The Rev Jack's Diary
Created | Updated Aug 5, 2004
Help I'm Middle Aged
Why is it, when the post comes there's only bills?!
Why is it, when your in a hurry someone stops you with just the most inane conversation?!
Why is it, public transport is always empty?!
Why is it, when in the bathroom singing, you always sound better?!
Why is it, when you're sat having lunch, the telephone rings?!
Why is it, that whenever you need to sort something official, you end up doing it twice? You take all the paperwork and it's still not enough to satisfy the 16 year old girl behind the desk. She has not got the authority to grant you whatever you need so she has to get another manager to get the authority and she is in another dept, dealing with another person because the manager of that dept is off sick! The amount of money wasted by this double take on everything must be incredible. Also the fact that these people really just don't care about wasting your time. The 16 year old girl has been told in the morning that she's taking too much 'company time' dealing with customers and to 'take a leaf out of Sharon's book. Now she only takes approx 17 seconds to answer the phone and a farther 1 minute 36 seconds to deal with a customer in person,' according to the manager. But, for all of her quickness and being efficient, she still has customers come back, which is back to where I started!
Empty bus lanes. Cycle lanes which the cyclists never use - they ride in the road 3 foot out from the curb and another foot from the cycle lane. A heavy goods lorry overtaking at 58 mph, another heavy goods lorry speeding along at 57 mph up the motorway. The daily drive to get to work so you can earn enough to pay for the wastage; contributing to it, condoning it too. 'Not my problem, I wash my hands of it as I leave at 17.30 to drive home'. Or is this way of thinking just me???
A fountain costing who knows what that can't handle people in a public place - a public park for goodness sake! Just open for a few weeks and then has to shut for a repair or two. 5 years in the planning. Bearing in mind that the 'Committee' knew where it was going, could they not have foreseen these sorts of problems? The 'Victorians' never had these sorts of problems when they built the sewers in London as they're still being used by us all. Although they need to be repaired which, in part, is due to lack of investments, the fact remains that they had the foresight to build something which would last with enough life in it (which is the wrong word there) and be able to absorb at least a x5 population increase without being completely redesigned or rebuilt!
We build a new motorway which, by the time it's finished, is totally too small to handle the amount of traffic that it has to carry and with enough 'over run' expenses to make it look like the GDP debt from a small Caribbean country!
Is there anything this country can do anymore? Can we do something which doesn't over-run in construction, cost, or have to be dug up and rebuilt or sorted in some way 3 weeks after it's been opened? Which
nicely brings me on to the next bit of this diary!
Officialdom, job's worth, and the petty mindedness and stupidity that accompanies each and every 'job' today. When I first started my working life1 we had 2 apprentices, 2 semi skilled mechanics, 5 skilled mechanics, 1 foreman and a workshop manager and this went
for most garages I worked in. Then came the 80s and the explosion of 'Middle management' and 'job titles'. So it changed the set-up somewhat slightly in our garage! We have 2 trainees, 4 semi-skills technicians, 2 skilled technicians, 1 workshop loading manager, 1 trainees' training manager, 1 service secretary with an assistant, 1
parts manager (just to order the parts, the rest of us use) 1 parts person and 1 service manager. So staff levels have gone from 11 people to 15 in the space of around 20 years and they wonder why the garage is losing money!
They also like to load the responsibility on you and give you more to do but, here's the crunch, without extra wages for you. So you either have the 'joy' of the new responsibility and have a longer working day or, like me, say 'stuff it' and go home because you're still not going to bring home any more money. All you're going to see is the manager leaving in the company car with a smile on his face knowing that you're hard at work, being 'one of the team!' Is it me? Have I become more cynical as I have got older or just more experienced with the environment around me? I like to think it's evolution; the genes in me making me selfish so that they can survive to the next generation and, in the process, making me more efficient in spotting the 'middle management BS' that flies around in the new working environment. This might offer up a reason why most young people are just interested in the self!
At least we have got global warming to take our minds off the state we find ourselves in each and every day. I think I might retire to a small Scottish island, dig a hole and lie in it and wait for the end! I'll have to dig it myself, of course, as, if I get someone else to dig my hole for me, I might only have it 3 weeks before it has to be closed and repaired because of a design flaw and the wrong type of leaves or something of the like!
Rev Jack
