Fire Drill

Just came back from a Fire Drill. It's a bit of a walk since I am on
the 4th floor. I can only imagine what people in the WTC had to go
through a few years ago.

I find Fire Drills are a good way to see who works in your building as
everyone seem to hide in their offices. Everyone come and go at
different times so you never get to see who works in your building.

We have fire evacuation procedures..I presume this is the same for
most companies. Apart from the usual and common sense "do not take the
lift", etc, you are not allowed to carry "hot drinks". I argued once
that this should be all drinks as any liquid spilt is a slip hazard.
But our power-hungry stubborn biatch office administrator who calls
herself the Camp Mother and the Chief Fire Warden said that it is not
required to be that obvious. Me think the problem in this company is
people usually take things literally. I personally see people carry
their coffee down the stairs during the firedrills. So what does that
say? Oh well...she'll end up changing her mind later once she realise
it makes sense.

I got her into trouble once. By accident... a few weeks ago we moved
around in the office. My boss went to aussie to he said "he'll put me
in charge" of this move for our department. It is a fair amount of
responsibility as I need to make sure the cabinets, mobiles, chairs,
computers, etc are all labelled correctly. All pre-move procedures
were excuted perfectly. We labelled everything as instructed and
everything is all go. The labels have our name, department, and phone
extension number on it. The movers and camp mother have an office
layout diagram approved by us so everyone knows who moves where. The
problem I believe was the movers and telecoms guy had a different
versions of this layout and camp mother never updated them.

So come monday out phones, computers, and monitors are all in the
correct places but the desk and cabinet layout are in the wrong
position. It was following the old non-updated layout. Of course it
will take time to move them around on that day and all we wanted is to
start work straight away as we have deadlines. That's what the movers
are for, paid to do it all for us but their work is only as good as
the instructions. I don't think Campmother was even there supervising
the whole thing. So I wrote her an email complaining about it.
Somebody told me that the only way you can get things done around here
is if you bark high enough the heirarchy. So I included the COO in
this email just so he knows what is happening. My boss is an expert
barker and we have the same views regarding the incompetent nature of
Camp Mother. In fact, he is against her more than I was because there
was a time I had a very pleasant and peaceful office relationship with
Camp mother.

So my email was about how this move was the worst we ever had.
Cabinets and boxes are in the wrong place. I said what is the point of
having the extension numbers on the items if they will not be moved to
the correct places. I decided after sending the email that I'd do the
changes myself. Asking Camp Mother to arrange moving them is a waste
of time and nothign will happen until that night or the following
morning. So I started carrying the boxes myself. I moved the cabinets
myself. I even borrowed a screw driver and switched the desks myself.
Just because I wanted my team to have minimal hassles. By mid morning,
I completed all what's left to be done - with the help from some
colleagues.

He is were the trouble began. The COO decided that this matter has
been elevated and he started investigating. I told him the story as
above. He ended up chatting with Camp Mother and Camp Mother ended up
having an official document on her record. All because of me. I feel a
bit sorry about it and in fact I apologised to Camp Mother that things
got out of hand. But what annoyed me the most is that my boss who
hates Camp Mother's guts, went two-faced on me and pretended he was
her friend and telling her she did her job well...my boss also was
called in the meeting with the COO and who knows what happened there.
Judging from his reaction and comments to my other colleagues, he
betrayed me there as well. I ended up looking like a bad guy while the
fact remains that Camp Mother didn't do her job properly and I was the
one who saved the day in our department. I got no thanks. I got no
appreciated. All I got was a behind the back stab. Saying I was mean
to Camp Mother, and she did not deserve it. It feels bad being
betrayed by your team.

I should have known. This ain't the first time either. My boss once
betrayed me. This was regarding some project. I told other parties
involved that my boss feels this way about the project. Then one day
in a face-to-face meeting, the other people ask him and said, "is it
true what was said...that you do not agree with this?" My boss looked
at me and said, "No, it is not true at all. I'm all for it" I ended up
looking like a liar. Don't you hate it when people are fake? They'll
be perfect for the next "House of Wax" movie!

My boss is not the only one. Two others are like that. They gossip
like there's no tomorrow. One make things up. Kinda like David
Copperfield.

She is very fake. She comes to you putting her charm on which is quite
disgusting I thought. She thinks she's cute. She always asks you
nicely but as soon as she turns around, that mouth starts to spill out
something else.

The other is the Two-Faced Queen. She two-faces everyone and she
speculates a lot. It's ok speculating but she speculates the worst
way.

Although I've come to accept that their actions are nothing more than
immature behaviour, I must admit I am psychologically traumatised.
There are days I just want to walk out. I seldom talk to them now. One
of the reasons I do not favour mixing work and home. They still talk
to me as if nothing is happening. Although lately they've been
whispering quite a bit. I do not believe it is about me but for some
reason they've decided to exclude me. They usually don't - this is how
I know they gossip a lot.

Office policies state that I must report this to the manager, but how
can I if the manager is the one initiating this. I'd rather not go any
higher as I've been there and being a pawn in the grander scheme of
things, I'll end up losing.

Don't worry, I won't do an American style, go to your office,
disgruntled employee shoot everyone maneuver. At least I'm not at that
stage...I'm sure someone else will...we already have shit smearers in
the office. But that's another story.