Whatever!!

The next few weeks proved to be ridiculously busy. March is one of the busiest months of the year in the motor trade and here we were trying to handle that and a huge overhaul of the office at the same time. My filing pile was taller than me when I was sat down, my one in-tray was now three, my phone rang off the hook and my microsoft inbox was so full my monitor looked bloated.
We still only had one fax machine trying to cope with orders from Exeter to Penzance and the Salesmen were getiing less patient and more irritating by the hour.
I began arriving at work by 7.00am just to get a couple of hours filing done before the calls started and the red mist descended. It was getting harder and harder to be the organised woman I had once been and having a little bit of OCD when it comes to the way I work, I was becoming a moody snappy colleague to work with. Only the other two girls in the office, Sarah and Dee could sympathise.
The silver lining on our particular cloud was that Dee was pregnant. It was wonderful news as she had longed for a child and was worried about never having them following an ectopic pregnancy. She had shared the news with me and Sarah as soon as she had found out but would tell work as soon as she was past the safe zone of 12 weeks. At least they would have plenty of time to get her Maternity cover sorted.
As for Tracey and Charles...well Tracey was still on her "Let's get Leah into the office" trip. Nevermind the humoungous filing piles on every desk, never mind the urgent need for another fax machine and bollocks to the fact that Charles had no idea what he was doing but said "yes" to everyone anyway. One day her wish came true. Leah arrived and with her came a whole load more trouble.
To begin with it wasn't so bad. She was ok if a little squeaky and she seemed to know her stuff when it came to Commercial vehicles so it made no real difference to us whether she was there or not. What did become apparent after a couple of days was that she had quite a tight friendship with Tracey and was prepared to use it to her advantage if necessary. More to the point, Tracey, who had a severe lack of friends both in and out of work, lacked in self confidence and was desperate to be liked, was happy to be used and didn't hesitate in favouring Leah. At this point myself, Sarah and Dee were bitten by doubt and it was starting to itch.

Something I should mention about Tracey and Charles is that they used to work together at a place that had recently made numerous redundancies. Hence why we had been landed with them. To make matters worse there there was a third person to add to the brew. Leah. She too had worked with both Tracey and Charles and so as you can imagine they had a rapport with each other from the start.
Before the centralisation, Leah had been based at our Commercial depot doing admin solely for them. Once we were centralised it made sense for her to join us in our office. No-one had a problem with this until Tracey made it her one and only focus.
"i think we need to get leah up here as soon as possible" she annouced at a meeting one day.
The meeting had been arranged to discuss ways of organising the work load and discuss who was going to do what. We also needed to work out how we were going to keep track of the all the paperwork that would be flying in to us from all directions.
"Yes, fair enough Tracey" I said "But as long as she has a fax machine and a telephone she can work from where she is for now. We have other things to discuss that need dealing with today and sorting by the end of the week."
I have witnesses to back me up on the fact that I did say this out loud but you would have thought that I had simply told myself this very relevant point.
"So as soon as Leah is up here with us the better" said Tracey again. And again and again.
Charles meanwhile sat and laughed nervously in reply to any question he didn't want to answer. Some manager! The guy looked like he would pass out if you so much as looked in his direction. And it was obvious that Tracey knew he could be manipulated and controlled like a child.
The rest of the week passed by with myself and the other two girls trying desperately to appease the irate salesmen who were determined to prove we could only fail in our centralised role whilst Tracey concentrated on....you've guessed it, getting her new best friend Leah into the office.

After the initial shock that I was facing redundancy I decided that since I still had another week to enjoy with my new husband, I would forget about it for now. Tracey had another idea. She called me again that week to ask if I would like to come in for an interview in order to secure my job. Is it just me or does everyone think it's appropriate to call someone who is on their honeymoon and ask them if they'd like to come in for an interview whilst at the same time telling them that it can wait until they get back if they'd rather!?!? If it can wait, don't bloody call me!!
On my return to work I discovered what had caused all the chaos. The Sales Director had decided to centralise our Admin department, reducing the staff and working from one office instead of 3. Everyone could see that this would mean a ton more work for those who kept their jobs but at the time we all wanted to as we all had mortgages or other bills to pay.
Luckily I kept mine as did all the girls I already worked with. Everyone from the other two offices were made redundant but they did take on one new member of staff, an Admin Manager.
The first day he walked into the office i knew they had made a mistake. Charles had the confidence of a beaten dog, the skin of a teenager and breathed in more nicotine than air. I prayed that appearances could be deceiving.

I wrote a blog a little while ago but chose to delete it due to personal reasons. Blogging itself however proved a very therapeutic outlet so I have decided (with a little encouragement from a fellow blogger) to return to it.
I guess since this is the sort of place you can write about all the things that piss you off or frustrate you or that you generally want to air your opinion on without people telling you how opinionated you are(!), I'll write about something that still makes me feel incensed despite the fact that I should have moved on by now!
It started when I returned from a week in Poland where I had enjoyed a wonderful honeymoon. With still a week to enjoy as a newly wed before heading back to work, me and my husband were looking forward to relaxing and preparing for Christmas. We had barely made it out of the airport before I received a text message from my supervisor at work. It asked me to call her when I got the message but told me not to worry it wasn't anything bad. You would hope it would at least be something that just couldn't wait for your boss to even consider contacting you when you were on honeymoon, right? Turns out she wanted to forewarn me about the letter of redundancy that was on my doormat waiting patiently to be opened on my return!
To be honest I was kind of grateful for the call as I probably would have freaked out if I had read the letter before speaking to her. Despite that small kindness my supervisor, Tracey, had just started out on the road to becoming my arch nemesis.