We’ve got a good boss, for sure, she tries to keep us positive by suggesting walking meetings, getting outside more often, meeting up in small groups to have a coffee, we have to pay for the coffee; the days are long gone when we could claim a certain amount every day for “lunch”. I don’t think it helped when people were claiming for about £6 of raw ingredients daily to pay for the family supper. That’s not how the expenses were meant to be used, that was proper abused and was probably why we lost the daily lunch allowance a good few years back. So there is no money, but there are pockets of goodwill and pockets of good people working here too, thats what makes the place tolerable; you’re certainly not going to get rich here, unless you move up the greasy pole and defecate on your mates, but by the time you’re up towards the top of that pole, your mates don’t speak to you any more and you really cant understand why.

So our group, our band of vagabonds have all nicely bonded, were tight, we don’t see each other often, but we all help one another out work wise and I dare say look out for each other on a more personable level; everyone here has a super power. Things are going ok, we understand theres no money, but this years pay reward is due, sorry was due in April, but the union and the board never get it together to sort it out before August usually. I think  as  its always such a derisory kick in the teeth amount, that if they wait a few months before they negotiate a percentage, with a view to getting it sorted by July’s pay packet, then the derisory amount will be 3 months worth and so would probably buy a few cocktails in Majorca and we’ed be in Majorca with those cocktails and so we’ed forget about how much they seem to be annually anally probing us. The fuckers.

This afternoon, I’d been in on Teams meetings all morning and so was ready to get out to go and poke around somebodies garden for the purpose of what I get paid not very much  to do something that I do very well. And so to receive an email just before I go out from the finance department telling us we’re to receive a 2% pay rise was disappointing to say the least, I wasn’t expecting the finance tendrils to unfurl and promise us an everlasting supply of tricolour and black printer cartridges (they stopped supplying them about 3 months ago, I made a block booking so should be ok until Christmas) but for the wallet to squeeze tighter and offer us a little bit less of a real time pay cut was beyond kindness. I’m 52, and set in my ways, comfortable in the job, lazy or probably just enjoying my life, content, were it not for the decade of poor pay rewards, and thats the reason i’m probably still here, sadly I enjoy whay I do, but to see the younger staff being shafted like this makes me think I’ve probably been a mug all these years. Who the hell does the shiny rather than rugged faced HR director think she is? Brightly coloured Floral attire and a soft Irish accent will not dissuade me from thinking you spend an awful lot of time speaking out of your arse and gaslighting us, the fools that we are. Just because you say it does not mean that it is so.

So I’ll reject the pay offer in the ballot, then I’ll go on holiday and receive a backdated chunk of dosh which will pay for some sex on the beach and I’ll forget about work in my soft focus drunken state on my congenial sun lounger. And the holiday will be wonderful, I’ll return to a billion emails and as I delete and read alternate emails I’ll suddenly realise they imposed something like 2.3%, and I’ll feel like a mug, the tanned metallic HR director will also have spent the entire holiday talking about how the staff are all mugs and the underlying hostility and sense of ever increasing worthlessness will begin all over again growing like a case athletes foot throughout the winter months, itchy but not all consuming.