7 June 2017

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Normal morning after a good nights sleep. Some strange dream about attending some training? And a white dog that nobody wants, my sister even instructed me not to go near, because it smells or something. Not as weird as the other night, when I dreamt my garden was sprouting kittens! I guess I miss having a pet. Mynx has been dead 8 years now, and with me moving as much as I do nowadays, I’ve not felt it right to adopt. I’ve been thinking about it, though and I don’t think I want a kitten or puppy. I’d rather adopt an older cat or dog from a shelter – once I have some sort of stable home. It wouldn’t be fair to expect an animal to keep moving from site to site; possibly even into different climate should I be moving to Pretoria again. And up to now I’ve always stayed in flats with no garden.

On my way to work I discovered a beautiful new flower along my garden path! I hope to get a nice picture when I get back home, it was quite unusual. It had a white centre with bright pink outer colouring on the petals. And the Aloes / Agaves are exploding in full bloom! More and more flowers appear almost every day. So far I have not been able to discover exactly what it is. It has hard, spiky long green leaves like an Aloe – but thin, without the fleshy centre typical for Aloes. I took a photo to the nursery last weekend and they suggested it could be an Agave or Bromeliad. I’m leaning towards Agave, but I have not yet found any confirmation.

Dianthum

And below, a close up of the mystery flower:

“If you want to know the true character of a man, look at how he treats those dependant on him, not at how he treats his peers” – probably misquoted, but that’s how I remember it from Harry Potter by JK Rowlings. I keep pondering yesterday’s train of thought regarding the relationship between management competence and delegability. I’m at pretty much the very bottom of the site-hierarchy, which puts me in a unique position to see just about everybody’s true character and quite frankly: I like it that way. That’s a fairly recent development, though, but it feels really good! Not so long ago I’d still get worked up whenever I was thrown a curveball – people making decisions which affect my work without consideration. Expecting me to adapt with no regard for the difficulty their decision represents for me. But now? “Not my circus, not my monkeys” – this polish proverb is my guideline. I confess, though, that I did get worked up again over a rude e-mail sent last week. I had been asked by this new site manager to send him an  up-to-date personnel plan. I sent him the most accurate information electronically available – and he replied “That is totally unacceptable.” Firstly, this coming from someone I have overhead saying “You don’t need to inform our secretary of your personnel schedule – she doesn’t need to know” i.e. he ensures that I never have accurate information and then holds me accountable for not having accurate information! But what upset me the most about that mail was that he CC’d a horde of management. Having my work declared incompetent by someone who knows very well that the incompetence is not within my control is bad enough, but to do so in ‘public’? But that’s him all over, he needs to throw his weight around asserting his authority. Luckily the guys here were included as well, and they quickly turned it into a joke ... whenever someone mentions ‘personnel plan’ now they chorus “totally unacceptable”. I feel silly now having worked myself up over such an irrelevancy – I guess I still have some pride-issues to iron out!

But that rant was a bit off topic. I’m thinking back over the past 30 years. All the people I’ve worked for in all the different jobs I’ve done in my lifetime. Data Capturer. Locksmith Assistant. Subscription Assistant. Trainee Technician. Industrial Engineer. Senior Buyer. Engineering Consultant. Freelance Engineer. HR Assistant. Personal Assistant to COO, CEO, CFO, Receptionist. Efficiency Consultant. Project Co-ordinator. Freelance Engineer. Receptionist. Maintenance Manager. And now Site Secretary. And everywhere the same: the least competent and thus the most insecure would hold onto any and every task involving responsibility or authority, self-rightously claiming “if you want it done right, do it yourself” Or: issue step-by-step instructions thus limiting my work to their level of competence! I had that argument with a manager once, where he instructed me to revert the spreadsheet back to manual state (remove all formulae) stating ‘standardisation’ as the reason; so I asked whether I should also type with only two fingers to ‘standardise’? Needless to say that did not go down well.   

On the other hand, the most competent and thus self-confident simply discuss the results they need and leave it up to me to achieve them; always available to assist, should I get stuck but more than happy to leave the details to me.

And do you know what I’m just realising? I’ve been exactly the same! No different! I’d like to refute with a big, defensive BUT – instead, I think I’ll let it stand.

It’s not a male / female thing. Nor a black / white thing. It’s a simple human mechanism, needing to assert our place in our little part of the world. Be someone. Be acknowledged. I’ll give it some more thought another time, though that realization may help change my attitude and make my life easier. We’ll see!

Drive home was pleasant, at least the radio is back on. Well, I say radio – but all I can play is the CD. Some neighbour at my last place decided to break off my antenna, so radio reception is not good. And since the last service, the CD is stuck – just won’t come out. The eject button gets no reaction whatsoever. Fortunately the CD was new and I’m loving it! It’s Peer Gynt – some days I replay ‘In the hall of the mountain king’ at full volume over and over all the way home while my hand dances along.

Since my gardener worked for my neighbour this Monday, I should have filled the drum this weekend, but I forgot. So I started Monday night and finished tonight. Last night was just too hot. Someone decided to tie their advert to my fence – I checked the postbox, there was no cheque in payment for the privilege, so I took it down. What are people thinking? Same when you take your car for a service – spend another half hour taking down their advertising stuck all over your car! Maybe I should get some stickers saying ‘I was here’ and start sticking them on shop windows.

My neighbour showed me the ‘work’ the contractors did to stop the rising damp in our walls. All they did was to throw cement onto the patch between the drain and the house! I have no clue how that’s supposed to help, but since it’s arranged & paid for by the Body Corporate – not our problem! I couldn’t help myself, I drew my initial into the wet cement. They also left a mess in the garden. Not impressed.

Indoors I got a bit carried away selecting, compressing and posting pictures of the flowers in my garden … time got away from me and it was eight pm, too late to start cooking. So I had a banana and some Bounty’s instead.