The bad, the good and the beautiful

On top of absolutely everything else I've had a revelation this week concerning my job. I hate it. I've never felt that way about a job before, or perhaps when I have been on the verge of feeling that way I've gone off and done something else.

Sadly that isn't an option for me. Not right now. Not until after I've had my visa renewed. Theoretically that will be September but if the Home Office is in anything like the state the recent incoming Home Secretary described that could be September 2007 (or 2008...).

Unfortunately but perfectly reasonably employers require prospective employees to demonstrate their entitlement to live and work in the UK before confirming an appointment, so harsh are the penalties for even inadvertently employing an illegal immigrant. A non-EU citizen with a time limited visa simply cannot secure full time and permanent employment in this country any more and my current employer has refused to offer a rolling-contract under the terms of which I'd be required to demonstrate the renewal of my visa/work permit.

Frankly I'm stuck. There's simply no point in my looking for an alternative position until the Home Office has done its thing. I can't chuck the job in.

I arrived in time for the start of my 1-9pm shift and walked in to find the colleague I was to take over from wafting around on Planet-S. Yesterday she was threatening to file a formal complaint against one of the Assistant GMs (who'd said the wrong thing or something in the wrong way or the wrong place) but she was at least smiling today as she told me precisely which critical systems had failed during the morning.

Then she wandered off, halfway through what she'd been doing, asserting that the books would all balance, hopefully.

Well I double checked her figures and the cash balanced so I proceeded. Then I worked back and picked up all her little mistakes. They are little mistakes, but with the accounting there should not be any, and if necessary I will have to spend half a fucking hour finding that missing 6p because she can't read her own writing when she comes to adding up her figures.

Between that and the temp who is covering for the checkout supervisor (who fainted and split her head open at home on Sunday and won't be in all week) I felt like I hardly had 5 minutes to myself all afternoon. The phone didn't stop ringing too, and I can do without having to deal with people who want to know what time we're open until.

I know exactly why I hate my job. I hate my job because I don't ever have the opportunity to do it - or even one single component of it - well. There's always some sequence of minor to catastrophic issues to be dealt with, sometimes several all at once.

The problem has only become acutely pressing because the whole store seems to have hit a rather bad patch rather suddenly. Everyone is in a mood (even the GM and the AGM he's shagging had a blazing row on Monday), resignations are flying in thick and fast and a whole set of significant if not critical processes have been undermined to the detriment of overall performance by a lowering of levels of work performance scrutiny.

In other words neither the GM nor any of his AGMs have recently been paying sufficient attention what the Kiddies are doing and (more importantly) how they're doing it. As a result fewer and fewer things are being done right. As a result we're finding more and more out of code goods on shelves and more an more incorrect pricing. If Trading Standards were to go through us like a dose of salts tomorrow we'd be neck deep in the smelly stuff.

In the mean time the GM, who has spent the first three days since he returned from leave telling everyone in turn exactly how and in what manner they are incompetent was in a positively sunny mood today. He's even given us the pool he's just replaced with a more permAnent arrangement. The Fat Bastard brought it home and has actually set to work on the jungle garden so that the thing can be put up.

So one curious side effect of all this total crap is that my garden might be sorted out while the weather's still warm enough to make it enjoyable.

Further good news is that the Victoria Plum by my kitchen door, which last year suffered from some horrible bug that did something nasty to the fruit is this year in fine fettle. We actually ate very few of the plums (I don't even like them particularly) but the butterflies simply adore the mushy flesh of over-ripe 'windfall' (if that's the right expression applied to plums) which I left lying about a couple of hot summers ago.

For a few weeks it was like living in a butterfly house and I've now got high hopes with this extended period of warm weather and the good crop on the tree that we'll have another this year.