A Short Jobbymoon

My Dear Fellows and Dear Princess Normal,

Lemon left MPI today. She unfortunately has only a short break before her new contract starts at Transpower on Tuesday. So just a long weekend really.

Caro tells me that the break between contracts is known by contracting professionals as a "jobbymoon". Apparently a Scotsman commented that this term didn't have quite the same appeal in Scotland.

I was quite sad seeing Lemon pack up her stuff for the last time. But the vultures are already circling around her desk. Tanvi has her eye on it, apparently.

That is all right. We like Tanvi. Lemon told me today that she likes listening to Tanvi speaking to clients on the phone.

"It's that sweet, very polite way she has of talking," said Lemon. "Whenever you hear her on the phone she's all, 'Thank you so much for your call' and 'I'm happy to help' then she hangs up and she's all 'What a f*cking idiot'."

The thing that cracks us up is that Tanvi uses the same sweet, professional tone throughout. She can make, "For f*ck's sake, what a f*cking moron," sound almost complimentary. 

Lemon and me went for drinks after work with a bunch of other people and we promised to keep in touch. I know that we will, but I also know I will miss her chat. Also, I am having to take over her work and I already know that Fujitsu are going to annoy me. They've been caught half-arsing it, and while they now talk about "process improvement" I'm not seeing any signs of the other half of their arse. 

This is making me think about changing MY contract too, next year. My contract will end at the start of March. I think I might start looking in February.

"But not at Transpower," said one of the other contractors at Lemon's leaving drinks. "Transpower is SHIT."

"Oh f*ck," said Lemon. Unfortunately, Lemon couldn't make it sound as sweet as Tanvi would have. And anyway, this was heartfelt.

S.