People, it seems really are determined to spoil things.
No sooner had the builders arrived and torn off all the plaster, and my mother had been transferred from community care back into her own home than I had an email pop into my personal email account at home telling me that once again the office in which I work had been broken into over the weekend and a large percentage of our electronic equipment had been spirited away by another set (or perhaps even the same set) of thieving scumbags, in a not entirely dissimilar manner to the way they were last year.
Granted it wasn't exactly the same. This time, instead of battering their way through the back door, they battered their way through a window of one of the neighbouring offices, forced their way through some "security" shutters and smashed their way through two office doors in order to target us.
This time it also wasn't me who had to have the dubious honour of discovering the crime, but one of m'colleagues who arrived at a sensible hour on a Monday morning to find her desk was being dusted for fingerprints by a criminal investigator who didn't really know all that much about what had happened.
Sadly, neither did any of us given that the landlords failed to pass on any information about what had happened to the one of their clients most affected by this incident, in order that one or other of us didn't just have to roll up and find out about this way in such a disturbing manner. Other than to "helpfully" mention that they had been planning to fit CCTV cameras "next week" (which would, at least, given us pretty pictures of people walking off with our precious electronic equipment which, once again, we're unlikely ever to see again), there's been some sympathy, a certain amount of schadenfreude, but mostly the kind of "couldn't really give a damn, at least it wasn't us" attitude that always makes the victims feel just great...
Meanwhile, I know from bitter experience that this is not a nice way for anyone to start their day and you can find that it can affect you in more ways than you think. I know that I have been rather "eccentric" in my "little ways" since the break-in last year and was just very recently getting to the point of thinking about getting around to perhaps believing once again that I trusted the old place enough not to have to do my weird "security" routines any more, so that therapy's going well.
Sadly, neither did any of us given that the landlords failed to pass on any information about what had happened to the one of their clients most affected by this incident, in order that one or other of us didn't just have to roll up and find out about this way in such a disturbing manner. Other than to "helpfully" mention that they had been planning to fit CCTV cameras "next week" (which would, at least, given us pretty pictures of people walking off with our precious electronic equipment which, once again, we're unlikely ever to see again), there's been some sympathy, a certain amount of schadenfreude, but mostly the kind of "couldn't really give a damn, at least it wasn't us" attitude that always makes the victims feel just great...
Meanwhile, I know from bitter experience that this is not a nice way for anyone to start their day and you can find that it can affect you in more ways than you think. I know that I have been rather "eccentric" in my "little ways" since the break-in last year and was just very recently getting to the point of thinking about getting around to perhaps believing once again that I trusted the old place enough not to have to do my weird "security" routines any more, so that therapy's going well.
Perhaps it wasn't personal.
Perhaps ours was just the first office they found with anything of value in it and they seized the opportunity, grabbed what they could and scarpered with their ill-gotten gains, but it's difficult not to believe that someone's out to get us when, once again, we're the only company to have suffered any real losses during the break-in.
All that I really know is that it's a massive pain in the backside and that last time it took the best part of three months to finally get ourselves sorted out, but, in the current economic climate, taking another hit like this is going to be very hard, and, from a personal point of view, might just make our lords and masters at head office have a bit of a rethink about the wisdom of having a "satellite" outfit like us at all.
Typically, it's also going to be massively inconvenient to have to work from home again given my mother's current situation and the fact that builders are currently knocking seven bells out of the walls of my little house and filling the air with lungfuls of dust, but I'd better try and make the best of that because, whilst I still am employed, I will need to find a way of making this work.
This time, at least, we do still have the majority of the files backed up, and some of the equipment (more by luck than anything else) got left behind, so we're not quite as crippled as we were last time, but that doesn't really make anyone feel any better about the whole thing. Luckily for me, because I'm on leave anyway, I'm not directly having to deal with the aftermath at this precise moment, but it doesn't stop you from feeling bitter, twisted and downright angry all over again, as we no doubt start to seek out alternative accommodation in hopefully a much nicer part of the world and face the prospect of a far less convenient commute gobbling up even more of those precious petrol pennies...
Assuming that there is one...
Perhaps ours was just the first office they found with anything of value in it and they seized the opportunity, grabbed what they could and scarpered with their ill-gotten gains, but it's difficult not to believe that someone's out to get us when, once again, we're the only company to have suffered any real losses during the break-in.
All that I really know is that it's a massive pain in the backside and that last time it took the best part of three months to finally get ourselves sorted out, but, in the current economic climate, taking another hit like this is going to be very hard, and, from a personal point of view, might just make our lords and masters at head office have a bit of a rethink about the wisdom of having a "satellite" outfit like us at all.
Typically, it's also going to be massively inconvenient to have to work from home again given my mother's current situation and the fact that builders are currently knocking seven bells out of the walls of my little house and filling the air with lungfuls of dust, but I'd better try and make the best of that because, whilst I still am employed, I will need to find a way of making this work.
This time, at least, we do still have the majority of the files backed up, and some of the equipment (more by luck than anything else) got left behind, so we're not quite as crippled as we were last time, but that doesn't really make anyone feel any better about the whole thing. Luckily for me, because I'm on leave anyway, I'm not directly having to deal with the aftermath at this precise moment, but it doesn't stop you from feeling bitter, twisted and downright angry all over again, as we no doubt start to seek out alternative accommodation in hopefully a much nicer part of the world and face the prospect of a far less convenient commute gobbling up even more of those precious petrol pennies...
Assuming that there is one...
Sorry to hear that, Martin - bastards.
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