Serial Monotony

I have a new officer working with me; she’s the Section Commander – basically the squadron personnel officer/customer service manager/Commander’s executive officer all rolled into one. She wants to take work from me and give it to someone else. I run the performance reporting program for the squadron, all military personnel have a written performance appraisal once a year, more often if they have a change of supervision; I request all the paperwork, read and make corrections, track everything and make sure it gets turned in on time.

I’m pretty darn good at it too – my squadron is the only one in the Group that has a 100% on-time rate. I’m a legend in my own lunchtime.

The thing is as the Commander’s Secretary it’s not actually my job, I got the program to look after temporarily about 3 years ago and for one reason and another I’ve kept it. The new Lieutenant wants it to go back where it belongs which will leave me with monitoring the Commander’s calendar and proofreading correspondence that comes in for his signature. Woo hoo.

Most people would be overjoyed at having their workload decreased but I get ground down by the tedium. The logical answer would be to find another job but that’s a tall order if you have diabetes & kidney failure, can you imagine sitting there in your interview finery clutching your CV and glowing references telling the interviewer that you’re wonderful and reliable and oh by the way you will need Tuesday and Thursday mornings off. New disability laws be buggered, you don’t stand a snowball in hell’s chance.

Even within the MOD it’s difficult especially as most jobs that are vacant are only open to staff who are due to be made redundant and have first dibs.

I joined the MOD to get away from being a secretary (not that there’s anything specifically wrong with being a secretary – I just had my midlife crisis early and thought there has got to be more that I can do apart from office management). I left school with the bog standard array of O levels and I took the path of least resistance as dictated by my parents who don’t hold any truck with careers, no dear what you want is a job.

I thought it would be a fresh start, I thought I could get my toe in the door and retrain to do something else. The dream was to do an OU degree or similar in Engineering and transfer into the Research & Development branch. At first I was assigned to Quality Assurance and for 3½ years I was happy. Then a US Air Force regulation decreed that foreign nationals couldn’t do the job I was doing so I had to take the next job that came up – a secretarial job.

According to the local personnel office, the MOD only fund training that relates to the job you’re in already so I can train to be an even more efficient administrator but little else. I feel like my life is slipping away before my eyes without ever having done anything worthwhile.

Sorry I’m just a miserable old bat today.