Are you really single? Or do
you have a wife?
Have you got a girlfriend from
a former life?
Are you busy chalking up the
number of your lays?
You gotta query every flipping
thing these days!
Your home is lovely. I thought
you lived alone
Until I heard the lady on the
answerphone!
I guess I'm just too gullible
to understand your ways
You gotta check a billion
flipping points these days!
I've no time either. You're
not the only one.
Although you convince me
you're important bar to none.
In your world of treachery, it
seems that lying pays.
You gotta cover every flipping
base these days!
When I'm sad and all
despairing
When I don't know how things
stand.
That's when you will be there
for me
Walk with me and take my hand.
When I'm in that deep dark
cavern
Far from any homely land
That's when I will hear you
calling:
"Walk with me and take my
hand".
When concern is all-consuming
And my trust is built on sand,
That's when you will touch my
shoulder,
Walk with me and take my hand.
It was the nightingale and not
the lark
That sang when you embraced me
in the dark
I wished that time would put
her hands to rest
And we could lie in love, as
lovers blessed.
Affirm your love for me with
each caress
Your passion you in tenderness
express
Yet still you fail to hide the
flagrant lie
And I must face the truth I
can't deny.
My love is empty, it is
lifeless, lost
Succumbed to painful falsehood
at high cost.
I wish that time had put her
hands to rest
And we could lie in love, as
lovers blessed.
Sometimes my heart
Catches in my throat
And everything I am
Struggling to not remember
Hurtles through like a
Tsunami of memories
And love.
Sometimes my heart
Goes into a corner
And cries alone
It picks up its broken
Pieces from the floor
Clutching at its memories
And love.
When I left university back in the early 1980s, my first job was as Materials Manager in the Computer Department of Siemens London. I know! We Cupcakes are full of surprises.
Actually Siemens London was nowhere near London but in Sunbury in Middlesex. Also I had never been technical in my entire life and had studied mainly politics and history at university, but I had also studied German and apparently that qualified me for a job in this multinational German technology company.
One thing that I didn't mention at the interview but which probably really did qualify me for the job was that all through my childhood, I had spent most evenings sitting with my Dad in the workshop he had made in our garage. We didn't have a car, so my Dad, who was a hobby carpenter among other things, filled our garage with wood, formica (formica is the material of the future, my Dad said) and a workbench that he himself had constructed from pinewood with various interesting technical gadgets attached. He went to carpentry evening classes once a week and learned how to make all kinds of furniture, with which he proceeded to fill our house.
Now my Dad was a bit of a dreamer, not so much of an organizer or a manager type. So mostly he spent his spare time designing furniture with his propelling pencil (in the future there will only be propelling pencils, said my Dad) on pieces of spare paper and explaining to me precisely how he was going to implement the construction and make all the parts fit together. He was very heavy on the details and spent ages perfecting his dovetail joints, which merged together like those of a master craftsman. The only trouble was that a lot of his furniture remained unfinished - unpainted, uncovered, just the - often cheap - bare wood. It didn't bother my Dad. I think he looked at it and simply saw the perfect beauty of the design and the construction (especially the perfect dovetail joints), not how it looked to the consumer (me), who wanted it to look pretty as well. He was a real technician.
So when I started at Siemens Sunbury, I guess that was mainly why I just fitted in with all the technician guys I worked together with. I was way younger than most of them, but I suppose that made it seem more normal for me, like they were kind of Dad figures for me. The technicians' workshop was in the room right next to my office, and I had to go through it to visit the bathroom, as well as to get to the stores where all my technical parts were located, plus the big Siemens Sunbury stores, which was like walking through a portal into a huge new magical universe when you opened the door behind the bathroom. Opening the door into the Siemens Sunbury stores from our offices was a bit like walking into Narnia from the back of the magic wardrobe.
This is the fourth episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".
Previous episode: Siegfried and the Professor
After a couple
of weeks, I realized that the part-time job was not going to cover my costs.
This is partly due to the high taxes in Germany, but mostly due to the fact
that under German law, I still have to pay private health insurance. It’s so complicated.
One of the main reasons I took a job as an employee was so that the employer would
contribute to my massive private health insurance costs. In fact, the university’s
HR Department promised me on the phone that they would take over almost half of
these costs, as is customary. After two weeks, it turned out that the guy who assured
me of that had got the facts totally wrong! Instead of paying what was discussed,
it turns out that they will only pay about one-eighth. The net pay is so low
that it makes a big difference. Plus, there are higher travel costs than I
expected and more tax. Quite literally, it is not worth me doing this job at
all!! I am left with so little net that I could be earning more by staying at
home and doing a couple of small translation projects every month.
There is no
other solution at the moment but to take on a full-time job in order to survive.
However, I am not convinced that, even with a full-time job as a secretary
here, I will be earning enough to be living a half-way comfortable life. I
simply hadn’t foreseen this situation and to be honest, the HR Department has
screwed up a lot.
This is the third episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".
Previous episode: Not Moving Forward
Nobody explained
much to me about anything when I first got here. For a little while, I thought Kurt
was the Head of our entire Institute, which has around a hundred people, most
of them men. On the second day, Kurt introduced me to a guy who I assumed just
happened to be standing around in the secretariat, with something along the lines of,
“This is the big man who knows everything”. It was a bit puzzling as the “big
man” was only a little taller than me (I am not tall!) and himself did not
expand on the everything it was about which he was so knowledgeable. He showed very
little interest in me but did join us for lunch, where by chance I sat next to
him. I was very polite and tried to engage him in conversation, with very
little success. He did mention that he used to live in Paris and had done his
PhD there, whereupon I told him I had also studied for one semester in Paris,
but he showed literally no interest and did not respond. Looking back, I guess
he was wondering what kind of a secretary studies in Paris!
A couple of
weeks later we had a meeting with the entire Institute and this guy was
moderating it. Afterwards I googled his name, Hagen Eichner, and found out that
he was actually the Head. Of the whole Institute. Bingo, there was a photo of
him in a gown and everything. Boy did I feel embarrassed that I didn’t know he
was actually the boss! According to the bio he is going to be 48 soon. He is
smartly dressed and very clean-cut, but apart from that I have ascertained
nothing about him at all. It didn’t help that he wasn’t interested in me at
lunch. I kind of closed down after that.
This is the second episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".
Previous episode: A New Job
In life, I have learned, if you are part of a large
company, or in my case, a large German public sector institution (several
thousand people work at this campus), your entire existence there is determined
by your immediate superior. If something goes wrong, you really only have that
guy that you can talk to about it. You would not want to go over their head and
complain, nor would you want to become embroiled in discussions about your boss
with other employees, as it will always get back to them eventually. So your
immediate boss very much determines your life, career and circumstances, and
ultimately happiness, within the organization.
While I like Kurt a lot and feel very much supported
by him, it is still puzzling me why he has virtually no work for me and I am
beginning to wonder if anyone else knows that I actually have nothing to do –
apart from the occasional proofread, as I mentioned before. I know that I’m
only supposed to be a secretary here (which of course I’m totally
over-qualified for, having spent most of my life working in informatics) but I
think even a real secretary would have limits in this situation. I have
literally reached the stage where I am embarrassed, ashamed, and yes – even
scared – to mention this state of affairs to a single person, either inside or
outside the entire Institute. It just doesn’t seem right. I keep asking myself
if I should be working on something that I’m not aware of, or if I haven’t
explored things enough. Kurt has explained very little to me – he’s shown me
the project’s website in English, and I have digested it and made linguistic
corrections. And he’s given me access to all his project e-mails for the last
few months, to read – but they mostly seem to just contain inconsequential, insubstantial discussions about minor topics between Kurt and the other two
project heads in our partner institutions. And without further in-depth
explanation, I can’t really make head or tail of them.
When I first met Kurt at the interview, I was a little
taken aback by his seemingly awkward manner of talking, his fixed way of
staring at me unblinkingly and his slightly jerky and awkward movements and
walk. In the meantime, I’ve become more used to it. And because he is kind to
me, and because he chose me for the job, I feel fairly confident with him. I am
not the world’s most confident person, and despite whatever show I try to put
on for people, I am really quite shy. So it took a lot of nerve for me to pluck
up the courage after about two weeks and tell him that I had nothing at all to
do.
I should explain that I don’t actually meet with Kurt
every day. Only maybe once or maximum twice a week, when he comes to my office.
I guess he thinks that is obligatory, that he at least sees/talks to his
secretary/personal assistant for about 20 minutes a week, just to show he is
interested in the fact that she is there at all. Kind of an “alibi” visit. I
mean, I see Kurt most lunchtimes, because I have chosen to go to the canteen
with the group – we meet every day at precisely 11:37 a.m. outside Kurt’s
office – his stipulation – but if I decided to bring lunch with me from home
and warm it up in the microwave, or chop up a salad, as some people (the other
secretaries) do, I wouldn’t see either the group or Kurt at all on a regular
basis. In fact, I would probably see almost nobody at all, the entire morning. I
would be like a ghost, flitting in and out and not doing anything!
And what happens in these little meetings? Just about
nothing. A lot of hot air is blown around and Kurt makes much of the one or two
tiny tasks I have that week. He can waffle on profoundly for ten minutes about a
two-line e-mail of no consequence that I have to write. Or he will use pompous words
and flamboyant phrases to describe insignificant events that might or might not
happen should certain measures might or might not be implemented, all the while
nodding to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and staring at me with his
unblinking eyes. It is a superpower of academics, I think. To make you believe
that the subject matter is of vital importance and that they absolutely own it.
Anyway, Kurt’s reaction to my telling him that I had
nothing at all to do was to make a little kind of “Mh” noise in his throat,
then turn on his heel and march out of my room without a word, with his awkward
stiff walk. He also closed the door, which I always have open, and I called
out, “Please leave the door open –” but my words were just gone with the wind.
This first time, I was surprised at his rudeness, but then I thought, Maybe he didn’t
understand me properly. Maybe it’s my English accent in German. So a few days
later when he paid me one of his flying visits, I said the same thing again:
“Kurt, I’ve got nothing to do”. I thought he would understand this truly
hellish situation, sitting around for four hours a day staring at my screen or
out of the window, by myself in this room, isolated in a completely different
building from my group, not interacting with anyone. But Kurt just made his
little “Mh” noise again and turned around and marched out of the room, with me
calling “Please leave the d–” and my words being lost in the ether while he
closed the door on me again. It was almost as if he were trying to close me out
of his head, or as if he thought if he closed the door with me inside, I
wouldn’t exist for a while. And quite honestly, that’s how I feel. As if I
don’t exist.
After my third attempt to convey my desperation, I
extended my usual complaint with the addendum, “Please, could you give me
something to do?”
This time, Kurt stared at me with his unblinking,
emotionless eyes and snapped, “Then do something that moves you forward!”, in a
cold, almost aggressive manner, and turned on his heel and marched, head down
and stiff, out of the room, almost slamming the door behind him and closing me
out of his life and possibly his conscience yet again.
I don’t even know what that sentence means! I will not
be asking him again.
I have developed a method for coping with this
situation. As usual, I continue to get up at 6:30 a.m. I perform all my
routines: shower, dressing, breakfast, makeup, nails, etc. I make sure I look
as nice as possible every day, even though almost no-one is going to see me. I
leave the house a few minutes before 8 a.m. and drive the 35-40 minutes to work.
The drive is always stressful – a lot of traffic and congestion at this time of
the morning. I usually arrive just after 8:30 a.m. at work, having been up for
just over two hours, and in peak functioning mode. I fetch a coffee
and then start to wind down all my engines, which in the meantime I can do
pretty quickly, because I have been practicing it for weeks. I bring myself to
a level where I am completely composed and serene, and where I am expecting
nothing, absolutely nothing at all to unruffle or provoke me. Effectively, I am
in a state where I am not really capable of any kind of challenging work. I
would go so far as to say that I am not really capable of any kind of work at
all! I am content and relaxed, and I can sit there for the next four hours and
just do nothing, if necessary. Essentially, I am almost in a trance. It is my
survival mechanism.
Next episode: Siegfried and the Professor
This is the first episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".
So now I am working mornings as a secretary at a technological institute in our city’s university. It’s one of the better universities in Germany. It has two campuses, one in the center of the city and one on a campus north of the city out in the middle of nowhere in the forest. I also applied for a job at the city campus, but was only offered this one in the forest. It is about a 40-minute drive for me and it has taken a while to get used to the stress of the journey. They have put me in an office in a separate building, not the one in which either my boss or my team are located. I sit completely on my own in this room and apart from saying Hello in the mornings, nobody speaks to me. It’s a bit of a mystery to me why I am in solitary confinement over here when my boss and team are over there. Apart from that, I have almost nothing to do! I’m certainly not being a secretary.
Except that
after a couple of weeks, they realized I could write. And so, since then, I occasionally
get scientific academic papers to correct in English. Most of the people here
are German of course and they are writing their papers in English. I think it’s
a pretty well-known fact how academics live to publish their papers in academic
journals. That’s their whole raison d’être. So they are really happy to have a
native speaker like myself to proofread them. I also get a little translation
work to do – German to English – which I enjoy. All of this work might keep me
busy for about five hours a week on average, and I have to be here for twenty
hours. So for about fifteen hours a week I have to pretend to work. That is a
feat and a half, seriously. That’s even more difficult than actually working.
Of course, my
pay grade doesn’t match the work I’m doing, when I’m actually working. I found out that I’m getting paid a lot less than
the three other secretaries here, who don’t appear to have one academic
qualification between them, while I have a university degree. But I don’t care.
Sitting around all day doing nothing at all is the worst thing. I spend the
morning here, then I go home and research or write articles, or do translation
work, which still pays relatively well, in comparison. Usually, I work at the
weekends too.
My boss, Kurt,
is gay. He made this quite clear on Day One. It makes things easier, I think. Kurt
is from Dresden, in the old East Germany, and he was born and grew up there
when it still had a wall round it. I can’t figure out to what extent, if at
all, this has made an impact on his character. His partner lives in Bern, and Kurt
joins him at the weekends, so he has gone from one extreme to the other really.
Communism to Swissness. I find him very fair and I feel that he likes me. I
have told all my friends, Kurt is the best boss I ever had in my life. Except
he has no work for me.
My friends keep
asking, why did they hire you when they have no work for you? I say, I think maybe
I am just an outlet for some money they need to spend. Just an item in the
balance sheet. That’s why they parked me over here in solitary confinement and
hoped I would just sit here like a tiny quiet mouse. I guess I look like that
kind of a person!
I don’t know
what will happen when they find out I’m not.
Next episode: Not Moving Forward
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