No weigh!

I stepped on the scales this morning and, wow, I lost six pounds on this life-changing diet. I'd clearly lost some weight - I've got less of a pot, just one chin, and less hamstery cheeks than I had a month ago - but I wouldn't have guessed I'd now be just eleven stone four. (I'm pretty au fait with kay-gees these days, but I prefer to weigh myself in imperial, if I do so at all.)

I've started using my iPod at work. The whole environment is far too distracting for me, except when my boss is away, then I can just about concentrate. My boss is very outgoing, and recently she's brought in some new people who (naturally) have a similar personality type, and from my point of view that hasn't helped. There are only two of us doing my role now, when once there were five, and while the overall workload has reduced, it's by nowhere near 60%. My colleague was off sick for three days last week, and guess what, we're now snowed under. My boss ensured me that we'd get some help from somewhere at some point but I don't believe her. (Probably the best thing about my job is that I do get on really well with my only "proper" team-mate.)

Every third month the contact centre people get a cash incentive if they take no sick leave in that calendar month. It's all or nothing - one sick hour and you don't get it. They brought it in a couple of years ago, when people were off sick a lot. If you ask me, incentivising on an all-or-nothing basis is a bad idea full stop, but this sick-leave incentive is seriously crazy. Whoever thought it up (who might that have been?) didn't think through the consequences at all. Last Friday was the first of the month, a sick-incentive month. Some of the contact centre people went over to their boss (who is also my boss) and made their opinions on the sick incentive known, but she was having none of it. She refused to even acknowledge that they had a point.

At this time of year, as the Christmas function looms darkly, I always think, surely I won't still be working here in another year?

About ten days ago there was a post in the Guardian about the growing inequality between London and the South East, and the rest of the UK. Someone made this comment:
Great Britain is a land of opportunity.
Inequality might be higher than ever before...but so is the reward.
Play smart, take a risk, and above all, work hard...and anyone can be successful.

I've seen this argument before: greater inequality is a good thing because it means wealth is distributed more fairly!

My dad was in a pretty bad way during and after his flight, but is a lot better now.