Finally Mrs Hardly has come back to the blog.

Tonight sees one of those very rare occasion when I am home alone – Fenton off to Malaysia (yet again), Nancy working at Krusty Burger and babies back in the paternal fold. I finally have the opportunity to write this entry – which has been brewing since Thursday, but rather than the baby-posts which would have occured had I had opportunity, you, dear reader, can have it all in one (very long) fell swoop.

Thursday was one of those days that begin innocently, but end up being quite crappy. The journey to work was quite uneventful. I arrived at Marie Celeste to have the new boss (blog name pending) call me a diminutive of my Real Name – a diminutive which I completely despise. My real name is boganish enough, but this version of it takes it to uber-bogan-ness and I simply loathe being called it (especially by a relative stranger).

Then a whole lot of other work-related yuck happened.

The work day capped off with new boss requesting I prepare afternoon tea-type beverages for Team Freak at our usual meeting – something they do themselves by walking the four steps to the kitchen – and something that does not really fall within my purview.

So I went and had a wee whinge to a couple of trusted confidentes (I can’t remember exactly how many, maybe three?) about how I was having a wee bit of trouble adjusting to new boss and cited those examples. Ersatz-madame-thingy asked if I wanted her to take it further and I responded, “good god no, I’m just sounding off to a friendly ear”.

The fun did not stop there, oh no – after work I sat in the dentist’s chair for 1.5 hours being drilled &etc and paid $1600.00 for the privilege (I swear dishy-dentist ugrades the boat each time one of the Hardly fam enters the office).

Friday: the big Marie Celeste function – attendance manditory. I wasn’t terribly keen because I had an awful lot of work to do and spending the afternoon boozing really isn’t that much fun when it is with colleagues.

New boss was out of the office in the morning and arrived just as we were all about to head off. Unfortunately I had a report running and couldn’t leave until it had completed, so pretty much everyone had left. New boss asked if he could walk to the function with me, not being entirely sure where it was and I agreed.

While we were waiting for my report to finish, hanging around my desk, new boss says, “I’m sorry I called you “diminutive of your Real Name” yesterday.”

Shocked, I responded, “that’s okay, I don’t like being called that, but if you’d made a practice of it, I would have mentioned something”.

Then … the bombshell: “I’m also sorry I asked you to do the beverages…”.

I choked out a “WHAT????”, followed up with a “Who the hell told you about that?”

“The HR Manager”

Cut to Mrs Hardly standing, mouth agape, eyes wide, trying desperately not to swear and oh-so-badly wanting to hide under the desk.

I tried to recover and jabbered something about just venting and that it wasn’t really a problem and that if actually I had a problem I would have come to him and that I hoped he didn’t think I was the sort of person that would go running off dobbing to HR for such a piddling issue and a whole lot of other stuff that I can’t remember but I must have talked for about three minutes without drawing a single breath and ended up by saying that if I found out who the dobber was they would be getting a whole lot of Hardly-wrath.

So then we had to walk across the city – together – and, yeah, that was comfortable.

Walking past the QVB new boss asked me not to track down or confront the dobber. I said I didn’t think that would work for me because I had a deep need to know who the mole was. He again requested I do nothing, I said I would think about it.

Then, just to add to my unbelievable fun – I had to sit next to him all through lunch. But that wouldn’t have been nearly enough discomfort for me, would it? The HR Manager came and sat at out table too! Cool, huh?

Fortunately there was much alcohol and other people at the table I could chat to. I had a very lengthy chat to the professor who almost caused me more grief by loudly enquiring, “so who stopped you from moving to sit in our department?”.

I then made it known to a select few about my agonies of earlier in the day and they were suitably aghast.

I have narrowed the possibilities down to two. One of them is ersatz-madame-thingy, who I adore, and given that I asked her not to pursue it, going to HR is a huge betrayal. The other person I cannot remember if I told.

The whole thing makes me feel ill.

So, over to you anonymous internet people. What would YOU do in my position? Given that you would be stupid enough to confide in colleagues in the first place, which of course you are all probably not.

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For non-Australian readers, there is not much worse in Australia than being a dobber. From the Macquarie Dictionary book of slang:
dob
2. dob in, a. to betray, report (someone) as for a misdemeanour.
3. dob on, to inform against; betray. [dialect variant of dab to set down abruptly, from Middle English dabben]

dobber
noun an informer; telltale.