A Question of Question

Being made redundant from a job is a funny old thing, because it quite literally is how you feel about yourself. Redundant. Not needed. Defunct. You can't help but feel like a failure, especially when a company is paying thousands of pounds for you NOT to work for them any longer. It feels like you must be so supremely awful that bankrupting a company is preferable to continuing a working relationship with you. It is very hard not to take it personally. Especially when you find out 3 months after having made you redundant, your post has been refilled......... but I'll cover that in another blog. For now I just want to relive what was Wank Wednesday. The day I got the boot. And also use it as an outlet to bitch about a former colleague.

It happened this July when I, along with the rest of the Customer Services team at a well known financial publishers were all notified we were being made redundant. It was all quite shocking because of the fact I had recently been promoted to the Customer Services Manager, having worked my way up the ladder for 4 years and things were going really well, our calls statistics had improved a great deal, we achieved our annual sales target, in fact we were meeting all of our targets.The department had never performed so well, and I liked to think that it was because of some changes I had made. I had also just finished staff appraisals, given pay rises and promotions. This is why is was out of the blue when we were all called into a meeting room by the Managing Director and told that we were being made redundant.

If I am completely honest, the first thing I felt was excitement. Adrenalin kicked in and my heart was pounding at the prospect of finding a new job. Maybe I could change my career path? I had always wanted to get into charity and this could be my chance? As I looked around the room, into the eyes of my colleagues who had befallen the same fate, I saw glimpses of terror, impending doom, confusion and shock. Then I looked at a girl we all called "Question" behind her back (who was possibly the most irritating person I have ever worked with, and on more than one occasion I think all of us fantasised about giving her a back hander, right across her grubby, bulbous, blackhead infested face), Questions lip was quivering and tears were streaming down her face. "um, what does this mean, am I out of a job? My god this is awful". Most people would feel empathy for the girl, but not me, nor any other of my colleagues. Not because we were mean and needed to be checked for heart beats but because we were all full time employees, and Question came into the office part time for 5 hours a week. And all she did in those 5 hours was irritate the hell out of us all by asking and answering her own questions in the same sentence so, I felt it was just a tad insensitive of her to be worrying about her pissy part time position when we were losing our full time positions. But that was Question all over. ANNOYING

She was one of those do gooders that ever office has. Always bright, upbeat, efficient and so irritatingly enthusiastic about her work she couldn't hold a conversation that didn't involve work, or answering her own work related questions. This displayed how was completely devoid of personality Question was. she put the 'ring' into boring. In fact, I think she put the 'bore' in there too. At 21 years of age, she had the figure of a 48 year old woman who had lived on microwave meals for the past decade. Her dress sense was ILLEGAL. If there were such things as fashion felony protesters, this girl would have been egged on a regular basis. Her hair was a disaster a D-I-saster. Just a mass of straw and hay. The whole thing was a car crash, and even her walking past my desk would make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and not in a good way. She drove everyone crazy, but was oblivious to this. Even just getting an email from her would drive most people to either commit murder or commit suicide. she was annoying on so many levels, but it was her questions that people took particular offence to I think. It drove us all to distraction, especially when she would hop toward your desk every time she wanted to ask an inane, self answered question. A prime example would be "Oh, can I just ask you a quick question? I have this customer who hasn't had his copy of this months magazine and wants another one. I think I should just send him another, what do you think?" So she would ask the question, then answer it JUST to show how clever she was. She needed reassurance about anything work related, but not her hair, dress sense or figure, which I could never understand or quite fathom out. No, she seemed completely confident and self assured with her pores the size of Mars, her white head ravaged nose and the nest of rabid pigeons that she called a haircut.

Even though she was only in the office for 5 hours a week (which she spread over 3 days) Question also thought that the whole company couldn't cope without her being there for the other 35+ hours because she took it upon herself to send an email around, not just the department, but the whole company saying "I will be out of the office now until Friday when I will be here from 11:00 and until 12:00pm, Have a great week everyone" every time she left the office. There were actually audible groans from around the office whenever she sent one of her of office emails.

So cut to me, in the office being told I am being made redundant, Question is crying and I can't help but smirk. I smirk because it's embarrassing. I smirk because it's awkward. I smirk because she is pathetic. How hard can it be to get 5 hours part time work I thought? Is it really THAT devastating? Considering we were located in central London and she lived in Surbiton most of her wages were surely spent on travel, which proved to me that she really was in the office just to annoy us all.

We were all told that there was not enough work for us all, and they had 8 full time workers but only 3 full time positions available. We could apply for them. They actually expected us to all apply for a job that we already had, and go up against not just colleagues, but friends. Some of us in that room had formed really good friendships. It was all very unethical, and I had already decided to take the money and run. The Managing Director asked to see me later, and explained that if I was to apply for one of the other jobs I would have to take a demotion and a pay cut as there were going to be no managerial positions. So basically my redundancy was compulsory (This has all proved to be an utter crock of shit and they filled my position within 3 months). I accepted the redundancy, and was told my last day would be the following Friday. This came as a shock because I thought when you were made redundant, you were not needed, and as you didn't have enough work to do, or so I was being told I assumed I would leave right away.....

Well, as they say, when you assume you make an ass out of you, because the MD had made his own assumption, that everyone else would be clamboring all over each other for the other 3 positions, when in fact they all opted for redundancy too. So they fucked themselves royally, much to our amusement. Apart from of course, Question, who is still hanging on for dear life.

I did go on to change my career, and I did get into charity.