Eight months off work recovering from a heart attack and, last week I returned . We still do what we do, but we’ve changed the way we do it. Lord forbid that you do the something the same way for too long, it breeds complacency and people get a bit too “comfortable” Management policy is such, that, people must be kept on their toes and … and what? –

And when we have changed how we do what we do, and we still know what we do, but not how we are currently doing it, then, those who are in the know on how we do what we do, they are the good guys. The rest of us who haven’t kept up, we are the bad guys, but we can be retrained.

And you get a training course at “beginner” level – (below basic beginner idiot level in my case) and the whole bloody room is filled with people who have done this before, and they can already do what we are here to learn to do, and the teacher (trainer) is too bloody fast and you can’t follow.

Oh dear, you’re too old.

No, I’m not old. I just don’t understand because I’ve never understood this crap.

I am told to embrace change

“Why did we have to change?” I ask. “Everything worked fine before. Why change?”

I get the standard answer that the new way is even better than before. By the time I understand the new way, it will be the old way.

And why do you want to keep me on my toes? I work best when I’m flat footed, and in my comfort zone. Keep your sneakers or ballet shoes to yourself. I want to work in slippers.

“Have you always been like this?” asks the therapist lady from the occupational health?

“Like what?” I say

“Unwilling and obstreperous.”

“I’m not unwilling.” I say “I just don’t like younger people telling me how to do what I do (and I do it well) – especially when aforementioned younger people have never done what I do, but think they can do it better than me.”

Mind you , it’s not just younger people. And then you work out that the people they put in charge are incompetent.

Old Vs Young

I won’t consider myself as an old bastard. Not quite yet.

The occupational health woman said I was being “childish”. I told her it might be signs of premature senility, adding that when I grow up, I want to be a senile delinquent.

She looks at me.

“I was never a juvenile delinquent, so if I can be a senile delinquent, I’ll be happy.”

I’ll never grow up, but now I’m grown up, I certainly can’t grow down.