Machiavelli Rides a Colagno

Interesting morning so far….all I need is for them to sack me this afternoon (which I’ve just got that strange feeling that they’re going to do – no one is looking me in the eye today; like being a cow in an abattoir and no one can look at you directly....). Then the day will be complete and the weekend will be off to a rollicking start.

The Owner took the opportunity to have a go at The Administrator of the biking group yesterday via MY e-mail account...and I got a message in my e-mail account at 22.38 last night from The Administrator with a relatively pissed-off message (which I’ll copy and translate once The Owner gets finished with payroll....the spreadsheet is up on the only computer we have in the office with Internet, and I don’t want to make a bad situation worse by being seen to be nosy about payroll.) Now I’ve gotta write The Administrator back and say, OK, I wasn’t here yesterday afternoon, sorry that she used MY account to have a go at you – I understand where you’re coming from, but she doesn’t....

Now El de la Bici, the guy who’s basically the brains behind the biking group who was supposed to be here at 10.30 to meet and say hi, has blown off the meeting. And he didn’t even call himself: he asked LaPi, who’s his sidekick in the group, to call on his behalf. The Owner says not to read too much into it. And I ask myself, what, El de la Bici works in an office with no Yellow Pages? Why does he have to call LaPi to call us when he could just call the store directly. Straaaange.....

Oh my God, this job is turning into Grade 8 all over again. I can’t wait to get paid for September and then next week I’m going to tell her, forget it, I’m out of here as of November 16th. And oh yeah, I’m not going to be in on the 26th and 27th ‘cause I’m going on a press junket.

Then again, maybe I won’t have to – maybe she’s lining up my final payments as we speak and as of 8:00 tonight, I’ll be singing Freebird.

Then again then again....my past experiences of wanting to be sacked from jobs I’ve never liked has always resulted in some stupid thing that keeps me here longer – a raise, a promotion, something like that. It’s like trying to get away from a guy you’re dating who you don’t really like. Any gesture you make towards freedom results in an equal and opposite reaction of the employer working harder to keep you on board. Or at least it has in two jobs.

“Third time’s the charm,” wrote Tolkien. No hay dos sin tres, (“two always results in three”) says the Spanish expression.

Who knows.