Light at the end of the tunnel

This whole blogging thing has been spectacularly unsuccessful so far ...... that was never the intention but to be totally honest for the last few months, thanks to work, I have literally been too drained and exhausted to put anything remotely interesting on here apart from the odd entry or two....

I have written a number of entries which have never made it to posting stage - I realised how many today when I logged in and actually looked back through them. These 'not quite posts' were intended to be a bit of an outlet about the day/week that was but looking back over them today they were little more than a senseless rant filled with bile and expletives which really made absolutely no sense whatsoever and while they would have made a pretty damn ugly post the scary part is that they perfectly summed up what my working world has become over the last 4 months - welcome to the Public Service where good performance is exploited and mediocrity is celebrated (so long as the the 'mediocre' in question has a tongue long enough and strong enough to lick all of the appropriate arses simultaneously)

Since August I have been basically performing 2 different roles - not really a big deal in itself, I have done similar before when there had been a legitimate business need to do so - where I have a problem in this instance is that this came about because of precious personalities and a total inability on the part of the knobs at the top to admit they fucked up BIG TIME. I have never worked anywhere where there are so many people in positions of authority whose only true priority is covering their own arses at the expense of everyone under them.

Let's take a quick look at Gemineye's working world since August -

• I perform role A - a colleague performs role B - both roles are highly technical, each with multiple long standing problems.
• Colleague in role B makes the mistake of disagreeing with something new manager says and is unceremoniously shunted into a new team performing drone work more 'suited to their ability'
• I end up being moved to role B and a new 'star recruit' is moved into role A
• Responsibility for training new 'star recruit' in the functions of role A falls to me - even though I was still in the process of learning role A myself and this is meant to happen concurrently with learning role B and all of its associated problems - problems which I then had the responsibility to fix despite the fact that I had no idea how they should have worked in the first place. Thankfully 'former colleague in role B' had done a pretty damn good job getting a lot of it back on track before 'losing the ability to perform the role'
• New 'star recruit' has a great deal of difficulty in picking up the basics of role A - such as how to open a file.
• First of many MANY concerns are raised about the ability of star recruit - also first of many MANY blank stares and dismissals that my concerns were biased and unfounded.

I need to break continuity here to draw attention to at least part of the pecking order -

We have manager 1 - a ball breaker with no people skills whatsoever and a list of hidden agendas. Manager 1 is technically responsible for another team but had been acting in our team before becoming the acting manager for the whole division - lets call her The Puppet Master

Then also have manager 2 - a nice enough guy but his lack of a spine has quickly tarnished what was a glossy veneer. The lack of a spine though does make it easier for him to make sure his arse is covered at all times. Lets call him The Sock Puppet

Then we have the assistant manager - also a relatively nice guy until he became my direct supervisor and I realised that he is a controlling micro manager - an interesting way to be when he has absolutely no idea at all of how any of the functions of the team work. Lets call him The Finger Puppet.

So.... moving on .................

• Mid October - the Puppet Master's grand plan of a 'super team' is realised when her team and ours are merged with much fanfare bit little planning.
• New 'star recruit' turns into a train wreck and is moved back to their original position - ONLY because the star recruit bleated that they weren't happy doing role A and wanted to go back to being a drone. "Of course, we will move you immediately - we don't want you to be unhappy." - "Gemineye, you don't mind cleaning up the wreckage that the star recruit left behind do you ? While you continue to learn role B of course"
• Gemineye speaks his mind during a monthly 1on1 with the Finger Puppet and suddenly becomes micro managed.
• The ridiculous part of that is that all of the things that the Finger Puppet comes to check up on are only known to the Finger Puppet because Gemineye told him they exist. Otherwise the Finger Puppet would have no clue at all what is meant to be happening. As it is he has absolutely no idea WHAT these things are, just that they are.
• I, and a number of others, put in requests to transfer to different areas in an attempt to escape the insanity.
• The Puppet Master, realising that there are a large number of transfers being requested from within her empire, realises that there may be a problem that needs to be addressed.
• Solution found - there is no doubt about the Puppet Master now - 'wow, we have all these people wanting to transfer out of the team, what can we do to fix the problems ? I know .....
• The Puppet Master announces that all transfer requests have been cancelled until early in the new year for operational reasons. Yep, perfect solution ! Instead of find out why people want to get away, take away their opportunity to move and we will eventually break them and they will conform.

Anyway ..... it's all getting a bit too convoluted now and it's really really difficult to express all of this properly because there have just been so many different things.

The good part is though ....... that I finished on Friday and we are flying out on Tuesday so for the next seven weeks I could not give a flying fuck what they do. :-)

More later today .............................