Main Stream - Conference Blues

The last week has been one of workplace apathy, lit with occasional flashes of rage-filled job frustration, and as such hasn't lent itself to rational commentary. Highlights were an incompetently handled and frankly insulting back-to-work interview with the director in charge of my area, and then, yesterday, the mind-numbing and almost universally upsetting staff conference.

The college that employs me holds these staff conferences ever few months... attendance is compulsory for all staff, and the opener to each one is a presentation presided over by the principal of the college... a sort of state of the nation speech, I suppose. This is followed by a return to the college campus, where we split off into groups and have annoying team-building or training sessions that have been designed by people who have no clue what any of the staff below manager level actually do or need training in, and who haven't had to work in a team since they were at college themselves.

These conference days normally bore half of the staff, and upset the other half... bearing in mind that although support and academic staff have very different jobs and needs, we all have the same "conference" experience.

Rather skillfully, and it's difficult to imagine this hasn't been what they've been striving for all along, the Principal and Directors managed to put together a package that either angered or demoralised everyone in the organisation. I don't know how they managed it, as they tend to catastrophically fail at pretty much everything else they turn their hand to, but they managed it yesterday.

The plus side, though, is that I forgot my tablets (beta-blockers), so it seemed like as good a time as any to stop taking them. Okay, I felt sick for most of the day, but when the conference was over, no tablets meant no more alcohol abstinence, and I fell off the wagon in quite a spectacular way, as did my missus, and all of our colleagues in attendance. After the trials of the day, everyone felt the need to get pissed off their heads. It made for a fun night.

Predictably, today was a muted affair, between the general depression that the conference caused, and the drink-specific malaise.

But now I'm home, with my virus addled computer, my job application busy lady, and our very very pregnant dog. The puppies are big enough now that you can see them moving really clearly, and it's difficult not to be at once awed and kinda creeped out. Screw "miracle", the easiest word to describe what's happening to our lovely doggy daughter is parasitic invasion. Still, she seems pretty happy.

Big Brother seems to be on, and I'm supposed to have got a cup of tea by now, so I must away.