By which excellent Steven Wright quote we return to the continuing saga of my silly little ear infection.
When I returned to my GP last week, she reported that the swab she took from my left ear - the one that's still not back to normal hearing - showed no sign of infection. Um. Does that mean, perhaps, that she didn't do it right?
I'm no longer taking antibiotics (good thing, too, as they were wrecking my stomach), but I'm supposed to continue with the decongestant and the ear drops... but only in the right ear, which is still rather inflamed. I've also been referred to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist but, as the doctor said, it will probably have all cleared up before I get the letter detailing my appointment. She also said it would still be worth going, because they could check my eardrum for perforations.
Nice.
Of course, considering I work in an open-plan germ factory, it should come as no surprise that I became ill again this weekend. All through Friday, I was developing a lovely cough and I spent most of Saturday and Sunday bedridden and feverish, largely unable to muster the strength to eat. It occurred to me, during this time, that following my GP's instructions and completing my decongestant prescription wasn't really going to help. After initial resistance from my folks (who said it was simply "an uphill struggle against the germs"), they eventually agreed. Yesterday morning, I put the decongestant on hold, and started taking an off-the-shelf cold and flu remedy... And slowly started feeling better.
Until today... When I woke up with a thumping headache, chills, and occasional nods toward nausea. That managed to clear up during the day, but the chills are certainly back, and I'm coughing more today than I was yesterday.
On the upside, while I've been feeling human, I've been able to get a bit of reading done - something I rarely seem to have time for when I'm healthy - getting through another couple of chapters of Greg Bear's Songs of Earth and Power, and watched the fourth episode of the new Battlestar Galactica series, which is still remarkably good television.
I've also received my first newsletter from the TransFormers Collectors' Club, bound into an issue of Master Collector. I'm in two minds about both: Master Collector the publication shows how small an operation the parent company really is - it's two-colour, printed on newspaper stock, 24 pages long, and comprised mainly of classified lineage ads. On the other hand, it must be exactly what the subscribers want, or it wouldn't exist, and they do offer a free 30-word ad per month with the subscription. The TFCC newsletter is 4-colour throughout, on nice, glossy paper, and my only real complaint about the first issue I've seen is the use of red text on a black-to-white gradient fill background. Ouch. I mean, really. Design no-no, guys. The six-page comic at the back is pretty cool, the character profiles seem to fit quite well, and what little editorial there is suits the magazine well enough (apart from the aforementioned design gaffe). It was, and still is, a very cool Christmas present, and I'm looking forward to receiving my first order...
I have heard that things at work haven't been too good in my absence. This is nothing unusual and, in this instance, much of the shit would have hit the fan had I been there or not... but the extent of the shit and the effects of the fan are far greater than the usual run-of-the-mill problems in that office.
The darkest of times we ever had were when Sales were running the flat-plans to their magazines. Now, thanks to a reshuffle dreampt up by - of all people - the MD (who used to be a Salesman and is, therefore, obviously an expert on Production), Sales will be getting the flat-plan back, and the Production department will be split (unevenly) North and South, when we barely have enough staff to cover everything as one team. Letting folks gain a closer affinity with their titles is one thing... effectively halving the workforce behind them is quite another.
And with the potential for problems inherent in asking Sales to maintain their flat-plans ("let's go up by 16 pages on press day! Hurrah! And let's move everything around so all the work that's been done has to be scrapped, because we don't have to stay late to finish the magazines like those suckers in Production! And let's make 9 different versions of the flat-plan in one day, just so it's all perfectly clear! Oh, we're so professional!") or, more likely, their unwillingness and/or inability to maintain their own flat-plans (as already evidenced by the number of times they ask for a few simple changes and then a new flippin' printout because they don't know what they've just done), and the whole thing is likely to collapse.
I have suspicions about this. Maybe I'm paranoid, but it smacks of a way of removing a very efficient and hard-working Production Manager without allowing them time to resign in disgust. My abiding impression of our Publishing Director is that she wants my boss gone (having opined, for example, that all of the problems in Production are down the the way the Manager runs the department), and I know the MD is afraid that my boss will resign. Allowing the department to fail this catastrophically (and it will be catastrophic) under what is still, ostensibly, the Production Manager's leadership gives them both a more mutually acceptable situation. What I can't understand - with either of them - is why they'd want that, rather than to fix the company...
Office politics are not that far removed from playground politics.
Of the things that would have been better if I'd been there today, the main problem has been that one of the designers had to take over my work, and decided to do it almost opposite to the way he'd been told. That, and not keeping things in good order, so others could follow the progress.
Oh, well. I specialise in fixing that sort of crap... Wish I was in better health, but there we go.
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