Curriculum Vitæ: a working life story, Chapter 16: “Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone.”

[Previous chapter] [The University: August 2010 – August 2011]

Girlfriend # 3 got a new Job in The Haven Town in The South of England. I handed My Notice in at The Boutique Agency at a time of general Upheaval. Bossman was in the process of branching out into PR, so he’d brought on another Member of Staff to replace the Intern. The PR guy was A Seasoned Pro: I’d met him before; he was the only bugger who’d bothered to meet me in person when Portillo handed over The Music Website Job to me. So he was one of the few PR people I actually liked. Nevertheless, I didn't much like the bands he represented, and I never got to Work with him anyway. Just met him briefly, shook hands, shook hands with my replacement web editor (another young Middle Class white guy from another defunct music website) and went out for leaving drinks. Bossman gave me a hipflask with my pen-name and the name of the company on it, which I thought was A Nice Gesture. He’d offered to let me Work From Home, like Anders. But because of my Qualms about my Career Progression, and my Concerns about moving to a town where I had no friends or relatives, I thought it was a better bet to start sending out CVs to hunt once more for that elusive copywriting Job I’d spent 12 grand (that I was still repaying) to try and procure.

I secured an Interview in The Fairy Place next door to The Haven Town on my 26th birthday, for a copywriting Job with what was essentially a legitimized loanshark Company. I had Qualms about whether it was A Good Fit; but the Remuneration was good for a Job outside The Great Wen, and the Company was listed in some or other newspaper’s Top 10 UK Workplaces. When I got there, the Bossman and the Superior—both about two feet taller than me—led me through what looked like a sweatier, dingier version of the phone-pig-pen at The Conference Company (albeit with far less Ethnic Diversity) and up to an empty company café full of colourful hammocks and beanbags nobody was using. I’d worn the suit that Girlfriend # 3 had bought me from Top Man. The Superior was wearing a lurid pink open-necked shirt that clashed with his sunburnt face; and the Bossman—who I knew from my Research had recently appeared on both Secret Millionaire and Watchdog—was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. I Nervously adjusted my tie. They glanced at my CV, tossed it aside, then looked at the mock-up of an email newsletter about loans that I’d prepared on request. (Although my A4 print-out couldn’t quite capture the coding I’d Laboured over thus to showcase my design and HTML skills in addition to my copywriting Competency.) The Bossman muttered that he didn’t think I’d explained their financial products in a way that was clear enough for their Target Audience (i.e. vulnerable poor people). He thanked me for my Time. And I was Dismissed. Back on the train to The Great Wen then. (Happy birthday to me! What the hell am I for?)

I returned to The Great Wen, a 26-year-old failure with nothing but a self-pitying poem I’d written on the train home to show for myself. I’d already given The Boutique Agency My Notice. And although I was applying for Jobs that could only hope to contribute to about a quarter of our combined Income as a couple, I was still not getting them. But Girlfriend # 3 had agreed to marry me at an unspecified future date, and was already trying to procreate with me. So while I had no Contract, as such, my impending Unemployment was still far from being A Nightmare Scenario.

We moved to The Flat Overlooking The Bay in The Haven Town. We didn’t even look at it before we moved there, so we were very lucky that it turned out to be lovely. Girlfriend # 3 started her new Job, and I settled into my new Role as cook, cleaner, and failure. For over a month I applied for all sorts of Jobs, many of which I didn’t even want, and none of which I got. I also plugged away at the three blogs I’d had on the go since before I met Girlfriend # 3: The Book-Review Blog; The Poetry Blog; and The Wine Blog. These three blogs had replaced the one somewhat chaotic, often sweary and sometimes libellous blog I’d run under A Pseudonym since The MA Course. I retired that one at some point in late 2008 or early 2009 when I decided to try to focus my Literary efforts around my three major hobbies: reading, writing, and drinking. I had a vague idea that I might like to try Working in some capacity in one of these Industries in future; but no plan as such. The blogs were just to ensure I kept writing, and maintained an online window into my world should a Prospective Employer want to peer in to it. To my great surprise, it was the latter of these three that bore fruit. Only a couple of months in to my semi-regular updating of The Wine Blog, I was contacted online by a Scottish affiliate marketer who’d built a couple of Wine Websites around some SEO-friendly URLs he’d won at an auction. We may as well call him Malcolm. Malcolm asked me to write for his websites, and said that he could afford to pay me A Modest Sum; so I was more than happy to post my uninformed babblings there instead of on my own blog. The Wine Websites Job (surprisingly) lasted for a few years, so I’ll come on to it later; but it was always a Sideline, and was never going to be A Proper Job.

My next Interview was a short train ride away at The University—a web editor Job, not a copywriter Job; but a good-looking Job nonetheless. I had to do a PowerPoint presentation for three intimidating Bosswomen, and just about managed to pull it off without having a full-on Panic Attack. I was consequently crushed when I received an email the next day to tell me that they’d had “a very strong internal candidate”. But they also said they were planning to: “move the entire website to a new Content Management System” and that they “may possibly need assistance with that”. So they promised to keep my CV on file.

I’d never had a promise to keep my CV on file lead to a Job Offer, so I carried on looking. But only a week later The University called me back in for a (less formal, sit-down) Job Interview for the position of web editor on The CMS Project. I was offered the Job on a six-month Contract basis, at a Salary that was unexciting but not insulting. So I accepted.

The role

The CMS Project at The University comprised a satellite Team that technically belonged to the digital marketing Department, but which, for logistical reasons, sat upstairs with the analogue marketing Department, with whom we were to have very little to do. There was one Bosswoman project-manager, one web-developer (Roger), and two web editors (me and a guy I will call Hermes). It was our Job to move the whole of The University’s website from one CMS (content management system) to another—within six months, i.e. by February 2011. Except we couldn’t actually get started on that just yet, because they hadn’t finished choosing which CMS we were going to move it to. Because this was The Public Sector, there had to be a Tendering Process, which I inferred was something akin to how one makes schnitzel.

Bosswoman was one of the three who had Interviewed me for the Full-Time web editor Role in the digital marketing Department—the Role that went to the “strong internal candidate”. Hermes had applied for that too, and they’d kept his CV on file. Hermes was a bit standoffish. There was no explicit suggestion that we were Competitors; but because we’d both applied for a Full-Time Job and been given a Contract Job, I felt from the off that he was intent on proving himself the Superior web editor—but I didn’t hold this against him: if he was, he was; and if he wasn’t, he wasn’t. Bosswoman tended not to allot us tasks directly because she was mostly involved in Meetings concerning the Tendering Process; so it was down to Roger to allot us Tasks, which—to begin with—involved Market Research concerning the website’s Target Audience. We drew up lists of all of the internal and external Stakeholders, putting together marketing personas, scenarios and use cases. There was a lot of Conceptual stuff about user-centred design; so while Roger was putting together wire-frames we had to do a lot of brainstorming and mind-showering. All Good Fun, but I couldn’t help thinking it was the sort of thing that should have been done before the Tendering Process... 

Bosswoman took out a reference to my mature student marketing persona suffering from Depression, so the scenario of her looking at The University website for Support with her Mental Health no longer made any sense. I also conferred upon one of my imaginary prospective international students from Pakistan adherence to a marginal branch of Islam that suffered day-to-day persecution and would thus have prevented him from being allowed to leave the country. But apart from that, about a month into the six-month Contract, everything seemed to be going well. 

Then Bosswoman had to take extended Sick-Lave, and our Team was suddenly operating at three quarters Capacity. The Tendering Process was incomplete, even though there was a strong indication of which CMS provider Roger and Bosswoman favoured from the beginning. Our focus shifted to churning out reams and reams of Word Documents forensically detailing what the new website would be required to do. Again, I felt like this probably should have been done before the Tendering Process began; but it hadn’t been, so we did it then. This involved a full audit of all of the Content on the existing University website, assessing its Quality, and pointing out any problems with it to the Internal Stakeholders we’d identified as having “ownership” of that bit of the website. I foresaw several Problems with this—apart from the fact that it ought to have been done already, which observation I’d worked out by now wasn’t widely considered a Useful Contribution. But I was Wrong when I thought that telling people their part of the website was crap, and to make it better, would be our biggest Problem. It turned out that getting people to agree that they had any responsibility whatsoever for what was on the website was a much bigger Problem.

“Aren’t there any copywriters here?” I mused. There was in fact one copywriter in the digital marketing Team, who’d identified himself at one of the rare Department Meetings to which our Satellite Team had been invited. Roger the web-developer was now the Team’s de-facto Bossman. So he arranged a Meeting between the copywriter and our Team. We asked him what he did—without wanting to sound accusatory about it—and it turned out that what he did was write The University prospectus. The online version? No: the print version. All the Time? Yes: it took exactly one year, then you had to start writing it all over again.

Ever since I’d found out there was a copywriter Job at The University, I’d coveted it; but having spoken to the guy that did it, I now felt significantly less Envious of his Position. I’d originally presumed there might be one or two copywriters working on the website at any given time. Apparently not! There were some web editors downstairs that did that, among other tasks associated with maintaining the website: usually adding pages to it, and sometimes—but very rarely—removing them. But it wasn’t a requirement for the Staff who uploaded webpages to be Professional Writers—and boy, did it show. The copywriter agreed that there should be more copywriters, because he’d quite like to Manage a Team of them. But he also said that what with the cuts to Higher Education funding that were coming in thick and fast, The University wasn’t likely to be employing any more copywriters any time soon.

I inferred this to be a reference to The Coalition Government elected only months before I left The Great Wen. I’d voted Liberal Democrat in a Labour safe-seat and almost immediately regretted it. But it wasn’t my fault, Prospective Employer; Olaf and I had been taken to a Liberal Democrat social event in a stuffy little room in The Great Wen by Boots back in 2008, where Nick Clegg had delivered a rousing Speech about Change. And having Lived for 13 years with the Labour Government I primarily associated with The Rupture, and secondarily with The War in Iraq, I was by then quite ready to see the back of them. But party politics wasn’t much discussed at The University in The Fairy place, except in terms of a vague consensus that The Government was doing A Bad Job at helping The University.

At some point toward the end of that first six months a CMS was finally chosen; but I don’t remember what it was called and would never actually see it. Following Bosswoman’s departure, Bossman Roger did his best to be both web-developer and project-manager. Hermes and I had to conduct Focus Groups with Prospective Students; which was fun, but useless. Our Remit expanded and contracted according to the Whims of Roger; but—he assured us—The Confusion was due to Political Machinations, which were holding up the Procurement Phase. Having made Roger aware of the social media aspects of my last Job, I was tasked with putting together a social media tone-of-voice Document for The University, and then a web-content tone-of-voice Document for The University. Roger went on an emergency project management Course, and after he did that we all had to stand up whenever we had a Meeting—even though we could all see each other from our desks already. 

Hermes got on stoically with his Tasks. We were given different Remits, and suffered similar pushback from our respective Stakeholders. So the initial competitive atmosphere between us gradually faded as the months juddered by. Our Team’s Satellite status, coupled with the early loss of our Bosswoman, seemed to somehow put us at odds with the Business As Usual Team downstairs; but we were also viewed with increasing Suspicion by The Analogue Marketing Team on our floor, many of whom were (confusingly) also “owners” of bits of The Website—probably because, like Nick Clegg, we were at once promising and threatening change. Roger tried to alleviate the Tension by arranging “outreach” Meetings like the one we’d had with the copywriter downstairs. He booked a slot in The Meeting Cupboard with “Sue” who “owned” a bit of the site I’d Audited. I suggested to Sue that we (or whoever) could record short video interviews with the Academics responsible for particular Postgraduate Courses—asking about their Research interests, and the Courses they taught—and we’d edit these into Content to complement what meagre fare was currently available on the website, thus encouraging more Students to Apply for Courses.

Sue had been shaking her head for a while by the time I finished talking. 

“Can’t be done.”

I’d been prepared by Bossman Roger for the possibility of encountering a “can’t do” attitude in some of these Meetings; though he hadn’t mentioned names.

“I think if we can just assure them that we—”

More head shaking and a raised palm. “Trust me. I’ve worked here for five years now. They’re too busy. They’re not interested.”

I looked at Roger. He made an ambiguous eyebrow movement. I did a sort of politician’s gesture with one of my hands:

“Look. I just think that if we approach them in the right—”

“I'VE HAD QUITE ENOUGH OF YOUR AGGRESSIVE TONE” Sue informed me. And then explained to Roger that she hadn’t “got time for this sort of thing” because she was “very busy doing” her “actual Job,” which was “quite busy enough without him”—she meant me—“coming in here” (she meant her Workplace, I think, as opposed to The Meeting Cupboard specifically) “telling me how I could be doing my Job better.”

Sue got up and left.

Roger and I got up as well. And after a brief but Awkward silence, we also left.

“Well, that went well,” I said once we were back at our desk cluster.

“Yes, thanks for that Alex,” said Roger. He sat down at his desk and put his headphones in.

Had I been Aggressive?! I didn’t think so. I’d never been accused of being Aggressive before. Only lisping. But I’d just got to the point in the Job where I felt I could sit and talk to Colleagues as equals, without stammering and apologizing for being in their Workplace; so perhaps I’d ploughed right on across the border into the realm of Workplace Bullying? I’d thought my suggestion pretty uncontroversial, and had even dared hope she’d like it. Maybe I should have been more specific upfront that we weren’t expecting her to actually do anything. I hadn’t even said “meagre fare” out loud. Ultimately, Prospective Employer, Sue and I had disagreed, disagreeably. Perhaps that was all there was to it?

We put The Outreach on hold after that. Roger was getting increasingly frustrated by the Scope of his Role. He was frantically trying to develop wireframes and UX proposals and all manner of other “deliverables” for the new CMS, while also managing The Project itself and being our Bossman at the same time. Early on, there had been whole weeks where Hermes and I were both desperate for something to do; I was euphemistically chided by Roger one morning during a stand-up Meeting for tweeting too much on the previous day—but in my defence, Prospective Employer: the tweets were completely unrelated to Work; and he couldn’t have known I was doing it without looking at Twitter himself. 

Having nothing to do at Work was worse than having too much to do. In The Boutique Agency Job, at quiet times you’d kick back and relax—write a poem, make some tea—knowing you’d soon be hit by a deluge of last-minute Work. But here at The University, I was on a Contract, and acutely aware of the finite nature of the Job, and thus my need to secure alternative Employment should the Contract not be renewed. The last thing I wanted was not to be busy. By the end of six months though, we were well into The Audit, and rushed off our feet. There was Budget enough remaining in The Project Pot; so Hermes and my Contracts were both extended for another six months. And Bossman Roger snaffled another web editor from the Business As Usual Team downstairs. The new web editor (we’ll call her Alice) was a good friend of Roger’s. She was easier to talk to than Hermes, who was pretty intense at the best of Times, and only really interested in football (spectating) and long-distance-running (participating at Club Level), about which—either one—I could scarcely muster Enthusiasm. Alice was being Sequestered; so wasn’t technically a Competitor to me or Hermes for any long-term Job that might become available at The University if our Project ever finished or indeed ran out of Money—the latter of which already seemed by far the likelier outcome

I wasn’t sure I even wanted a Job at The University by this point. The Job, The Project, the Workplace… all seemed mildly Cursed. Girlfriend # 3 had announced a Pregnancy, so we moved from The Flat Overlooking The Bay to The Tall House in The Gated Community, and I started learning to drive as A Matter of Urgency or possibly Emergency; because Girlfriend # 3 was adamant that although she was A Good Driver, she would not be driving herself to hospital while in Labour. Nor would she walk—even though, as I gently pointed out, The Hospital was less than a mile away. At Work, a new Megabossman came in to be Bossman to the three Bosswomen who’d initially Interviewed me (and by extension also Bossman to Bossman Roger). Eventually he came upstairs to introduce himself to our Project Team. He was making his way around the desk cluster shaking hands when he stopped in his tracks and pointed to something I was doodling on the A4 pad of paper I always kept on my desk.

“Do you know the significance of that symbol?” he demanded.

I looked down at the bit of celtic knotwork I was scribbling. Shit. It wasn’t some kind of Neo-Nazi thing, was it?

“Well… its significance to me is that it’s on the cover of the album ‘Thunder and Consolation’ by New Model Army,” I offered.

“That is the significance!” he agreed.

Hermes looked cross. Roger looked confused. After that moment, I could do no wrong in Megabossman’s eyes, and whenever he was upstairs to talk to More Important People, he’d first stop at my desk and reminisce about all the New Model Army gigs he’d been to over the years. I’d only seen them a few times. Once with Greg back in Pennycomequick—four years ago. And twice with Elen from The Manic Street Preachers Chat Room, at the back-to-back 20th anniversary Great Wen shows in 2000—ten years ago! Christ, I was Old. But not as Old as Megabossman, who’d seen them back when I was an egg. Talking about New Model Army was much better than talking about The CMS Project, which neither Megabossman nor I knew (nor, I suspected, cared) much about at all.

Things Came To A Head one day, when Roger returned from a Project Status Meeting in a state, and urgently summoned his three web editors into The Meeting Cupboard to declare that: “I have been… Professionally Embarrassed!”

Theatrical blinking.

We looked suitably grave, but said nothing—I assume neither Alice nor Hermes knew what Bossman was on about either. But we were sympathetic, as his Team. The detail was that Bossman felt he’d been given an undue dressing down for the poor progress of The Project; and a large part of the Work he thought he was Managing Perfectly Well was now being Outsourced to an Agency. They’d dressed the “dressing down” up as a “helping hand”—a sort of “don’t worry about this bit now”. But it was implicit, he said, that they thought he was doing A Bad Job; because the bit they’d told him not to worry about was the “information architecture” we’d all been working on for a month and a half since The Audit. We were told to give all of the Work we’d done to The Agency so they could look at it, decide why it wasn’t good enough, then do it better. We—the web editors—now had to get on with some actual copy-editing of Legacy Content, so as to ready it for migration to the (still at this stage hypothetical) New Website. 

Finally, I thought. Some actual writing Work!

Personally, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Bossman Roger was doing A Bad Job; because he was quite literally doing two of the four Jobs that the Team had initially been Tasked with doing—despite being One Person. But a Rubicon had been crossed: Roger “DGAF” thenceforth, so we could probably have done what we liked. But now that we were finally getting down to the actual Content and being allowed to suggest cosmetic improvements—like standardized spelling and punctuation—I was, at least briefly, In My Element. As the second set of six months began to draw to a close—and Bossman started Making Noises about leaving The University for a better one—Rumours began to circulate about how much Money was being Paid for the outsourced information architecture—and how little was left in The Project Pot. Things didn’t look good for the future prospects of the CMS Project’s two Contract web editors.

One day we were all summoned to a big Meeting Room in another building. (I think it was some kind of rented Tall Café?) The Agency to which the IA had been outsourced—actually just one guy, by the looks of it—delivered a PowerPoint presentation. This was billed as The Great Unveiling of The New University Website. So we were all eyebrows when we learnt that The New Website could fit onto one PowerPoint slide. Sure, there were a few slides that introduced that slide. And yes, our Project Team got a “shoutout” for all our Hard Work from “The Agency” (again: one guy—a guy that usually designed billboards, not websites; I’d already Googled him). But we were sitting there in The Tall Café being told that being shown one slide of a PowerPoint presentation was more-or-less the same thing as “having a new website”. And being told that two times another six months’ worth of web editors’ Contracts was what this PowerPoint presentation was worth. The only difference in terms of The Information Architecture, was that he’d reduced it to just The Homepage. And The Homepage now had tags or tabs on it, so that—The Agency said—people could instantly navigate to the exact Content they wanted in One Click without having to wade through all The Website’s sections.

Alice asked how was that going to Work when The Website had tens of thousands of pages featuring all different kinds of Content—unless The Homepage itself was just One Big List, linking to every other page on The Website? And wouldn’t an integrated Search Functionality make more sense? The Agency nodded and replied that he was glad that Alice had asked that question actually because—and then he delivered a very long sentence with lots of incomplete clauses and technical-sounding nouns, including but not limited to “Solution”. And he took a deep breath and gesticulated to his slide, reiterating that tags or possibly tabs were actually The Future of web browsing. I looked at Hermes and Hermes looked at me. Alice looked at Roger, and Roger just shook his head. One of The Project Owners—The One Who’d Hired The Agency—chose that moment to lead a standing ovation, which Megabossman joined in with, and most of the rest of the assembly followed suit.

There are at least two sides to every Story, Prospective Employer. And the two sides to this one, according to various Colleagues at The University over the last few weeks I was there, can be broadly characterized as follows:

Side one: The CMS Project Team had been struggling with its Workload since the loss of its (first) project manager. We’d done valuable Work, but weren’t Making Progress; so the strategic element had been outsourced to The Agency. The Agency had presented The Strategy for The New Website to The Project Owners and The Internal Stakeholders—and everyone loved it—and The Strategy was sent to The CMS Company so that they could build and deliver The New Website and its CMS based on that. The Project went over-budget due to Unavoidable Complications, so the Content Migration itself would have to be done on an Ad Hoc basis over the next six months by The Business As Usual Team—with Freelance assistance, if Funds could be sourced.

Side two: one of The Project Owners decided to Pay her friend—a guy who designed billboards for a living—one third of the total Project Fund to deliver a PowerPoint presentation that summarized some (but not all) of the Work that our Team had already done—while also mostly claiming the credit for it. And that the same Project Owner managed to convince Megabossman that this was A Good Idea because—much like her and her friend, The Agency—he didn’t really know very much about websites either.

Like I say, Prospective Employer, it’s impossible for me to know which of the above bears the closest resemblance to the actual sequence of Events that played out toward the end of my 12 Contracted months at The University Job, because I was just a web editor—doing what I was told (when I was lucky enough to be told to do anything). Maybe it was one story; maybe it was the other. Maybe it was a bit of both. And maybe it was neither. But because I’m interested in My Legacy, I made sure to check The University’s website every now and then over the next few years. And I can tell you—and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine will verify—that it wasn’t until three years and three months after that presentation that The University finally published The New Website. 

That, at least, is What Really Happened.

Good Job or Bad Job?

I didn’t work with Bosswoman for long enough to form an opinion, but Bossman Roger was A Nice Guy, and Alice was nice too. I liked Hermes well enough, but couldn’t shake the notion that he thought we were rival Candidates in a year-long Interview for a Full-Time Job at The University. I also suspected he thought I was Weird. But which of us was measuring things on his monitor using a plastic ruler from Day One in the Job, Prospective Employer? Not me.

There was something of a “Blitz spirit” in our Team, in that Roger felt we were under constant bombardment from The Project Board, the analogue marketing Team, and the Business As Usual Team. (But not because of looting; I would never steal from a Workplace, Prospective Employer, and there really was nothing in The University worth taking.) Nevertheless, I don’t think I’d describe what we had in that Job as Solidarity; because for whatever reason, a lot of the Administrative Staff at The University seemed to think it was our Project Team’s Job to make their Jobs more difficult. When all we were really trying to do was to move Content from The Old Website onto The New Website, which—for reasons beyond our control—would not be ready to receive It until well over three years later. So our Project failed. But there were a few Good Times along the way. Maybe one Good Time, Professionally. That being the Time Bossman unilaterally decided we should storyboard and shoot a promotional video for The University and upload it to YouTube. He let me use the free video-editing software on his new work iMac, and I storyboarded it, and got some of the Staff (who didn’t hate us) from The Business As Usual Team to co-star.  

But there was also the Time the “It Gets Better Project” reached our office. If you don’t know, Prospective Employer, that Project was a user-generated Internet video Meme launched to help prevent Suicide among LGBT Youth by encouraging gay adults to share their Life Stories to show that there was Hope for a Happy and Fulfilling Life, even after a Difficult Youth. I’d seen some of these already; many were very Depressing, and I worried they might have the opposite of the intended effect if LGBT Youth didn’t watch to the end. So I found it very refreshing when Bossman skipped quickly over his unremarkable upbringing and Awkward teenage years, to spend the majority of his allotted three minutes sexually bragging in euphemistic terms about his many Conquests at University. I sincerely hope they had a lot more success with that Project than we had with ours.

We really didn’t see much of the Department downstairs we were supposed to be part of. But how much does a satellite see of the planet it’s orbiting? Alice at least used to come up to chat with Bossman before she joined our Team. And there was one other guy who used to visit, who unironically referred to himself as a “social media guru” online, and had 12 followers on Twitter. I don’t remember what his Job was. As for our floor, The Analogue Marketing Department (all women aged about 25 to 45) either disliked or simply ignored our Team. And there was one lone, long-haired middle-aged dude in the far corner. I got the train back to The Haven Town with him once or twice. He was my favourite member of Staff, but I rarely got to talk to him while at Work. I think he was The Market Research Department? I’m not sure he even had a computer.

Look, the Job was ridiculous. I still don’t know whose fault that was, but I don’t believe in Blame Culture, Prospective Employer. I was employed to migrate Content from one CMS to another, and 12 months later, nobody had presented me with a second CMS. So it was—by definition—a supremely Unproductive year. Maybe the most Unproductive Professional year of my Life? Sure, we had Work enough to do for most of the Time we were there. But I doubt anyone ever looked at the several hundred pages’ worth of Documents I banged out on the frankly archaic PC. And The University Website was still full of typos years after I left. Did The New Website that finally went up 3.33 years later owe anything to the work that Hermes, Alice, Bossman Roger and I did that year? I honestly don’t care. I learnt a few things about Marketing, I guess; and about The Public Sector generally. But these weren’t Lessons I’d want to Apply in future Jobs; only Warnings I’d want to Heed. 

Bossman Roger got A Better Job at A Better University in the last month we were there. He promptly relocated with his boyfriend or possibly husband, and he didn’t let the door hit him on the way out. I knew he felt his Job at The University had become Undignified. But I don’t know if I’d say my Job lacked Dignity, specifically; because it lacked Meaning of any kind beyond the paltry Remuneration. Maybe I’d even have Quit before my Contract was up; but Girlfriend # 3 was still pregnant and we needed me to be in Work so she could take Maternity Leave—because I had no idea how to breast-feed. 

A new Full-Time web editor was brought in to The Business As Usual Team without Hermes or I being made aware of a Vacant Position. And she got on well with One of The Project Owners, and was swiftly Promoted to the Superior Job that our Bosswoman had been Sequestered from before she took sick leave. (She was a very strong internal candidate, Prospective Employer.) Hermes and my extended Contracts came to an end just in time to make me Redundant for Child # 1’s Due Date: no Money left in The Project Pot!

It was A Bad Job. The absolute worst.

Concluding Notes

• Midway through The University Job, Girlfriend # 3 and I changed our surnames by deed poll to “Velky”. There were many Reasons. We wanted to have the same name when Child # 1 was born so we felt like A Traditional Family. I was uncomfortable with Patronymic Naming Conventions. And I was tired of spelling out my long Polish surname over the phone. I’d been using “Velky” as a pen-name ever since I’d seen the film “Alexander” starring Colin Farrel in The City of a Hundred Spires with Cosmo back in 2005. The film was released in The Former Communist Country with the suffix “Velky”, which means “Great” or “Magnificent” in most Slavic languages. Girlfriend # 3 liked the sound of the word too, so we went with that. Bossman Roger signed my deed poll form and I posted it in the box in the carpark of The Big Asda in The Haven Town that evening. My father took my name-change personally, even though I wrote him a lengthy letter specifically asking him not to. Nobody else cared. Few even noticed.
  

• Right at the end of The University Job, Hermes and I were made aware of a new six-month Contract web editor Job for a New Project at The University, funded from a different Project Pot. Hermes flashed me a suspicious sideways glance, but wouldn’t say whether or not he was Applying. I looked into it. “Staff Intranet Project.” Same Pay. Similar Job Description. Familiar Faces on The Project Board. Fuck it, I thought, and I applied to be the Project Manager instead. Hermes found this amusing when I told him—then disconcerting when I was invited to an Interview. Bossman Roger said we’d be Crazy to Apply for any Job at The University; but I was Applying for all sorts of Jobs at that Time: this was only one among many. Of course Hermes had applied for the new web editor Job, and got it, and I was pleased for him. As for me, I attended my Staff Intranet Project Manager Job Interview (on my 27th birthday) and enjoyed telling my Interviewees everything I’d recently learnt about project management, and mismanagement, in what you might call “coded terms”. But I wasn’t offered the Job; there was a very strong external candidate.
  

• I took my remaining two weeks’ worth of Holiday at the end of my Contract that August in order to prepare for the arrival of Child # 1. When the day came, and Girlfriend # 3’s Labour Pains really started kicking in, she insisted we wait for our Ocado delivery to be unpacked—by the fastest and most Anxious delivery driver I’d ever met—before I drove her to The Hospital (for the second time that day) in her Peugeot 207, with my provisional licence. The copywriter from The Business As Usual Team was already at The Hospital with his heavily pregnant partner, who worked in The Analogue Marketing Department. She’d been completely indifferent to our Project, as far as I could tell. (Probably had other stuff on her mind.) The copywriter offered me a gruff and stoic nod by way of recognition, and I felt we’d shared a mute moment of mutual Terror. The birth took ages. (I’m not complaining, Prospective Employer; that’s just a fact.) The first twelve hours were nice and relaxing because it was night time and no one was around. Then the nice night-time midwife went home and a new morning midwife arrived, and everything became a lot more Stressful. Mother and Baby (as yet still one) were disappeared to a private room—and I was left alone in a Weird cloth gown and paper shoes, thinking that Girlfriend # 3 and our baby were going to die. What would I do then? We had all that food in the house. And I wouldn’t be allowed to drive the car without her in it. But they didn’t die, Prospective Employer. I was allowed back in the room, and the baby was produced with some oversize kitchen utensils. They gave the noisy little thing to me and it seemed Cross. It probably wants to be with Girlfriend # 3, I thought. They asked me what it was, and I wasn’t sure I was the best person to ask. You’re the bloody doctors, I thought. You’re being Paid: you tell me. But I made an educated guess, and fortunately nobody contradicted me. Somebody ticked some boxes on a form, and Girlfriend # 3 was finally allowed to hold her daughter. Our daughter.

  
  

• A week later I received an email from The Head of Something-or-Other at The University (the swiftly promoted downstairs web editor): “The project board have heard my request to keep you on as a copywriter (as you really are fantastic at it) However, they cannot extend your current contract, so instead proposed to give you a ‘casual’ contract, where we agree the hours you will work in advance per week, and you are paid weekly.” I considered the implications of this. It seemed to me that even if I was A Fantastic Copywriter, she wouldn’t know it. I Quoted an Hourly Rate I knew The University wouldn’t agree to Pay, and informed The University that I’d accepted a Full-Time copywriter Job at The DIY Company, to start in October. The Head of Something-or-Other wished me well with my Career and congratulated me for Procreating. I sent a farewell email to the Department entitled “So long, and thanks for all the fish” just to say “I won’t be back in now, so thanks to all of you who’ve made the past year at [The University] such an interesting experience.” Only Alice replied: acknowledging my “interesting” choice of adjective, and wishing me well.

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