Season of Mists and Mellow Crepiness...

[QueenQueenie]

Here you go Crepesters...

Thank you, QQ

Thank you, QQ. I love the thread title.

DH has just told me that tomorrow's appointment involves having a probe inserted into his stomach which will be left there for 24 hours. This is the first I have heard about it, you understand.

BTM, so pleased to hear that your DD is upbeat after all her upsets.

Nucat has spent the last day going from lap to lap and hardly leaving our sides. I hate leaving him when we go away although he is looked after very well.

Aww at cat, NU!

Ouch, NU, how horrid.

BTM, i agree, it has got very sophisticated. I am glad it is discussed so much more publicly - I think that makes it easier to spot the manipulative/excluding types of behaviour. Good for your dd - fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Best of luck to your dd for tomorrow, BTM. I'm sure we'll all be thinking of her.

On the S&B front, I'm also getting into mustard. It's a great colour for autumn, and its name, if nothing else, is very warming.

BTM - that sounds grim with your DD. I hope you can get it resolved quickly.

I am glad we have got rid of "Forever Autumn" as those words kept making me cry!

DH informs me that we are supposed to be going to visit some friends of his on the 11th. Apparently it was organised months ago, as these people are Very Busy and Get Booked Up in Advance. I have suggested that he go on his own.

I am tired and crabby. We had our "awayday" today, and were told to think about what our department needed to make it work better. Everything I wrote down on a post it note was aggressively challenged by BB "Who said that? Why do you think that? Why don't you think it works well as it is? Well I don't agree, I'm afraid." And removed post it note. (I put it back as soon as she had moved on.) Uberboss, who countersigns my appraisals, has never spoken to me in the six months she has been in the department. We were all "invited to make an appointment with her if we wanted to speak to her." I asked for a meeting and was given a date four months away, so I said, oh don't bother, I'm sure we can have a quick catch up in the corridor. She doesn't work like that, apparently. Next available appointment is after Christmas now... That will make for an interesting appraisal. I feel I need to get my point of view across, as it is clear that BB has already poisoned her against me (she is very "off" with me when our paths cross), but how and when? I know I need to get out of this job, but I just get obstacles put in my way. Once of my colleagues, who has known me for years, said to me today "You have lost all motivation and ambition since you have been in this job. They have beaten it out of you." And she is right.

Oh dear, MrsS, that sounds awful. Awful. Do they know about your recent bereavements? What about your HR department? Is there one? Are they competent at all?

HR said they won't/can't do anything until I've completed a stress audit. If I complete the stress audit, BB will say that it is my recent bereavements that are making me stressed, not the job, and that will be it, thank you very much, no further action. I will do the stress audit, but it is so clear to me what is going to happen, that I am more or less resigned to being stuck in this fucking awful job for another 18 months.

On the plus side: it is not demanding - I have had absolutely nothing to do for the past two weeks, and no-one has offered me anything (I have asked). I have something to do from Monday - it is dull and way below my grade. Because they don't have enough work for us (and won't admit it) they have assigned two of us to this job, which means it will be like my last job, with very little to do (we were working from 11 to 4 and struggled to fill the day). But I am tired of having boring and undemanding work to do. Although I had AB to contend with in my last job, I did have a job that stretched me, and a team of six working to me. I wasn't doing the photocopying and ordering tea and coffee for meetings.

Blimey, it's Kafkaesque in its trappedness, innit?

God Mrs S - I sometimes have trouble believing that people can be quite so horrible. Can you not insist on meeting with uberboss as a matter of urgency or are they all just covering each other's backs.

MrsS, have you taken legal advice? I think in some circumstances not giving you any work might be dodgy. I think it might be worth getting advice - it sounds as if they are both running scared and will want to kee the state of affairs in the department quiet......?

MrsS, so awful for you. I agree, have you taken legal advice?

DD is not such a happy bunny this morning - doesn't want to go in, but is now getting ready

Is there a 'constructive dismissal' kind of thing you could invoke? You know, giving you stuff so mind-killingly tedious that you'd rather leave...

DS's last day at school today. I woke up in the night crying about it, and fretting about being able to fit the course in with his new school, lack of breakfast and after school club places, how difficult the course is, and general OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE. DP woke up, and was in this instance very sympathetic.

I'm taking in a big tub of Heroes chocolates, and a goodbye card with our contact details on it. And will endeavour to hold my face together until I'm out of the school gates.

Herbs, just get through today, darling.

MrsS, just awful. Will ponder. Being under-stimulated at work is a killer.

I must try and get some more work in though also must finish some writing of my own.

Shiksa….? Ha Haaaaaaaaaaa what an excellent autocorrect blooper. Actually it's a somewhat derogatory Yiddish term for a non Jewish female

Hopes and good wishes to Herbs and miniHerbs. Dry those tears…it's gonna be ok.Things always seem worse at night.
to you and DD Tilly
MrsS I think I'd be taking advice…are you a member of a union by any chance? Your boss and her boss are stonewalling you, by the sound of it, and HR doesn't sound a lot better. And their conduct sounds like it should be called in to question.
Right…off to launch into another day of unbridled domesticity and cooking. I'm scheduling my little cry for sometime tomorrow morning.

Herbs Try to look to his new beginning tomorrow. And yours too!

Stropps, how did it go???

BTM, really feeling for you and dd today, she sounds very brave. Horrible, horrible behaviour.

Herbs, KBO, the build up is the worst I think.

Herbs - it will be fine, honest. I know when we were moving and we couldn't locate childcare and I didn't know how we were going to make it all work and I nearly had a breakdown. And now I look back and think 'see you can find a way through'. And it is so the right thing for ds - this time next week you'll look back and go 'what was that all about' :)

Mrs S I am and for you. The behavior at the awayday alone is criminal..... And if you are anything like me thinking 'oh well I am getting paid for doing bugger all' does not really help as its so bloody frustrating and boring.

Are there no other routes available to you? If there is anything I can do let me know (bro is a barrister and I know is good friends with a very good employment bode)

Herbs, good luck mini herbs for tomorrow

Auriga- no harm done . I am mostly philosophical about it now. Mostly.

Mrs S I think you could start a grievance procedure against BB.
The ACAS website has specific details about how to do that.
I have been in a few jobs like that in the past and there is nothing so soul destroying as having nothing to do.it just chips away gradually at your self- worth . You have my utmost sympathy.

I'm off today and slobbing about in my empty house. Both lovely and odd. Extraordinary lack of filthy band t-shirts to wash ( yay) but strange with no dd .

My sympathies, Herbs; you will get through today - take everything a step at a time.

I am aghast at your employment tribulations, MrsS, which have just gone on and on. I too think that you need legal advice.

Back from hospital and DH has a tube down his nose into his stomach, with a handy little monitor attached. He is feeling very sorry for himself. Back tomorrow to have it out.

BTM, I hope things are ok with DD and the meeting goes all right?

Crem, I used to find the worst time after the DC had gone away to uni was when they used to come home from school before DH came in at 7.30 - it was a long three hours.

I wish your DH well over these tests, NU Is it a pH monitor he's having?

Two rib sticking beef casseroles in the oven. Two pressure cookers full of the inevitable chicken soup made. I'm going to have a rest and watch a movie on amazon, love film thingy, or net flicks. Feeling like I'm bunking off

Found you!

Mrs S, I really don't think you can do another 18 months like this.

I'm sure you are, but keep oceans of notes, all incriminating emails etc, and notes of hours done and on what. I would have an 'at large' conversation with HR, try to find your job description and mark off against it on a week by week basis which bits you've done and which you haven't. Offer to do things 'I would like to get involved in blah blah project' and evidence your offer. Let HR know you are doing it and arrange a follow up meeting in three weeks and show them the disparity between your job description and your actual job. Smile sweetly throughout!

Bet you get a hurried appointment with Super Large Arse Boss (SLAB) very quickly.

Sorry if that is teaching you to suck eggs....

BTM - horrible about the bullying. Have you got many 6th form choices near you? They all seem to have their open days in this term, so it may lift her spirits if she can see what lies ahead. Don't let her tell anyone where she is going!