that there will be lots of different positions, and that I will put the fun into funding.
I’m waiting.
This is my dole diary. Some of this may be true.
07:00 Hit snooze
09:00 Berate myself for flushing the alarm clock down the toilet. Fucking thing doesn’t work. Must use neighbours loo.
09:01 Turn on Kath and Kim on Ten. Can’t decide if David Reine is faking stupidity.
09:03 Put kettle on and make a large plunger of strong coffee.
09:05 Regret final drink, which even though I can’t remember drinking, now believe to be completely unnecessary.
09:09 Check out KAK to see if she is still wearing canary yellow. She is. And even though I should be disappointed, decide she is a trooper.
10:00 Breakfast on High Street
10:45 Return home, have shower. Make self look half decent. Thank the powers that be for Clarins Beauty Flash Balm.
11.00 Look for job.
11:11 Speak to recruitment consultant. Visualise recruitment consultant. Wonder how recruitment consultant made career leap from asking customers if they “want fries with that” to big time successful recruitment consulting.
11:30 Submit application.
12:00 Lunch.
12:20 Decide it is time for nana nap.
12:25 Regret flushing alarm down the bog.
12:27 Coma.
13:50 Awake.
13:51 Coffee.
14:05 Check email. Not important, no one writes. Consider spamming myself.
15:00 Supermarket run.
15:20 Look at supermarket from moving tram. Will buy groceries after a quick drink at the Grace Darling Hotel.
18:30 Refused service at Grace Darling Hotel. Make abusive phone call to boyfriend for refusing to meet me for a drink at Grace Darling Hotel.
19:00 Safeway is expensive. Decide budget restraints mean I can no longer afford to eat.
19:05 Catch tram home.
19:20 Tram Inspecttors throw me off tram in front on Bender Bar. Convenient. Good thing boys don’t know Vanessa at the Grace.
19:22 Final drink.
19:39 Final drink.
20:02 Final drink.
21:15 Allegedly visit neighbour.
23:05 Wake up on couch. Head hurts. Wonder why boyfriend is ignoring me.
Despite having entered into a performance management plan to make you more interesting, and despite three written warnings about how you could improve; disappointingly – you have failed to live up to my reasonable expectations.
Namely – you are boring as fuck and you continue to struggle to provide meaningful content for me to do. With this in mind, it is with regret that I have decided to let you go.
I understand that this may be upsetting for you; however you have failed to deliver on your promises of career development, training and a reasonable wage.
You have also failed to provide a reasonable working culture where I can be flexible with my working hours and not have to continually work late to prove that I am keen, committed and enthusiastic.
In addition, your attempts to micromanage professional and competent staff, when all is going well, is starting to get on my tits and is rather disappointing.
As a result, your contract is hereby terminated. You will be paid out your full entitlements at the next pay run.
Kind regards
Mikey.
I work in the learning and development department of a large multi-national petro-chemical company.
It is slightly weird environment for me to work in because I cannot drive. My only experience behind the wheel of a car was last week when I tried to run down an ex-lover who had earlier disobeyed me. I found the whole steering thing to be incredibly traumatic, because I soon discovered that it is nigh on impossible to drive when you cannot drive, particularly when you are using your best swear words whilst simultaneously gesticulating wildly. And tis even harder when you cannot get the fucker out of first gear.
Anyway, the evil overseers at (insert name of petrochemical company here) decided that I was not entirely competent using Excel (also known as Satan’s own spreadsheet) and that for the benefit of quicker global destruction, I should go and spend two days at an intensive Introduction to Excel course.
Fuck me, I cannot begin to tell you how much fun it was, quite simply because it wasn’t fucking fun at all.
Did you know that if you use the control button while you click you can select multiple cells at the same time. Well no, neither did I.
And that dear reader is the result of my learning.
As a self taught idiot savant who can even make pivot tables, I should have probably thought of this earlier. But hey, I know I am worth the $800 which was spent teaching this middle aged dog a new trick.
Why next week I might even have a go at Word.
I will soon be out of a job as the Big Oil Company I work for has decided I am superfluous to requirements. I am very excited that I must look for a new job because I now have the opportunity to expand my skillset with another caring and sharing company who will screw me senseless and spit me out onto the scrap heap of Big Issue selling.
Finding a new employer to bend over for has meant that I have spent quite some time searching the job search websites. I wish I hadn’t because recruiters write rubbish like this:
“This is a one off opportunity if you could see exactly how awesome your new place of employment is you will have already sent your resume to the link below”.
Umm, yeah like whatever, I like watersports and riding horses.
It gets worse though. Just have a read of some of the shit that they write when devising key selection criteria. As someone who has spent quite some time responding to key selection criteria I am over it, because they in no way predict a person’s ability to do the job. This is why my good friend CP and I have devised selection criteria for the modern office slacker. The nine key criteria are;
- Do as little work as possible and constantly distract colleagues.
- Productively use company IT facilities to create world-class blogs.
- Respond to all queries in a timely manner, somewhere between five and six working days.
- Go to work hung over and late every Friday (I already do that).
- Participate in team meetings by telling your superiors how crap their latest policy is.
- Violently attack managers whenever they use clichés, like “at the end of the day” and “we really need to hit the ground running on this one.”
- Contribute to process improvement by saying how much better it was when we did things the old way.
- Blame people who have left for everything that goes wrong.
- Participate in workplace flexibility by working flexibly at the pub or bar.
Good God, I think I have found a new job.
Today I look like little Linda Blair in The Exorcist, but with more snot and additional chunky bits being coughed up and spat out. But I am at work because I am a martyr and I am a good patient. By the end of the day, you will not be able to see my desk due to the piles of contaminated medical waste. Even now, having only been in the office for ten minutes, there are puddles of snot lapping at the feet of my co-workers.
I will get better, but not until I have infected everyone in close proximity, and made them feel better with my sunny attitude and requests for voluntary euthanaisa.
My friends and colleagues should be pleased that I am a such good patient and don’t complain.
Now if I could just find a doctor who would prescribe morphine for the common cold, I’d be really happy.
At 6.55 am in Melbourne it is dark and cold and usually I am contemplating chucking a sickie and not going to work. At 6.55 this morning there was an explosion, somewhere close, but somewhere far away. I thought Al Qaeda had come to Melbourne. As such, I wasn’t going anywhere. I sat on my couch waiting for news. I sat waiting to hear the sirens. But there was no news and there were no sirens and I realised I must go to work. I showered and readied at the last possible moment. I walked to the tain station where there was still no carnage, apart from the wrecks of humanity asembled to catch the 7.59 Crapex train to Austwich.
I made it to work on time. There were no bombs and no dismembered bodies at Melbourne Central. I was disappointed that the big bang wasn’t a bomb, and that I would have to go to work.
But there had been an explosion. A truck carring a crane exploded about two kilometres away from my flat. At least it wasn’t Al Qaeda. Terror had come to the suburbs, but it was all in my mind. And that my dear friends is a victory for Mr Howard.
I was informed by the Dear Leader, that the Big Oil Company has scheduled my execution for October 31, 2007. Yes, for the second time in 18 months I have been made redundant. This means I will be redeployed into the labour market.
I have decided that this is good because I am a clever, creative and cute guy and I will easily fall on my feet. I plan to sell the Big Issue. Or drugs. Or maybe I’ll drop my daks and become the world’s oldest rent boy. Yes, that is it. I am going to be a street hustler.
I work for a multinational oil company. We are the incredible shrinking firm, with restructure after restructure and redundancy after redundancy. Today is quite exciting as a new round of executions, er layoff, er restructures, has been announced. And it is great.
Eighty per cent of the work done in my team will no longer be done by team, because we are shedding the customer base that my team supports. This means with eighty per cent less work to do, there will probably be eighty per cent less work for us to all do on a daily basis. And won’t that be fun.
Oh silly me, I have just realised that eighty per cent of us will be made redundant. I forgot, they shoot workers, don’t they?
