I am so incredibly frustrated right now! I have today and tomorrow booked off work as holiday, and have just had a lovely day out with my boyfriend. I was feeling happier and more relaxed than I have for weeks, and was starting to hope that things might be on the mend. Then, just as my boyfriend was dropping me off at the station, I noticed an unrecognised number calling my mobile. I suspected it was work related, but because I was busy didn’t answer it. A few minutes later it vibrated again to indicate I had been left a voicemail.

Once I had found my platform etc, I dialled up to retrieve it and discovered it was a manager from the Manchester office. Now to put this into context, you need a little background. For at least the past three months, the deal has been that I was supposed to be spending next week auditing a firm of solicitors who are located next door to my firm’s office in Birmingham. This was an ideal job, and on the understanding that I was working on it I chose this weekend to go visit my sister in Germany. I’ve got a very early flight out on Saturday morning and a very late flight back on Sunday night, but I thought it would be cool because I knew I wouldn’t need to get up until seven on Monday and it would be quite a relaxing week.

Having planned my social life on this basis, I then found out last week that the plan had changed. Another major audit of ours was postponed due to a management buy out. This meant another member of staff with a cheaper charge out rate than me became free on the planner, and she was chosen to replace me on the grounds of economy. I then became temporarily blank on the planner.

I should have booked the whole flipping week off while I had the chance. Before I could blink, I had randomly been assigned to work for the Manchester office. “Manchester office” was all it said on the planner when I checked. No reference to who I was working for or what I might possibly be doing but hey, why would I possibly want to know that sort of detail?!

Well, on Monday evening I finally received a very curt email from a manager in the Manchester office. She said that I would be working by myself in Bury from Tuesday to Thursday, could I please book a hotel as soon as possible and travel up on the Monday night so as to be there bright and early on Tuesday.

I was initially rather upset by this email. Firstly because the tone of it was quite frankly rude. Secondly because I didn’t relish the thought of spending a week up north entirely by myself. I don’t generally mind working away, sometimes I even like it, but at the moment I’m going through a horrible lonely phase where too much time on my own really doesn’t appeal. Apart from anything else, when I’m on my own I think too much and that isn’t helpful at the moment.

After a day, however, I managed to pull myself together. After initially worrying I was going to spend the week in a scummy travelodge where breakfast is a flapjack left on the floor outside your room each morning, I managed to find a nice little hotel in the centre of Bury which not only served breakfast but had free wifi access. I chose it specially so it was within walking distance of the client and I wouldn’t have to charge taxi expenses to their budget. I planned my route there on the train, I printed out numerous maps, and I was going to arrange to see my boyfriend in Birmingham on Thursday night. Basically, I got myself mentally accustommed to the idea and prepared to make the best of it.

And now, at four o clock on Thursday afternoon, I get a phone call from the same Manchester manager saying there’s now been another change of plan and I’m working on a different client. This one is Christ knows where in the region of Bolton and I’m needed there on Monday morning. More than that she didn’t say and I couldn’t call her back because I wouldn’t have been able to hear her in the station. I’ve apparently got some emails from her but won’t be able to pick them up until I either get home or think of somewhere I can find free wifi access.

Regardless of what the emails say, I am now highly pissed off. I’ve got a flipping hotel booked in Bury which I now need to figure out how to cancel. If I end up being charged for that she’s fucking well getting it on her expense bill. I now need to find another hotel wherever the hell this other client is and I doubt I’ll find one as nice or as convenient. I’ll be bloody lucky to find one at all at such short notice. If Bolton is as far as Bury, I will legitimately need to get up at 4am to be at the client by 9 using public transport. Not what I would have hoped given that I’ll have had a tiring weekend and she’s flipping well having my overtime claim on her budget and all. In fact I intend to charge every single second of overtime I work to her, including my lunch breaks if I work through them. And if she dares suggest that I travel up on the Sunday night she can go to hell because there is no way I am altering my weekend plans for her stupid little audit.

This was what I meant the other day when I was complaining about people pretending to care. No one cares in the slightest. No one treats you as a person and I am getting sick to death of being treated as a commodity which can be shipped hither and thither at a moment’s notice, regardless of the personal inconvenience it may cause to me. Oh and I’ve already promised to work for another manager in my own office on Monday, planning an audit I’ll be doing in a few weeks, so I now have to email him about the change of plan which is probably going to result in him telling me to do the work in my own time. That’s going to be charged as well.

Sigh. I really have had a lovely day and I’m sorry to have to blog about this when there are much nicer things I’d like to be talking about. But I’m so incredibly frustrated now that I would just like to burst into tears, not least because today had been so good until that point and once again work has to impinge on things in a negative way. To me this is a perfect illustration of why I hate this job so much and why it makes me so desperately unhappy that I have ended up on anti depressants.

In other news, in one of those peculiar coincidences which really shouldn’t happen but occasionally does, I just met my one friend in the whole of Leicester on platform three getting off a train from Nottingham. He works for the Leicester branch of my firm, and so I asked him about the rumour that the Leicester office is closing down. It is indeed, he said, but apparently where they are moving to is practically next door. So, erm, not Sheffield like someone else told me. When I cheer up enough to appreciate it, that will be good news.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.