Backstabarama

I recently regaled Monky with some work woes which were making me anxious, and after said discussion, I came away knowing I HAD to do something. So, having already spoken informally with both my boss, and her boss, about my concerns about a certain member of staff, I finally committed something to writing - stating exactly how incompetent I thought she was. It was hard to do, and I tried to word it as constructively as I could ("not sure she is coping with the workload blah blah blah") and to my absolute shock yesterday ...

she got sacked! I'm pretty certain that my bosses must have already had complaints (probably from hospitals) but it still came as a mighty surprise. I work at a place where you would have to stick a pencil in your boss' eye, shouting "you c**t", to get the sack, so the mistakes already made must have been serious. I guess my letter was the final nail in the coffin. I'm not going to pretend I felt sad, I just felt f**king relieved, when my boss told me. Last week, I came the nearest I have ever come to a full-on anxiety attack, with quite scary palpitations and nausea, just THINKING about what my incompetent colleague was doing. And yesterday as my boss and her boss finally looked through all her files, in her vacated office, I felt a weight lift, because I knew I would no longer be part of a team that might kill someone out of pure incompetence.

I have a little bit of respect now for my bosses, but still think that they are at least partially to blame for employing this person in the first place. She was an internal candidate (among about 6 others applying from within) and it was to the absolute astonishment of EVERYONE when she got the job, above others who were clearly much better candidates. I don't like to play the race card but a cynical part of me wonders if her background gave her a helping hand, and her employment had something to do with creating a more "diverse" team. I say that only because I cannot think of a single other reason which would have made her seem suitable for the position... and sadly she was a perfectly pleasant person, supporting a young child, and losing her job will be a real blow. They have offered her a position lower down, if she wishes to take it, but it would be a brave person to do that having been sacked. So from having a job she could do just fine, she is probably now going to find herself struggling to get by - and all because of a super-shit decision by management in the first place.

So, after a slightly dramatic day (which also involved a fire in our office that fooked our server, and an emergency trip by me to central london to hand a brown envelope of cash to a stranded colleague) I fell into the local pub exhausted. C.I.Der and GingerCnut were on hilarious form, as usual, though Shaggy is still having serious personal woes. C.I.Der is fond of a party, and soon enough her and Shaggy were having their own little party, away from other onlookers and involving vices of a non-alcoholic and "high class" nature. I was slightly pissed at her and Shaggy - not least because Shaggy's excuse for this is that it "relaxes her before she goes home, and how I'd understand if I was as stressed as her" . I do understand the stress thing, but I think self-medicating against anxiety is about as disastrous an attempt at a healing process as you're likely to find. C.I.Der is a seasoned party animal but with a stable life. Shaggy is not. With Shaggy a car-crash was already on the cards, but now I find myself praying it involves a broken bumper and not a total f**king write-off.