As I pull off my tie and unbutton my collar; with sweat coating the body beneath my shirt, let alone how uncomfortable the rest of me feels, as a man I feel hard done by. I know that the increasingly obsolete nature of men in the 21st century is our gender's punishment for centuries of oppressing women. However, in this hot weather, I just wish companies were less complicit with making men endure discomfort day in/day out. A couple of months ago when selecting which shoes to put on to go out, the 11-year old boy who used to live in my house, complained to me that all the shoes he had looked like 'girls' shoes'. This is not because he has a cupboard full of pink pumps, it is because every style of shoe a boy might wear is now worn by girls. Yes, girls can wear pumps and court shoes, they can wear calf-high, knee-high and even over-the knee-boots; they can wear them with heels of various types or flat; smooth-soled or with tread; they can be shiny or matt. Yet, these days it is acceptable for an 11-year old girl to wear trainers (sneakers in the USA), DM boots, flat ankle boots, basketball boots, worker boots, lace-up or slip-on brogues even wellington boots, all styles once seen as 'boys' shoes'. No wonder he had no style that he did not feel would make him look feminine. Gender identity is something we are all conscious of especially when growing up.
In the recent hot weather, I have similarly become very conscious of how many more options my female colleagues have in what to wear to work compared to me. The can wear a suit and tie the way I am compelled to, whenever they wish. However, in the hot weather, that is the only option I have. I could wear a short-sleeved shirt, still with a tie, but immediately would look as if I had become 65, not something desirable in the current workplace. The best I can do is take my jacket off. My female colleagues, however, flaunt their freedom and come in a wide range of clothing seen as suitable for the office and which is immensely cooler; many have a different outfit for each day whereas I just have different coloured suits to choose between. A man is ridiculed if his trousers are above his ankle and yet my female colleagues can come in skirts above the knee, or midi or even maxi so large they can swirl around in them; even skating-style skirst. They can wear tight or loose trousers, harem pants, long or short culottes, long leggings, cropped leggings, capri pants, pedal pushers, Bermuda shorts, cycling shorts (if matt) and traditional length canvas shorts. About the only fashion off limits for the workplace are the bum-hugging denim shorts so favoured by female students. Women can wear blouses with long sleeves, short sleeves or no sleeves; tops with some, a few or no buttons and all of these things in a range of shades.
The dichotomy between how comfortable a man is allowed to be in this weather and how comfortable a woman can choose to be is shown every morning by the difference between the male and female presenter on the BBC Breakfast programme on BBC1. This morning the man was in a suit, with jacket on, and a tie; the woman was in a sleeveless dress. Studios may be air conditioned, but it is very hot under those lights.
A large percentage of my female colleagues are in sleeveless dresses and sandals, seen as acceptable for the workplace. If I turned up in a teeshirt (let alone a sleeveless one), even a short sleeved shirt unable of having a tie, and shorts, no matter how much they looked like those worn by the Bermudan police, I would be sent home. I read some months ago a comment that the tie shown on the novel 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (2012) did not reflect what men actually wore to work. I have no idea what it is like in newspaper offices, but every day you see men heading to work and indeed in offices (I just walked past an accountants' office full of them) with the ties on. This is the expectation in many British workplaces, there is no other option when you work in an office. Pity those compelled to turn up in uniforms fit to work outside in December.
Ridicule and condemnation awaits any man who wears sandals even on his days off let alone at work. Dressing in a way which would give me some modicum of comfort in work, is liable to damage my standing in the job. I have two interviews next week. The interviewees I have seen at my workplace this week have all been in sleeveless dresses, so each probably carrying many hundreds of grams less in weight than I will be compared to do and without it all pulled tight by the top button and the tie. I will have to drive in these clothes, I will have to sit waiting in these clothes, I will have to concentrate while being interviewed in these clothes. I am not going to perform as well as my rivals. In my department there are 7 men and 53 women. The imbalances of the past can be seen that even though there are so few men two of the four deputy-heads of the unit are men, though the current and past two heads have been women as is her boss. This suggests that in my industry, though, there is no need to further favour women in interviews, by making the men feel so uncomfortable.
I am not a transvestite. I have no desire to wear 'women's clothes', but certainly when the temperatures reach a certain level, I think there should be more leeway for men. We should be allowed to remove ties for a start. I am tired of having a chafed neck every evening; it is agonising when the sweat pours into yesterday's wounds. An open-necked, white short-sleeved shirt can be very smart. For trousers, long shorts in cotton, say in navy blue, again would look smart. If sandals are unacceptable then slip-on pump-like shoes in a dark shade and allowed without socks again could take a lot of heat off male employees and yet look as if they mean business. However, I know this is never going to happen in my lifetime and I simply have to pray for more summers like 2012.
I have taken a bold step and looking around the world at what men who want to look smart in hot countries do, I have ordered a white thobe (also known as a thawb, dishdasha, kandura or suriyah), a long loose garment warn in North Africa and the Middle East. I doubt I have the courage to wear it to work and if I did that would probably be my career over, no matter if it was a 'dress down' day. In addition, given that I now walk to work, the chances that I would be reported as being 'suspicious' as people travelling on public transport in London are advised to look out for and would be picked up by the police as a terrorist threat before I reach work. Being bald I had been tempted to buy a skull cap too as my head burns as I walk home; I have worked out a route which is most shaded, to reduce the damage. However, I may try a brimmed hat, a little like those Australian ones, and hope that the clash of cultures will reduce the apparent threat I pose.
In the mid-Victorian and the Edwardian periods there were campaigns for 'rational dress' for women. These did not really win through until after the Second World War. I think we need to introduce 'rational dress' for working men which allows them to work without being endanger of over-heating in the office and having to spend the evening tending to the chafed skin around their necks and other parts of their bodies. Men have been backed into a single option for office wear and puts us at even more of a disadvantage in the workplace than is already the case.
Showing posts with label office work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label office work. Show all posts
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Saturday, 5 May 2012
The Challenges To An Early Sleeper
Having reached the age of 44, I know that I upset people. As a child, my name, where my family lived in the town, who my father worked for, the fact we did not attend church, the fact we had an old car, old furniture and a black-and-white television were all grounds on which people felt they could despise me, tell me they despised me and then punch me. These days it is the industry I work in, my appearance, my qualifications, the fact that I have an enthusiastic manner and like to chat, that I either ask too many questions or insufficient questions, the fact that I am a white man, my lack of hair, the country I come from, the fact that I drive an old car and my view of politics that stirs people to get vocally upset at my mere presence. Fortunately since reaching the age of 19 I have been spared the physical abuse which was once so common.
The strangest basis on which people get upset at me is the focus of today's posting, i.e. the time I get up in the morning and even more than that, the time myself and the woman who lives in my house go to bed. It is the going to bed time that causes most upset among the people I meet. You might argue that it is no-one's business what time I choose to go to bed and you would be right. However, as I noticed on many occasions on this blog, these days much of the population of the UK feels it has a right to not only judge on a whole host of aspects, many of them very mundane, but to tell you explicitly of its judgement on your behaviour as if without their help you would never have noticed what you were doing 'wrong'. Britain is the home of unasked-for advice; even random strangers in the street feel obliged and unshamed to come up to you and simply tell you the error of your ways. They are aloud to be indignant but you have to be at minimum stoic and preferably grateful for them enlightening you.
Fortunately most people I meet cannot tell what time I go to bed. However, colleagues can. This is especially the case when you have evening events or they telephone you after you have gone to bed. I had a manager two jobs back who found out that I am often in bed before 21.00 and sometimes as early as 19.30 and on that basis he felt I was unsuited to be sent overseas on work and that he was obliged to ridicule me about bedtime every time he met me. The problem for these people seems to stem from the sense that only children go to bed early, so an adult who does so is juvenile and cannot be given responsibility. There is still a lingering macho/macha attitude that you should have the stamina to work long into the night the way Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler were supposed to do, though the latter it is sometimes conceded, slept during the day to make up the time. So early sleeping equals immature, unbusinesslike and weak behaviour; going to bed late suggests you are mature, professional, hard-working even exciting.
These attitudes are very culturally specific and of our era. When the bulk of the population worked in agriculture, in the UK, sometime up to the mid-18th century most people rose and bedded down with the daylight. The woman in my house keeps very much to agricultural hours, something like 04.00-05.00 to rise and 19.00-20.00 to sleep. Her son, aged 10, nowadays goes to bed at 19.30 in the week and 20.00 on Friday and Saturday night, but it is difficult to keep him in bed after 06.00 in the morning especially with his mother awake and working. Acquiring chickens has just added to this tendency in our house as they become impatient if still in their coops after sunrise and alert us to that impatience. I am the late one in our house, getting up at 06.45 in the week (05.00 on Mondays) and sleeping in until 07.30-08.00 at the weekend.
Professions like farmers, bakers, market traders, the remaining milk deliverers all keep such hours. Of course, shift workers have other patterns, working right through the night and sleeping the day or 'early' work something like 06.00-14.00 or 'late' work 14.00-22.00 which mean they have other patterns. This all tends to be forgotten. We are all middle class now, so the assumption is that we all work 09.00-17.00 and so rise no earlier than 07.00 and are happy to stay up until 23.00 each night. Ironically, even working in an office, my day has lengthened and many people I know now do 08.00-17.30 meaning earlier getting up time and so an earlier time to bed. Interestingly the 'lie-in' which seemed such a middle class luxury in the 1970s when people would not get out of bed at the weekend until 12.00 appears to have faded and remains a habit confined to students and other young people who have raved the night away. Whilst late rising is no less 'unusual' than early rising, it retains a cachet of 'cool' whereas early to rise/early to bed just seems 'worthy'.
There are advantages in getting to bed early. Some people, clearly the two other residents of my house, work better early in the morning. The shops are quieter in the morning and with extended opening hours, aside from on Sundays, there is no need to hang around for them to open, you can get out and buy what you needed before the masses reach the supermarket. Perhaps you miss going out in the evening, but being unable to afford to eat at restaurants and being unable to sit comfortably in the cinema and theatre seats in my town I am not missing much that I would be able to do by staying up later.
Getting a decent amount of sleep, which is seen as nine hours for children and teenagers has regularly reported benefits. A key difficulty is the noise. In our district now that all tenants have to smoke outside, doors banging and loud conversations do not only go on in the evening but into the early hours of the morning too. I am lucky, I fall back asleep easily when roused, but the woman in my house finds it far harder. The noise does not have to come from your district, you have to make sure that friends and relatives know not to telephone.
With recordable digital television and catch-up online facilities many of us 'time shift' our television watching anyway and it is far easier to try to access the latest episode of 'Sherlock' on the I-Player at 05.30 than it is at 18.30. The only down side seems to be playing online community games as there are fewer people (though never none) to partner up with at that time of the morning. Email which is my main form of communication for work and leisure is asynchronous anyway and it is rare that I am able to answer a phonecall when it comes in, it is far more common to have answerphone to answerphone conversations.
If we manage to go through with our plan of relocating to living on a co-operative farm, then the sleep patterns will be an advantage rather than something to conceal. However, for now, having experienced the prejudice of revealing that you are in bed before the ten o'clock news comes, this is something that I intend to keep as secret from friends, colleagues and especially managers as much as I can.
The strangest basis on which people get upset at me is the focus of today's posting, i.e. the time I get up in the morning and even more than that, the time myself and the woman who lives in my house go to bed. It is the going to bed time that causes most upset among the people I meet. You might argue that it is no-one's business what time I choose to go to bed and you would be right. However, as I noticed on many occasions on this blog, these days much of the population of the UK feels it has a right to not only judge on a whole host of aspects, many of them very mundane, but to tell you explicitly of its judgement on your behaviour as if without their help you would never have noticed what you were doing 'wrong'. Britain is the home of unasked-for advice; even random strangers in the street feel obliged and unshamed to come up to you and simply tell you the error of your ways. They are aloud to be indignant but you have to be at minimum stoic and preferably grateful for them enlightening you.
Fortunately most people I meet cannot tell what time I go to bed. However, colleagues can. This is especially the case when you have evening events or they telephone you after you have gone to bed. I had a manager two jobs back who found out that I am often in bed before 21.00 and sometimes as early as 19.30 and on that basis he felt I was unsuited to be sent overseas on work and that he was obliged to ridicule me about bedtime every time he met me. The problem for these people seems to stem from the sense that only children go to bed early, so an adult who does so is juvenile and cannot be given responsibility. There is still a lingering macho/macha attitude that you should have the stamina to work long into the night the way Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler were supposed to do, though the latter it is sometimes conceded, slept during the day to make up the time. So early sleeping equals immature, unbusinesslike and weak behaviour; going to bed late suggests you are mature, professional, hard-working even exciting.
These attitudes are very culturally specific and of our era. When the bulk of the population worked in agriculture, in the UK, sometime up to the mid-18th century most people rose and bedded down with the daylight. The woman in my house keeps very much to agricultural hours, something like 04.00-05.00 to rise and 19.00-20.00 to sleep. Her son, aged 10, nowadays goes to bed at 19.30 in the week and 20.00 on Friday and Saturday night, but it is difficult to keep him in bed after 06.00 in the morning especially with his mother awake and working. Acquiring chickens has just added to this tendency in our house as they become impatient if still in their coops after sunrise and alert us to that impatience. I am the late one in our house, getting up at 06.45 in the week (05.00 on Mondays) and sleeping in until 07.30-08.00 at the weekend.
Professions like farmers, bakers, market traders, the remaining milk deliverers all keep such hours. Of course, shift workers have other patterns, working right through the night and sleeping the day or 'early' work something like 06.00-14.00 or 'late' work 14.00-22.00 which mean they have other patterns. This all tends to be forgotten. We are all middle class now, so the assumption is that we all work 09.00-17.00 and so rise no earlier than 07.00 and are happy to stay up until 23.00 each night. Ironically, even working in an office, my day has lengthened and many people I know now do 08.00-17.30 meaning earlier getting up time and so an earlier time to bed. Interestingly the 'lie-in' which seemed such a middle class luxury in the 1970s when people would not get out of bed at the weekend until 12.00 appears to have faded and remains a habit confined to students and other young people who have raved the night away. Whilst late rising is no less 'unusual' than early rising, it retains a cachet of 'cool' whereas early to rise/early to bed just seems 'worthy'.
There are advantages in getting to bed early. Some people, clearly the two other residents of my house, work better early in the morning. The shops are quieter in the morning and with extended opening hours, aside from on Sundays, there is no need to hang around for them to open, you can get out and buy what you needed before the masses reach the supermarket. Perhaps you miss going out in the evening, but being unable to afford to eat at restaurants and being unable to sit comfortably in the cinema and theatre seats in my town I am not missing much that I would be able to do by staying up later.
Getting a decent amount of sleep, which is seen as nine hours for children and teenagers has regularly reported benefits. A key difficulty is the noise. In our district now that all tenants have to smoke outside, doors banging and loud conversations do not only go on in the evening but into the early hours of the morning too. I am lucky, I fall back asleep easily when roused, but the woman in my house finds it far harder. The noise does not have to come from your district, you have to make sure that friends and relatives know not to telephone.
With recordable digital television and catch-up online facilities many of us 'time shift' our television watching anyway and it is far easier to try to access the latest episode of 'Sherlock' on the I-Player at 05.30 than it is at 18.30. The only down side seems to be playing online community games as there are fewer people (though never none) to partner up with at that time of the morning. Email which is my main form of communication for work and leisure is asynchronous anyway and it is rare that I am able to answer a phonecall when it comes in, it is far more common to have answerphone to answerphone conversations.
If we manage to go through with our plan of relocating to living on a co-operative farm, then the sleep patterns will be an advantage rather than something to conceal. However, for now, having experienced the prejudice of revealing that you are in bed before the ten o'clock news comes, this is something that I intend to keep as secret from friends, colleagues and especially managers as much as I can.
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Caution: Indignitaries At Work
I am now in line to be kicked out of my job. It is not on the grounds that I have stolen money or harrassed anyone or even was incompetent, it is simply that my manager dislikes me. She somehow sees my very person let alone my manner, offensive. She complains I repeat myself and write too long emails and yet goes on at length repeatedly around the office whining the same stories to everyone about her washing machine. She complains I do not meet the 'high standards' of the department, primarily on the basis that I lack 'team spirit' a very ill-defined criterion which basically comes down to whatever she thinks it should be. It has nothing to do with being a colleague as I have worked successfully with the other seven people in my office and tens of others across the company. What is alarming is how a single manager has so much power, how she can set different rules for me to my colleagues. I am supposed to eat elsewhere, I am supposed to knock more loudly on her door than my colleagues, I have to notify her in a particular way if I have to go to the doctor, something my colleagues do not have to do. She complains that I am too outspoken but also that I defer to her too much. There are no objective measures of her criteria which allows her to say such contradictory things at one time. She spends so much time socialising with senior staff, taking up a large part of the working day, that they take her views without question. I have tried to talk to her manager and simply have been told he cannot discuss the case. There is no-one I can turn to bar the union representative and I have no idea what you do in such situations if you are not in a union.
For me the severity of this step is great. I am liable to be kicked out with no pay and so will immediately default on the mortgage payments on my house meaning that my fears of having it repossessed have only been delayed by a year. It seems unlikely that I will work again as I will be unable to get anything but a highly biased reference from my manager. I have explored the problems with this particular manager before: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-are-british-managers-so-bad.html
Looking back I wonder if I could have done anything different to forestall this problem and the answer seems to be no. The case against me has been built on such insubstantial complaints that if it had not been these then it would have been something else. Basically the difficulties were two emails which apparently were critical of how my unit worked, though you would struggle to find that meaning in what I wrote. I suppose that I should not have said that I had no ability to control scheduling, the thing that the correspondent was making a mild complaint against. Apparently I was supposed to accept blame for things I cannot control. I was told I should not have said a colleague was off sick, even though that is completely the reverse approach to the previous place I worked. There they felt if you did not reveal the cause of the shortage of staff as something legitimate like illness then you were effectively criticising the company for not looking ahead sensibly to recruit sufficient staff. A more established in my office made the identical error some weeks later and while he has been chastised for it he is not being kicked out. I also said that my job did not involve cleaning up, which is a statement of fact. However, in a twisted way, this has been portrayed as being an unacceptable statement, on the grounds that it is both disparaging to cleaners who do a wonderful job; makes me appear as arrogant due to my qualifications and experience and yet also is said to show I have no pride in myself and thus, by implication no pride in my colleagues, thus violating the team spirit requirement. This statement was apparently so offensive that it led to a complaint being telephoned in by a visitor.
The last damning charge is that I did not inform my manager correctly before going to a hospital appointment despite it being in the Outlook system she can access for weeks and me talking about it with her for 10 minutes precisely a day before I went. Apparently it is fine that she forgot the conversation and she argues that she cannot afford the few seconds it takes to check the Outlook calendar. It is also apparently acceptable for her to stamp around the office demanding where I am, when just asking one of the colleagues could have revealed that. My behaviour is portrayed as 'discourteous' whereas hers is apparently beyond reproach though to most readers I would assume it would appear at best childish at worst idiotic, but maybe I am wrong in modern British society.
This is the key factor: indignation. In our powerless society, it seems that no-one can be anyone I am the first to admit that I make mistakes, but I learn from them. In addition, I have never done anything that is so severe it should lose you your job. Is it fair that individual words, assuming they are not racist, sexist or otherwise insulting should be enough to bring down your career? Maybe in this era of unemployment it is sufficient and we should all look at every single word we use thinking how it might be turned against us.
Of course, it is impossible to see through someone else's eyes, so what to us might be anondyne, apparently can be highly inappropriate to someone else. I have neither violated what society would deem acceptable nor what my company does, just what my manager 'feels' is unacceptable. That is not even direct criticism, but apparently something that seems to her as being insufficiently ardent in singing the praises of the unit she runs. From my historical knowledge such mentality seems very much like a personality cult and I am someone like those who stopped clapping some seconds before the rest of the people having heard one of Stalin's or Mao's speeches. Of course, I will not be killed but at the age of 44, my career is over and I have effectively become unemployable for the rest of my life.
As I have noted before, it is no longer sufficient in the UK to complain about something, you have to stamp and shout at your loudest. Neither is it sufficient to be irritated, annoyed or put out, you must be utterly appalled, completely indignant, generally way out of proportion to what has happened: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/12/rise-of-indignitaries.html I suppose given the prevalence of this trend in society we should not be surprised to find it in the workplace. It is exacerbated by procedures like performance reviews, appraisals, probation periods, fixed-term contracts which put immense power into the hands of often poorly trained managers certainly without an ability to detach personal prejudice from their judgements of work effectiveness. It is a kind of focused discrimination, not on race, age or gender, but simply on who they like or dislike. Staff of all levels will not discuss or debate or really just complain they become indignant as if even the most minor misunderstanding has been concocted with malicious intent, both offensive in itself and aimed at bringing the company into disrepute. Of course, none of these things is done that way. However, not being indignant gives away the few grams of power they feel they have snatched and, horror of horrors, they might be forced to admit that they are sometimes wrong, something my manager seems incapable of acknowledging. Thus, by being so offended, she can play, 'it is so terrible I cannot even talk about it' card, shutting down any reasonable rational debate.
As I have noted before, the clamping down on discussion let alone the suggestion of different approaches or Heaven forbid, even mild criticism, is damaging to British business: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-dont-want-to-hear-that-censoring-in.html I have no idea when I might work again and it seems unlikely that it will ever be for a large company. I am naturally bitter that years of study and hard work can be trashed by the prejudice of a single individual, but I imagine it is a common occurrence. There was nothing I could have done once I got the job. If I kept quiet I was being rude and not taking sufficient initiative, if I spoke I was being rude and arrogant. There was never a way of winning and never any redemption for my 'offences'. I just post this as a warning for people who might be in similar positions, I do pity you, yet I fear this approach in the workplace will become even more common as incompetent people remain in position and unemployment rises higher.
For me the severity of this step is great. I am liable to be kicked out with no pay and so will immediately default on the mortgage payments on my house meaning that my fears of having it repossessed have only been delayed by a year. It seems unlikely that I will work again as I will be unable to get anything but a highly biased reference from my manager. I have explored the problems with this particular manager before: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-are-british-managers-so-bad.html
Looking back I wonder if I could have done anything different to forestall this problem and the answer seems to be no. The case against me has been built on such insubstantial complaints that if it had not been these then it would have been something else. Basically the difficulties were two emails which apparently were critical of how my unit worked, though you would struggle to find that meaning in what I wrote. I suppose that I should not have said that I had no ability to control scheduling, the thing that the correspondent was making a mild complaint against. Apparently I was supposed to accept blame for things I cannot control. I was told I should not have said a colleague was off sick, even though that is completely the reverse approach to the previous place I worked. There they felt if you did not reveal the cause of the shortage of staff as something legitimate like illness then you were effectively criticising the company for not looking ahead sensibly to recruit sufficient staff. A more established in my office made the identical error some weeks later and while he has been chastised for it he is not being kicked out. I also said that my job did not involve cleaning up, which is a statement of fact. However, in a twisted way, this has been portrayed as being an unacceptable statement, on the grounds that it is both disparaging to cleaners who do a wonderful job; makes me appear as arrogant due to my qualifications and experience and yet also is said to show I have no pride in myself and thus, by implication no pride in my colleagues, thus violating the team spirit requirement. This statement was apparently so offensive that it led to a complaint being telephoned in by a visitor.
The last damning charge is that I did not inform my manager correctly before going to a hospital appointment despite it being in the Outlook system she can access for weeks and me talking about it with her for 10 minutes precisely a day before I went. Apparently it is fine that she forgot the conversation and she argues that she cannot afford the few seconds it takes to check the Outlook calendar. It is also apparently acceptable for her to stamp around the office demanding where I am, when just asking one of the colleagues could have revealed that. My behaviour is portrayed as 'discourteous' whereas hers is apparently beyond reproach though to most readers I would assume it would appear at best childish at worst idiotic, but maybe I am wrong in modern British society.
This is the key factor: indignation. In our powerless society, it seems that no-one can be anyone I am the first to admit that I make mistakes, but I learn from them. In addition, I have never done anything that is so severe it should lose you your job. Is it fair that individual words, assuming they are not racist, sexist or otherwise insulting should be enough to bring down your career? Maybe in this era of unemployment it is sufficient and we should all look at every single word we use thinking how it might be turned against us.
Of course, it is impossible to see through someone else's eyes, so what to us might be anondyne, apparently can be highly inappropriate to someone else. I have neither violated what society would deem acceptable nor what my company does, just what my manager 'feels' is unacceptable. That is not even direct criticism, but apparently something that seems to her as being insufficiently ardent in singing the praises of the unit she runs. From my historical knowledge such mentality seems very much like a personality cult and I am someone like those who stopped clapping some seconds before the rest of the people having heard one of Stalin's or Mao's speeches. Of course, I will not be killed but at the age of 44, my career is over and I have effectively become unemployable for the rest of my life.
As I have noted before, it is no longer sufficient in the UK to complain about something, you have to stamp and shout at your loudest. Neither is it sufficient to be irritated, annoyed or put out, you must be utterly appalled, completely indignant, generally way out of proportion to what has happened: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/12/rise-of-indignitaries.html I suppose given the prevalence of this trend in society we should not be surprised to find it in the workplace. It is exacerbated by procedures like performance reviews, appraisals, probation periods, fixed-term contracts which put immense power into the hands of often poorly trained managers certainly without an ability to detach personal prejudice from their judgements of work effectiveness. It is a kind of focused discrimination, not on race, age or gender, but simply on who they like or dislike. Staff of all levels will not discuss or debate or really just complain they become indignant as if even the most minor misunderstanding has been concocted with malicious intent, both offensive in itself and aimed at bringing the company into disrepute. Of course, none of these things is done that way. However, not being indignant gives away the few grams of power they feel they have snatched and, horror of horrors, they might be forced to admit that they are sometimes wrong, something my manager seems incapable of acknowledging. Thus, by being so offended, she can play, 'it is so terrible I cannot even talk about it' card, shutting down any reasonable rational debate.
As I have noted before, the clamping down on discussion let alone the suggestion of different approaches or Heaven forbid, even mild criticism, is damaging to British business: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2011/02/i-dont-want-to-hear-that-censoring-in.html I have no idea when I might work again and it seems unlikely that it will ever be for a large company. I am naturally bitter that years of study and hard work can be trashed by the prejudice of a single individual, but I imagine it is a common occurrence. There was nothing I could have done once I got the job. If I kept quiet I was being rude and not taking sufficient initiative, if I spoke I was being rude and arrogant. There was never a way of winning and never any redemption for my 'offences'. I just post this as a warning for people who might be in similar positions, I do pity you, yet I fear this approach in the workplace will become even more common as incompetent people remain in position and unemployment rises higher.
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