Workplace stress

As many of you may know, I work for the good old National Health Service of the UK, well, England, since the UK's been ripped up by the government over the past few years.

Anyway, the NHS suffers badly from sickness absence and retirement due to "workplace stress". From experience, I'd say much of this stress was encountered by people who simply can't handle the job they're given and a lot of it is self-inflicted due to poor work practices, lack of training and time-wasting. Other stress is inflicted on the workforce by their own colleagues. By this, I'm not referring to management, but colleagues whose own stress gets transferred onto others.

It may be hard to believe, but I'm actually a fairly laid-back person at work. I like to get on with things without fuss, then fuck off home as soon as I can. What I cannot deal with is mithering fucking colleagues who constantly bombard you with their insane comments or ways of working.

I'm on the verge of strangling our temporary secretary. Yes, a temporary secretary who seems to have taken over the operation of the entire department. A temporary secretary who's American (with fucking bells on) and who is obsessed with the boss.

I won't go into much detail because that's never particularly interesting. However, it's impossible to work in silence in the office for more than a couple of minutes without her coming out with some stupid comment, just for the sake of breaking the calm. You'll be sat there, working away and you'll hear: "Are we allowed any candy today?"..... pause for 10 seconds while I try to ignore her.... "...Tina?". And this happens over a number of things. Just cryptic little utterances that you'd normally ignore (or try to) become some major thing.


SHUT THE FUCK UP! PLEASE, JUST SHUT UP!!


It's hard to describe. She's one of these that's always claiming to be hot, despite it still being freezing. I leave the office for 2 seconds and return to find the fan on. It's like a pathetic, childish battle of wills that she has to entertain to get through the day. An despite being told, time and time again, to use British English, she refuses. So people don't know what on earth she's talking about:

"Can I get him/her on their cell?"
"Is there a parking lot nearby?"
"This is a courtesy call..."
"I'm trying to arrange a meeting for May twentyone"

And it goes on, and on and on.

Worse still, she's been sticking her oar in with a new staff member - giving her her own special take on the personnel and the running of the department.

Fook. I might take a few weeks off and curl up in bed with a packet of Seroxat.

Edit: For a more in-depth look at working practices within the "modern NHS", check out Farts. Do you realise that most secretaries actually print out all the e-mails they receive?