H aRRgh!!

On a Monday, it’s tradition in many offices to discuss one’s weekend activities over morning break.

Every so often, I am reminded why I limit this to a weekly activity and stay clear of such conversations for most of the week.

Today saw one of those occasions.

You may recall that I was involved in an interview recently where one of our Managers asked the immortal question, “Are you actively trying to start a family?”

It was a cringe-worthy moment, and obviously I cut down the question before the candidate had a chance to answer.

Yesterday was the day that the yearly appraisals for all of our employees were due in.

Every year we set a deadline, and allow ourselves to hope that it might be met by virtually everyone.

Inevitably, such hope leads to disappointment each year, and this year has proved to be no different.

It’s been a long old day.

This afternoon in particular has seen me struggle to stay awake.

Rather than too many late nights, I’m blaming the activity I was reduced to at lunchtime; counting car parking spaces.

Every so often, someone starts with the company who you immediately know is going to cause you many headaches during their time at the company.

It’s been a while since we found a new one, but we definitely have such a person now.

One of our junior managers is leading us on the path towards a race discrimination case, and no matter how much we point this out to him he doesn’t seem to want to change his course.

You may be aware that we have been undertaking a sizeable recruitment drive in recent weeks.

Such mass recruitment always throws up a few issues, but this really could be a massive one.

Yesterday it seemed that we were on a one-way path to a race discrimination case, being driven by a manic junior manager seemingly unconcerned by the potential ramifications of his actions.

Today I’m pleased to say that a sensible and positive ending may be in sight.

I have found myself in a situation that I do not feel at all comfortable with today.

One of my colleague’s, with whom I get on very well, has blatantly ignored company rules to her benefit, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

As much as I like her, I don’t think the behaviour she has displayed today is anything out of the ordinary for her, which makes me feel even more uncomfortable.

Our Finance department had one of their regular audits today to make sure that everything is above board.

Usually this has very little to do with Human Resources, as you would imagine.

Unfortunately that was not the case today.

A few weeks ago we established a weekly management training session for a group of 10 of our managers.

These sessions have been running very well for the past 4 weeks, and I expected today to be no different.

In the end, things turned out fine, but that seemed unlikely at 9.05 this morning...

I’ve had an interesting day of interviewing potential candidates for one of our vacancies today.

2 in particular stand out, but not for all the right reasons…

I had what could turn out to be a very ‘profitable’ meeting regarding training today.

The meeting was with someone I can only describe as a ‘Guru of Funded Training’. Perhaps he may be related to the Guru?

Anyway, I digress. With a somewhat tight training budget here, we are always on the lookout for ‘something for nothing’, and our eyes have certainly been opened today.