Week 1- I'm all raring to go, eager to learn as much as I can from the current Admin before she goes on maternity leave. Instead I'm sent to sit with some wet behind the ears temp (they hadn't bothered to tell me she'd been taken on) who has no admin experience at all to 'learn what she does'. After realising that all she does is flutter her eyelashes at the guys in the office and spend most of her time talking to her boyfriend I took it upon myself to go and sit with the real Admin staff and make notes and at least learn something other than how to be a tart.
The remainder of the week pretty much carried on in the same vain. I learnt how to do stuff really quickly but without 'proper company training' I had no log on to enable me to do anything but that was ok as I did the work on Charlotte's details while she supervised me. Every now and again the eyelash fluttering dolly bird would appear to learn the job - all she did was look at her watch and phone and then piss off back downstairs to be with her boyfriend.
Week 2 - I spent 2 days at the Birmingham branch doing some Excel training. I found out on the 2nd day that the manager who interviewed me had quit the job under a cloud of losing vast amounts of money for the business! WTF!
Wednesday I'm told that he's being blamed for supposedly losing £1.4 million in just over 12 months (alarm bells start ringing by this point). The place is swarming with the upper echelons of management who just ignore us minions. All orders are now being scrutinised with a fine tooth comb to monitor where money is being wasted. I could make a few suggestions - managers ordering last minute lunch via the caterer's (on the company) because they can't be arsed to go out and buy their own lunch from a supermarket 5 minutes away; People ordering stuff off their own backs without getting it approved but getting away with it. Staff breaking into store cupboards to take uniform and supplies that they can't be bothered to ask for - does anyone care? Apart from us Admin dweebs, no. I then find out that me and wet-behind-the-ears are to be 'equals' as she will be covering the maternity leave. So let me get this straight. I am to be on equal footing with someone who wasn't even born when I started working in offices and who can't even copy and paste on a document. Yeah that's going to work NOT.
So there we go. After 2 weeks I have come to the conclusion that this well known international company couldn't run a piss up in a Nunnery. I've decided to give it until the end of January to see if things improve and then I will start the dreaded job search yet again for that elusive good job with a good company.
Elsewhere it's less than a week to Christmas. The decorations are looking festive but the mood isn't thanks to the mild weather. Kimi managed to escape and come home plastered in some foul smelling gunk. He's just about got over the horror of having 3 baths in short succession. Star Wars VII finally came around and we went to the 1 minute past midnight showing like the proper geeks that we are and it was fabulous. I can now splurge on the merchandise that I wasn't allowed to spend my pocket money on first time around.
Have a merry Christmas and may the force be with you :)
