I'm tired and uninspired. But am equally tired of the previous "no pain no gain" post. Cliches make me sick. My especial hate is "done and dusted" which gets tossed around the office like a rugby ball. Ick.

I'm a contradiction. I did one of those personality tests that tells you if you're an IFJT or whatever. My nutty aunt who i'm going to stay with on friday night did the test on me, she's a career counsellor. Anyway I came out bang in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum.

So at 9am this morning when we were sitting round the table with my Manager, the CEO and the Registrar talking about what a fucking shit place it's been to work for the last few months, I was crapping myself waiting for my turn to speak. And when I did, my voice was wavery, I did not make a whole lot of eye contact, and I got the wobbles (worse than usual!)

Then something funny happened. We started to get fobbed off with a whiteboard marker and more talk about staying positive and looking forwards and time-FREAKIN-management. And I suddenly wasn't so reserved anymore. I started speaking quite rapidly and firmly and I found myself looking straight at the CEO when I told her we needed a fifth person, if only to recognise that the turnover is such that they are always going to be compensating for lack of depth of experience. My manager looked like she was going to cry. She might have had actual tears.

I think the damage has been done. I said this also, in so many words: that it was unfortunate that it had taken one of "us" to send that "them's fightin words" email on Friday for the meeting to have been called, to gain an explicit acknowledgment of the demoralised and exhausted state of the skeletal remains of our team. I'm all for optimism, but surely to move on you need to first establish where you are at the present time, and if that is at rock bottom then so be it. Ofcourse the issue of overtime was circumvented with a recital of the company policy stipulating prior arrangement and approval. And a reiteration of the preference that we do 40 hour weeks. Too fucking right.

And then later on I got called in to my Manager's office, and sweet talked. And told that the CEO had approved a fifth person.

For some reason the news didn't really excite me. Maybe I'm just a trouble making bitch.

I feel like something gray and concrete and enormous will visually correspond with this post.