Miserable Middle Manager goes Xmas shopping

Yesterday I went Xmas shopping in Westfield and it was an horrible experience. Over heated shops were all displaying the same expensive shit and my wallet was feeling lighter and lighter as I was progressing.

I think this experience resulted in me having another horrible nightmare:

I was back at Westfield, in the Superdry store, trying to find some not-too-tight-t-shirts for my wild teenage cousin. It felt super hot, I was hyperventilating, then suddenly my eyes come across a vision : Robert Kanayellow, another ex colleague bully like Moobs  is in the shop, his wet chicken face and rat eyes looking at me curiously – I hadn’t seen this abuser for 10 years, you bet he was surprised!

Suddenly I am short of breath, super loud music kills my ears, vision gets blurry, panic attack, I fall on the clothe rake, suddenly I Kanayellow is on me, his face on my face, what’s happening? Face rape??? No he is doing mouth to mouth eeeeekkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Christmas shopping everyone.

The Tree of Eternal Goodness

This morning I found myself in my kitchen dozing over my coffee, reflecting on Xmas, on the office day ahead, the dog vet appointment next week, and wondering if I was another victim of Chronic fatigue syndrome (myalgic encephalomyelitis - ME) or just a victim of my poor eating habits. Maybe I could call in sick and say I got struck by ME?

But then my eyes came across my hair brush. What is an hair brush doing in a kitchen you will ask. Well, I don’t know, it seems that things have a life on their own in my flat, especially keys. Anyway, I bought the brush last year at TK Maxx for £5, it is big, flat and useful, it is black with some stuff scribbled at the back. I never reflected on what was written on it, I don’t really care, the brush is cheap and useful. But this morning I read it again, it says:  ‘Life is an endless struggle, full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hair stylist you like.’

What a fuck came through the mind of the Corioliss (the brand of the brush) designer?

This brought me back to the office, 3 years ago, when I was working as a Miserable Middle Manager contractor for a few months for another pestilent company.

Another guy, Jasper, had been hired as the same time as me, to be another middle manager : the sales manager - 10 direct reports, off course he was super motivated. He had been out of work for a few months and no one really knew what he had done before, not until he started being a dick, then everyone Googled him and asked around, finding out that he was just another loser with a big mouth.

But Jasper wasn’t lacking ideas, I have to give him that. He was an old style sales guy, one of those fuckers like Moobs, who sell encyclopedia door to door, and he was applying old style methods to encourage his sales team to make more money.

One of his idea was ‘the tree of eternal goodness’.

We had this dull plant in the office, you know the office plant that struggles to survive and that office managers put in empty corners, to remind you that nature exists somewhere, far away from your desk and fluorescent lights...Well, one day, he moved the plant, put it in the center of the open office and stuck small envelopes on its leaves.

Everyone wondered what the hell this was about, but he wouldn’t say. Then on Friday at 5PM, he pulled out a little bell, shaked it, and called everyone to gather around the tree.

Guys, it is Friday 5PM and I want to introduce the concept of the tree of eternal goodness. As you can see, in each of these envelopes there is a poem and a present. The principle is that you guys go sell as much as you can during the week, and on Friday the best sales person will be rewarded by an envelope which contains a poem and a nice present.

This week the best sales person has been : Arthur!!! Please go, pick your envelope and read us the poem!!!

Obviously Arthur became really pale, then he walked through the gathered crowd, picked an envelope, opened it, looked at the crowd : Do I have to read that to everyone?

Yes you have been the best man in the building this week!

Then he read :

‘Life is an endless struggle, full of frustrations and challenges, but this week, you nailed it, congratulations, you won a bottle of sauvignon, for a nice celebration. Xx Jasper.’

...

Jasper lasted 6 months in the company, during that time, about 30 envelopes were opened, about 10 people were shamed in public. He then left the company to join the Conservative party and run as an MP in his council.

Good luck Jasper.

Why Miserable Middle Manager is fuming today

I am fuming today, and I am fuming BIG.

You have now been reading my posts for a couple of months and you might think: "Well, MMM is actually fuming all the time, what is it special about today's fuming?". My fuming might not deserve a post, but today I need my loyal readers to listen to me. I need Ekaterina in Russia, Yorgos in Greece and Awowe in France to show me their empathy, I just need to feel you are there when I need you.

Where should I start? As you know, I have been catapulting CVs into the big black hole for a couple of months. I aim good as 99% of them get into the black hole and never come out again. During this time I have also had several off-on/love-hate relationships with HH (headhunters). No Kathy, don't get confused, HHs are not as idyllic as OBFs, they are an inferior species and don't deserve any respect.

This week my colleague Iman met this "a-m-a-z-i-n-g" HH and called me to share his experience: " Hey, MMM, you won't believe it but I have found the perfect man for us". Iman is not gay, he meant the perfect HH, not the perfect man. At first I did not want to listen to Iman's advice on having a date with HH, but as my rejection rate had been falling during the last two weeks as a result of having stopped my catapulting activities, I though it would be a good idea to follow a friend's advice and to give a bust to my rejection rate. I was (kind of) impressed when HH asked me questions about my MBA and seemed to know what an MBA was (the illiteracy rates in the HH industry are higher than those of adolescents in third world country- see The Economist, July2011 issue" ). Vate Ferfoutr seemed to be ready to invest a lot of time on me and I thought I had maybe finally found light at the end of the tunnel.

As he requested, I provided him a copy of the following information:
- Driving License
- Passport
- Security Clearance
- Birth Certificate
- Working VISA
- Green Card
- Recommendation letter from my previous manager
- Recommendation letter from HR
- Credit check
- PHD thesis
- MBA thesis
- My university transcripts
- Two utility bills (electricity bill & council tax) as proof of address
- Driving records showing I knew how to drive on the left of the road
- Height and weight (I had to give him this info in metric system as I cannot convert into feet or stones)

Anyway,

After spending two full days looking for all this information in my big fat files, I got my killer heels on (killer because they really kill me, I cannot walk for a week after wearing my heels, I got used to wearing the trainers we are obliged to wear at KonardKingdom) and headed up to his office. It was a good day until I got in the reception and told Onglede Chav, the receptionist, I was there to see Vate Ferfoutr.

25 minutes later I was still waiting for Vate Ferfoutr at the reception and decided to go and have one of the best muffins in London to forget that traumatic experience.


How long would you readers wait before leaving your date behind?

Rewarding employees

Yesterday night, as I was browsing through my stuff at home, in the hope of finding my car insurance policy, I came accross some fucked up shit!


I had completely blocked this fabulous episode of my life, when I was working for this amazing radio called Pestilence FM. At that time, I had a sub team who was selling radio air time to local care homes and businesses in need to advertise their products to OCD radio listeners in need of knowing all about pest control.

So my team had sales targets!

...and received awards.

One day my boss, the Marketing and Sales director decided to distribute some awards to reward us for our hard work. However, he decided that my contribution to the success of the commercial team was minor, as I was not selling, but managing.

So by the end of the quarter, we had a nice gathering in the local pub and surprise surprise, between the main course and the dessert, Jingo (that was his surname, can't remember why), well Jingo decides to shut us up and to distribute awards to the team!

He was a good man and everyone had an award : award of the best sales person, award of the most beautiful legs, award of the best dressed sales person, award of the best sales pitch, award of the one who won most awards, award for most amount of cleavage wore!

Then he looked at me with pity and said : and the Award for most amount of awards not won goes to..............MISERABLE!!!!!

Fond memory.

How was your weekend?

Today is Monday and Mondays are always a pain in Miserable Middle Manager’s life. In everybody’s life I guess. The world suffers on Mondays!

Nothing new here you will say, but then I thought I would describe my early Monday morning. See if I can beat you in the race for the worst first few hours of the day.

7:30: Iphone alarm clock goes off, the vegetables I had on Sunday night kick in, I have some energy (30% batteries left my brain tells me). My hand reach the Iphone to shut it up and put the news on. I doze another 15 minutes listening to the misery in the UK, the lodger who’s killed two women, rioters and police relationship, boring stuff....what’s become of Amanda Fox, has it rained in Somalia I wonder?

I stop wondering and look at my work mail (first mistake of the day) – a care home who wants to withdraw from its contract, Mark Oobs asking me to come earlier to take care of it. I think about my best friend Stress, nooo it is too early don’t come over, I leave the phone alone.

8:00: reach the bathroom, crawl to the shower. Hit my head on the wall – did I tell you I can’t stand up in my shower? It’s been built under the outside stairs. Anyway, doesn’t help the Monday mood – what’s gonna happen to Miserable Middle Manager this week?

8:15: the dog still hasn’t moved from his lamb sheep skin (called the moumoute, the thing was bought in Ikea when it was all soft and smooth, but the dog trashed it to make it his own). He looks like a snake on the moumoute, only his tail moves...every morning is the same, he hopes that I will leave him alone, that I won’t put him in his huge garden because it is cold outside. For him I am the monster that drags him out, but come on, it was the garden or the nice shower, I chose the shower to beat the ungrateful dog’s depression!

So every morning I take him for walks, 10 minutes around the block. He analyses pee, I call him the Piss Analyst, I have a theory: he is secretly part of the PSI squad (Pee Scene Investigation). He analyses every pee and covers it with his own to hide the smell of dog criminals who try to overtake the neighbourhood.  I know that he is a hero, although he is a miserable OCD lad.

Anyway! Off we go, once the pee has been all analysed, he ends up in the garden for the day.

8:25: put some make up on, eat a toast and drink half a litter of coffee – I will talk about the diet of Miserable Middle Manager another time, but in a nutshell : I am hooked to coffee but I shouldn’t, I should eat fruits, veggies and less carbs, but I can’t. Basically I eat fuck all at lunch from Monday to Friday, because of the stress that blocks my stomach.

8:30: am on my way to the tube, recharge the Oyster, signal failure on the Jubilee Line, train eventually comes, my cold body crashes against 50 other, the sardine is in the can, ready to get everyone’s disease and be pushed in the ribs by at least one person.

8:55: am off the tube, phone beeps: Gabino Ducon’s boiler has broke, he must wait for the boiler repair man to come by between 9 and 2PM, so he asks if he can work from home. I reply yes good luck take care, at least he is not off sick, so I won’t have to cover for him, and I don’t have to smell his presence in the office.

8:56: Philippe Focker text me he is late, bus tyre exploded on the way, won’t be able to attend the 9:30 meeting, off course.

9:00: reach KonarKingdom Ltd – my friend Stress welcomes me at the gate, he is my best friend and will shadow me the whole week. I guess without Stress I would feel lonely.

So there I am in the office, 20 desks on open space, 10 for my department, 5 for my team, all empty.

9:15: computer on, (yeah it takes on average 15 minute for the shit to be fully functional – IT keeps rebuilding it, it seems that they don’t have the budget to buy a new one, so they would rather spend time on it themselves).

So people start arriving between 9:30 and 10:00, I always try to force Philippe Focker to go to the 9:30 meeting, but he never does, he always has a good excuse, he never arrives before 9:40. But apparently it is ok, according to HR, the company is flexible on office hours, as long as we do 8H per day. According to them, if I start being strict on time keeping, employees will take revenge. I don’t really understand, between 9:00 and 10:00am, clients call, colleagues ask questions, meetings happen etc etc...so what, if nobody is in, clients will wait?

Ho well.

10:30: most people have arrived, I say hello to everyone, not everyone answers, I keep hearing colleagues saying ‘how was your weekend’, no one asks me how was mine. I guess I am the Miserable Middle Manager, not the office friend, people keep their distance.

I have tried to work on my body language (NLP experts told me to), but as I am always the first in the office, body language is only limited to my face. So I catch people and tell them an enthusiastic ‘Hello, how is it going!’ distorting my face in an extatic and happy shape.

I try to hide my miserableness obviously.

But it doesn’t work.

Very few answer.

Nobody ask me how my weekend was.

But if someone had I would have said the below:

On Friday night, I left work late and fuming because of Philippe ‘Busy’ Focker. I went straight to the pub to meet my friends, drank as much alcohol as my body could take and vomited on my BF car. I was quite hangover on Saturday morning, spent my whole day in front of the TV, watching all the Come dine with me and Signed by Katie price trash TV available, accompanied by the dog on his moumoute (the moumoute is really screwed to the dog now that I think about it). Then on Sunday I went to the North Acton scrapyard (hell on earth) to dump the pieces of an old shed that had been living in the garden for too long.

And each time I threw a piece of trash in the skip, I would call it a name : YOURS!

Today is Ninja day, happy Ninja day!

Your feedback matters

This week Miserable Middle Manager had a few questions and comments from fellow readers, I picked a few that I though were interesting :

Question from Barbara Colmarbreast from France :

If I am a woman and my OBF is a woman, does it mean that I may be a lesbian?

Barbara, having someone you admire and trust in your company doesn’t have anything to do with sex, so don’t worry about your sexual orientation at this stage. Try to develop and capitalize on this relationship, use your OGF as a mentor and model, and ask her for advice and feedback if you can.

Comment from Irina Benlili from Canada :

Like you Miserable, I have had an interview for a company whose office was only accessible by car and located by a motorway. I had no car and the hiring manager told me to come by train and bus. I took the bus but ended up on the other side of the motorway, unable to cross. Exhausted and late, I took courage,  called the hiring manager and asked them to send a cab. Which they did! It was a matter of life and death, and I got through the second interview!

All I would say is bravo Irina, having your hiring manager do stuff for you although you haven't even been interviewed you is a massive challenge, but you nailed it. 

I also received an anonymous hate mail, possibly from an ex employer :

Middle M,

What’s wrong with shoving a huge amount of crisps in your mouth during team meetings? You f*** anorexic b***, if you wore skirts and deep V dress more often, you would be a bigger fish, not some king of controlling mediocer human being!

BTW, remember the big spread shits I used to make you do for the Friday management report? I never used read them, because there was no Friday management report! I made it up to f*** your head up!

TDC

 Thank you for your comments and questions, they always cheer me up, please send more to miserablemiddlemanager@gmail.com



How to become a BIG fish

Miserable Middle Manager has never been a big fish. She has instead always been a size 0 - Well, except during the year she spent in New York clubbing-non-stop and eating in the trendiest restaurants in town with her oldest friend Valentina. Only three months after arriving to the big Apply with a one way ticket, a tourist visa, an empty wallet and a suitcase full of saucisson, she could not zip her trousers anymore. That was her heyday: she was a size 2. For a year she enjoyed the glory of being a big fish but her joy ended when the US immigration department announced her that, unfortunately (it does not cost to be polite when you kill someone), she had not won the green card lottery and had to immediately leave the country or she would face a free trip to Guantanamo. She would go back to size 0 in Guantamo, so decided to take the first flight back to the the old continent.

Within two months without Valentina, she was again a small fish. How could she become a big fish again?

For the years to follow, Miserable Middle Manager worked very hard to become a big fish again: gained a masters degree from a reputable university, became fluent in 4 languages, travelled the world to learn about different cultures,  moved country 3 times, city 6 times, flat 9 times and  met many big fishes along the way. Miserable Middle Manager was on the right track. She worked hard and cleaned all the shit that her managers threw to her: under performers, über performers, sexual harassers, bullies, slackers, transvestites and muslims in disguise ( she never saw their face). She just needed a model to follow, someone who would lead her to success.

A synchronicity moment happened when she met Roundy Tête de Carrote, one of her most influent clients at Konarkingdom Ltd. Roundy definitively knew the secret. How could someone who barely knew his grammar, never went to uni, spoke no foreign languages and called colleagues his 'mates'  became a 'member of the senior management team'? How could someone holidaying in a caravan parked on an English beach could be a director? Was his yellowy moustache the secret of managing team of 62 fucked up civil servants-alike? Or was his call-it-casual dressing style that combined a Primark suit under a Vodafone jumper? I had to find out, Roundy definitively knew how the secret to become a big fish.

It was time for the weekly management meeting and my own agenda had just one item: to find out the secret. That was an opportunity I could not miss. Without  staring at him, I still managed to read his defensive body language and to carefully listen to all the crap coming out of his mouth while trying to keep my eyes out of the two middle buttons of his shirt that were trying to get propelled due to an excess of belly fat. The deception could not have been bigger. Roundy did not show any minimal sign of innate leadership, emotional intelligence, proper education of even geeky slang. To my surprise I found out that Roundy was definitively a big fat empty soul, and that becoming a big fish did not have anything to do with intelligence, emotions, experience, leadership, social skills or finance knowledge. I had been looking at the wrong place.

Does Mr Tête de Carrote's stellar growth secret reside in the little white and blue Tesco bag he pulls out of his dirty backpack at noon every day?

How many pink bras are sold in the UK each year?

You are probably thinking that having to deal with unbalanced employees on a daily basis has finally taken its toll, that Miserable Middle Manager has finally lost it and is getting into the porn industry in her last attempt to find a meaning in her life. Although it is something she is seriously considering, she is not getting into that (YET).

Miserable Middle Manager could not actually recover from her failure to recruit Carlos and have an office romance with him and she is going to gore interviews. Yep, you heard well, gore interviews.

If you asked an HR recruiting guru what interview styles can be used to recruit team members, they would probably mentioned the same ones that wikipedia lists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview): behavioral interviews, cognitive interviews, investigative interviews, multiple-mini interviews (I agree, what the hell is that? who would want to do a multiple-mini interview?!), informational interviews, ... an so on. Basically any interview differing form the classical "what are you strengths?" "what are your weaknesses?" "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "why did you leave your last job?" would deserve to have a name.

Today I experienced a new type of interview: The Gore Interview. Yep, gore. I was going for a middle management role in a mediocre company in Slough which, from the beginning, was a potential double-rejection when, to my surprise, the guy asked me the following after introducing himself:

MF - "I hope you don't mind, I have thought that doing a case study based interview will be the best option for you to shine and to demonstrate all the skills you have learned during your MBA".

MMM -  "What the hell? Of course I mind! It has taken me 2 hours to arrive to this shitty office which is located in the middle of a motorway, I think the role you are recruiting for is shit and underpaid, and after checking you in LinkedIn I found out you did not even get your A levels. So, who the hell you think you are to test me with a case study, motherfucker?"


MMM -  I was not brave enough to say that, so I continued like: " Sure, not problem at all, that is what I have been doing during the last couple of years and I ended up liking them. They are like a game to me, I miss them so much that I just keep doing them in my spare time"

MF - Great, I knew you would not mind. So this is the question: "How many pink bras are sold in the UK ever year?" You have 20 minutes and I need to understand your thinking process, so think out loud!

MMM - You are not only a motherfucker working in a shit-hole office but you are also a pervert. Do you also wear pink thongs when you dress as a woman?


MMM - Easy peasy! That is clearly a market sizing question, I have previously sized the number of mattresses in France and the number of girls getting drunk on a Friday night in London, so bras should be straight forward as I know that market well.


I am going to start by stating some assumptions. I will assume that the population of the UK is 60 million and that life expectancy is 80 years, and that there are the same number of people in each age group (meaning same number of 15-year-olds than 78-year-olds. So if you divide 60 million by 80, you get 750.000 people per age group. I will assume a 50/50 split between men and women.

Girls between 0 - 6 don't have boobs yet, and 20% boys start showing transvestite tendencies by the age of 5. By the time they are 20,  those 20% have already came out of the closet and have been joined by an extra 15% who were hiding their sexuality due to an extremely conservative education.

I will also assume that an 8% of women in all age ranges never get to use bras because there is not much to hold or because their silicon operations were too far and they cannot find size 48DD (not even in M&S, the biggest bra seller in the UK).  In addition I will also assume that only chavs like pink bras, so that will be 60% of the population. I will also assume that each person buys one bra per year and that all men buying bras go for the pinky option.

If I add those together:

375000 men and 375000 women per age group

Female
0 to 6 --> 0
6  to 80 --> 375000 * 0.92 * 0.60 * (80-6) --> 15,318,000

Male
0 to 4 --> 0
5 to 20 --> 0.2 * 15 * 375000 --> 1,125,000
21 to 80 --> 0.35 * 59 * 375000 --> 7,743,750

Total: 15,318,000 + 1,125,000 + 7,743,750 = 24,186,750 pink bras sold in the UK every year.

Was that the response you were after, PERVERT?

Office toilet humour

Shit happens.

Yeah, real shit, like shitting at the workplace, in the office toilet.

I must stress that the story contained in this post really happened and I appologize if the story feels a bit below the belt.

So yesterday morning, I go to work like every day, things go OK until 11am, no aggression nothing,  Xmas mood, Santa is playing guitar on the radio, clients are as unhappy by the service as ever, things get almost boring.

Then something incredible happens.

I receive an email from the office manager; email addressed only to female colleagues and entitled: Ladies toilets.

Hi ladies,

It has been brought to my attention that the toilets are again in a very poor state. Please be so kind to leave the toilet as you expect to use them.

Many thanks,

Veronica

 

So I think, OK, these toilets stink, but maybe the office manager should tell the cleaning lady to start cleaning, instead of just replacing the toilet paper.

Then another email arrives in my inbox.

Ladies,

Thanks Veronica.  Ladies, can you please refrain yourself from emptying your bowel at work. The office is a place to work, not to shit. As the toilets are shared amongst all of us, it would be good if everyone could do their business at home and not in the office.

Thanks for your understanding; it is not the first time the issue has been brought up,  myself and the other girl from Essex agree that putting make up on while someone is shitting nearby is not ideal and has an impact on our moral, hence decreasing our chances of pulling men in bars.

Kind regards.

Janet

Another comes!

Janet,

I shit at work, because when you gotta go, you gotta go. It is not your place to manage my bowel activity. You are so plain and transparent that you already look like a fart anyway. Don’t bother us with your make up. You were born ugly, not my ass fault.

Gigi

Sudden shout in the office, Janet calls Gigi a shithead, Gigi shouts back some C word, this happens in less than a second and everything goes back to normal.

Then at lunch time, I discover that there are several clans/shit political parties in the office :

Extreme left party/clan : Shit at work, only shit at work because don’t want they home toilets to stink
Left : when you gotta go you gotta go
Center: don’t give a shit
Right: would rather not shit in the office, but accept that other may need to
Extreme right: never ever shit in the office, and don’t accept than anyone does.

So what party am I? I guess I am left, some king of social shitter.

Have you ever asked yourself the question? It had never occurred to me that I would ever do.