I’m used to writing this in the morning from Japan. This whole time shift back to the old standard of doing it just before sleep? No thanks. Once again I’m buggered. They fed me, bless them. They fed us both. But was the client happy? Surely yes. I’m almost past caring but for the fact that this work has been crucial in the past. When the boats fucked me over I would have starved but for this. So it is precious work. Add to that the fact I’m extremely good at it now.
I’ve been on the South Bank again. I’ll happily play the game when it is my ability to pay the bills on the line. It’s been hard recently as the work has fallen off post COVID. Apart from the few months when I had to rebuild post boats, the boat thing taught me never to rely on anything dayjobby. I thought I was a valued member of the team with the boat company. They fucked me with no warning and notice, even though one blessed fool tried to pass off something I had genuinely taken to be neurotic raving as a “warning”. He came up to me in a corridor, so nervous he could barely speak, babbling something about nothing. Apparently that was my “warning”, where my concern was so strong for him I genuinely asked him if he was OK.
It still hurts, being randomly taken off that job. “It’s his first decision as head guide. We have to stand by it.” He was a tamagotchi-human. Totally dependent on the big people pushing the buttons. He’s absented himself from any responsibility for his life. “Head” guide = “most obedient guide”. Let’s make up job titles based on how useful you’ll be to us!!
I loved it too much, when it was just me and the passengers and the river. I was extremely good at it. Like properly excellent. I loved it and built a whole journey. I worked so hard to have facts and stories beyond the standard ones. It would have become my only focus if it hadn’t become poison. Everything in context, losing that job was a good thing for me. But it is so hard to properly understand that until you have the benefit of hindsight. I loved it. I’d still be doing it. Thank fuck.
On the way to work tonight I watched a few of their venomous boats plying their trade. The skippers can do what they like. The guides? Someone in that horrible office will turn on them.
I found myself with the usual conflicting emotions. In the end though, thank the lord I don’t have to work with people who aren’t honest with their employees. I wrote an angry blog after they took me off roster, which is like using a swear word in an argument as they found it and actuated it. That’ll be the moral high ground for them until we all die. Hurrah, fuckers. And it’s a fucking massive shame, as they don’t have that moral high ground in reality and they fuck people over from time to time. They were utterly awful to me and I have no doubt it was the same for others I know and don’t know. We could form a club. It’s a pattern. Mostly based on the fact they only have a few skippers and there was one super poison skipper.
“Never go into the office and you’ll be ok” one of the skippers warned me, and that’s the truth. It’s lions led by donkeys. But the donkeys think they’re lions. And they really aren’t.
Thank God I’ve got a good acting job coming. I spend too much time thinking about this validation nonsense and the pain of the past. I’m still bruised by that loss of a dayjob. Because I loved it and was excellent at it. The reasons for me being taken off it had no logic. Essentially it was just office politics via boats. Thank fuck. Thank the dear lord. Thank you universe. Through nonsense they lost an excellent worker. At the time, I felt I needed it. Had they understood me they would have absorbed me. It all went wrong. I still get to be this one.
AlBarclay 