It turns
out my possible change of position at work is likely to be down, rather than up.
I arrived
today, barely ready for the onslaught of another week of toil, to find an
e-mail informing me that ‘despite an impressive presentation and outstanding interview
I have been sadly unsuccessful on this occasion.’
(Thank
you to the cut-and-paste feature of whichever HR minion was designated to
contact me.)
The
new Area Sub-Manager, or District Co-ordinator, or whatever the hell they’ve
decided to call them, will be someone who until recently worked in a completely
different department at Head Office. So they had the choice of four different
managers from the four different filling stations, who all knew each other and
all knew the workings of the four different garages, and they’ve overlooked
them all to bring in someone who has never worked outside an office on the
outskirts of London. Rumours, of course, are rife. Some are saying that he
wants to retire to the country and so his chums higher up have created this position
so he can head to Suffolk. Others are saying that he has had a little extra-marital
dalliance and has to leave the big city in a hurry to avoid complications with
his wife’s family. I doubt that one is true, seeing as it isn’t the Middle Ages
anymore, but something certainly stinks.
My
own suspicion, borne out of a lifetime of cynicism and several at-work encounters
in various fields of employment, is that they simply knew who they wanted from
the start and went through all this ‘consultation’ bullshit to avoid any
grievances. That pisses me off more than my qualities and qualifications being
simply ignored, because I wasted time, effort and energy on an application that
was never going to be successful and probably wasn’t even looked at. And they
approached me for Christs sake. Why did they bother asking me to apply
if they already had someone in mind?
Obviously
the four of us who are most affected have been chatting all day. We all agree
that we would be happy for one of us to be overseeing the others, but we’re not
happy about this unknown, inexperienced quantity being dropped in from afar. My
guess is that at least two of the other managers will resign within a month.
Maybe that was the point – if you piss people off and they bail out themselves
then you don’t have to sort out a redundancy package when you make them obsolete.
Anyway,
I shall stop now lest I end up in trouble.
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