I did what?

I'm not best friends with clothes shopping.

I tend to avoid it as much as I can. Until recently, I'd splash out every 5 years or longer on classic good quality things that I'd then wear out until they're dead, before doing it again. No shopping in between, none at all.
Before I lost weight I used to go to a plus size store. I liked their clothes and I knew that their sizes would fit me without even trying things on. Now of course I can't go there any more so I'm stuck. Back in March I bought a few pairs of trousers in size 14, thinking that the additional weight loss wouldn't make much difference now as it was only about 10 kg left. What I hadn't counted on was losing inches and not weight. In the past few weeks inches seem to have disappeared into thin air. My weight has only slightly changed, but the trousers I bought in March are now falling off my hips.

Today I decided I'd look for new trousers. Partly it was 'cos this morning I'd had an argument with my sister who's being much less than supportive - her comments when she saw me after a few months were along the lines of: "you look older", "I'd stop now", your bones are sticking out" and the likes. Hey, I'm not saying she should tell me how wonderful I look, but a "wow, well done, are you feeling good about it" would have been nice. For the record, the bones that are "sticking out" are the cheek bones and the collar bone, and they're not sticking out: they're visible, which they should have been before if they hadn't been covered in fat. She also told me that I looked ok when she saw me last year, after I'd already lost some weight but not as much as now, completely ignoring the fact that when she last saw me I was still officially obese. She then added that it wasn't about looks, and that if I felt good I shouldn't be upset at her opinion. So I replied that it wasn't her opinion I was upset at, but the fact that of all the comments she'd made not *one* was positive, supportive or encouraging and that *she* was making it all about looks (older, bones sticking out, looked ok last year etc...). I also reminded her of the saying "if you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut", especially since her opinion hadn't actually been asked.

But I digress. Today I was upset at the argument, and I was also thinking that I'll need more trousers soon as the ones I bought in March were mostly summery, and on top of that they're now falling off my hips, so I had a look around when I went out.

The first shop I stopped at was ok-ish. I tried 3 or 4 pairs (sizes ranging from 12 to 16), and guess what, none of them fit me properly. The best option was a pair of jeans in size 14 for £35. They looked ok but didn't feel quite right. I thought to myself that £35 was a lot of money to spend on a pair of jeans that didn't feel quite right, so I went to have a look in the second shop. There I tried another 4 pairs (ranging in size from 12 to 16 to XL). The size 16 wouldn't even fit through one leg. The XL fit, the 12 was very tight. In the end, the choice was down to two pairs of trousers (one for £35 and one for £50). Again, they looked ok but didn't feel quite right, and £50 was way too expensive for something that didn't feel quite right. By now I was feeling quite annoyed and ready to go home. The second shop was made for women who want to feel and look like pre-pubescent girls, and the shop assistant had been looking at me all through my visit with an expression in her face like: "you'll never find anything *your* enormous size here" ("enormous" meaning anything above a size 10 which in any other shop would probably be an 8 or 6).
As I was walking home I went past a third shop, and forced myself to go in, even though I didn't believe it would be any better. How wrong could I be? I looked through the rails and grabbed an armful of trousers and jeans, helped by the incredibly sweet shop assistants. When they had asked me what size I was I had told them I'd no idea so I was just trying different ones, as I was currently wearing a 14 that was falling off my hips at every step, but I had just tried some 14s and 16s I couldn't even get into, and some 12s that had fit me. The guy had looked me up and down and told me that he thought I was a 12, but that there was this type of jeans just arrived, called "Tummy Tuck", where you should go for one size lower, so he pushed a 10 in my arms before I went to the fitting room (trying not to laugh at him - me, in a size 10? Purrlease). Anyway, I picked all the trousers from the mess on the hooks one by one and tried them on. I was aiming for black and started from those. There were a pair of leggins, a pair of trousers and one of jeans that fit me (all in size 12), but again I wasn't entirely convinced (the one I liked the most was £80, but no way I'd spend that much on a single item of clothing!). I then had a go at the others, blue, pairs. All except one fit me, with the same problem - doesn't feel quite right). I put the Tummy Tuck on last, without much conviction: first, they were blue, secondly, they were a 10, and thirdly, they looked like a completely ordinary pair of jeans. In other words, "they won't fit me and even if they do they don't really look that hot".
Boy, how deceiving looks can be! They went on like a pair of old slippers, I zipped them up before I remembered to hold my breath in as no way I'd make it with a size 10, and up the zip went, nevertheless. They felt like I should have been born in them. They moulded to my legs, hips and bum like a second skin, soft and smooth as silk. And as for the "tummy tuck", I looked at my profile in the mirror and... it just wasn't there. No tummy! Flat as a pancake! But the best thing was that I didn't feel constricted. I have a thing about tight clothes that make me freak out, I need large, airy things. Not today - they were tight but a right kind of tight, not a freaky kind of tight. I felt as if my body was being supported without anything actually making me feel like I couldn't breathe. I popped my head out of the fitting room and said "I'll have these". I had to force myself to take them off so they could be scanned at the till... and that's when I saw it. The price tag. I looked at the woman and said: "Bloody 'ell, one-hundred-and-thirty quid for a pair of jeans? Are they made of gold thread???"
She just winked and smiled at me saying, "Look at it as an investment, you'll have them for years and you said yourself how they felt like a second skin".
I handed my credit card over and even left my number for them to call me *if* they get them in black! Apparently I wasn't the only one either: the lady told me how every one who'd tried those jeans on had ended up buying them, and then coming back for a second pair as basically they wear them all the time and need a spare for when they're in the wash!

Vanity sizing at its best - give a woman a pair of jeans with a label claiming they're 2 sizes below what she is, add some trick that makes them feel like she's just had cosmetic surgery without actually seeing a knife, and fleece her of roughly half what she'd normally pay for clothes in 5 years!

If it walks like a duck...

It looks like a duck, it sounds like a duck, it's a...

Du'h!

Which is what I felt like this afternoon. I spent a couple of hours with my neighbour today, chatting, drinking coffee and messing around with the bike. We were testing the gears trying to work out what the best combination was for going uphill. I then went up the hill to see if the practice matched the theory.

The problem is that I've still got problems with changing gears, I often forget that it needs a couple of revs before the gear clicks, so it was a bit tricky 'cos I kept switching without giving it time to adjust. Which also meant I kept losing my balance and bumping into bits of road, pavement, parked cars and the likes. At some point I got the hang of it just enough to cycle a few hundred yards without toppling over, and this is when I heard "the noise". I could hear it coming from the front wheel and I could feel it vibrate through the handle bars. I kept getting on and off the bike, pushing it back and forth trying to look at the wheel but I couldn't see anything. And yet every time I picked up a bit of speed, there it was: "wrack, wrack, wrack". So I started worrying that maybe something had gotten loose and if I kept cycling the wheel would come off and I'd end up splattered all over the road, or under a bus, or head down in some nearby bush; I had this gory horror movie in my head of how my cycling exploits were going to be cut short due to a loose screw or something. So I went to the shop and explained the problem to the guy, telling him I was worried blah blah blah. He lifted the front of the bike from the handle bars, simply gave the wheel a spin with his other hand and said: oh, it's the mudguard touching the tyre.

Ooopsie! You mean my horror movie star career is not going to happen???

I thanked him and walked out with Ginevra, trying not to look like the prat I felt like!

Not an entirely bad idea

If the Italian team had thought of it themselves, they might have managed to stay awake for more than 15 minutes instead of being ignominiously kicked out!

Man after my own heart!

"You call it 'iPod oblivion', I just call it stupidity," said Inspector Parr.

Today mark Ginevra's first month on the road. I'm truly loving it except that every time I get on the road I get really tense 'cos I'm so worried about other road users. And I'm not talking about the obvious ones such as cars, buses and lorries. I'm talking about pedestrians, such as the 4 year old girl who threw herself under my front wheel (fortunately with no consequences as I'd already slowed down due to being near a school), because her mother could not be bothered holding her hand or even looking for traffic before letting her dash into the road, or the bloke who suddenly jumped in front of me on the cycle lane (also without consequences as I'd already noticed him walking erratically so I had also slowed down and was ready to brake).

So it is that every time I am close to a pavement with children or dogs on it, I slow down to almost 0 in case something unexpected happens. I don't usually give the same consideration to adults, as frankly if you make it past 20 and you still haven't learnt both consideration for other road users (and people in general) and self-preservation, it's only right and proper that you should be removed from the gene pool.

So, yeah, I'm with Inspector Parr.

It gets worse!

Obama has to specify, through his ambassador that he didn't mean national offense, after his comments caused anger "among many business people and pensioners in the UK", not to mention Davey, when he used the term "British Petroleum". This brings up a lovely picture of old geezers in tweed sitting on park benches, getting their caps in a twist. What does BP stand for, for fuck's sake, bloody poms? It's ok, I understand you have plenty of time on your hands and you need to find a way to occupy yourselves now that you have a free bus pass, but seriously? As for the business people, shouldn't you think about picking up your own businesses from the gutter, instead of being insulted when someone uses the full words the abbreviation stands for?

But all credit to the President for trying to pacify instead of showing the contempt they deserve!

You couldn't make it up!

Poor little Davey, he's saddened and hurt that Obama said BP are a bunch of tossers. It offends his patriotic identity. Americans have been accused of anti-British feelings.
It's not often that I side with the Americans, but pardon me for thinking I'd be mightily pissed off if well in excess of a million gallons of oil a day had been spilling into my pond for two months. I'd also be thinking I'd want the head of the people responsible on a platter, possibly with fries. But hey, the Gulf of Mexico is a big ocean and I want my life back, what's 60 million gallons of oil between friends?
What life? The one you made on the back of fuck knows how many dodgy deals, taking full advantage of the fact that it's a global economy? Global? So, what's British identity got to do with it? And even if it did, isn't the Gulf part of the globe too? Oh, I see, it's only global when you can make a shitload of money out of it, never mind that a catastrophe on this scale affects us all, regardless of where we live or what our passport says.
A bit like the Germans getting all hurt when you tell them Hitler was a mass murderer, really.

While we're on the subject, how about doing something about this too? Or doesn't "global" extend to Africa?

Two wheels good!

In early May I finally got out of my last job, which was a nightmare. It was so bad that I was feeling sick every day at the thought of going in - in fact, it was so bad that I felt very edgy today when I had to call them to find out what had happened to my last pay slip and P45. I was informed that the pay slip had been sent to my workplace, because they'd not had enough notice that I wasn't there anymore. They knew on 4th May, wages are done in the second half of the month, and it would not have been sent to workplace until around 25th May. That's the people I was working for, and this is one of the very minor things they do, messing with wages.

Anyway, a few weeks down the line, and I'm feeling a lot better. No small thanks to Ginevra, my new bike, kindly offered by my dad :)))



I've had it since the bank holiday. Before then, I was using a bike borrowed from a friend, but it was old, too low for me and with no gears so it was really hard. With Ginevra, I'm all over the place! Last week I went for an ice cream in Regent's Park, which was a good excuse to do 30 km that day :)))

In early May I also went to see Gogol Bordello - they are just great! I'd seen them a couple of years ago and was looking forward to seeing them again. I had bronchitis at the time (possibly caught thanks to being so stressed out at work), but I was determined not to miss this gig so I dragged myself there. It was well worth it! And here's the t-shirt I bought. As soon as I saw it I thought my father should have it; I'm just borrowing it until I can give it to him :D

Gordon Brown: "I quit"

In September.

Errrr... darling, has it escaped you that the first time (and about time too!) you gave people a chance to say ay or nay, they got back to you with a resounding "fuck off"?

In September? How about yesterday?

A chip off the old block

Well, the dream job I moved to 7 weeks ago turned out to be a nightmare and one of the worst mistakes of my whole life. While the job itself is good, unfortunately I can't say the same for the people I work for and with. Tomorrow I'll be putting in a grievance, just in case it's a just a matter of individuals; however I have a strong feeling that it's the organisation.

I am currently in a situation where the thought of going to work is making me sick; I can't look for other jobs because 1 - I am never at home to fill in applications and 2 - even if I were, I couldn't go to interviews (unless I threw sickies). If I resigned I'd be left stuck with no job and no recourse to welfare benefits for a few months.

There is another option that I've been considering in the last few days. It would involve something that is morally dubious, but it might make me a decent sum of money, enough to allow me to be off work for 2 or 3 years (just as well as if I decided to go for it, I doubt many people would give me a job for a while, until it all dies down). I've just started investigating my options with regard to this, and may be talking to a few people soon, to find out exactly how much we're talking about.

With this in view, I rang my family today to let them know what I was thinking about and to find out how they'd feel about it. First I spoke to my mother, then my father. They both reacted how I was hoping they would, both supportive. However when I put the phone down after discussing it with my father, I couldn't hep but smile as a realisation had dawned on me.
I'd told him how sick this job was making me feel and described a few incidents that had happened.
Now, when they happened in the first place, I was outraged and sure the organisation were breaking the law. My first step was to contact employment law advisors and tell them the situation. To my shock, no law was being broken. According to European Working Times Directives, workers have fewer rights to humane treatment than prisoners. I was incredulous and spent almost an hour on the phone thinking that maybe I hadn't explained myself properly, but I had. At this time, there was no point in approaching anyone else to back me up from a legal angle, as whoever I might approach could only refer me to the EWTDs, so the only option is to get out. Another thought had occurred to me: I shouldn't let this lie as it is really obscene, and at some point I should bring the matter up with MPs and other suitable people, so that the system can be changed. Just not straight away, as it wouldn't help me with my immediate problem.
When I started noticing these things at work, I spoke to a deputy manager who's also not been there very long, and who also wasn't too happy. As a lot of my colleagues aren't happy either but are too scared of losing this job to say anything, I offered to be the one who speaks up, after all of us having a meeting to discuss our issues and deciding on a strategy. That way, if that meant someone losing their jobs, it would be me and I'm not bothered about it. The DP smiled and said: "You're militant, aren't you?", and I replied that no, I wasn't, I just didn't like people moaning about things without doing anything to try to change them.
So it was that I ended up smiling when on the phone to my dad. His reactions were exactly the same as mine: outrage, disbelief, anger, before he started telling me to contact this and that person. I kept explaining that I had already contacted everybody who could help, but as the thing was completely legal, there was not much I could do, even if I contacted someone else (who'd only refer me to the EWTDs). Then my father instructed me to make this situation public so that it would start a change in the system. And this is is when I thought: "After all these years, he's still militant, ain't he?!" and it dawned on me that was exactly what the DP had called me!

Must be in the genes :)

Lovely day

Had a lovely day with a friend today. Lots of chat and a stroll down the park, followed by a Thai meal.

We went to check out a mural I'd seen started earlier in the week. As I was walking home on Monday I saw this guy painting under the Crouch Hill gargoyle and stopped for a chat with him. He hadn't finished his work yet and would finish the following day but I hadn't had the chance to go back yet.
All I can say is that it's amazing.





See more of his gorgeous work here.

Start Wearing Purple

Best song ever!

And how apt... Hütz was a refugee in Italy, of the kind so disliked by Mr Berlusconi and his lot, and he's come back to bite them in the arse :)

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

Well, my first week on the job, or rather, on induction. I turned up on Monday, at the place I was told I'd be all week for training, to be told there was no training that day. It was scheduled for the following day but my name did not appear on any list.
That's when I started hyperventilating. I must have looked it too, as the lady in the office offered me a cup of tea. She advised me to go home since I wasn't training. I left the place and went for a walk - there was no way I could come home in that state. I mean, I don't mind a one-day cock-up, but not being on any lists at all? Hello? I left a job to come here!

As I was walking around Acton trying to calm down, my phone rang. It was the HR director apologising profusely for messing me up for the day, and assuring me that I *was* on his list for the following day. He told me to make my way to one of the other projects where I'd meet my manager. I found her putting up shower curtains and light bulbs! The project opened last week, so everything is in a mess and needing finishing touches. There were only three people booked in so far, the rest expected for the end of the week, and two of them were out, so it was on the whole a very uneventful day. However, I was very perplexed... I met 5 members of staff beside the manager, all of them psychology graduates and no older than 26. I felt like the odd one out, very old and very uneducated, and unsure what I was doing there.

The following day I went for training. It was quite a big group, with the same demographics as the people at the project. I started wondering why I'd been given the job, I really felt I didn't belong.
The day after I actually mentioned my doubts to one of the trainers. I let out a sigh of relief when he said that academia was way over-rated and not to worry, as he himself had only graduated after several years on the job! Later on in the day he went as far as repeating his thoughts on academia to the whole group, during training. Way to go :)))
Got to admit, that boosted my ego a bit.

The whole training was brilliant. It was held by the directors in turn, so during the week we got to meet all the senior team. It reinforced the impression I had of the company at the interview stage, which helped a lot. I also had some nice conversation with several of my colleagues, who didn't seem bothered by my lack of qualifications.

Tomorrow I'll be starting at my house, and I'm a bit nervous - hopefully all will be fine, once I've settled in!

My first time

Just over two months into my new job, I'm loving it. There have been a few customers who left the office visibly uplifted and more optimistic for the future after we'd had a chat. The other day a lady gave me a hug and a kiss, saying I was in the wrong job and I should be a counsellor instead. I was moved.

Although this lady will probably never find out as I'll never see her again, I wish she (who regards herself as useless) could know how much she influenced my decision today. I got home on Tuesday evening to find a message in my voicemail and two emails from the "other" job. They wanted me to start on February 15th.

It was a terrible dilemma: when I applied for the jobs, that was the one I really, really wanted. I ended up taking the other one because they offered first. If both offers had come at the same time there would have been no contest. However, since starting the job I found out how wrong I was in my assumptions about both the employer and the job itself. I have throughly enjoyed the last couple of months. My new colleagues are brilliant, so is the organisation, both in its approach to customers and employees. I have received nothing but support. My only misgiving was that I felt I wasn't really making much of a difference due to procedural limitations.

So I had to choose between the job that I really, really wanted and that I knew would give me a bit more scope (but that I could be wrong about, given the precedents!), or the job I already had and loved on all fronts except that little bit.

And for the first time in my life, today I handed in my notice, although I'll be there until the end of the month. I had never resigned from a job before, they all came to natural ends before I moved to something else. It feels very weird!

Scary stuff :)

All's well...

... that starts well.

And my first 7 weeks at work have been pretty good! I've been meeting and interviewing customers and so far it's all been very interesting.

The one thing customers have in common is that they have at least one medical condition. This could range from arthritis to depression to ME to schizophrenia to not better identified back pains to panic disorders to dodgy bones following injuries or accidents to cancer, and everything in between.
Other than that, they are as different from each other as any two individuals can be.

I've had young mothers who've never worked in their lives and think they're good for nothing; empty nesters who've always been in work until the illness struck or they were injured and who now think they're on the scrap heap; drug or alcohol abusers in their late teens, twenties, thirties and above who want to but can't break the habit, or who have never even thought about breaking it, or who have broken it and are now at a loss for what to do with the rest of their lives.
People who can't speak English, people who can speak several languages, people who don't want to talk and people who won't shut up for you to edge in a word.
Shy people, arrogant people, people with no self confidence (whether because of their illness or for whatever reason), people overly self-confident with no apparent good reason, dreamers, sleepers, hypers, no-cluers and over-cluers.
Ex-offenders and people who've never even got a parking ticket in their life; coming from care homes or posh homes; homeless, in temporary accommodation or snug as a bug in a family home.
In other words, a motley crew of humanity.

And I hope they've enjoyed meeting me as I've enjoyed meeting them, because I couldn't single any one of them out for lacking at least one redeeming feature, usually quite a few more. They all had potential, some of them more than others. They just need to be triggered on the level that works for them.

Unfortunately I only meet them once, before referring them to someone else, so I can't be that trigger. This is something that has had me thinking since I fund out what my role would be, shortly after starting the job. I like triggering people, I like being part of what sparks them into getting where they want to be. I like to think I am able, in some way, to inspire them to better things than they realised they might be capable of before they meet me. However, to do that I have to get them to trust me first, and that's not realistic, in most cases, with just one fairly short meeting, which more often than not starts with the customer being extremely defensive, some times to the extent that all they keep saying for several minutes is they don't need anything and this is a waste of their time.

I'm trying to get round this by thinking that the people I refer them to can pick up from where I left, if I manage to break down their barriers enough that they won't arrive at their next meeting thinking they need to protect themselves. This line of thought got a few knocks in the last couple of days, after I interviewed a couple of fairly challenging people. I approached them as I think I approach everyone: I listened to what they had to say, tried to spot what they thought was so bad about them they were trying to hide it, and went from there, not giving undue importance to what I thought was either due to their illness or a defense mechanism.

The first person was a young man with schizophrenia who was hearing voices. He told me straight away he hadn't taken his medication that day, because it doesn't agree with him and he tends to skip it on occasion. Talking to him was tricky because he kept sharing his attention between me and the voices only he could hear. All considered, I think he coped pretty well as I only heard him reply to the voices, very quietly, just once during the meeting, and that was when I was writing something down and therefore not giving him my full attention. All through the meeting he tried very hard to focus on me and what I was saying, and to give me coherent replies. He kept fidgeting on his chair and a few times just jumped up and stretched his legs, moving around a bit before trying to sit down again. I'd wait for him to re-compose himself, repeat the last thing I'd said, and just continue. I ignored his tics, fidgeting and all that (other than asking him at the beginning if he was ok or preferred to move elsewhere where he could be more comfortable, to which he replied he was ok and explained about medication etc...). He had a friend with him who seemed to also have some sort of mental illness. When I went to greet my customer in the waiting area they asked me if it was ok for the friend to also sit on the interview and I agreed. Although the friend was a bit fidgety and displayed some odd behaviour too, he also talked to my customer when he started getting too jumpy and his voice seemed to soothe him, so on balance I'd say he didn't hinder the interview, on the contrary! Oh, and the customer was wearing a hat, a bit like this one.
Anyway, as soon as he was out of the door, my colleagues burst into laughter, gathered around me and started asking me a few questions which I'm half inclined to regard as slightly odder than the customer's behaviour.
These were, in random order:

- Why did you play along with them?
- Why did you not tell the friend to wait in the waiting area?
- Did you look out of the window? I bet he stopped fidgeting the moment he was out of here!
- Why did you not tell him off for being so rude?!?
- Did you see his nicotine-stained fingers?
- Why did you not tell him to remove his hat???

I was somewhat stunned for a few seconds, not having a clue what they were on about, then it dawned on me that everybody in the office thought the guy was taking the piss, aided and abetted by his friend, and they were going through his oddities with a fine-toothed comb to make a case against him.

Take his hat off? He kept his coat on too all through, should I have told him to take that off as well? I mean, I could keep eye contact with him, I could hear him, he could hear me. Do I really give a shite what he has on his head? Let's assume they *were* taking the piss, let's say his hat was a fashion accessory that he removes only when he goes to sleep because it makes him look cool (and excuse me, but I wouldn't wear a Peruvian knitted hat if I wanted to look cool); provided it doesn't compromise communication, what difference does it make? Or worse, let's consider the possibility that his behaviour was intentionally and carefully designed to wind me up, including the (according to my colleagues) disrespectful failure to remove his hat. Do I really want to antagonise a potentially unstable person right from the start, by asking him to remove his hat (that makes no difference whatsoever to my ability to talk to him, and his ability to hear, understand and reply)?
On the other hand, he could have been cold. Or the hat could be his safety blanket, a form of protection against a world full of unknown voices and known people who laugh at you. Or he could simply just not have thought about taking it off.
And the problem is...?

Stop fidgeting the moment he was out of there? Of course it's a possibility. Obviously you can never be 100% sure that someone isn't giving you a trainload of bulls. Personally, I think that if you go to the trouble of faking the symptoms of an illness to such an extent, there is probably some form of mental problem you should get checked anyway. And in any case, my job isn't to verify if someone is ill or not, or what illness they suffer from. There are doctors for that. My role is to help them identify their potential and move on.

The second person was a middle-aged man angry with the system, the world and the universe. And I wouldn't be surprised if he was angry with himself too. This was apparent by his extreme defensiveness as soon as he arrived. The colleague who greeted him came back to the desks asking whose customer he was, and when I said "mine" he replied "good luck" followed by a rolling of eyes. When I went to pick him up from the waiting area his first words were: "I don't know why I'm here, this is all a waste of time and there's nothing you can do for me. And I don't need your help anyway".
He then went on to tell me he'd just been released after a 12 year spell in prison (not the first one either) for armed robbery, which he kept repeating for the first 15 minutes. He was obviously trying to sell himself short, so it wouldn't hurt too much when I'd say that yes, he was hopeless and the scum of society. Or maybe he was just trying to scare me, who knows.
He was also in pain due to an injury.
Anyhow, I let him rant for a while, then I said that I still had to go through this and asked him to please humour me. That's when he laughed the first time - result!
By the end of the interview we'd shared a few giggles and he'd agreed to consider a few suggestions I'd made. I always stand up and shake hands with customers at the end of an interview. In this instance, I was chuffed that he'd extended his hand to shake mine before I'd done the same to shake his.

As soon as he'd left, two colleagues came to congratulate me for how I'd handled it. That was sweet of them, and I'm not saying I didn't handle it well. However, what pleased me the most was the handshake he'd initiated on leaving, after being so obstructive at the beginning.
Other colleagues remarked on how rude the man was. Hey, maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't equate "abrupt" with "rude", nor do I equate "annoyed", "angry" and "pissed off with the world" with "rude". In fact, all through his rant, the guy kept saying "I know it's not you", so it's not even as if he was being personal.

After both episodes, when I was arguing with colleagues that I wasn't being soft, I was just doing what I'm paid for (i.e.: help customers find their potential, build their confidence, etc.), all they kept saying was: oh well, it's because you've only just started, after you've been here a while you'll learn to spot the no-hopers, piss-takers, and wastes of time. I pointed out that although I might be new in this particular job, I've worked with very similar sets of people in my previous jobs, for about 15 years, so it's not as if I haven't a clue. I just think people deserve a chance.
At this point one of them took me aside and said: well, you know, it's not that we don't care, it's just that we have targets to meet and not enough time to do it if we spent time with everyone as they needed it...

That really made me think... this is the main reason why I had become so unhappy in my previous job and why I was pretty happy to be made redundant... Do I want to go back there? Can I find a way to get targets to meet what's right?

More winter wonderland from last Wednesday.

In the morning:







In the afternoon, moving towards dusk:

View from a Hill

Enjoy :)