For someone who struggles daily with the inanity of kitchen small talk, it is somewhat mortifying when I explode my tasty filter coffee all over the work surface. This stuff is a bugger to clean up, it leaves stains everywhere and tricky little grains in every corner. Oh how they laughed.
Of course I shrug it all off with good humour and make them feel it's somehow their fault that I temporarily forgot what happens when you don't give air a means of escape.
I hide in my office.
However it's not all rosy in the world of New Jobs...
The original plan is that I will be 'acting up' as Faculty Timetabler, that I go up to a Grade 4 and get paid accordingly. I am bullied into doing the pointless 'interviews' because this is what Grade 4's have to do, you know. Now of course, Personnel don't want to have to write a new contract, what with failing to do the Pay Equality Project anyway so instead, they are going to give me a Responsibility Bonus.
I don't really know what one of these is, it sounds a little made up to me (they trust me to make my own coffee without throwing it all over the kitchen perhaps?) so I bitch and moan but the lady who should be fighting for me is a bit wet and I suspect I'm going to have to lump it.
Am I the only one who thinks it will be detrimental to my future career that in years to come people won't recognise this period as a secondment, or acting up since my Grade will not actually change? Who cares how responsible I am and who's going ask whether I'm a pretend Grade 4 when I apply for a Grade 5 job?
(I'm NOT going to apply for a Grade 5 job, but still. You never know...)
...
Some interesting little circular arguments go around about rooms and teaching times, the academics seem to believe that I am all powerful. Perhaps the girl I replaced was good at seeming that way. They would rather I fought their battles for them than (God forbid) actually talk to their colleagues, despite the repeated emphasis on the fact that I really don't care what they do or when they do it, just tell me what is decided, please and stop whining at me.
I lose a room, that is the Big Central Timetabling office phone up and put the pressure on about a room they want, but they've always let us use. Apparently no, we're not allowed to use it and I should have known better. I dig out the email that specifically says we have 'priority for timetabling' before forwarding it to the Queen with a carefully worded note.
