Rant time!

Aaarrggghhh! It's been a horible day today. My boss was married over the weekend and so is off this week and next. He was ill last week and so we wont be seeing him for three weeks. I'm standing in in his stead. As usual in these circumstances all hell has been let loose shortly after he dissappeared. My boss is four grades above me and I really don't have the authority to do most of the tasks required so we've had to go for a team effort with the rest of the development team and then passing the ultimate decision to those managers who are at work. I've been in meetings all day trying to sort out the problem. I still have my own work to do at the same time.

I don't get paid enough!

On an average day I'm working to two grades above my current grade and occasionally (like at the moment) I work to three grades above my grade. I'm designing and writing software components which are to be used company wide. I'm setting down policy for how other engineers will work. I'm helping set out the future of software in the company. Others doing similar jobs are earning £10,000 more than me!

When my boss tried to upgrade me he was told that he couldn't because I didn't earn enough! Basically there are set pay scales for grades so you can't be given a grade if you don't get paid the right rate. None of this giving people the appropriate grade and then paying them appropriate salary. It's arse about face. I can't have a pay rise so that I do get paid at the right rate because it would mean a pay rise that is outside the allowed limits. So I'm doing the job of a higher grade but can't be paid the rate because I don't earn enough now. It's a bloody stupid state of affairs. So my boss has been giving my rises as and when he can to try and get me close enough for the grade rise. The next time I can get a rise is the end of June. It better be good enough or I'm considering leaving.

Stupid f**king beaurocracy.

Woo!

Just checked /. and discovered I now have excellent karma and all of my posts have a starting score of 2. It appears that my ravings are not so much bollocks as I had thought.

The caterpillar and I

I was wandering around the lab today, probably returning from one of my countless tea making expeditions, when I was accosted by an engineer in the bay neighbouring mine. "Did you know that you have a caterpillar in your hair?" he said. "Pardon?" said I. "There's a caterpillar in your hair!" and he leans forward to retrieve it. It's small and green and quite definitely a caterpillar. Very typical of the sort of thing that puppets made out of man made, vary coloured, fur sing about shortly before being turned in to gothic clothing. My extremely rudamentary knowledge of biology seems to suggest that, should it survive, old inch worm would turn in to a cabbage white.

Now a research and development lab is not the usual habitat for a small green caterpillar. Particularly one destined to become an anoyer of gardners, allotment owners and farmers. And my hair, being a rather caustic place to live due to all the chemicals I put in it, and being on my head, more so. After some thought I decide to take it down to the railway near where I work as there is lots of greenery there and my new friend, also being green, would not be so visible to aviatory predators. Hopefully it would also be able to find something to eat.

I returned back to the lab to tell the others where I had taken inch. I was then told that birds can distinguish different greens very well. Like Inuits can distinguish many kinds of what to the average Brit is white fluffy stuff, birds see greens as a rainbow of colours. A rainbow that is all greens. This would mean that my little friend is not so cammoflaged I as had hoped and may be he would have been better off in my hair after all.

I hope I did the right thing.