The Black Bullet paid out a dividend today. I had a site inspection at RAF Brize Norton, so I took the Enfield. At 18p a business mile that’s about seven quid to me, or half a tank of gas at today’s prices. Unfortunately the oil leak is looking, shall we say, significant. I'm losing enough to have to top her up regularly, so I've shopped around on eBay for gaskets and whatnot in preparation for a post Le Mans rebuild.
One really nice thing about my job is the texture of it. Yesterday I attended Her Majesty’s Navy, at Portsmouth, today the Royal Air Force. There’s a distinct difference in culture between these outfits. I can’t discuss it with any authority but they feel very different. If anything, the RAF looks the poorer, judging from the dilapidated standard of the accommodation on this station.
While I was checking in at security I noticed the flight times to Iraq and Afghanistan listed on a screen behind the desk, then three coach loads of squaddies in desert combats pulled up as I waited for my escort. Despite my early morning reveries [TBB 6.12], this is as near to the frontline as I’m thankfully likely to get. Then I thought, would I have the quality of life I enjoy without these people? I squinted at them as they passed by in the bright sunshine. I don’t know how I feel about all of this. It looks exciting, but also kind of archaic and pointless. My escort arrived and I unscrewed my face, sparkling blue eyes under a bob of brown hair.
“You Mr Postman?” she said, getting my name all wrong.
“Er, yeah, shall I follow you in?”
“You’ve got your pass and everything? Good. Let’s go, Andy’s waiting for you.”
A smile and she was gone. I fiddled with the fuel tap and hoped the old iron would start nice and easy so I could catch her up. It wouldn’t do to get separated from my escort.
There aren’t many female site managers, or assistant site managers in this case. Curiously, this is not so with the continental construction companies we occasionally work for. First off you think of the sexist crap they must have to put up with but Aimee, my escort, seemed to positively revel in the attention she got and was able to use it to get things done.
Thinking more generally about work on the way over, after I received a bitch-mail from one of the management. A global popped up yesterday entitled New Invoicing Procedures and when I queried something I was told they are the same as the old procedures. The thing is, it took 750 words for my line manager to describe how the procedures hadn’t changed, so to get shirty with a suggestion that we all meet to discuss this appeared testy to me, to say the least.
I think I poked him in a sore spot, he knows he’s no good with people and he felt I’d criticised his management style, which, if he felt it, then I suppose I had. We sorted it out on the phone later but if I’d sniped back, cc-ing everybody else in, it would have gotten severely out of hand and hiearchy would have made me the loser.
We spend so much time at work that occasionally things get muddled. We lose sight of ends and means and get locked into battles of will, or clashes of ego. Worse still, we even start to believe in relationships that don’t really exist, in the sense that they may only be underwritten by the bottom line. I can think of plenty of people I’ve spent an awful lot of time with that I’ve never seen or heard of since I signed their ‘Good Luck’ card.
Consider the Social, or team building exercise, where you might find yourself wishing you were out with your mates instead. Or worse, fending off the unsolicited attention of a colleague who has finally got you to themselves, out of the way of significant others. I recall two occasions (no, three, if you count the boiler room episode) when I fantasised about making a play, or taking up a perceived offer. Thankfully all of these remained firmly in the realm of fantasy, unless you count the one years ago when I actually took the girl out only to watch her desire dissolve into the sticky pub atmosphere, as the reality of our situation loomed horribly, sweaty and bulging.
Anyway, we both escaped unharmed but the point was it's a damn shame that we have to spend so much time at work to make ends meet. There's a classic Sabbath track I haven't yet mentioned that says it all - Killing Yourself to Live (Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, 1973 MEMS). We're so busy we surely miss the trickle of time passing, kids growing, relationships maturing, communities evolving, stuff that can really make us happy.
The workplace is also a community, of sorts, but when relationships are metered by performance and shaped by imposed hierarchies, chemistry has nothing to do, so it sits down and puts its lazy-arse feet up. In extreme cases, the inability, or unwillingness, to seperate feelings from the needs of the business is marked as weakness. So I have to conclude that there's not much room for personal considerations in business, not really.
Management professionals might shout, “We want people to be able to express their feelings at work, feelings are good!” Well, whichever side of the line you’re on, just do one thing, take a leaf out of the big book of being Japanese and tell people at work about your feelings in a manner that always leaves you an escape route.
Avoid putting it in writing - there is a caveat to this, if a record is useful, but generally it is far more effective to talk directly to the people your feelings concern. Then you can gauge their reaction and modify your response, on the spot. This is how we sorted out the New Invoicing Procedures episode but, note, the initiative had to come from me, a shop floor level employee, and this is a bit disappointing. But if it's important to you you have to step up to the mark, otherwise you risk taking a hit in the self esteem department.
The Japanese go out after work and get drunk and claim they have no memory of anything unpopular they might, or might not have said while under the influence, which is brilliant. Drinking after work in Japan is not about pleasure-seeking. It’s hard being a salary man and quite common to see a wife tut-tutting her puke-smelling husband off a station platform and into the car after a heavy meeting. It may be wasted on my colleagues but I’ve secured a meeting to discuss the New Procedures, now if I can only get them all pissed...
