room was a bit dim and dull when we moved in, but my girlfriend bought these nice curtains, which helped to brighten it up. In fact, I like it so much here that I’d rather stay in than go out most evenings while she’s working in the cafe.”
“You’re a lucky, man! The cave I rent is so miserable. I hate it. I stay out as long as I can! I even stayed on at college tonight until it closed!”
“You may need to find a girlfriend too.”
“No, thanks! They all are ‘high maintenance’, you know. Too expensive for me by far. Well, I’ve come to bring you your powerbank with the cable – you left it behind at the lecture this morning.”
“Oh, thanks! How stupid of me! I owe you big time.”
“Never mind, I stayed behind to ask the girls about a revision and then saw the powerbank lying there.”
“I see. Thank you very much. So, interested in girls, are you? Well, take it easy and remain calm!
“I’m OK. Just hate talking about it.”
“No problem, understand. Would you like a coffee now you’re here?”
“I am in a hurry. Gotta be off. But I’d love to call back another time, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. Let me know when you’re free. It’d be great to get together with the others tomorrow evening. Feel free to drop in.”
9. CHANGE
* FRIENDS ARE OK WHEN THEY DON’T GET IN THE WAY
Now I’m sitting and dreading Luisa coming back. I am wondering if it’s really her flat and I am the one staying here as a guest. It all started so easily and innocently and looked like a favour to a friend. Luisa called and asked to just put her up for a couple of nights… Now, more than three months on, Luisa is still here, in my flat and shows no sign of keeping her word to leave.
The thing is, I can’t bring myself to tell her. She’s taken advantage and treats the place as her own, even borrowing my clothes to go out or for interviews. Of course, she always asks me first, saying her clothes seem really boring and when she sees mine, they all look great. She even wants to look like me at interviews. “People judge you by what you wear, you know!” that kind of thing. So if I said “no’, it would sound like I didn’t want to help her in a friendly way. Of course, she always washes all the clothes before giving them back, but my blood is starting to boil. The truth is, I’m scared Luisa will take offence, accuse me of being selfish and not caring about her situation because she is in trouble. I vividly imagined her crying and saying I’m throwing her out while she has no job, no money and no other place to stay.
I tried to think up some excuses in order to get Luisa to leave, but it was unfair. So I decided to make my feelings clear to her and bring the subject up this evening. I realise I will sound selfish, saying that I value my own privacy and don’t want to live with her on a permanent basis and that our arrangement was meant to be temporary but it has gone on far too long and has taken advantage of my good nature.
It will be hard to say that but I know I’ll be honest. Sometimes friends are OK when they don’t get in the way.
* IT’S HEATING UP
The factory closed, we were laid off and the number of problems started to increase. I asked my friends to get together in a café. I was afraid no-one would come but it was filling up gradually. Things got worse last week, we got no reply from the city council and the situation is obviously now not looking good. After the owners started moving production to the Far East at the beginning of the year, all business in our area was down, but the mayor says it is picking up now. I think our discontent is heating up and we can no longer stay calm. The city authorities have been ignoring us for ten months and even the most patient and long-suffering agreed to sue them. So the governor and the district attorney eventually woke up to what’s happening.
* A PROBLEM OF THE POWER BUTTON
I’d been working in the IT department for 7 years until a total changeover happened. A new CEO was appointed and he decided to make most staff as mobile as possible. I could not make my mind up what to start with but he said I would be in charge of moving all data and applications to some cloud platforms as well as developing and supporting the new infrastructure. So I was promoted. It was not so bad.
On the other hand, it didn’t make my life easier, though. I had to commute to the office and an avalanche of problems didn’t make me and my colleagues in the IT department mobile and flexible either. “The bodies were out but the minds were in’. We had a year from hell – we have phased out all the old computers and phased in completely new ones – mostly servers. We didn’t have to work it out from scratch and to come up with a new idea. We implemented the existing mobile network solution. My colleagues weren’t sure how things would pan out at first and we faced a few problems with securing data and online traffic. However, the arguments about the new system blew over quite quickly. Our management, sales and marketing staff started appearing in the office once a week and now I may not see some of them for months. Yet I can watch them emailing, chatting and meeting online around the clock. They have a chance to plan their life and work according to the result they have to achieve, but sometimes I wonder where the border between their private lives and office responsibilities lie. My wife says it is “a power button’ problem – as you switch your mobile or laptop off, the border is crossed.
*GETTING OVER
Last year my girlfriend and I broke up. It took me a while to get over that. I fell into depression and suffered for a long time. I knew I had to get over my depression, but decided to give up smoking first. I felt awful and sick for the first few weeks but that’s all worn off now. I also quit hanging out with my friends in the evenings and started poring over books trying to catch up with my classmates. Morning jogging helped a lot too. Six months had passed before I got used to it all and stuck with my new regime. So now I feel much better than before.
* SURGICAL INDICATION
Surgical indication is an intervention aimed at benefitting a patient when no other kind of treatment can help. It is established based on validated criteria. In business it is profit. Last year I was brought in to turn around SSMicro when the company had been in the red for three years. The quality of their products was going down and so did the profit. The main problem was that they saw the result but could not see what caused it. So they needed surgery. I soon realised that SSMicro had been sticking to the only supplier who was no longer able to meet new market requirements. The management thought it was enough to just tinker with the design and product range, as well as the channel support without getting bogged down into the minutiae of the whole company structure, as they said. The shareholders, though, supported my plan to shake things up completely.
I suggested to both change suppliers and make some drastic changes to the company’s processes simultaneously. The obsolete procedures had to be turned into new effective ones. I started to change things around slowly. At first staff were not happy with those changes and it took a lot of time and effort to explain to them that it would pay off. We had to restructure a few departments and change employees over but no one was laid