advice

I used to make my living giving advice over the phone. My knowledge of the law was, and is, pretty solid. During my years on the phone, I dealt with the lot of the same quite specific problems on a regular basis. Below is an example of a conversation I had more than once with various callers, who were usually owners or HR managers of a company.

Caller: So in the office/on site/at the staff party, Person X punched Person Y in the face.
Me: What have you done so far?
Caller: We've suspended Person X. We're not sure what to do now.
Me: [explains disciplinary procedures]
Caller: Can we sack him?
Me: Generally speaking, it's considered to be within the range of reasonable responses to treat assaulting a colleague as gross misconduct.

This even happened once:

Caller: But some of our clients really like Person X, and I don't think they'd be too happy if we sacked him.
Me: You aren't obliged to sack him. But it may be worth bearing in mind that you have a duty of care to all your employees, and it's possible that being obliged to continue to work with someone who punched him in the face may lead Person Y to consider submitting a grievance or even potentially claiming constructive dismissal.

(Yes, I talked like this. I still do if you ask me this kind of question.)

I believe that sacking Person X when he punches Person Y in the face is a very reasonable thing to do, and this belief does not change one bit if that person is Jeremy Clarkson. You don't get to punch someone in the face at work and continue working there, unless you're trying to stop them committing an act of mass destruction or you work as a boxer or something. Being good at your job or popular with a lot of customers (whatever your opinion on Clarkson, he is clearly both those things) isn't and shouldn't be enough to give you leave to punch people in the face.

This has been your employment law update for March. Thank you.

new office analysis

New office pros:

It has been officially certified as Not Falling Down
It is currently proudly displaying a Union Jack-painted washing machine in its reception, which is hilarious.
The doors are just normal doors and don't randomly malfunction and lock everyone in or out.
We are allowed ACTUAL BINS here. This is such a stupid thing to be happy about, but I might be happier about this than anything else. Why would you take all the bins, previous office? Why?
There is WiFi and a quiet room, and I have been given to understand that there is a free gym for general staff use.
Everybody is in such a state over the sudden move that they keep buying and passing out doughnuts for no real reason. I approve of this.


New office cons:

I am in a basement. Not just any basement. An Emergency Basement.
It is a little-used and therefore rather smelly Emergency Basement.
There is music leaking in from the post room all day, not loud enough to listen to but not quiet enough to ignore. It's about 95% terrible, which is sort of worse than if it was all terrible because the 5% keeps getting my hopes up.
The building is weird and twisty and non-signposted, so I have absolutely no idea where I am, how I got here, or how to get back out again.
The nearest "tea point" has no way of a) heating water or b) storing milk.
In lieu of security doors, they have rather scary security guards all over the place. Because of said security guards, I have to actually wear my security pass, with its picture of Scary Wonky Radioactive Oompa-Loompa Jen, at all times.
It really does smell quite bad. This bears repeating.

Sunday, expanded

Birthday month may be over but other people are still continuing to get older, and yesterday was my boyfriend's birthday. For various reasons I made most of his presents. I made him cushions (three. I got carried away), one of which had a picture of his face on it.

Him: [staring at cushion and laughing his head off] That's terrifying.
Me: I know.
Him: I love it. It's terrifying.
Me: I know it is. It's been sitting in my room just looking at me for several days.
Him: I sort of feel like I should leave it here.
Me: No way. You having a cushion with your face on it is funny. Me having a cushion with your face on it would just be creepy.

I also made him a cake shaped like a fruit market, because I miss when I used to make people cakes shaped like ridiculous things all the time. Presenting people with tanks and race tracks and beans on toast and pianos and snakes and Christopher Walken sat navs was fun; the recipient usually knew I made stupid cakes and was probably even expecting one, but they still wouldn't know quite what to say when they saw it.

We went for dinner. It was by far the most expensive dinner I've ever had in my life. If it had been half the cost it still would have been the most expensive dinner I'd ever had in my life by some way. I've never done fancy food and I don't really understand it, but it was what he wanted to do for his birthday, so off we went. I dressed head-to-toe 1920s and felt very pleased with myself. We had eight courses (plus a cheese board), all of which were very tasty. At least six of them I wouldn't have gone near a year or two ago. I feel like I'm growing. It was amazing food, and I do understand why it's a thing now, but I still can't get my head round choosing to spend that much money on one meal. But that's OK, it's his thing. It doesn't have to be mine.

(Also we had matched wine with the whole thing, plus some champagne, and I have not been my brightest and sparkliest today.)

Tomorrow I go to my new office. I am nervous, and not the good kind of nervous.

Sunday

(It's still Sunday. I just got home.)

Tonight I have had an eight course dinner, plus a cheese board. I have had seven glasses of wine, plus a champagne aperitif. I am too drunk to write. This is OK.

no time

Today I have made things. Birthday presents and birthday cake. I created birthdayness with my hands.

I went on an emergency shopping trip to John Lewis to buy some extra duck down cushion pads, which is possibly the most middle-class thing I've ever said in my life. Oxford Street on a Saturday lunchtime is a particular joy I could have done without. I don't find it quite as horrendous as most people say they do, but it nevertheless makes me into a horrible person inside my own head, hating everyone who stops or slows down or has a big bag or appears to be frightened of escalators.

Now I have to go out, to create birthdayness with my presence. And then tomorrow, I will create birthdayness by giving my boyfriend a handmade cushion with a picture of his face on it. Why not?

leaving

I left my office today, possibly forever.

Over the past four or so years, I've got very comfortable there, stupid high-rise rabbit warren that it is. It's familiar. Ingrained deeply enough into my brain that I can get to it, get around it and get away from it without ever having woken up properly. I can spend days, weeks, months on autopilot there, which I know isn't good for me but I've been struggling to persuade myself to give up that level of ease in exchange for uncertainty and scariness.

But the office is falling down (I might have mentioned), so we're being relocated for the short term until they find somewhere to put us for the medium term until they decide what to do in the long term. We've been advised that it'll take six months to stop the office falling down, and if everyone goes back, I'd like not to go with them.

The comfort is being taken from me. It'll be harder to get to work, the short term office will be much, much less pleasant (and "pleasant" would never have been a word I'd use to describe our building), and I won't really have my own space anymore. And since I'm going to be uncomfortable anyway, this might be the time to force myself to move on.

sick

I don't feel well. I don't know if it's the kind of not well that comes from stress, or from unkind office lighting, or from having a bug of some description, but everything in my head feels uneasy and strained, and my concentration is shot. I space out or feel woozy or get a wave of nausea and then it goes away, but every time I worry that's it, that's the one that means I'm really truly sick and won't be able to do any of the things I'm meant to be doing this weekend.

The roof of my mouth aches. I don't know what this means. I wish I understood my own body more, what causes an ache here or a pain there and the sort of things that can be done about. It's on my list of things to learn, but it's the kind of knowledge that scares me - as soon as I learn a little bit I'll start to see how much I don't know about myself, how much can go wrong, how many things I've been doing to hurt myself without knowing it. I know that if I choose to get deeper into it, I'll find answers to things I didn't even know there were questions for and things would make a lot more sense, but the fear is there nevertheless.

I doubt myself when I'm sick. I question whether I'm really sick, or whether my brain is just trying to convince me I'm sick because it doesn't want to do something. Being sick is something my depressed brain does when it's pretending to be my rational brain - I can't go out because I'm depressed, but it tells me I can't go out because I'm sick. Feel that twinge when you stepped. You're going to faint, you're going to be sick, you'd better get back in bed before something awful happens. I'm not particularly depressed at the moment, but my anxiety brain is alive and well and trying to make me afraid of the depression monster.

You need to do EVERYTHING. ALL the things. Right now.

Maybe I don't. Maybe I just need to let myself be sick.