Might need a baseball bat

Day two and I’m in ahead of my boss, again. Yesterday he arrived in the office towards the end of lunchtime.

I confess that while I wasn’t bored yesterday, I have not missed over the past gazillion years, the feeling of a complete lack of knowledge about what I am supposed to be doing here. Effectively I was supposed, so I thought, to come in and monitor the finances of a number of homelessness programmes and the rump supporting people programme. It was mentioned yesterday that my lackey would continue to review payments, but that my boss and the Deputy Director would handle the payment approval side between them. Now given that the system automatically informs the approval officers when payments are in review, but informs no-one else, I find it hard to see how I am supposed to monitor expenditure and allocations properly.

I am more than happy to provide reports and sample checks for line managers anxious to ensure that things are operating properly, but I suspect that I am going to have to bully up the line if I am going to be able to do the job properly.

Anyway, we’ll see. I’ll give it a couple of months to learn the policy area, before getting too stroppy, but I learned ten years ago, in the hardest way, that you have to fight your corner or risk going down without a trace. Not that I think it will come to that, but if they want me to do this job, I shall require the freedom to do it properly. And it’s not as if I feel any confidence that they are operating it properly at the moment.

On them other hand, it was very nice to log on and see my details upgraded to the new job and grade.

Watch this space.

Contract Management

So the boss said, “I think this meeting (2 hours) will be a good one for you to attend – I should have told you yesterday”.

Not unreasonably, I felt, I asked when it would be held. “In ten minutes’ time: I’ll send you the papers”.

What a morning. Less of a meeting and rather more reminiscent of those interminable mass-lectures that were the bane of college life. TWO HOURS of being talked at by a succession of people whose idea of a presentation is to put the text on PowerPoint and read it to you. TWO HOURS of unremitting boredom as the whole launch of the so-called Contract Managers Network took place. God take me now.

I think I may have ruined its reputation from the get-go (I don’t actually know what a ‘get-go’ is, but it seems apt), by referring to it as ‘Contract Managers Anonymous’ – “My name is Bryan and it is a day since I joined” “Hello, Bryan”.

I wonder what the qualifying period is between contract lapses to earn a medal?