I Air My Views
Work is as ever the home of innuendo. The girls at the end of the corridor were showing each other pictures of their pets on their mobiles. Or, as Lorraine, put it: 'They're looking at their furry friends.'
I said I'd knock before going in.
The new 'interim donor award' has been in the office - a crystal column. This has been run past donors (not too closely I hope, as it has sharp edges) and apparently they gave it the thumbs-up. The only donor I've consulted on the question of donor incentives, Richard Sell, had quite different ideas, but I couldn't see his suggestion (a blow-job) getting through the committees. Though it would have been interesting to see the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) they would have come up with for that.
It might have made our health and safety training more interesting, I suppose. We did it online this week. It wasn't awfully exciting but I was touched by their belief that 'staff should always go home unharmed'. Physically, at least.
Such is their concern for us that we were also invited to air our views on our employers in a session called, erm, Air Your Views. Initially we were told that this would merely be a matter of listening to a presentation and 'voting' using a special keypad. However, when we turned up it seemed that we were actually expected to speak! On a Monday morning! It came as a shock.
My favourite moment came when someone from our department said that sometimes she felt invisible, and the guy leading the session (who was writing something down at the time) turned round and said 'Who said that?' It wasn't a joke, which was why it was funny.
The voting aspect of the thing was meant to be anonymous, but when using the keypad, you still felt a bit bad about being the '8%' (as it came up in the bar chart they instantly created from your views) who had voted for an unpopular option. It happened to me when there was a question about whether you were 'proud' to work for NHS Blood And Transplant. I said that I was 'neither proud nor not proud', but it turned out that everybody else was at least slightly proud. I thought pride was a sin - it seems to me rather a strange idea, being 'proud' to work for someone, as if you would stride out of the house every morning, chest puffed out, sneering at dustmen. I consider it a plus point that I am not actively ashamed to work where I do. I mean, I've liked them on Facebook, what more do they want?
At the end I was asked what the organisation could do to improve itself and I said something about being 'more flexible'. Unfortunately I was then asked to elaborate, so I mumbled something incoherent about 'rigid structures'. Hopefully they understood that what I really meant by 'flexible' was the flexibility to give me more money and more time off. Please.
I said I'd knock before going in.
The new 'interim donor award' has been in the office - a crystal column. This has been run past donors (not too closely I hope, as it has sharp edges) and apparently they gave it the thumbs-up. The only donor I've consulted on the question of donor incentives, Richard Sell, had quite different ideas, but I couldn't see his suggestion (a blow-job) getting through the committees. Though it would have been interesting to see the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) they would have come up with for that.
It might have made our health and safety training more interesting, I suppose. We did it online this week. It wasn't awfully exciting but I was touched by their belief that 'staff should always go home unharmed'. Physically, at least.
Such is their concern for us that we were also invited to air our views on our employers in a session called, erm, Air Your Views. Initially we were told that this would merely be a matter of listening to a presentation and 'voting' using a special keypad. However, when we turned up it seemed that we were actually expected to speak! On a Monday morning! It came as a shock.
My favourite moment came when someone from our department said that sometimes she felt invisible, and the guy leading the session (who was writing something down at the time) turned round and said 'Who said that?' It wasn't a joke, which was why it was funny.
The voting aspect of the thing was meant to be anonymous, but when using the keypad, you still felt a bit bad about being the '8%' (as it came up in the bar chart they instantly created from your views) who had voted for an unpopular option. It happened to me when there was a question about whether you were 'proud' to work for NHS Blood And Transplant. I said that I was 'neither proud nor not proud', but it turned out that everybody else was at least slightly proud. I thought pride was a sin - it seems to me rather a strange idea, being 'proud' to work for someone, as if you would stride out of the house every morning, chest puffed out, sneering at dustmen. I consider it a plus point that I am not actively ashamed to work where I do. I mean, I've liked them on Facebook, what more do they want?
At the end I was asked what the organisation could do to improve itself and I said something about being 'more flexible'. Unfortunately I was then asked to elaborate, so I mumbled something incoherent about 'rigid structures'. Hopefully they understood that what I really meant by 'flexible' was the flexibility to give me more money and more time off. Please.
posted by martin at 10:26 AM
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