It’s a Dogs Life 52

“A second class return to Nottingham, please!” and if you recognise that quote, and it’s relevance, then you too must be considered a veteran!

I generally do not think of myself as a “boss” in my work. Perhaps because I worked my way up through the ranks (I’ve done nearly every job). For many years my ostensible “underlings” (I prefer the term “Elves” at this time anyway), were folk I had worked beside, frequently people who had “seniority” in service (this in a workplace where a “mere” 10 years is a new start) and indeed seniority in “life experience”.

Such circumstances behoove one to walk softly – even when you are actually in charge, and if there was ever a big stick, I lost it a long time ago .

It’s never really been my way anyway – lead from the front, treat people with equality and dignity, show the way by example. I would feel I’d failed terribly, if I even had to mention the putative existance of a big stick. I famously do not get angry, lose the plot, or swear (people are openly agast if a profanity escapes me, notes are made in diaries), which I suspect only tends to net me a lot more shifts where things are anticipated to go wrong (“we’ll change it while Tony is on duty – he’ll be fine”).

However, while I still tend to think of my many colleagues as “people I work with, who do a different bit of the job” (rather than as minions), the relentless passage of time has moved me from “new face” through “one of the team” to “permanent fixture”, and somehow the years have fallen away from the many of the staff, who now appear to be mostly my juniors (by some margin).

This broad gap in years has also lessened some of the shared familiarity and points of social reference. Thus, I suspect most of the staff are aware that I sing and play, few have ever heard me do so, and while the name “Lucky Dog” is ocassionally referenced, it’s meaning is lost in time.

We do not get many “quiet” shifts, these days, but ocassionally the luxury of conversation sneaks in. When someone mentioned having a near miss accident, I felt I could share a few snippets from my own varied repertoir.

My tales of mishap, disaster, and near apocalypse, were met with some amusement, and the observation that, “my stage persona has a wonderfully comprehensive back story”.

I had to painfully explain to the elves that it was I– the scarred and grizzled veteran – who had survived the “wonderfully comprehensive back story” (mores the pity).

Next week on IaDl – How many times have you been on fire?….let me see