Work – 1 February

I forgot to mention, I think it was Thursday night, while I was outside having a smoke after sunset that I saw a snake slithering between my flower pots! It wasn’t large, about as thick as my little finger. I’m fairly certain it was a brown house snake, which is harmless.

I woke up later than I wished. It was just past seven. Still not sleeping well. Still not interested in food. It’s easy to say ‘you must eat’ – but just looking at food makes me want to gag.

Anyway, I had so little energy, I just sat around waiting for nine, when it was time to go.

Work. What can I say? Here’s the first shock: This Site Secretary is now Production Manager. And Warehousing. And Logistics.

I’m desperately needed, and urgently. The biggest client has requested my presence at Wednesday’s monthly meeting – at their place, in Roodeplaat? Krugersdorp? I’m not sure, but somewhere so far out, that you can write off the rest of the day.

I’m nowhere near up to that – my mind is still mostly vacuum, I’m still struggling to form coherent thoughts and I still haven’t been able to sleep nor eat much.

But I don’t have a choice. So, instead of unpacking and setting up home, or de-traumatising my cats when they arrive, my first priority must be to recover myself, so that I’ll at least cope without dropping. Literally fainting.

I had a meeting with my boss, where he gave me the big picture, then he took me around the entire factory and then we had a meeting with HR, COO, Production Planner, Engineering Manager and my boss.

In a nutshell, the good news is: I’m confident I can do what needs to be done. But it’s a Herculean task! I have no clue, as yet, where to start. Should I start at one end or should I get several key points going? And then, of course, there’s the matter of … politics? Diplomacy? Male ego? I don’t know, yet, which will be my biggest challenge – but the most important thing for me is to control my motor-mouth and say as little as possible. There are definitely undercurrents, and I don’t want to drown.

Two things I want to say here, because if I keep it inside, I’m gonna burst! IF someone – anyone! – had applied even part of the suggestions in my report (the one I worked weeks on, last time I was in Pretoria) then things wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as my boss paints it now. However, if they had, they wouldn’t need me so much, now.

And the second: when I mentioned that I had my technical books ready, I was energetically informed that they are not needed – after all, this isn’t rocket science! Hello? It may not be rocket science exactly, but it’s the complete lack of scientific approach which brought about this mess! You NEED the techniques and systems in my technical books. The whole problem IS that you’re re-inventing the wheel.

Another irksome comment: when I remarked how this is very different from what I’ve been doing for the past 8 years I was equally energetically informed how it’s no different at all. Project work is just like manufacturing – goods go in, product comes out. Again: Hello? Firstly, Production Management and Site Secretary are obviously not the same! And secondly, every time in the past, when I tried to offer my Industrial Engineering (IE) skills, it was rejected offhand, since ‘Projects are nothing like manufacturing – there is nothing IE has to offer, which could be of value’.

So you can see, the biggest challenge will not be the task, but the personalities. I will have to tread very, very carefully to avoid stepping into quicksand.

I’m wondering whether I should post this on a public blog – but frankly, since it’s fortunately quite obscure and not particularly popular, I feel it should be okay.

After work, I drove to Pretoria East where I know exactly where to find what I need in terms of groceries. When I have some time, I’ll have to explore the surroundings closer to home.

Back at home, I took down the landlady’s curtains in the bedroom and put up my own. I took down the lace curtains and one side curtain in the bathroom and put up my own – since mippies may want to open curtains, and they use claws to do that. I unpacked their food dispensers and water dispenser, filled them up and placed them in the bedroom. I set up two litter boxes, filled with sand, added bicarb (to reduce the smell) and placed them on the grass mat in the bedroom.

And then I waited for my mippies. But that will go into a separate post …