Whole day of work wankery tomorrow, give me strength.

[StrawbHead]

I have an 'away day' at work tomorrow. The whole Department in a room together 9am-5pm for the first time since autumn 2019.

Since our last 'away day', several new members of staff have been appointed and, mostly, shown themselves to be absolute arseholes. Two of them in particular are completely insufferable - think speaking for the sake of speaking at any opportunity, wokery pokery to the point of cringe, mask zealot Twitter warrior types.

One of these areholes is leading a session tomorrow on 'equality and diversity issues'. She has form for bullying.

Since Covid I've gotten used to getting on with my own work without crossing paths with most of my colleagues. I've avoided all in-person, whole-department activities for three years. It's been heaven.

Please give me the strength to survive tomorrow's horror show.

GCacademic I. Sorry you were reduced to tears by a colleague bully. Did you make a complaint about him/her?

Thank you. No, I didn't complain since it wasn't direct bullying, it's more that their idea of a "progressive", "inclusive" workplace culture involves constantly drawing attention to people's difference, whereas in the past people were just allowed to get on with their jobs without being made aware of their skin colour all the time. I haven't felt this "othered" since I was at school in the 1980s when there was active racism.

Urgh! You have my sympathy, I hate events like that.

I think all you can do is 'engage the face, smile and nod' and hope the day passes quickly.

When you get home, takeaway, wine and hot bath!

@GCAcademic I was at training where they asked people to shared their lives experience of racism, except there were 30 + white people and 1 black man, I lost all respect for my new boss when she didn’t move it on. It’s like they were desperate to hear all the gory details. I sat there and said nothing though which I feel shitty about so I am sorry you had that experience.

Funny how inclusion never includes people who don’t want to share personal details with Jeff from accounts for the benefit of Malcolm from HR.

That's disgusting.

How’s it gone?!

I’m sorry you are looking at this all wrong we have similar but tbh
inwards eye rolling and by god do some of them go above and beyond to make a tit of themselves
endless source off amusement with the shit they spout and every sentence with there buzz words
opportunities
solutions
inclusion
development
barriers

I love the idea that there might be coffee and pastries to start and booze to finish.

If you're lucky, an academics' away day will involve three-day-old coffee from an urn and a plate of rationed Rich Tea biscuits. And absolutely no booze.

Sorry I haven't been able to update throughout the day. You'll never guess why... the event was dedicate a "no phone zone" 😱

So, I haven't had chance. Now I'm on the train home, with a massive headache.

I couldn't engineer it to sit next to my pal (the stuttery dude who can't string a sentence together). But I did end up on a fairly decent table. All men but that was okay - they're the ones on the good end of the academic men spectrum.

So, I just did twat wankery bingo alone.

Here's what I anticipated coming up and did:
> All-day mask-wearing
> Performative window-opening coz everyone's an expert in air circulation
> Reference to how unbelievably hard Covid has been for our poor dear students
> Reference to 'non-binary' (could also have been trans or gender non-conforming) scholars when talking about EDI

What I thought would come up but didn't:
> Questions about what happens in the event of a Covid winter surge
> The phrase "Covid's not over"
> Performative anti-monarchy
> Pronoun name badges

Wanky things that came up which I didn't expect (but should've):
> EDI presentation structured wholly around the EDI leads own research, how they alone have identified and solved EDI issues in academia. EDI lead is a rich, white, able-bodied woman 🙃

As per advice and instincts, I kept quiet, I tried to look engaged, I nodded (a bit). I didn't particularly smile.

Lunch was good though - vegan cheese pastries, falafels, wraps, kettle chips. Could've done with a little bit of salad mind you.

Can you get booze on that train?

Sorry, I'm just getting through the thread

@GCAcademic I am so, so sorry that you experienced that. I absolutely recognise it and I hate it. Its paradoxical that being inclusive and alert to EDI issues actually involved asking 'non-traditional' academics to do loads and loads of emotional heavy lifting. Fuck that. I grew up poor, really poor. I used to be quite happy to share my experiences of university and social mobility but not anymore.

I can't remember who it was that asked about whether I'd challenged the bullying colleagues. No, I haven't. I had no idea what had gone on (aside from these people being bolshy and dick-ish in meetings) until a few weeks ago when another colleague told me. For the last two year, I've been staying home as much as possible having as little contact with my colleagues as humanly possible

You can but I'd be asleep within two minutes and miss my stop!!

Ask a shit ton of questions in the bullying talk. Ask specifically about bullying. Give veiled examples.

Forgot to mention that the day started with an ice-breaker task. The task was 'two truths and a lie'. Cringe. It was only 9:30am, I decided not to object on the grounds that it was asking us to reveal personal information. Not that early in the morning.

I kept mind light-touch, not too personal. Other people were coming out with all sorts about their kids and where they lived. Jesus. Fucking pipe down.

Bless you Op, sounds bad. My DP had an online "Equality " course which included much wankery but he got through the first part by turning down the sound. The second part he wasn't so lucky but at least he can say he completed it.
I just hate wanky stuff, I'm too old for this shit!

Oh my, this takes me back to peak covid when our entire team was made to do 20 slides in 2 minutes on ourselves. People were showing photos of their first boyfriend, funerals, weight loss journeys, the hospital they were born in and even the details of a breakup! Mine was stuff like, I prefer the winter to the summer and leave the crusts on my sandwiches. It was excruciating to have that much detail on 11 people I had barely met dumped on me in such a short space of time.

@StrawbHead

You have my heartfelt sympathy.

I would advise sitting close to the door, so you can make a quick exit at the end of the day.

Plumbing emergency ? Boiler leak or similar might work

Very outing, but my last such day I had to prepare a graphic showing me and how I fitted into the team. I hated my job and was being bullied, leaving home in tears every morning.
I drew a series of round pegs in their holes, together with me, a square peg, being hammered into a round hole with such force it was splitting. No one, not my manager, my director made a single comment. Not long after I walked. They were the employer of the year.

Oh god, that's awful. I'd have really struggled too. How could you find 20 things that are personal (as in not work-related) but not too personal.

I guess the other option is to go the other away, out-personal them:
"My first fact is that I suffer from chronic hemorrhoids"
"My second fact is that when I was 19 I had a dodgy acid trip and ended up sucking off an Elvis impersonator called Colin"
"My third fact is that my left nipple is twice as large as my right one"
Etc.

If you can combine out-woking with out-personaling, bonus points: Maybe Colin isn't an Elvis impersonator, maybe he actually identifies as Elvis. Sorry, they. Maybe they is a non-binary trans-mortal Elvis.

I feel your pain. I have a training day coming up where we get to choose which sessions we go to. They're all boring as fuck and not particularly relevant to my role (plus my manager is moving me to a new job out of the department so even less point). The only other sessions are about MH, resilience and wellbeing - all of which have been rammed down our throats for the past few years.

I'm planning on roping some of my team into wankery bingo. My manager and her minions love a deep dive where they get their ducks in a row, touch each others' bases, and all that shit. I might try to introduce a new phrase too. Thankfully it's a virtual event so hopefully we won't have to have cameras on and I can read or something instead.

Oh and we always get break out rooms. Yay.

Sounds painful but I'm glad you've strategized to fully exploit the opportunity and explore the potential for wankery bingo. That's some excellent blue sky thinking which really pushes the envelope to outside the box.

Give yourself a round of applause. Except don't because that can be very triggering. Click your fingers instead. Although I read on Twitter so must be true that clicking fingers is appropriation of Black women's culture so totally inappropriate if you don't identify as Black.

I put that last bit as a joke but my Department is organising events for Black History Month where the phrase 'identify as Black' has been used.