Chantal - Have Laptop Will Travel

I’ve worked for enough companies to know what is normal and what is not. I can truly say I’ve never ever worked in an office with 9 other people who rarely ever speak to each other. I’ve never sat so close to a manager who is so averse to basic communication.

But I know that I hate it. I was completely miserable – on Friday I escaped to the pub in my lunch break for the first time in about three years, and even then didn’t feel fully up to returning to the office.

The thing about having worked for so many companies is that I know how and where I work best. I know that this job seems like a dream job, but nothing about its reality supports that. I know that I need to have friendly chatty colleagues around me to break up the day, I need to have a clear work plan and deadlines and above all, I need contact with users to make my work real. I don’t have any of that. My father asked if I’d brought any plants into work yet, completely oblivious to the fact that I’ve not settled in enough to bring in more than mugs, tea and music (mugs for water and tea, herbal teas because I don’t drink coffee or black tea, music because the complete silence is driving me mad). I’ve not settled; I don’t see how I can settle without basic human contact. And I don’t see how I can get that, how I can compromise sufficiently to finally accept that this job isn’t that bad after all.

After going to Morocco 5 years ago, I’d muse about how someone could spot a bubbly, lively person and think, ‘I want to suppress that’; similarly, my new boss apparently liked me for who I was, and so forced me out of the job I had at the time so that he could seat me at a desk surrounded by empty desks and people who don’t speak to each other, with an unspoken sense of urgency but no indications as to how to meet the necessary deadlines without access to something so basic as the databases I’d need to work with. I’ve spent a week trying to keep myself vaguely busy, and although I’ve just emailed myself various (Palestinian) websites to read in further depth, no matter if I have no work at all to do any more – I’ve exhausted all the options I’ve already come up – given that the project I’m working in specifically snoops on email, internet and phone usage – milking email and internet usage seems far from the most ethical way to spend my time. I justify it by thinking that if nobody will talk to me, then at least I’ll email those who will, even if I completely sabotage the statistics for my team. Employment these days is about teamwork, not about sitting in isolation with a manager who won’t talk, and if that manager has problems with retaining staff, then surely he should look into the reasons and circumstances, rather than employ yet more people who will be completely miserable with the working conditions.

My father suggests that my problems are due to my experiences at Network Rail. Yes, I adored my circle of friends there, and at least I can stay in contact with most of them without having to be physically there and suffering the hell that they are undergoing. Perhaps Lewisham was a more harmful experience, allowing me to chat and bond freely without pressures of work; had my new job been similar, perhaps I would not have minded.

But the whole situation makes me miserable, more than miserable. I’ve not had to commute by tube for over two years; I’ve learned that the only way to survive it is with a copy of Metro in front of my face, obscuring the sight of the crowds ahead. Whether I catch the tube at Canada Water or at London Bridge, I won’t get a seat until Westminster, or a copy of Metro until soon before then, depending on when some commuter decides to ditch her copy. I’ll anxiously check my email for friendly words, then reboot, in which time I have to force myself to sit at my desk and not bolt back to Bond Street station and home – yes, I’m being paid a lot of money to waste my time so blatantly, but I can think of far easier and kinder ways to make myself miserable.

I guess the only leverage I have is the amount they’re paying me. They want me to stay; they need me to stay. The person I’m replacing left on the spot as he was sick of the complete lack of management, and I’m starting to think that my only option is to go in with an ultimatum: either they give me access to the information I need, or I grab the next job I can find which is not there. I was thrilled to get an Oracle job at last, but maybe, after the last week, I’m starting to understand exactly why they were so desperate, why they would take someone without even the basic necessary experience. Five years ago, I was turned down from a job as the manager in question felt that I would be perceived as too young and too sweet; my manager and his boss will be in serious trouble if they so much as dare to think of me like that.

I don’t want it to be tomorrow. When I was back at Network Rail, I’d avoid going to sleep for as long as I could, dreading the day ahead so much I couldn’t bear to face it, and would stay up as late as I could physically manage. That’s how I feel now. Yesterday was taken up with my father, essentially leaving me with only one day of weekend, which I don’t want to end, as, when it does, it’ll be Monday and I’ll have to be back at work, back at a desk where I have my back to the rest of the office, and though I sometimes put whichever music I’m listening to on pause when I hear voices, I learn quickly that it’s not worth listening to anyway. What I want is to wake tomorrow and find that it’s Sunday, all over again, and possibly for the day after that as well.

I know that there are only two selling points to this job: the salary, and the Oracle experience. But I also know that Oracle experience in itself is meaningless unless I have about 2 years’ experience of it, and given I can only contemplate another month of this at the most, I have no idea how I can deaden myself sufficiently to last that out. I don’t even want to contemplate what I’d be like at the end of those two years; spending each day without speaking to a single person is hard enough as it is; after four days there, I could barely stomach sitting at my desk and propagating the pretence of being a semi-happy employee on Friday.

My father asked if I could ask to return to Lewisham. I’ve often thought about the supposed urgency in my current job, versus how very little I’ve done all week and how much happier I’d have been if I’d been able to spend the week at Lewisham, whilst the new company got its act together and was even vaguely prepared for me when I finally joined. Of all my colleagues there, Dominic knew best how grumpy I was about the set-up there, but at least at Lewisham, I had (potential) real live access to actual databases, actual work to do, actual people to interact with. And however intangible the data was there, at least it didn’t have the ethical issues of snooping on colleagues’ email, phone and internet usage. On Thursday, I scrolled through the list (as I emailed Matt in a panic, my optical mouse has a roving eye – I have to keep wrestling it back from the far left-hand corner of the monitor) of accessed websites, reminding myself not to add to the statistics by checking out most of the websites to see what they were about. After Google and Hotmail, one of the most popular was Madonnalicious.com, and I can only speculate about its content.

My back is to the room; I don’t care what they see. I don’t even care any more about what they think. On Thursday, I spent most of the day reading all the online newspapers I could think of for further details about Arafat and his death. My boss was baffled the first time he saw an Outlook popup notification of new email; I’ve since calculated that I’m averaging 32 incoming emails a day, roughly one of which is work-related. I’m relieved beyond words that the Network Rail system isn’t junking the emails I send to my ex-colleagues, also that the RCN system isn’t junking their emails back to me.

I look at the plants hibernating in my living room and I think back to the emphasis companies place on being a team player. The only people who are designed to cope with complete social isolation are hermits, and although I may much resemble them in my free time, it’s only because I get my full socialising fix while at work. Take that away, and I’d rather be paid less to work in a more humane environment, where I don’t get off one train at London Bridge and be too tempted by the train on the next platform, which will take me back to my lovely home, my garden, and the full delights of daytime TV.

I know that next week has to be better than the week I’ve had, but the past week doesn’t fill me with much confidence. The isolation and lack of work aside, the commute and vertigo are sufficient reasons to unplug the alarm clock and never think twice about returning.