Pampooties

WTF?!

2006-05-30T12:49:00.000+01:00

Hi All,

I'm back after a prolongued absence (sorry about that) marked only by my repeated exclamations of "what the fcuk!!". I have changed jobs and while I am immensly pleased with move I have to say that my new place of work must be the most difficlut I have experienced in terms of coming to an understanding of how the place actually works! Everything is so densly layerd in shrouds of ambiguity, that coming to know the end to end process of any business stream is a near impossibility and to the newbie like me, very intimidating. Hence, I have been a little distracted from my Blog.

Anyway, enough of that nonsense. Over the next while I intend to set my mind to updating this blog and adding a few new articles. One of immense interest to me at the moment is the Cannes winning "Wind that Shakes the Barley" , that fine "British" film. Don't you just love that prior to the win the Brits were giving out about how one-sided and oh-so-inaccurate about the nature of British rule the film is (I mean the Tans? Are they completely in denial?). Now however, they are proud to announce the Britishness of the film.

Get your own back....on Telemarketers!!

2006-02-03T14:32:00.000Z

This is so fantastic. It’s directly related to my current (soon to be former) employer’s activities and I urge you all to adopt this practice.

From the Irish Indo :

IRATE victims of cold callers are turning the tables by asking them a
tirade of questions about their personal hygiene.
Instead of letting the credit card salesman or telephone rep do all the talking, they are asking questions and keeping them on the line.
By quizzing them about things such as "Is it important to have good teeth in your job?" consumers are distracting them from selling their product.
Regulations introduced last year by the telecoms regulator, ComReg, means customers can register their preference not to receive calls from companies without their prior permission. Companies who breach these rules can face fines of up to €3,000 per call, but many Irish people are unaware of the service.
Call centre staff often have a prepared speech or script that they must stick to - but now so do victims, thanks to a Dutch conceptual artist.
Martijn Engelbregt's guide has become an internet phenomenon, with thousands of irate people copying it from a website to use when the nuisance cold callers come on the line.
It offers a set of questions to ask the salespeople and put them off their sales pitch - and cut their firms' profits by taking up their time. The counterscript begins by asking the cold callers to spell their name and continues with questions about their life and work. It eventually leads to talk of dental hygiene and ends
with the question: "Which toothpaste would you recommend?" If the cold
caller is still on the line after all that, the householder is advised to end
the call by asking: "Would you mind giving me your phone number in case I need
more information?" The idea came to Mr Engelbregt when a chat with one
salesman "got very personal and the guy told me he didn't like his job.
"I talked to him for more than an hour, asking him questions," he said. He said
the reaction to his guide has been huge, and he has been hearing from both
delighted consumers and irate salesmen. "I have had salespeople saying I am
stealing their jobs and threatening to call me 10 times a day in revenge," he
said. Cold calling has mushroomed in recent years thanks to advances in
technology and the use of cheap Asian call centres.
However, more than 80,000 Irish telecom customers have signed up for the service to make sure they don't receive unsolicited calls. To opt out, consumers must call their telephone provider and leave a recorded message of their preference to ban firms from contacting them.

To download Mr Englebregt’s counterscript, go here.

The Great Escape

2006-02-01T12:03:00.000Z

I know that posting has been light of late, but I have been a little preoccupied with things like, eh, building a house on my own and by myself. Well there are architects and builders involved – but you get my gist.

Oh and then there was the whole landing a new job thing.

I am so out of here. My new job is lined up – signed, sealed and start date agreed. And it’s not in some outsourcing group either. No siree!

I have handed in my notice and now play the waiting game, which is proving to be a very weird experience. Much weirder than the last time I left a company.
The head of our channel is giving me the silent treatment - a very mature response indeed. I actually have no work to do and there is absolutely no point in my being here today. I mean none. At all. I am writing this as I wait to meet for my exit interview. I can’t wait. I will be reasoned and honest and try at least to avoid breaking into a wildly celebratory dance as I scream “fuck you all” at the top of my lungs. I hope I succeed as I don’t think it would portray a favourably professional image were I to do so.

I think that I ended up in this kip for a reason though. I hope that the horrendous experience I have had being a yellow packer will help me to appreciate my new role (if I don’t fail miserably at it – nerves are getting me).

I am going to endeavour not to whinge quite so much about work in this new place. Unless it is terrible - then there’ll be whinging aplenty!

On the house front - I am having a hard time choosing between knobs.
How interior design can reflect every day life!

Medical exams. Why?

2006-01-27T08:40:00.000Z

I have a medical today as part of the rigmarole I have to go through to get a new job with an Uber Corporation. I can only assume that one of the main reasons behind medicals is that they are an ass-covering excercise, whereby I can't come along in 6 months and sue Corporation X for RSI if I am already showing signs of it now. The other of course is that they get to see if I am using drugs or drinking too much. Oops.

So, can you fail a medical, does anyone know? What happens then? Do they withdraw the offer of employment?
Anyone?

I really want this job! In fact, if they just gave me the benefits and percs, and left out the basic, it would probably still be worth my while getting this job. How's that for corporate whoredom!

EDIT: Well, I have a pulse, according to the test. Now I wish they would just send me the damn contract so I can thoroughly enjoy telling the current crew (employers/slave runners) where to shove it. In a diplomatic way, of course....

Graffiti - Irish style

2006-01-25T13:33:00.000Z

Amongst all the polls and analysis that have been discussed ad nauseum in recent blogs and news paper articles regarding the effects of immigration on Irish society, and what the populace makes of it, one thing has been glaringly absent from discussion and that is this: Since this new wave of immigration began back in the mid nineties, the quality of graffiti on offer on walls the length and breadth of the country has increased proportionately.

This struck me as I drove into work this morning, along a route that takes in a direct line from south County Dublin to the city centre. Wall after wall was adorned with an array of scrawls, which thankfully served to alleviate the boredom of staring at yet another D registration crawling along in front of me.

This got me thinking. I knew all along that "Johnno hearts Na’alie", as I have been told numerous times. Johnno used to be very fond of urban bus shelters, retail loading bays, post boxes, and lampposts as media through which to extol the womanly virtues of Na’alie. I have learned for instance that she is in fact a “ride”, sometimes so much so as to be termed a “slag”. This latter must be true as I have seen her moniker scribbled alongside those of “Anto” and “Tommo” on more than one occasion. The prodigiously untalented Johnno was also in favour of the irretrievably dull “black-marker-running-out-of-ink” school of graffiti, as many eminent art critics don’t call it. All of which, while interesting in a general way, is wholly unedifying.

Some people see this rise in graffiti as vandalism of the worst sort, and actively campaign for the practitioners to be punished accordingly. Johnno’s lazy brand is of particular offence. It is hard not to agree.

However, having only a vague awareness of the cultural theory behind modern graffiti, I do know that it belongs to an ancient human tradition that has precedents in both the Old World and the New. I know also that Graffiti surges in importance during times of great political upheaval and changes in a society – In ancient Rome for instance, at the height of empire and as the rot set in, it was prevalent in the streets of the capital. Modern “street” graffiti surged in usage in the USA during the seismic nineteen-sixties. It has been long used by political agitators – John Trudell named a whole album after the practice. I know that it has been used a method of territory marking from Ogham stones to gang lands today. Northern Irish murals must be products of the same impulse.

I have been searching the web (well Flickr anyway) for decent examples of Irish “street” graffiti, but there does not really seem to be much attention paid to it, which leads me to believe that the upsurge is due to immigration. So given that we are all agreed that Ireland is undergoing huge socio-economic changes, do our new exponents of graffiti have anything to actually say?

Here are some random samples I found.
Capture Capture
Iced Coffee
Dublin.ie
Indymedia

The yellow-packing continues…

2006-01-18T14:42:00.000Z

So, Oberstfuhrer McDowell wants to introduce a Garda reserves force who will (and I love this quote from today’s Examiner) “have powers of arrest, search and detention broadly similar to powers enjoyed by Gardaí.”

Powers enjoyed by the Gardaí! Oh, where do I begin?

“What’re ye up the weekend, lads?”, queries Ordinary Punter.
“Well”, reply Garda Liam and Reservist Paidí in unison, “we thought we’d go out and enjoy a bit of auld arrestin’, some unwarranted searchin’, slap a few fines on unsuspectin’ motorists using our new random breath testin’ technique, and generally lark about. What about yerself?”
“Eh….I think I’ll just stay in if that’s the case.”

The problems with this reserve force have been well covered in the meeja and rightly so. I am absolutely against this for a number of reasons.

It is a manifestation of the worst kind of role downgrading that seems to be the modus operandi of the entire economy, public and private sectors both, right now. And where have we seen this before? That’s right: the teachers underwent a similar undermining of their role in society with the introduction of class room assistants back in 2000. It really is a cheap and nasty way of meeting election promises without actually spending any money. On paper, that is. In practice, according to Ivana Bacik (she’s likely to know more than me on this one!), it will actually increase the number of cases taken against the state for unlawful arrest, abuse of powers etc, and may also jeopardize the successful closure of many prosecutions, on which the “real” Gardaí have expended time and resources at public expense.

Regarding the case of teachers, class room assistants ended up being paid for providing the same service that teachers had actually done for free, such as after-school supervision etc. This created all sorts of tension in the staff-rooms of schools up and down the country, and probably did very little to improve the general quality of second level education, other than reducing it to “crowd control”.

The tax payer will have to cough up in some way or other for this reserve force scheme, too. Who will benefit from this scenario? Probably those lawyer friends of McDowell, as they receive case after case on their books. This could work out, in reality, to be a method of using voluntary labour to create private wealth for a coterie of lawyers, without affecting the Dept. of Justice budgets, and blinding the public into thinking that “justice is being served” and election promises met. Not that I’m paranoid in any way, you understand, but it is genius, you have to admit.

In essence, this type of scheme is akin to the rampant outsourcing going on in private companies all the time – it looks great on paper for the company concerned, while the wider tax-paying community picks up the tab. This is what is happening with the pension scenario at the moment, and all that hoopla over the impending pensions crisis requiring an SSIA type remedy to be introduced by the Irish Government. The companies get off having to supply pensions and benefit packages to Irish employees, this reduces cost per employee, while the tax payer pays at the other end. Tax payers, many of whom, are outsourced to begin with! Very creative.
In the case of the public sector, tax-payer pays any way. The trick here is not to know what we are paying for at any particular point in time - it looks great when you can say you have a budget surplus today, as politicians don't get elected on the basis of long term effects unless the policy is obvious at the time.

If those who enlist in the reserves do so on a voluntary basis, without pay, what type of person will apply? There are bound to be some who are well meaning, but my money is on those who have a grudge against neighbours or severe personality issues surrounding a need to exercise power over fellow citizens. According to coverage on Newstalk this morning they will also “enjoy” their powers of arrest when off duty, just as a rank and file Garda would. This is open to all sorts of abuse. Apparently a weekend’s training will suffice for these reservists? You can’t learn how to adequately use MS excel in a weekend, let alone understand the application of the finer points of Garda powers!

Maurice Pratt has a lot to answer for….

EDIT: See The Dossing Times for more on this reserve Gardaí conundrum.

Fore! Women, Work, and the Golfing Fraternity

2006-01-11T16:11:00.000Z

This morning I attended a departmental strategy meeting.
Out of 8 senior managers in attendance, I was the only woman.
This meeting took place in a hotel renowned for its proximity to a golf course.
When the meeting was over my colleagues retired to the golf course while I returned to the office.

It is an old business axiom that real meetings take place outside the meeting room – either on the way to or the way from. Protract that exit from the meeting room by adding the circuitous route of an 18-hole golf course, and you should deduce that this is where the real meeting takes place.

I bring this golf fixation of mine up again as a result of a response left on one of my previous posts, in which I discussed the impending EU legislation seeking to ban single gender organisations. Auds asks a number of questions (rhetorical I assume) about my position on this in her message.

She asks, for instance, with regard to women’s exclusion from single gender golf clubs whether this could “tangibly affect their career?”

My answer here would have to be yes.

Yes - In a very real way. If decisions, business plans, and key appointments are discussed over the tee off, then business women who have a direct interest in said plans or appointments are at a disadvantage. Women are excluded from some of these clubs entirely, and in those clubs which allow for women members, they cannot play with the men anyway.

When business discussions are eventually brought into the board room from the golf course, the full picture, or nuance of the political backdrop against which the decisions are made, is not available to the person who has not attended these "meetings".

She may appear unprepared, not in full possession of the facts, or even as if she is playing to a different tune. If she has valid reasons to posit a different point of view to the rest of a male dominated board (these things are usually, not always, male dominated) she may not have the political backup to drive her opinions through.

Compounding this problem for women is that when kudos for jobs well done are discussed and the back slapping ensues, men (and I have been involved in a case just like this) can claim their female counterparts’ achievements as their own in the club house over a few friendly pints, while the female employee will not be present to contest this. First impression counts and the opportunity to correct this false claim will not present itself back in the office. If the slighted employee, whose hard work has just been hijacked by her colleague on the golf course, raises it as an issue she will appear petty. She cannot win.

In the professions such as law or medicine this may not prove to be much of an impediment to women’s advancement in the workplace. I don’t know. Lord knows those guys have their own little club going. However I do know that in the private commercial sectors such as Finance, FMCG, Telcos etc., being noticed for your achievements and remaining on the radar of those in power count very much towards your promotional prospects in your company. If those in power are attending single gender clubs with their young male only acolytes, leaving equally talented and hard working females in the office, how do those women retain the attention of their seniors? They have to go out of their way to do so and thereby lose the advantage of the chummy subtlety fostered in the club house. They either have to work harder or get a shorter skirt.

But don’t believe me. Here is what was quoted in a syndicated Washington Post artcicle:

In 2003, the women’s research organization Catalyst surveyed 705 women in Fortune 1000 companies about what they thought was holding them back at work. More than 40 percent said “exclusion from informal networks.” One of the most mentioned informal networks was golf.

The same American study is covered in more detail here.

Auds goes on to ask:

Would a Pioneer woman not suffer the same discrimination for not getting drunk with the lads?

In the past maybe, but not in Corporate Ireland today as far as my experience tells me. Either way there is no pub I know of today that has a rule excluding women or pioneers from entry. There is free admittance and no-body is forcing the pioneer to drink. If business is on the table, as it were, the pioneer can attend and have a Club Orange. I had a pioneer colleague who made a point of attending the office outings just to be seen to take part. Not a problem. I don’t remember any business being done at these sessions, though, other than over the counter trading of Vodka and peanuts.

The issue with single gender golf clubs is that they are actively excluding women from a place where decisions are being made on a daily basis by a group of men, who are probably often of the same organisational ranking as many of the excluded women, and that these decisions can often have a direct effect on women’s careers and working life.

Auds continues:

I welcome Portmarnock's male only policy the same way I'm glad Curves only has women in it or the ICA has a female only membership.

When Curves becomes a place where careers are forged to the exclusion of men, where brown envelopes are shoved around indiscriminately, and where women claim their male colleagues’ achievements without challenge, I promise I will take up the cudgels of any ensuing campaign and post about it here.

Curves was co-founded by a man who I am sure has made enough money out of it to soften any blow he may feel about gender imbalance. That it is marketed for women may be the ultimate exploitation of women. Curves purports to be for women only because of physiology.

Of course it is nice to have women only clubs and male only clubs. In theory. In practice you will find that the majority of business deals are forged in one and not the other. That it seems to be peculiar to Golf may be a bit of a chicken/ egg scenario. Did golf clubs become the boardroom because there are no women present, or do I find it objectionable that there are no women present because the club house has become the board room? Perhaps the solution is to ban business from the golf course. Have fun working out the legal points for that one!

Regarding the ICA, which was set up in order to redress a gender imbalance and inequality in rural Ireland, I too am glad that it exists if only for that very reason. If there was no inequality it would not exist to this day. It was reaction to clubs like Portmarnock, and its rural equivalents that brought about the ICA’s existence in the first place.

I quote from their website:

The Society of United Irishwomen was founded in 1910 as the women's arm of the co-operative movement. The first branch was formed in Bree, Co. Wexford by Annita Lett.At that time there was no outlet for women. Most lived a life of drudgery - their main function being housekeeping and childbearing.They were chattels of their husbands the law was changed as a result of lobbing by ICA.

Portmarnock, its ilk, and their place in modern Ireland, is complicated by not only a gender bias, but a post-Colonial hangover, and the two may be linked. Membership is intended to say something about position and societal rights that, I feel, is borne out of what may ultimately be the same sense of inferiority that brought about the notion of the Shoneen, or the pseudo-Anglo “horsey-set” of today (covered by the Sunday indo recently).

AUDS: Our freedom to associate with like minded people is so basic and natural to the human condition that legislation not just destroys that freedom but cheapens the idea of free human relationships and equality.

Or legislation can protect it. Freedom to associate is one thing. Freedom to willfully exclude, quite another.

On Postcodes - the corporate view

2006-01-10T12:25:00.000Z

Winds has posted about something which is bizarrely dear to my heart: post codes and the lack thereof on the auld sod. Ok, they’re not really dear to my heart but let’s say I have a more than passing interest in them.

To my mind the only reason why anyone would seek to introduce these post codes to Ireland is for market intelligence and for territory planning of residential sales routes. In other words post codes will make it easier for marketing companies to break us all into easily analysed sub-sections of society.

In the old Ireland loose categories would suffice to get an overview of a market segment, and marketeers could make assumptions about, say, the Dublin 24 area as a whole, or rural Wexford as a whole, in terms of the demographic overview, the purchasing means of the majority of households in the area etc.

Now, however, with the post Celtic tiger property boom these old segments don’t work efficiently for direct sales into the residential market.

For instance, no longer does a street in Dublin 8 signify a particular income bracket. Prestige and traditional housing are jumbled together in a category defying way. It is not easy to target sales to particular areas with this “mess” simply because it is not easy to analyse the mix of data in any sensible way.
To compound the marketeers’ problems there is the peculiarly Irish phenomenon of Vanity Addressing, whereby potential customers fill in forms by saying, for example, that they live in Firhouse, Dublin 16, when Firhouse is actually in Dublin 24.

Postcodes will make it logistically easier for the likes of UPS to schedule deliveries and should speed up the mail delivery process – apparently only 70% of Irish internal mail gets delivered the next day at present. However post coding will also make it easier for the likes of the telecom companies out there (there are about 100) to break us all up into easily scheduled calls.

An Post, who have spent millions GIS tagging every premises in the country to make their own deliveries more efficient, have said that post codes allow for increasing the volume of mail delivered (and therefore revenue), and allow for a deregulated market in the postal services sector. As if they really want that.
The fact remains that whichever company that is chosen to run the introduction of post codes will end up buying this information from An Post at a huge cost. Deregulation is coming one way or the other and they may as well make some money out of it.

ComReg advocates the introduction of post codes, despite the fact that ComReg is supposed to have the consumers’ interests to the fore. All I can see are benefits for the Telecoms and similar companies who will then have an easily locatable source of sales leads (i.e. us) to harass over the phone and at the door. Something they are achieving quite admirably as it is.

Software companies specialising in off the shelf CRM software, logistics software, and data analysis software will make a packet in the rush to leverage as much cost saving benefit as possible.

This will be good for the consumer in the short term and the cost savings should, in theory, be passed down the value chain, but in the long term they will know a hell of a lot more about us than they do currently. We will receive more junk mail and have to battle more “market research” questionnaires on our way in our front doors. This was picked up by the Carlow Nationalist and the marketing benefits are stated directly by An Post on their Geo Directory website:

As Ireland's only complete buildings database, GeoDirectory has a range of applications of use to practically every business. The standardised address features included in GeoDirectory facilitate a number of direct and database marketing applications - including address capture, validation, matching and cleaning. The location data can facilitate sales planning, penetration analysis, routing solutions, proximity analysis and risk analysis.

A look at this page tells one quickly just who is set to benefit…

As a citizen I certainly don’t want to see the introduction of postcodes.
As a corporate whore with a job to do...bring ‘em on. It would free up my time during the day to write more blogs!

Gender biased golf clubs face EU ban

2006-01-05T10:26:00.000Z

Hurrah!

Almost.

Having aired my scorn at the corporate golf culture in previous posts, it was with absolute delight that I read this morning’s Indo article title “Golf clubs to face EU ban under gender bias rules”. Imagine my chagrin then when I actually read the piece. Apparently there is a loophole to the new law, which is intended to outlaw gender based discrimination, and that is that, since it would allow for “freedom of association", and therefore by default, allow for single-sex organisations.

So in fact this new “ban”, coming into effect in December 2007, is utterly ineffective in weeding out that kind of “boys’ club” that has provided, for the major part, the glass ceilings faced by female managers in Irish corporate life.

The most famous example is of course our very own Portmarnock Golf Club (pah!), where it was ruled by the high court last summer, that upon payment of Green Fees, women could play but could not become members.

One of the things that most bothers me about this type of golf culture club is outlined in this article at The Post: the absolute hypocrisy of people in public life particularly our politicians, who on the one hand preach equality, and on the other tee off on the hallowed courses at Portmarnock.

Of particular note is former Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne. Named in the same article dated from 2003 as a member (I have no idea if he continues to be a member), but just last month the Department of Justice was found guilty of paying 14 female clerical officers working for An Garda Síochana less their male Gardaí counterparts. I’m not saying that there’s a link, as I have no idea how long these claimants had been pursuing their case with the Equality Tribunal, but it is food for thought.

Also name-checked in The Post article, is Niall Crowley, head of the Equality Authority itself. He is not a member, but his brother and uncle were at the time the article was written. Again, food for thought.

Weird Habits.....maybe too late

2006-01-04T14:31:00.000Z

I have just noticed that over the holiday (when I was well ensconced in rural Ireland/ culchie-land, I was memed by Colm at In Fact, Ah . Now, I don’t know if it is too late for this, or from whence this practice emerged, but it has given me food for thought, and not to be seen as being a bad sport my habits are listed below. I never realised this about myself but I appear to be the most non-committal human ever!

Firstly, the rules, as lifted from In Fact, Ah are as follows:

The first player of this game starts with the topic “five weird habits of
yourself,” and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five
weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose
the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget
to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You are tagged” (assuming
they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

1. I become obsessed with actors and/or musicians for extended periods of time, and even though they fall out of favour with the meeja and may not be thought of as 'cool' any more, I pretend that I still like them, probably more out of an obscure sense of loyalty than anything else. During the period of obsession I will consume hours upon hours of the artist in question's output (though I use the term "artist" loosely), and then go completely cold-turkey, for years sometimes. For example, I will always have an abiding love for R.E.M., despite the fact that if I were to be honest with myself, their albums without Bill Berry have been less than stellar. Why do I persist?

2. I start courses that I don't finish. After I completed my M.A. back in 1998 I have been forced to trawl the corporate depths, owing to pecuniary difficulties. Since then I have embarked upon a huge variety of professional courses that I thought I would like to pursue as a career, but have all turned out to be quite "meh?" in my estimation.

3. I love to dabble in adventure sports but I refuse to commit to any of them as a long term hobby. Thus far I have managed to try the following: Shotokan Karate (I did this for three years so maybe this one doesn't count?); Marksmanship; Snowboarding; Skiing; Trekking (Not the star variety); scuba diving; canoeing; and Horse Riding. I am sure there are more but I was obviously that non-committal that I forgot.

4. I store things for later use when I know in my heart of hearts that they are, in fact, of no use at all. For instance, I must, at this point, have accrued Europe's largest collection of clothes hangers, despite the fact I would be considered to have a limited supply and variety of clothing. I cannot bring myself to throw them out and in the garage they shall languish for another year. Roll on 2007's New Year resolutions!

5. I spend working hours reading blogs, when in fact I should be, eh, working. That’s not really a habit or trait though, is it? Unless you count avoiding actual work as a trait.

Now , as is the tradition, I tag, and seeing as I am both in work and fairly new I apologise if I’ve memed someone who has already been tagged!

Funkyredcortina
Shane Ryan
Planet potato
Liffeyside
AdamsRants

Facing the Post-It Christmas Blues

2006-01-03T15:12:00.000Z

So now we all slip ineluctably into the new working year and I can't quite put words on the desolation I felt last night as I tossed and turned, and generally failed to sleep in any solid way. What am I going to do without all those languorous afternoon power naps?Now I can barely remember that feeling of elation as I gleefully tossed aside all care for my workload at 12.30 on Friday 23rd December, running out the door praying silently that the lift would descend all six floors without stopping once. Now, staring back at me is every single piece of paperwork that I so exuberantly discarded, sitting in piles on my desk and festooned with pale yellow "reminder" post-it notes.

In today's Irish Independent there is an article discussing the fact that today is the most depressing day of the year, according to workers. It further posits the idea that it should be made a "duvet day", whereby coming into work would not be compulsory and that one should only stir from the bed for food and the bathroom. I fail to see how this could benefit anybody - you have to come in eventually, and the longer you leave it the worse that the pile of post-it-laden documentation gets.

Once again, planet potato's unparalleled understanding of the modern Irish culchie has it spot on regarding the return of the bog-posse to Dublin. I am one of those most discerning culchies mentioned, electing to buy salad (salad!) in the emporium of crap supply chain that is Superquinn, following yesterday's doleful drive from the arse end of nowhere. The salad, you can no doubt deduce, has been purchased due to the fact that I have made my New Year resolutions, oh yes. That I based these resolutions entirely on withdrawal symptoms from the relentless eating over the Christmas is neither here nor there. Said withdrawal from bingeing is making me feel like a refugee from Black 47, while I more closely resemble a Telly Tubby. Needless to say, girth-removal is my chief aim over the coming months, followed by changing my job to something more rewarding - I just have to figure out what that may be. Perhaps a career as an anti-post it note campaigner is my true calling in life?

Christmas in PC World

2005-12-23T11:09:00.000Z

There is a really interesting post at Damian McNicholl’s blog regarding attitudes to the traditional Christian festive greeting in the USA. I am tempted to assume a mantle of euro-snobbery*, but I will resist. I don’t think anyone can argue with Damian’s logic in how to offer season’s greetings to those of other faiths. I work in a major Irish company that has employees from many different cultural backgrounds (a primary result of outsourcing), and it was only at the office party ™ the other night that it actually dawned on me that half the office don’t even celebrate Christmas. It does not prevent people getting into a holiday mood though and wishing each other “Merry Christmas”, because when it is translated into office parlance it means simply “Isn’t it great that we get out if this kip for a week? I hope you enjoy your break and come back in one piece in January”.

So, feck it, Happy Christmas! I suspect blogging will be light for the coming week, but you never know…

*Is that a McWilliamsism? In fact is “McWilliamsism” now a McWilliamsism or should we continue to refer to it as neologism?

Departures from Smirny Central

2005-12-22T14:07:00.000Z

Our office party ™ was held last night and was, all in all, a wholly uneventful evening, despite which, I still managed to end up “under the weather”. That weather being Vodka clouds, with sporadic Mr Fog patches.

My esteemed colleagues (steamed colleagues might be more apt) had started drinking at close of business, so, needless to say, the inane prattle was rather unedifying by the time I arrived fresh and sober after my ritual tantrum about my weight, followed by the now traditional tardy taxi ride into town (why do they take the bookings?).

I don’t remember drinking that much, but maybe therein lies the problem: I don’t remember very much at all. I just hope that I didn’t say anything hugely offensive or untruthful.

The most exciting thing that happened for the entire evening was one of my colleagues almost getting thrown out by the bouncer for dancing suggestively. What larks, eh?

The office party ™ signals the ending of all serious attempts to feign usefulness in the cube-farm for another year, and is swiftly followed by a mass exodus as we culchies run for the hills; back to mammy for the Christmas. There are certain rites associated with the culchie at Christmas, nicely summarised by Planet Potato .

Books I have lined up for my holiday reading at the mammy's:

Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin

Ronan Bennet’s Havoc in its Third Year

The Irish Writer and the World by Declan Kiberd

…And of course multitudinous magazines, newspapers and websites.

I never get through all the reading I plan, but I love that sense of failure a redundant plan induces, don’t you?

Sex and the Urban Crisp

2005-12-22T11:02:00.000Z

I heard on Newstalk (and read on the Examiner) this morning that Hunky Dorys have had objections to their current advertising campaign upheld by the ASAI as it was offensive to women. For those who don't know, the campaign features two different ads, one depicting three scantily clad, nubile young women in bed, the other shows three hunky man-boys in their underwear. The text asks: “Which one would you throw out of bed for eating Hunky Dorys?”

Despite the equality of the offensiveness, apparently the ASAI received 60 complaints from the public, all of which were with regard to the objectification of women. I am not entirely sure where I stand on this, but it does seem to indicate that there are double standards in operation. Surely the depiction of men as sexual objects is as deserving of complaints from the public. This is advertising for a snack food whose target groups are predominantly of school-going age. More worrying still is the idea that, in the advertising industry which is supposedly populated by young urban sophisticates, the very people who have had the benifit of years of feminist debate and equality legistlation, actually thought that this was a good idea.

Sure 'tis all a long way from the packah-a-tayhos we grew up with.

Christmas in the office.....

2005-12-21T16:03:00.000Z

So it's Christmas in the office and the Secret Santas are about to be unveiled. I wonder what I'll get. A spirit of cheer pervades the cube farm and no-one is doing any work of note. I myself am writing this!

The office party is tonight. No doubt I will have a blog about that in the morning.

On a separate note....I gave a Christmas hamper to a guy from another department without whose goodwill I could not do my job. Well, all I can say is that, based on the effusiveness of the thanks I received, the previous incumbent of my current role must have been a right stingy b*stard! I checked with others and this person has never received a gift from our department before. Why do people's contribution get overlooked so often? Is it only salesmen who actually get thanked or shown appreciation? Why are operations considered second-class citizens? It reminds me of that joke in "The Office" when David Brent said in reference to the warehouse, "Don't go down there. There are working class people down there."

I have mentioned before that we are an outsourced department, and that this is an issue for me. However, if you think my attitude towards this is "ranty", as Beth Bond posted, there are worse than me in here. One colleague of mine refused to go to our Christmas lunch today, as to do so would mean sitting at the same table as "outsourced field scum". He himself is outsourced field scum, but clearly he sees a world of difference between his role (managerial) and the others who have no problem working in an outsourced function. Why do we have this attitude? I know that mine stems from the deeply felt belief that I have come down in the world, and that my current job is a bit too "yellow pack" for me.

Back to the gifts thing. It did make me feel good , so does that take away from the gesture?
Underneath it all I know that this can be leveraged for that extra bit of help. When it comes to a conflict of interest between my department and another similarly positioned one with which I have to compete, and this person holds the key to the allocation of resources, will his decision fall in my favour?
Do we all think like this? I have purchased gifts for my team as well. Did I do this to make them feel appreciated or rather to make myself look good?

Both perhaps.

Male (mis)managers

2005-12-19T13:20:00.000Z

I am not surprised to read in today's Independent that the management of AIB were complicit in the wholesale rip-off of that bank's customer base, or that a general culture of scapegoating and buck passing has prevailed there.

Oh where have I seen that before?! Hmmm. In my last job? In my current job? Alas and alack it appears to be a management strategy widely deployed in many high profile Irish companies (at least those for which I have worked). I actually left my last position because any attempt to get at the truth behind the gross mismanagement of staff and company resources was white-washed. But sure, what would I know? I'm just one of those females they let in from time to time to balance the scales in the eyes of the equality authority.

Just today I asked a senior manager to confirm the plan of action for the next quarter in terms of head count. And just today I was subjected to ducking and diving and the general refusal to sign any decision off. I am forced to make that decision now. Either way I lose. If there are problems I will get the blame. If things go well, he will get the kudos.

Is it just men who engage in this practise or am I raving? Auds at realitycheckdot.ie appears to believe that the lot of female professionals has improved and that inequality among the sexes in the workplace is a thing of the past. This is a well debated issue at this stage, however if it were true, why is my biggest problem right now the fact that I do not have access to the golf club and the associated reciprocal arse-covering that is engaged in by that particular subset of the wider community.
Who has got my back?

Corporate Whoredom

2005-12-12T20:51:00.000Z

The worst day is the one when you come to realise the mediocrity of your life. How you have settled. The things that were important to you and you let dwindle to nothing…or worse…you retain the illusion that you are working your way around to them. The procrastination is what kills it eventually. That thing you love.

You see I am an outsourced worker. Outsourcing employees must surely be the most invidious practise emerging in Irish corporate life. I don’t have the problems that underpaid Polish workers in Irish Ferries will have if that company gets its way. I am not paid below minimum wage, I have a managerial title, but still something in the structure itself is wrong – I can no longer identify with the job that I do and the company for which I ostensibly work.

I have been trying to figure out why this position in which I now find myself seems to bite at my very heart. Is it a pride thing? I did leave a very comfortable, seemingly respected job in the FMCG sector, where I had things known as “benefits”. Now, it appears that I don’t even have sick pay! The mileage allowance is 10 cent lower than industry average. There is no such thing as a pension…hell we barely have desks.
OK, that last one was a bit of an exaggeration.

Still, it’s as if the soul has been sucked out of me. I don’t recall if there was an exact moment in which I finally realised that this was the case. I mean there must have been a point at which it could have gone either way for me, but I made the fateful decision to nestle in the desiccated bosom of corporate Ireland just a moment longer, and then all was lost.

Nothing is any good to me anymore; I don’t like to go out; I have abandoned all my interest in literature and history ; and, to top it all off, I can’t even bring myself to do any work. I am on a silent protest: It has become the driving force in my life to get away with doing as little actual work as possible. This is just not me. Where has my personality gone?

And how did I find myself in this mess? Simply put, I was lied to during the interview process. I trusted a little weasel who I should have known on first meeting was closely related to Gollum. But it goes deeper than that: I have been lying to myself all these years. I have been working to fulfil others’ expectations of me. I have been willing to hang my identity on others’ expectations of me, and when that outward perception of success was stripped away I was confronted with the bitter, naked reality that I have been a willing and even eager participant in the gradual erosion of my sense of self.

The only kernel of me left in this shell is the belief that I was meant for better things. It is this persistent conviction in itself that has perhaps led to my discontentment.

I have always wanted, in a kind of a loose, undisciplined, and directionless way, to be a writer. Now, if you ask me to narrow that down, I could not. My biggest fear now is that any talent or skill I accrued during my years in university, when I read and wrote voraciously, has been stripped away by the last 8 years, spent pouring over Excel spreadsheets and Access databases, long since defunct.

What has any of this got to do with outsourcing? Absolutely nothing, other than the fact that finding myself in a degraded, yellow-pack job made me realise for the first time that I need to change, and that I need to carve a direction for myself. Up until now, I only had direction by default, because I had to go somewhere.