HR Rant

 

This week, at work, has been awful, and I do not specifically mean because I have been struggling to breathe, because of the humidity, or struggling to sleep in the heat with no air con or fan. I am struggling with how much of a hypocrite our HR lady, Amy, is.

On Monday morning, some of the manufacturers, where I work, asked Amy if they could work from 6am until 2:30pm (instead of our usual 7:30am until 4pm) the rest of the week, as they said that the director used to let them do that in the past, when there was a heatwave. Now bear in mind, the manufacturers jobs are only time sensitive on a day-to-day basis, not an hourly basis, so it would not really matter if their hours changed. Amy immediately said no. She was absolutely disgusted that anyone suggested changing their hours. She said that she didn’t understand why anyone could complain that they were hot or how anyone could possibly get hot, or hot enough to feel uncomfortable to work. Okay, so that manufacturers only sit down at their desks with soldering irons and electric screwdrivers. They aren’t crafting huge pieces of machinery. However, the building has no air conditioning and gets incredibly humid.

This put Amy in a very spiteful, nasty mood for the rest of the… I’m going to say week. When she spoke to anyone, she was snarling her nose and use a tone of disgust. She said that there weren’t any problems last year, when it was hot. She wouldn’t know, as she was on maternity leave. I told her that there were issues in the heat last year – she did not like that. I told her that we had to send three people to the hospital last year. One was a lady in her late 60s, who was suffering from dehydration and two other colleagues got hospitalised for kidney infections. Amy looked at me with the most disgusted look and said, “That can’t happen. What has kidney infections got to do with hot weather.” She refused to believe that two people could struggle with the same thing too. When I explained how you get a kidney infections she just snarled, “Drink more then.”

 

When the director came in, a little bit later on Monday morning, and Amy told him in absolutely disgust how dare people ask to work earlier hours and she suggested that he punish them with written warnings for trying to dictate to the company and the director how to run his business, he shrugged at Amy and said, “Yes, of course they can change their hours in the heat.” This did surprise me a little as our director is Scrooge. He also did not include this as a change of hours, like Amy insisted. Where I work, you can change your hours by an hour either side of your working day twice in a working year (for example of your child starts school and you need to start an hour later to drop them off, which means you now leave an hour late at the end of the day). The director said that the manufactures do not need to file a claims form to change their hours: this infuriated Amy too.

 

Amy made sure that none of the office staff were allowed to change hours, though. She said to the director, “The office staff have fans.” The fan is palm sized and plugs into the mains. The manufacturers also have these and some of them have mini desk air coolers and they have two shutters open to let cool air in. The manufacturing shop floor is a lot cooler downstairs than what it is for the office staff upstairs. But anyway, Amy got her own way.

Amy went on a huge rant about how no one is be allowed to complain that it is hot. There is no way that being at work can be too uncomfortable. If anyone was to complain about the heat, she was going to give them a written warning for being disrespectful and whining.

 

By Monday afternoon, our office was 30 degrees. From 12:30pm, she complained that she had a headache and was too hot and didn’t feel very well. I told her that she had to be careful in the heat and her headache was likely from dehydration. Her response was, “I am drinking. I’ve drunk a carton of juice.” This is a 200ml carton. She had drunk that by that time I had drunk 1,500ml of water.

For a 37 year old who has an 18 year old and an 18 month old, she really doesn’t know a lot about anything. She has had a punnet of grapes open on her desk since Monday and has not put them back in the fridge. Nor has she washed them. She lives off Coca Cola. She thinks that drinking a 500ml bottle of Coca Cola is enough to drink for the entire day. She struggles to drink that! Her diet, like many at work, consists of either a McDonalds breakfast every day or a greasy full English breakfast, from a local café. At lunch she either has McDonalds, fish and chips, Subway or she brings in a chilled or frozen microwave meal from a shop on her way to work and leaves it in her bag under her desk until lunch time, when she puts it in the microwave. If she ever brings in a 1,500ml of Volvic flavoured water, she leave the bottle open for the entire week, with barely drinking half of it and then instead of pouring the water away on a Friday, she puts the lid on and then puts it in the bin. And people tell me off if I am ever seen eating a Belvita biscuit or for having a tiny lunch box sized packet of Lidl’s version of Maryland cookies, where you get six tiny biscuits in it. I am always being judged for what I eat, but she never is.

On Tuesday, our office got to 33 degrees. And she spent the entire day complaining that she was too hot and that she couldn’t breathe. She was angry and shouting at people wanting to know why it was so hot. The rest of us just sucked it up and carried on.

She called in sick on Wednesday, because she said it was too hot and she had to spend the day driving around to find an air con unit for her home, because her home was over 34 degrees in every single room and her toddler couldn’t sleep. I am sorry, but there is no way that her house could be 34 degrees. I live in a maisonette, with three outside walls. The sun is directly on the back (the kitchen and bathroom) all morning and I have no blind fitted to the over-one-metre-long kitchen window. The sun is on the front of the property (the living room and bedroom) from 3pm until it sets,  to the point where the sun sets directly in line with my bedroom. My windows, blinds and curtains are closed all day long. The only electricity I have on is my fridge and when I charge me phone. There is lots of concrete in my maisonette, as that’s how flats are built, to sound-proof them. I also have a non-insulated roof. My maisonette has been 77% humidity and I have been struggling to breathe. I have no fan and no air conditioning. I still go to work. At work, on Wednesday, our office got up to 34 degrees with three tower PCs running, with six monitors, and four small fans circulating the hot air. That is how you get a room to 34 degrees. She was just plucking a stupidly big number out of the air to hope that is sounded believable to not have to come into work. She had already told the goods-in team that she was going to call in sick on Wednesday and needed a believable excuser and was asking them for one on Tuesday afternoon.

She only came into work yesterday because she had a half day for the doctors. Another hypocritical thing – she tells people off for not rearranging doctors’ appointments for the first or last appointment of the day and for having to take time off work for an appointment, but she left at 1pm for her doctor’s appointment. Anyway, the office was 33 degrees from the get go and all she did was boast about her air conditioning unit, at home, and complain that the office shouldn’t be allowed to be open in the heat and it was ridiculous that the director had the air conditioning units cut the day he bought the property, and he had the ceiling boxed in around the units. When I asked why he had done that to the air conditioning units weeks ago, to try to understand, she praised the director for his smart money making thoughts and said air conditioning was stupid, and you didn’t need to waste that sort of money in this country, and there is no way that staff are entitled to something so silly. And now, she is complaining that we don’t have air conditioning.

 

On Thursday afternoon and today, the office got to 35 degrees, and today, all she did weas complain. She spent most of the day away from her desk. I spent so much time at my desk that even after drinking 3 litres before midday, I still felt unwell. I was allowed to sit outside for two minutes maximum, but that wasn’t really long enough. My right eye went twitchy, and still is, and I kept going shaky and no matter how much water I drank, it didn’t ease it by much. I didn’t complain and I still carried on working. I haven’t slept for longer than two hours on any night this week, because it is too humid. I have not complained once.

I cannot stand two faced, hypocritical people. They get me so angry.

I really am regretting using the last of my good spell candle ingredients doing a big tray spell for her, when her husband was threatening to divorce her. It is all beginning to feel like it was all for show. I found out today that she loves getting attention from people.

Anyway, it is now 9pm and I have had my balcony door open for the past four hours, since the breeze began I have all of my windows open and the humidity has finally dropped. I no longer feel tight chested and panicky. I will, hopefully, sleep for the first time in a week. It has taken me hours to finally feel comfortable and now it to too late to be creative.

I have all of my washing done, and it has dried indoors within a couple of hours I had wanted to write some poems for tomorrow, but I am going to try to get some sleep. Just because I know that I cannot cope being in situationships, because they are too mentally abusive and no one has ever wanted a relationship with me (I know there must be something wrong with me, I’m not delusional and think that it is constantly everyone else, I must jut be unlovable), I can still feel upset about what would have been special days. I really did want to be with someone and treat them with love and kindness and that they are my priority, and I secretly wanted that back. I am not wrong for missing all of the good things, despite not being able to cope with all of the mentally abusive things. I will be busy all day tomorrow and Sunday, so I will have no time for Peter 2.0. Oh, but I am really enjoying finally using my mint-green typewriter keyboard. I love it. I finally feel cooled down and my heartrate has lowered to the mid-seventies.

Goodnight universe. I am very grateful for my imagination, creativity and for all of the love Cuddles, Ducky and Snuffles have filled my life with. People may hurt me, but I will always have my teddies.

 

- Josie -