Tuesday 6 April 2010

Don't P On Me and Tell Me It's Raining !

There are regular moments in a diva’s life when standing up for yourself isn’t just about having an attitude, it’s more a case of applying common sense to a situation and being truly amazed when that the other party involved doesn’t see things the same way you do!

Take recruitment agencies (or not if you don’t have to use them!)I have been employed for the past few months as stand-in for a PA whiz who's been off sick. She is now back (although about to go off again to have another surgery,hence my requested continuing presence as her back-up - an unusual role for me!) and we are currently enjoying the dodgy delights of job-sharing, something which is slowly but surely driving me mad.

While she has rightfully returned to the lion-share of the role, I have been relegated to being a bit-player, picking up drips and draps of 'office stuff', degenerating daily, to varying degrees of administrative boredom, before reaching today's rock bottom - a day spent by me photocopying year end budget reports for a board meeting. hell on earth!

When I was told of the original job-sharing plan, I immediately contacted my boy wonder agent and told him firmly to find me something else pronto, as the reality of my workaholic self being able to job share with a mini-me almost as controlling (workwise only!) as me, was about as likely as my being quiet for longer than 10 minutes!

His response was to tell me to 'Wait and see' - the cop out of someone isn't too keen about rocking the boat and seeing what happens or a parent trying to avoid a tantrum at the checkout, when they say no to that second packet of Haribo's which has mysteriously appeared in the shopping trolley having been ejected previously.

So three weeks on, I called him today and reiterated my message in even more blunt terms.

"I am so over this situation. You need to get me out of here and find me something else please. I told you what was going to happen and right now I'm living it and I don't like it!"

"Have you tried talking to HR?" he simpered patronizingly.

I controlled the urge to tell him exactly what I thought of that particularly useless suggestion. Just what did he think they would be able to do - somehow magic me up a job, after already telling me when I met with them one week into my work assignment, that there was a recruitment freeze on.

A little nugget of information that boy wonder had conveniently forgotten all about, despite my having told him during one of our scintiliating weekly updates.
"Perhaps I could talk to them for you? Let them know how concerned you about the situation?". I responded.

"You haven't thought about that properly have you?" I replied. "Right now everything is ticking over nicely for them workwise, so if I were them and you spoke to me,I'd say it's been lovely having BB here, but if that's the way she feels then we wish her well in her next role. Good work, but you've already said you need time to find me something else, so just why would I let you talk me out of a job before finding me another?".

"Oh", he replied as the penny finally dropped. Which sums up my feelings about my experience with recruitment agencies, they are invariably on the side of their clients, wanting to maintain ongoing revenue stream from them, despite trying to reassure their temp workers that the opposite is true.

I put the phone down, updated my speculative cover letter, printed off some more cv's and popped them in the post on my way home. Fingers crossed !!

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