Hello!
If you’re not familiar with these posts, let me explain. A few years ago, I used to post annual updates on what is the anniversary of my “deathday”; the day in which a suicide attempt failed (27 February 2011, in case you want to mark it in your calendars for God-only-knows-why). I wish I could say that they were as humorous as the kebab blog, sadly not – they were fairly miserable self appraisals of how far (or not) I had moved on in the interim 12 months (ish). I think I’ve deleted them, and I can’t be bothered searching the archives, but you’re not missing much, content fans.
This, however, I hope will be much brighter, for you see: 2017 was, without a shadow of a doubt, the BEST YEAR OF MY LIFE! Spoiler alert: When it comes to the minutiae, you may struggle to see how this could be the case, but I’ll try my best to explain.
Now, when it comes to an Annual Review, a lot of people like to start in January. Not me. I’m a rule-breaker. Let’s go back to December 2016, which was for a lot of people, a pretty awful end to an awful year, in which the death of David Bowie served as a starting gun for a chain reaction of famous people dying, which would only be bought to an end by the similarly untimely deaths of George Michael and Carrie Fisher.
On the 7th of December, 2017, I was at work. So far, so ordinary. It was fairly hectic, if memory serves. I ended up taking a phone call from a guy who was upset that his clients had booted him off a job he was doing, and this was deemed to be my fault somehow. Literally, he kept punctuating his angry barbs with “William” – not just my name, but my Sunday name. The name my mum calls me when I’ve done fucked up bad! “I’m off the job, William. How does that make you feel, William?” he said, without giving me pause for reply, nor himself a pause for breath. “This is YOUR fault, William. Why would you DO something like this?” The poor guy was clearly upset. Just so we’re clear, it wasn’t in any way shape or form my fault, but that’s not important. What had actually happened is that his clients had contacted the company I worked for, and accepted the deal on the table, without any prompting from me or anyone else in the office. Still, the barrage continued, and I was going to let him get his frustrations out. “How would you feel if you were out of a job, WILLIAM?” he said, menacingly. I smiled. Because I knew what was coming.
On the 8th of December, 2017, at precisely 15.04, I am called into an entirely expected meeting, albeit one that was overdue by a few hours (and four minutes). This was my, potentially, penultimate weekly review meeting. I had been working for this particular company for 11 months at this point, and as with most new jobs, there was a probationary period that needed to be successfully negotiated before I was confirmed in post. At this point, I had not successfully negotiated this probationary period. The purpose of the weekly review meeting, as you might well imagine, was to review my performance week-on-week, and if I was deemed by the company to have done well enough, i.e. perform to the standards they expected, I get to keep my job; if I was deemed by the company not to have done this, then I did not.
It was a brief meeting. Usually, my manager and someone else, either his manager or someone else on that pay grade would sit down, with a device to play a recording of one of that weeks phone calls, randomly chosen I was told, along side some notes of how I could have done better. Unfortunately, the randomly chosen call, which seemed to take my manager a while to randomly select each week (I sat next to him) seemed to be my worst, similar to the chap I mentioned earlier. “You didn’t control the call”, they would say. “You should have done this! That could have been quicker. I’d have cut in there…” and so on. But not this week. The account manager was smiling. Grinning, almost. “Well, as you know, you had four weeks to pass your probation”, she said, three weeks to the day of giving me this warning, “and it’s time we parted company”. I sat there, listening to this. I would say I was shocked – and I was by the timing, and the nonchalant manner in which is was announced. I didn’t say anything. “I take it you’ve been applying for other jobs?” she said, presumably rhetorically on account that it was December the 8th, not exactly peak hiring season, unless she thought I’d make a good Father Christmas at the local shopping centre. “Err, no, no I haven’t. I’ve been focusing on passing my probation.” was my less than cheery reply. “You’ll need to collect your belongings and give me your pass”, she said. “I’ll get them, you stay here” my immediate manager said. I handed over my pass and awaited my bag and coat, wondering why I wasn’t being allowed to say farewell to my colleagues. The account manager gave me a tenner at this junction. “That’s your Christmas party deposit back”, she said, still grinning. “Safe journey home” she said, as she escorted me to the front door.
Back in October 2015, the future looked bright. Where I had worked prior to this, I had a fairly decent job but zero chance of progression. When I was offered a job where I could work towards a professional qualification, I jumped at the chance. There was also a personnel change that caused me to leave – the best manager I ever had, a guy called Alex, was moved to manage another team, and he was replaced with the worst manager I’ve ever had. Changing jobs at this point was a no-brainer.
However, with greater reward comes greater responsibility – and greater focus on the work I did. I found myself the subject of a ridiculous amount of scrutiny, and criticism. Some of that criticism was merited – I had moved from a call centre environment to a call centre masquerading as a real office, and with it, it seemed like my every move was being monitored and scrutinised. It was hell, frankly. I worked in a team where the phone would not stop ringing yet I was expected to perform a number of daily tasks *and* answer the never-ending stream of phone calls, and would regularly be pulled into meetings when inevitably one of these two conflicting targets were not met. I would point out that my colleagues faced the same pressures as I did, and that they too could not meet these impossible demands. “That’s not your problem”, I was told. When I pointed out that my colleagues were allowed to have time off from taking phone calls to get their daily tasks done (I wasn’t, for the avoidance of doubt), again, not my problem. They would deal with this, as managers.
Luckily, it wasn’t long before it became abundantly clear that they were looking for me to leave of my own accord. From May onwards, four months into the job, and seven before I was asked to leave, I was regularly pulled into meetings to discuss my performance and / or quality; again, some criticism was merited – but at the end of each meeting, I would be asked “are you sure this job is right for you?”. On one occasion, my behaviour was called into question – that I muttered under my breath. We all do it to some extent or another – it’s called thinking out loud, and it’s a great stress reliever. I was told to not do this; fair enough. I promised I would be conscious of the fact I do it, and like any habit, I would try to reign it in. “Oh, it’s your personality, is it?” I was asked, before an awkward pause. “Are you sure this job’s right for you?”
I should also mention at this point, remember I said I left my previous job in part due to the manager who replaced Alex? Well, he also left my old company, and joined my new one. As my manager.
I did start this post by saying that 2017 was the best year of my life, and I’m sorry for being distracted by venting about a previous job, but it was important to set the context, as 2016 was easily the worst year of my life. To be honest, the bar was set fairly low. But it’s not all a relative thing – 2017 has genuinely been a great year for me. After a period of unemployment, I hit the reset button, and have gone back to doing what I did a few years back, essentially banking admin. I work nights now, three days a week – whilst nights are tough, the extended weekend more than makes up for it, and it pays slightly more than the last place I worked at, so it’s win-win.
What’s really been good about 2017, most importantly, is that I’ve started to enjoy life again. In 2011 I tried to end my own life because I had hit rock bottom, and I felt that there was no way out. The interim years had their highs and lows as well, but I was basically treading water. This last year I have been fortunate enough to have been able to live life as I want to; more or less – been on a few city breaks (ostensibly to review kebabs but actually just because I like getting out and about), have started going to gigs again (Public Service Broadcasting and Saint Etienne the highlights, Star Shaped was brilliant even though I acquired a stalker at that particular gig), have felt more confident this year than I can remember for a long time (even though my waistline has returned to it’s pre-2014 glory days), and even met a wonderful girl (though sadly it wasn’t to be).
2018 will be even better. Onwards and upwards!
