Charitable words and deeds

I have just spent the past 6 weeks working for a major UK charity and I truly admire the work it does and I am amazed at its ability to deliver services to people as it undergoes a major change to its structure. I witnessed the complex changes, it is undergoing, first hand. I didn't stay longer than 6 weeks as my role was one of the things chopped and changed during the restructure and luckily I had another contract to go to.  What did shock me about the charity was the way some of the senior people spoke to their juniors.  During a very senior level meeting one of the trustees referred to me a a 'Nazi' and 'Dr Mengele' and this was the first time he had met me and was part of his 'getting to know me banter' .. I was shocked and if we had been alone I would have let rip on him but as he is also the Lord Lieutenant of London I thought it best to stay quiet and simply make some sarcastic comments about him forgetting to close car doors for the royals (it is one of his duties to open and close doors for the royals, so basically a servant with a nice title). I was told by colleagues that he was just testing me to see if I was strong enough for the role. I think he was being a dick and happy to spread that fact around. Speaking to Jewish friends yesterday they thought his comments with or without context were offensive. Trustees of charities should choose their words wisely.

In the past week I broke my ACER laptop when it bounced off my sofa onto my rug and suffered concussion.  I paid £84 for an engineer to poke about inside and all he did was hand me back a broken PC and a bag of bolts and screws and small plastic bits from inside. So now I have my new shiny, silver, HP Pavilion and hope it lasts as long, if not longer, than its predecessor, that lasted 4 years (a record for me).
So yesterday it was 24c in London and warm enough to go out without a coat and I went to the Tate Modern to see an exhibition by Anni Albers and it was interesting and much of her work was very complex and the evening was topped off by me setting off an alarm as I tried to touch the life size model of a loom in the exhibit, much to the embarrassment of my friends. A nice evening of art, textiles and Turkish food and today I am trying to study for an exam in November and realize that what I know about Business Law is let down by what I know about Business Finance/Accounting so I will be learning about break-even, profit/loss, good-will and all those other fancy terms for things in business.
I start my new job tomorrow, possibly another interim role, maybe not but hopefully there will be no one there who is fond of using the word 'Nazi' to test your personality.

October 14th, 2018