Meritocracy

Amendment: did I say “demotion” in my last post? I meant redundancy. Sigh.

Still, not me. I’ve had my official debriefing with heavy emphasis on the “none of this was personal” aspect and detailed description of how all our work has been assessed on various catagories for the last few months. It is reassuring to know that I am working in a meritocracy, as any workplace should be. It means that web use and desk naps are not taken into account, just the quality of the work we produce. Strangely the changes, scheduled for Oct 1, will create an almost total gender balance in our part of the office from the existing mostly male writing team with female project managers. I don’t know if this will make any difference. Probably not. Personalities are far stronger than gender characteristics, but there are some people here of very limited understanding.

Since most of the housefolks moved out me and partner have been spending more time in each other’s pockets. I find this interesting because although we’ve been living in the same house for 2 years we’ve only just started formally sharing a room and with our only other housefolk little more than a cackle at the top of the stairs it is much more like living alone as a couple. A final stage of adjustment/trial of if we could or should live together. So far we have spent half this time with me ill and him nursing me. At the moment we are still in the transition phase, one night we couldn’t think of anything to do and moped about, last night we were full of giggles and ate noodles in bed while watching DVDs. I’m sure it will balance out.

An interesting thing that came up while watching said DVDs was a discussion about American dating practices as represented on TV. I was wondering if the multiple dating concept was as prevalent as TV makes out of if it’s a middle class urbanite thing, and partner said he didn’t like the idea at all and preferred the “once you ask someone out that’s who you’re dating” method, aka the British method. I told him that that was just a part of our culture to think that way and he looked concerned. I’m sure to him it feels as natural as cheese on a pizza but it is just a concept of our particular society. I think his concern was that I might believe that and want to date someone else. I do believe it, but I am quite happy being monogamous with him. Meritocraticly I believe he justifies this choice.