Our union has brought in a work to rule i.e. work your contractual hours. In my case that's about 37 1/2, so if I start at 9am I'm supposed take an hour for lunch and down tools at 5.30 daily.
This week I had three classes scheduled till 6 (fortunately I am a dab hand at telling the students "don't worry about that, we'll deal with it next time" or "just leave that bit") and today I had a Skype meeting till 9.15 (the US, East Africa and Australia. At least I didn't have to get up at 7am as the colleague in Australia did. On a Saturday).
I am running out of ways to tell colleagues "we really need to finish this project by Christmas, no particular reason, we just do". We've got a strike day scheduled for later in the month, the day I have two meetings, one of which should involve planning a large project for next year. I am a sad union geek and extremely anti working on days we are supposed to be on strike. But I'm still very very anxious every time I have to mention the A word to anyone.
We have been having some building work done (new loo under the stairs, if I haven't mentioned it it's because I've been trying not to think about it. Lost our dining room to Stuff for 2 months). Finally, I can get to the table and make some Christmas cards. We agreed we'd probably share the good news in our Christmas cards - but I don't think I'm going to feel ready. Do you think we can tell people "if you don't hear anything, it probably means bad news"? Or how about letting them know when the baby is leaving school?
2 comments:
I think you can tell them exactly what you feel comfortable with sharing. Something along the lines of 'we hope very much to be adoptive parents by X date, but if you don't get an announcement from us, then assume things didn't work out' is surely fine if that's what you're happy to share?
I think you're probably right. The people we hardly ever speak to will work out what happened by our next Christmas card, I'm guessing!
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