Work has become a fourletter-word is the euphamistic sense, as well as the literal. Margaret, in the Grand Ellipse, made the observation that “if knowledge is power, then ignorance is surely helplessness.” The words I put in her mouth in regard to Victorian era intrigue are proving as true now as they were in the game. Each day the situation changes; each day those of us still there learn of something else. People are told their jobs are being abolished and that they are being moved to a different department at 4:30 p.m. the day before it takes effect. The office closes at 4:45 p.m. My secretary was one of those; she was told on Thursday night to move into a different cubicle on Friday, and report there on Monday. The woman whose cubicle she is to move into will come back from maternity leave on Monday to find that she has been transferred willy nilly, and that the boss she had when she left no longer works there. I no longer have a secretary, and as of Monday I am theoretically wearing two hats. I did at least manage to insist that they continue to pay me for my current job as long as they expect me to continue to do it. The woman in charge of new employee orientation has been told to be ready for 5 new people Monday, but not who they are or what positions they will fill. That means she can’t tell Reception who to look for, get their computers and phones set up, complete their paperwork so that all they have to do is read and sign it, and so on. She had asked several people on Friday, but for some reason it’s a Big Secret. She’s being prevented from doing her job, and she’s terrified that she’ll be in trouble for it when she hasn’t been given the information she needs. I wish I could reassure her that it couldn’t happen, but I can’t. Neither I nor anyone else knows what could happen. Another woman, whose job is to advocate for foreign nationals, put together a 12 page report on the impact of the planned change in processing and then no one would look at it. She gave up during the meeting, but realized that when I said the same things, with the title behind me, I was at least acknowledged. At the end of the meeting she quietly handed me her report with the comment “You be my voice. They at least listen to you. I don’t even know why they had me come here.” I had agreed to put the whole thing in writing, and indeed I spent the rest of Friday doing so. I’m not done yet, either. I have acknowledged the advocate’s help in my own report, as well as integrated her work into the content. It is all I can do for her. If I am helpless and frustrated, then surely she is more so. It seems Dilbert-land has come to life in a state agency. I know I’m not the only one whose resume has been sown broadcast across the area.
So I’ve taken refuge in writing of a sort I’ve not done in years. I’ve taken the characters of Shirley and Margaret, and a vignette that Dorothea (who wrote Shirley) and I were batting around last week, and written out a full blown revenge melodrama. Suffice it to say that their nemesis ends up very dead at Margaret’s hands. He doesn’t end up with any inconvenient holes in his hide to be explained, either. (Shirley, at Dorothea’s suggestion, was not so fortunate. Margaret, like Queen Victoria, was Not Amused.) Mind you, it’s dreadful stuff. I’m not particularly good at writing fiction, and this would give the most devoted reader of Grade D Westerns the collywobbles. But it was really remarkably satisfying to have at least one villian I could stalk and kill with impunity, however improbably accomplished. And in the end, I write for myself anyway. It’s one of the things I can’t not do.
Okay, I expect a longish sort of email instanter…
I’ll send it once I have it transcribed.:) I wrote most of it longhand in a small blank book that lives in the bag of holding commonly known as my purse. I was sitting on a bench in the park while a certain small boy played.
Ah, all-righty then.