First day nerves

I won't lie to you readers, it's just not in my nature, for some reason I'm really nervous about tomorrow and my first day in the new job. Sounds silly really, but I've been out of the rat-race of office life now for over six months, and the 15 years of media sales I racked up before I was made redundant might as well have been 15 minutes.

You see, the thing is, I wasn't entirely upfront with Dan Bantam, I've never really worked at the coal face, as it were, of media sales. My specialism was in something known as Newspaper Communication Insertion and Distribution Logistics. I basically worked hand-in-hand with the Marketing Collateral Division to ensure the seamless, timely, delivery of High Level Corporate Sales Information Leaflets and Brochures.

I'm probably confusing you with all my technical terms. Basically, I was responsible for chasing down the invoices of companies that had flyers inserted into the Daily Mail. Bingo, Scratchcards, Perfumery. I've seen it all. Still, it was only a small white lie, I mean how difficult can selling adverts be? Surely you just phone up the peoople who placed adverts last time and book them in next month!!

The trouble is, I don't really know that much about the subject of personnel. Personnel, like a number of other terms has been businessified up, mainly by Americans, and is now known more commonly as Human Resources.

Personnel and Human Resources are one and the same. But if you tell a Human Resources Professional this they tend to get quite precious. I know this from very personal experience. As regular readers or readers that have recently started following and have bothered to read the backstory will know, my recently ex-d girlfriend Gill Nelson is a Human Resources Professional.

I once made her cry by calling it personnel. Not on purpose mind, I think she's made some people redundant that morning and she said she was feeling a bit low, I told her in no uncertain terms that in today's cutthroat world of trade and commerce there are no people, there are just employees. I'd had a few Cobras and kinded of hammered home my views. In full fairness to me, the last people to leave a sinking firm the personnel department, I said.

I was probably feeling a little bitter at the time, bitter but realistic. I said she was a pretty canny operator, leaving school with an English and History degree, which basically qualifies you for nothing, and somehow engineering herself into an unsackable job, "a job for life" I called it, I think this is what started her off to be honest. Her Mum had recently passed on and she was a school teacher so never really undestood what it was Gill did all day. Dreaming up pointless courses and making people redundant in the main, I'd said.

Anyway, I figured enough water has passed under the bridge since we split up, so I thought I'd give Gill a call to pick her brains regarding some of the latest development in the industry. If I can turn up tomorrow morning with a few words of jargon and some general industry knowledge, it'll help me settle in no end.

I thought she'd be pleased with me, pleased so have someone to talk to about Human Resources. Jesus, how wrong can you be? Don't answer that. She just scoffed that I didn't know anything about the subject and with my track record of staying power I'd be lucky to last the first day.

It must be the hormones, I thought, so I asked her how she was getting on with Dave the roofer. Not surprisingly Dave the roofer has thus far failed to step up to the plate and do the decent thing. But, GET THIS, Gill isn't even bothered about being married. I questioned the wisdom of bringing a bastard child into the world. She didn't respond to this, I think I touched a nerve. Seems Dave, the roofer, has already set up a fund for his progeny. Ten grand he's put into it?! And Gill says he's going to put in £1000 every month INDEFINITELY!!!

No wonder she's so bloody chirpy. Selfish cow. If I didn't know better I'd assume she tricked my best friend Dave the roofer into the whole thing.

Now that's Human Resources.