The last time we eat as a team,
six months ago, is the first time we meet, five new KM staff and two new MM
staff. I memorise all the names around the table at a swish little basement
place off Flinders Lane. The next time we are all together—not for lunch—is a
week later at our employer’s staff conference in Adelaide and I remember all
the names.
Because we all go on the road
to present mental health and well-being professional development workshops across
Victoria we see little of each other. Fourteen of us share our Collingwood office,
but five is a crowd on any given day. Some days it’s just the two admins and
one project officer.
We’re not all ex-teachers.
Comrade R, the KM co-ordinator, is a social worker, male. Two KM project officers
are speechies, female, small. Mister T is a psych student. Two KM staff live
and work in Ballarat. Most live in the inner suburbs; only Comrade D and I live
on the fringes, she in the south, me in the east. The new KM admin comes in
each day from faraway Harkaway.
Before and after lunch I organise
my desk, labelling countless folders of PowerPoint slides and notes, tagging
suspension files, sifting and sorting documents, filling my recycle box with
notes bequeathed to me by previous workers dating back to 2002. My closest
colleague, Comrade S, has crap all over her desk and shelf, claims to knows
what it all is and where to find anything. I believe her.
Tomorrow I tackle a myriad
files and documents strewn across my computer desktop and in the half dozen
flash drives my employer has burdened me with. After six months I think I know
what is important and the system I need to file it.
But lunch is today’s highlight,
fish patties in green curry, sweat running down my forehead, a paper towel
mopping the back of my neck. I don’t need to memorise anything, just to find
out a little bit more about my colleagues.
Rock on.
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