Slackers Unite

Ayup regulars may have noticed I've been slacking a little lately.

I've got an excuse - and its not that my computer has recently spent half a week being fiddled with by the local rent-a-geek.

No, nothing as sophisticated as that.

It's that its cold outside and the car air con is bust. Which means that when I get in it's kettle on, feet up and brain off.

Life at work has had me feeling that road out.

You see the bosses wife has moved in on the place, and has wormed her way onto the payroll as Business Executive, and she's as much use as a chocolate teapot.

I've been charged with giving her stuff to do. Not that she's paying the least bit attention. And to be honest its driving me nuts!

Now I didn't think that people still walked around like something out of a Doris Day movie. Especially when they're twenty five years old. I grew up with lasses who were "I can do it better than any blokes" types, who would work harder, longer, and not break a sweat, and match you pint for pint afterwards.

I'm not used to thick-skinned sharp-nailed gold-diggers of 2003 who sit on the phone all day and spend a whole afternoon composing a letter. I'm not used to my colleagues sloping off to the hairdressers at 3pm, and hitting the road at 5 on the dot like the school bell went.

And the trouble is she's the bosses little cracker. The big cheese and his size 6 got married very recently and she's his everything. Having her around chewing his pencil all day is clearly working for him very well.

He's given her responsibility for the accounts, Cos she's got a degree in business management, and the company's going to hell in a pickle barrel. She's so on the ball with it all the damn phone was cut off due to none payment two months in a row!

I'm grinding ginger silently, keeping a public shit eating grin on my face to keep the wheels turning. I'm supposed to be mentoring her (whatever THAT means) and teaching her how to do my own job just in case I drop dead of nappy rash or something.

Now this is really hacking me off and I can't seem to shake it.

You see by now The Cheese has begun to notice the flies swarming around the Accounts Receivable file, and is vaguely aware it's going to need sorting before the VAT man arrives for a snooping session. And he's always taken the piss out of my immaculately balanced cheque book.

So his big theory is this.

(He's been reading Tom Peters on the bog...)

There's no room in the modern economy for specialists. Yeah right...

He recently opened a company meeting with this little gem, and announced his intention to make his two biggest specialists redundant this year. He actually used the term Downsizing, which is pure 1990s übercrap. He didn't mean it of course, because someone's got to run the business while he's out on one of his famous liquid lunches, but it sounded good.

Anyway his latest theory is I can help sort the accounts and I can teach Bunnykins who to do MY job. Cool eh? I sort out her bloody mess while she gets back on the phone to her mates and tells her hubby what an easy job I've got. Keep this up and suddenly I'm out of a job, and a deeply bitter and twisted bugger to boot.

Never mind. Mustn't grumble! I've arranged for the VAT inspection tomorrow and I'm suddenly feeling a little under the weather :-)

I'm sure Bunnykins can handle it...

B