We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine

During lunch recently, I was asked by a customer if my company was non-profit.  I had to stop myself from laughing when I told him "Not through choice".  What I dislike about working in sales is how I am encouraged to feel responsible for if the company is making money or not, like how when as a team we are told that sales needs to bring in about £100k before the end of the year if the company is going to avoid making a loss.  The direct implication being: work harder.  It's your fault if the company doesn't make a profit.

A few months back, when I went to the open mike poetry in Shoreditch park, I read a piece about "Gross Domestic Happiness", and the idea of it being a business model -- so, like the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, success was measured by happiness rather than by profit.  It was a very clumsy analogy, and not a very good poem either -- but I still entertain sometimes the idea of a company whose sole aim is to make people happy, the customers and the employees.

A colleague of mine recently left the sales team, and it was quite sad.  She wasn't happy working in sales, which was fair enough -- it's not for everyone, and probably not ultimately for me, either.  Her mistake, though, was to let on.  As soon as she mentioned that she needed a reference for some unpaid voluntary position she was applying for, things turned sour.  Suddenly she was having to have meetings and being told her performance wasn't up to scratch and that the company valued loyalty. In the end, she chose to quit shortly after a meeting where she was presented with evidence from google that had found her posting on an online message board about her plans for working abroad next year.  The whole thing didn't make anybody very happy.

I've been writing on and off about the proposed new opportunity for me in the company.  A chance to be creative and to get away from telemarketing.  I felt flattered that the boss would take into consideration what I was good at and what I would enjoy.  When interviewing new candidates for the sales team recently, we even made oblique references to it -- pay the company with loyalty and stick things through and they will pay you back.

Except this week I've learned that's not the case at all.  We had a team meeting yesterday to discuss our targets for next year and the changes that the hiring of new staff will bring, as well as the sales manager's impending maternity leave.  I was told that the new job we had been discussing for weeks or months is going to be put on hold for now.  It seems that all the talk before was really just talk.  The year ahead is going to be a complicated one, with roles in the team changing and our responsibilities increasing to take on more managerial and mentoring roles.  But still with the main focus on telemarketing.

Don't get me wrong, I shouldn't really complain.  The job has afforded me a lot of luxuries in recent months, and the next year will bring a small payrise, along with higher targets which bring with them higher earnint potential.  Just the same, when what I wanted was to be appreciated for what I am good at, it feels like a kick in the teeth.

After the class and program with Screw Work Let's Play didn't work out recently, I have jumped at the chance for something similar -- an intensive, 21 day program designed for creative people who are tired of jobs, offices and only living for the weekends.  Maybe that's all of us, but I don't want to spend another year just complaining about it -- I don't expect a miracle, but I am hoping to take away from it something to get me doing what I love, and getting paid for it.  Check it out yourself: Escape Your Corporate Cage.

I guess that's where we find me this week.  Let down, beaten up, overworked and disheartened, but perhaps in just the right place to start something to break me out of my rusty cage.

Pretty dumb

I don't know how long it has been like that, but I discovered yesterday I had accidentally changed the privacy settings on my blog to stop anyone being able to read without an invite.  Fixed now.

Stayin' out of circulation till the dogs get tired

Remember that phrase -- "stay out of circulation til the dogs get tired"? The theme to my travel writings, and probably what should really be the title of my blog. I've never known that it came from. Googling that exact phrase never brought back any results, now it only brings you to this blog -- and if anyone is already here, reading this, it's probably only by accident.

Tonight I had the gee-nee-us idea of googling the phrase without quote marks. It turns out that the line "is stayin' out of circulation till the dogs get tired" is from a Tom Waits song, "Gun Street Girl". I must have played the song about 5 times in a row since I discovered, it's amazing. I love it. I wish I could sing and play the guitar just so that I could play this song.

So that's it. Enough from me, more from Tom Waits whose voice sounds like a 40-a-day smoker who gave up the cancer sticks so he could spend more time gargling gravel.

Strike me

Image source: http://76.12.250.57/

In a weird sort of way, I kind of enjoy the Tube strikes in London.

I'm a big fan of changing my routine. Every day, I take the Docklands Light Railway to Bank underground station, and then change to the Northern Line. But every once in a while -- maybe once a week, sometimes not even that -- I will get off the DLR a stop earlier, and instead change trains to go in to Tower Gateway.

Tower Gateway DLR station is separate to Tower Hill Underground station, so there is a short walk involved in the interchange -- but what all this changing of trains business means is that every once in a while I get to walk past the Tower of London. It's humbling to look at this building that has stood for hundreds of years and seen prisoners, kings, queens, plotters, guards and tourists all walk over the same ground.

I read somewhere that only something like 10% of what we see each day is actually being physically "seen", the other 90% our brains just makes up from memory. When you visit somewhere new, there is almost a feeling of exhaustion -- as everything has to be seen afresh and processed.

A change to my journey's routine encourages me to notice and appreciate the things around me.

This morning, with various Tube services suspended and disrupted, I decided not to take a chance on being able to complete my journey in the normal way. Even if the required stations were open, there was a chance of being stuck on an over-crowded platform somewhere, unable to move among a mass of hot and bothered commuters.

Instead, I went overground to Shoreditch. I have nothing but affection for Shoreditch, and it is slightly better first thing in the morning than in the evenings. On a cold November morning, it was still waking up -- it felt like the streets were stretching themselves like a sleepy animal, and that at any moment a door would burst open and a band would stumble out from an all-night recording session, blinking in the light.

I took a turn down a street I'd never been down before, just because it was heading in the right direction and I'd seen other people going the same way. Before too long, I found a brightly painted wall with the word "Scary" and nothing more on it -- professionally, too, not in the style of a grafitti tag. This is something I'd never have found on any normal day.

I could go this way every day, if I was so inclined. But then it would become "normal", and I'd stop really seeing anything.