Work

We had a meeting about stuff yesterday with my union rep and and a representative of the organisation I work for present. It was a very negative meeting with everything I said in my defence being reflected back on me and the responsibility for sorting the situation out being laid firmly on me. Basically I should have been pro-active about everything and my boss made no mistakes according to them.

The result is that I will be getting a written warning and have a month to improve - assessed by my boss - or I will be given notice.

It doesn't look good really so I will begin looking for and applying for a new job this weekend.

The union rep thinks they are being harsh and the expectations were unreasonable. Apparently she knows of other people who've had trouble with this boss. In the end though, this is most likely to help the next person who has problems, not me.

The general strategy on their part seems to be to try and get me to say that I'm not up to the job and to quit. Or if not, to "prove" I'm not capable so they can fire me on those grounds. Personality clash is an accepted reason but doesn't leave them looking so good.

Not good

The relationship with my boss has deteriorated. The pressure I have been under and the level of stress has led to mistakes and she doesn't seem to be the forgiving type.

It seems that I may be forced to look for a new job soon.

Ecuador bullet points

• A 7 hour time difference takes the best part of a week to get over if you are 18 months old (and his parents)
• Walking around outside with an hysterical over tired 18 month old at 4 am is likely to make the neighbours think you are hurting him
• Sitting in a dodgy part of town with an expensive camera is a bad idea
• Sea lions = sea “oofs” (dogs are oofs)
• All lizards/iguanas = Godzilla
• Butterflys = flys
• The Galapagos was amazing and I didn’t want to leave -we saw so much, snorkled, relaxed and loved it.
• Drinking Cuba libres in a bar where your sister’s current squeeze works and they run a tab is dangerous (did we really drink 25 of them between the three of us?).
• The cloud forest is beautiful

More to come plus pictures when I have time.

Back soon

I think we are officially packed and ready to meet the taxi that will pick us up tomorrow morning at 4.45 (eeek!). The start of what is sure to be a very long day on route to visit my sister in Ecuador. I hope that T is not too much trouble on the flight but we'll just have to wait and see how it goes I suppose. While we are over there we will be spending a week in the Galapagos and as someone with a zoology degree I can't quite explain how exciting this is.

This means my already infrequent posting is likely to be even more infrequent but I'll try and at least post a picture or two while I'm away.

In other news my period hasn't arrived yet but I'm reasonably sure we didn't do anything at an appropriate time so it'll probably show up tomorrow during the flight.

work and sick kids

So at the moment no-one is happy. T has been sick since the weekend, I've been juggling being home and working - including going in early mornings and evenings and so has S.

In the mean time my boss leaves for a conference on Saturday and I'm going on holiday next Saturday so we haven't seen each other much this week and after tomorrow we won't be seeing each other until November. This means that we are going to have to have a difficult talk tomorrow as she seems to be really annoyed with me. I know this is because she is worried about having results for the report that is due to our funding body in December but I'm doing what I can and I'm allowed to take a holiday. Currently I have no technical support so I'm doing all the work which means that I am the limiting factor when it comes to results and T keeps getting sick.

The problem is we don't have any family nearby so there is no-one else who can look after T when he's sick. On top of this I'm going down with whatever T has so I'm feeling shitty and feel like crying. Why can't my boss understand that I love my job and want to do it by I also love my son and if he's sick I or S need to be with him. It's not as if I can take T to work(which is acceptable here), a lab is not a safe place for a toddler. Or maybe I should have him in the ergo on my back while I do my experiments?