ms crankypants

I don’t like mince tarts. I don’t see the sense in having steaming pudding on a stinking hot day. I feel sad when I see pile upon pile of fresh food left in rubbish bins because overcatering everywhere you step is seen as generosity. And I’m not a fan of the gastro that’s hit me and won’t go away. Christmas carols  of both the traditional and funked-up kinds shit me, however, I may be placated if the child over the road refrains from playing with pyrotechnics and trying to set the street’s nature strips on fire again this year.

But I do like baby animals any time of year. This is the latest addition to my parents’ alpaca colony: he’s the sweetest little thing, even when he’s got his cranky face on.

And mum has had a rough time the last few months with her start as a wildlife carer — she has been given (I believe) possums too young and fragile (a 60-gram animal is almost too tiny to comprehend) to have a high success rate and she’s lost a few of the dear things. But little Sunday the possum is going along great guns; my mother conducts midnight raids of banksias in the locality’s parks because Sunday’s favourite food is banksia (when she’s not sipping honey water, of course). Apologies for the crappy photo but she moves so quickly on those spongy little feet.

Happy Christmas and a glorious year to you all xxx.

Crank-o-meter: bah humbug, but the animals are damn cute

December 25th, 2009 | Tags: animals are fun, family | Category: animals are fun, family | Comments (11)

It looks like I’ll be re-starting a job search in the new year because I can’t stand the new place. The worst part isn’t the avalanche of crap I wasn’t told prior to starting, but the crushing impact on my self confidence that has made me doubt my sense of judgement. I wasn’t expecting the first job I walked into be the career move from heaven, but I could not have landed in a hotter type of hell.

that about sums it up

I researched the company and know the managing director, attended two interviews, asked a lot of questions and went in with my eyes as open as they possibly could be. I could not have predicted, though:

• Week 1: Being told to tell my co-workers that I have not been employed permanently, but rather on a three-month contract, because, “of some things going on.” I have not been able to extract a more acceptable explanation and can’t be sure if someone in the company is pissed off about the decision and they’re waiting for him or her to cool off, or they want to ditch me after three months and this is their way of softening the blow and pre-conditioning me
• Week 2: The person I’m kind of replacing confessed he was only leaving because of systemic and unmanaged bullying by the workshop manager. Both are grown men and apparently others have been bullied and treated appallingly to point that excessive alcohol abuse several nights a week is considered par for the course to forget about life for a while
• Week 2: The bully phones the MD from interstate while in the midst of a breakdown of some kind and cannot work or function at all. He flies home and is sent on leave, much to everyone’s relief
• Week 2: I find out the admin person is the bully’s wife and I’m on her shit list because she thinks I’m after her job. No one has bothered asking my intentions because the truth isn’t as interesting as feeding the rumour mill
• Week 3: The bully is phoning most of the other workers several times a day, insisting they find out why I’ve been employed and to spy on me to see if I’m trying to steal his wife’s job. They all feel uncomfortable about the position they’ve been placed in and pass on the information to me, but will not tell senior management to help fix the problem
• Week 4: After four attempts, I cannot extract a job description or timeline of when we can start telling people why I’m there. I am in tears in the boss’s office telling him to get the fucking bully off the telephone and to manage him because I was not hired to be placed in such an uncomfortable situation. I am told they are aware of his antics and I am to tell them if it happens again. Um, no. Fuck off, I’ll go and find a union to join
• Week 4: The bully returns for the last official day at work, ignores me (the best outcome we can all hope for) and invites everyone except me to a party that night. They accept. I shall not listen to another word of their goddam whinging about bullying if they keep allowing him to control their work and personal lives
• Week 4, or the magnificent closing act: I am asked to indeed spy on the admin person as they are looking at cutting her working hours to, oh, ZERO a week, and are assuming I’ll do her job as well. I find this somewhat amusing because they didn’t asked if I’d be interested. I am not

I’m taking it week by week (now I’m being paid because the admin person is the only one who knows who to use the system and she wasn’t quick in adding me to payroll) but I’m tired of waiting out each day with dread. And I’m doubly sick of patronising myself by saying several times an hour, “Hey, you’re employed and bringing in a wage over the quiet period. Shut up and do the things that add to your resume and get the hell out of there as soon as you can.” I’m just not dumb or easily influenced enough to keep feeding myself platitudes. And now I’m terrified of making another mistake next time I send myself out into the big world.

Crank-o-meter: fucking hell

December 21st, 2009 | Tags: work | Category: work | Comments (9)

More than a year ago, I signed up for a radio announcer’s course at the local station. Notice that I said ’signed up’, as the course was never finished. As a class we completed three or four weeks of classroom theory and were sent our separate ways to pitch for a show and request panel training with announcers.

My pitch for an hour of accessible Australian music (The Local Sound – original, hey?) with a different theme each week got up and I started devoting an insane number of hours to making playlists along themes of ‘Songs to make you cry into your beer’, ‘The magnificent influence of Vanda and Young’ and ‘A little bit of bogan rock never killed anyone’ and planned to allocate more time to help out around the station with admin and housekeeping. I submitted a list of announcers I respected so it would be dead easy to schedule the scary hands-on training.

And then the air waves of communication turned into dead space. I heard nothing and followed up with phone calls to ask what the bloody hell was going on. More nothing. Because I’m a sane, rational person with no sense of revenge, I decided to wait a year until my subscription renewal notice arrived before making a point. The Dutch half of my genetic structure is painfully stubborn at times and almost impossible to contain when it’s on the loose.

ha!

I received phone calls to my home and mobile phones within 48 hours of mailing my subscription notice. The station administrator asked on the spot for me to nominate five or six shows to sit in on and he’d line up the panel training and re-start the process for requesting a time slot. He could not have been more responsive or helpful. The thing is that I’ve filled my ‘radio time’ with other activities and I’m not sure I want to do it now. Be careful what I wish for.

Crank-o-meter: we already know i’m not a people person

December 13th, 2009 | Tags: entertainment, shittypants | Category: entertainment, shittypants | Comments (5)