Monday 27 August 2012

Jings! A new job!

Well. Those of you who know me will be aware that for some time now, I've been unhappy at my work.

That is by way of being a massive understatement. For some time now, every weekday has dawned with an ever-increasing feeling of dread, which increased exponentially the closer I got to my place of work. Days have become an ongoing effort not to grab various individuals by the neck and shake them til their teeth rattle.

In fact, it's been quite worrying, particularly in the last few months, when I have been aware of some very definitely alarming tendencies towards not only colleagues but fellow travellers on the daily commute. I've found myself struggling not to hurl foul and vitriolic abuse at the human tidal wave of bad manners, self-interest and determined ignorance surging towards me on the stairs to the low-level platforms as I struggle through their solid mass to catch my train.  

Worst of all is the meaningless animosity that builds up against people you've been sharing a journey with for seven years. For no good reason I want to attack Bonnie Tyler Woman with a pair of hairdressing scissors and a makeup bag containing products created after 1985. I want to shove Smoking Guy's fags right up his nose to remind him that when he lights up three seconds after getting off the train and smokes going up the street, there's a whole line of people right behind him who are getting his smoke right in their faces.

Most of all, I really, really want to tell Ball-Head Girl (this isn't as rude as it sounds) that her hair looks like a big ball perched on top of her head (see?). It really does. She pulls it up in a big pony tail right on the top of her head, then backcombs and shapes it into a ball. Her head looks like an eight with the top part coloured in. I do not know why this sets my teeth on edge, I'm sure she's a perfectly lovely person and I would like her very much if I knew her, but her hair, for no good reason, fills me with blackly violent tendencies that really have me starting to worry about myself.

It's 'familiarity breeds contempt' run wild, I suppose. Except now we've gone right through contempt and out the other side into full-blown psychosis. So basically I'm really glad to announce that I have a new job. OK, I'll still be doing a commute, and I'll still see a lot of the same people every day. But when the journey only lasts 15 minutes, it doesn't seem quite so dreadful. The other bonus is that I can, if I feel like it, get the bus once in a while. Mix it up a bit. Change it around. Up the tempo. It's teeny little alterations like that to a daily routine that stop it becoming a daily torment and, ultimately, a daily desire to do harm to one's fellow humans. That's what I'm hoping, anyway.

I'm also hoping that my new team a) will not contain people who cannot seem to eat without sharing the contents of their mouths with everyone else around them; b) will all know what they're doing; c) will not have mobile devices that PING constantly to tell them they have email when they're sitting at their desk LOOKING AT THEIR EMAIL and d) will not wander off into lengthy digressions about the outrageously expensive home improvements/holidays/weddings/cars/watches/54-inch television screens they're buying.

On the other hand, I'm also hoping my new set of colleagues will contain as many wonderful people as my current set does. Without the good guys, I'd never have made it through the morass of ineptitude and fuckwittery that has surrounded me on a daily basis for the past several years, so my thanks to them. They know who they are. Them I will miss. Others? I shall merely aim badly.

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