The Analog to Digital Converter

When I left university back in the early 1980s, my first job was as Materials Manager in the Computer Department of Siemens London. I know! We Cupcakes are full of surprises.

Actually Siemens London was nowhere near London but in Sunbury in Middlesex. Also I had never been technical in my entire life and had studied mainly politics and history at university, but I had also studied German and apparently that qualified me for a job in this multinational German technology company.

One thing that I didn't mention at the interview but which probably really did qualify me for the job was that all through my childhood, I had spent most evenings sitting with my Dad in the workshop he had made in our garage. We didn't have a car, so my Dad, who was a hobby carpenter among other things, filled our garage with wood, formica (formica is the material of the future, my Dad said) and a workbench that he himself had constructed from pinewood with various interesting technical gadgets attached. He went to carpentry evening classes once a week and learned how to make all kinds of furniture, with which he proceeded to fill our house.

Now my Dad was a bit of a dreamer, not so much of an organizer or a manager type. So mostly he spent his spare time designing furniture with his propelling pencil (in the future there will only be propelling pencils, said my Dad) on pieces of spare paper and explaining to me precisely how he was going to implement the construction and make all the parts fit together. He was very heavy on the details and spent ages perfecting his dovetail joints, which merged together like those of a master craftsman. The only trouble was that a lot of his furniture remained unfinished - unpainted, uncovered, just the - often cheap - bare wood. It didn't bother my Dad. I think he looked at it and simply saw the perfect beauty of the design and the construction (especially the perfect dovetail joints), not how it looked to the consumer (me), who wanted it to look pretty as well. He was a real technician.

So when I started at Siemens Sunbury, I guess that was mainly why I just fitted in with all the technician guys I worked together with. I was way younger than most of them, but I suppose that made it seem more normal for me, like they were kind of Dad figures for me. The technicians' workshop was in the room right next to my office, and I had to go through it to visit the bathroom, as well as to get to the stores where all my technical parts were located, plus the big Siemens Sunbury stores, which was like walking through a portal into a huge new magical universe when you opened the door behind the bathroom. Opening the door into the Siemens Sunbury stores from our offices was a bit like walking into Narnia from the back of the magic wardrobe.

A Full-Time Job

This is the fourth episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: Siegfried and the Professor

After a couple of weeks, I realized that the part-time job was not going to cover my costs. This is partly due to the high taxes in Germany, but mostly due to the fact that under German law, I still have to pay private health insurance. It’s so complicated. One of the main reasons I took a job as an employee was so that the employer would contribute to my massive private health insurance costs. In fact, the university’s HR Department promised me on the phone that they would take over almost half of these costs, as is customary. After two weeks, it turned out that the guy who assured me of that had got the facts totally wrong! Instead of paying what was discussed, it turns out that they will only pay about one-eighth. The net pay is so low that it makes a big difference. Plus, there are higher travel costs than I expected and more tax. Quite literally, it is not worth me doing this job at all!! I am left with so little net that I could be earning more by staying at home and doing a couple of small translation projects every month.

There is no other solution at the moment but to take on a full-time job in order to survive. However, I am not convinced that, even with a full-time job as a secretary here, I will be earning enough to be living a half-way comfortable life. I simply hadn’t foreseen this situation and to be honest, the HR Department has screwed up a lot.

Siegfried and the Professor

This is the third episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: Not Moving Forward

Nobody explained much to me about anything when I first got here. For a little while, I thought Kurt was the Head of our entire Institute, which has around a hundred people, most of them men. On the second day, Kurt introduced me to a guy who I assumed just happened to be standing around in the secretariat, with something along the lines of, “This is the big man who knows everything”. It was a bit puzzling as the “big man” was only a little taller than me (I am not tall!) and himself did not expand on the everything it was about which he was so knowledgeable. He showed very little interest in me but did join us for lunch, where by chance I sat next to him. I was very polite and tried to engage him in conversation, with very little success. He did mention that he used to live in Paris and had done his PhD there, whereupon I told him I had also studied for one semester in Paris, but he showed literally no interest and did not respond. Looking back, I guess he was wondering what kind of a secretary studies in Paris!

A couple of weeks later we had a meeting with the entire Institute and this guy was moderating it. Afterwards I googled his name, Hagen Eichner, and found out that he was actually the Head. Of the whole Institute. Bingo, there was a photo of him in a gown and everything. Boy did I feel embarrassed that I didn’t know he was actually the boss! According to the bio he is going to be 48 soon. He is smartly dressed and very clean-cut, but apart from that I have ascertained nothing about him at all. It didn’t help that he wasn’t interested in me at lunch. I kind of closed down after that.

Not Moving Forward

This is the second episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

Previous episode: A New Job

In life, I have learned, if you are part of a large company, or in my case, a large German public sector institution (several thousand people work at this campus), your entire existence there is determined by your immediate superior. If something goes wrong, you really only have that guy that you can talk to about it. You would not want to go over their head and complain, nor would you want to become embroiled in discussions about your boss with other employees, as it will always get back to them eventually. So your immediate boss very much determines your life, career and circumstances, and ultimately happiness, within the organization.

While I like Kurt a lot and feel very much supported by him, it is still puzzling me why he has virtually no work for me and I am beginning to wonder if anyone else knows that I actually have nothing to do – apart from the occasional proofread, as I mentioned before. I know that I’m only supposed to be a secretary here (which of course I’m totally over-qualified for, having spent most of my life working in informatics) but I think even a real secretary would have limits in this situation. I have literally reached the stage where I am embarrassed, ashamed, and yes – even scared – to mention this state of affairs to a single person, either inside or outside the entire Institute. It just doesn’t seem right. I keep asking myself if I should be working on something that I’m not aware of, or if I haven’t explored things enough. Kurt has explained very little to me – he’s shown me the project’s website in English, and I have digested it and made linguistic corrections. And he’s given me access to all his project e-mails for the last few months, to read – but they mostly seem to just contain inconsequential, insubstantial discussions about minor topics between Kurt and the other two project heads in our partner institutions. And without further in-depth explanation, I can’t really make head or tail of them.

When I first met Kurt at the interview, I was a little taken aback by his seemingly awkward manner of talking, his fixed way of staring at me unblinkingly and his slightly jerky and awkward movements and walk. In the meantime, I’ve become more used to it. And because he is kind to me, and because he chose me for the job, I feel fairly confident with him. I am not the world’s most confident person, and despite whatever show I try to put on for people, I am really quite shy. So it took a lot of nerve for me to pluck up the courage after about two weeks and tell him that I had nothing at all to do.

I should explain that I don’t actually meet with Kurt every day. Only maybe once or maximum twice a week, when he comes to my office. I guess he thinks that is obligatory, that he at least sees/talks to his secretary/personal assistant for about 20 minutes a week, just to show he is interested in the fact that she is there at all. Kind of an “alibi” visit. I mean, I see Kurt most lunchtimes, because I have chosen to go to the canteen with the group – we meet every day at precisely 11:37 a.m. outside Kurt’s office – his stipulation – but if I decided to bring lunch with me from home and warm it up in the microwave, or chop up a salad, as some people (the other secretaries) do, I wouldn’t see either the group or Kurt at all on a regular basis. In fact, I would probably see almost nobody at all, the entire morning. I would be like a ghost, flitting in and out and not doing anything!

And what happens in these little meetings? Just about nothing. A lot of hot air is blown around and Kurt makes much of the one or two tiny tasks I have that week. He can waffle on profoundly for ten minutes about a two-line e-mail of no consequence that I have to write. Or he will use pompous words and flamboyant phrases to describe insignificant events that might or might not happen should certain measures might or might not be implemented, all the while nodding to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and staring at me with his unblinking eyes. It is a superpower of academics, I think. To make you believe that the subject matter is of vital importance and that they absolutely own it.

Anyway, Kurt’s reaction to my telling him that I had nothing at all to do was to make a little kind of “Mh” noise in his throat, then turn on his heel and march out of my room without a word, with his awkward stiff walk. He also closed the door, which I always have open, and I called out, “Please leave the door open –” but my words were just gone with the wind. This first time, I was surprised at his rudeness, but then I thought, Maybe he didn’t understand me properly. Maybe it’s my English accent in German. So a few days later when he paid me one of his flying visits, I said the same thing again: “Kurt, I’ve got nothing to do”. I thought he would understand this truly hellish situation, sitting around for four hours a day staring at my screen or out of the window, by myself in this room, isolated in a completely different building from my group, not interacting with anyone. But Kurt just made his little “Mh” noise again and turned around and marched out of the room, with me calling “Please leave the d–” and my words being lost in the ether while he closed the door on me again. It was almost as if he were trying to close me out of his head, or as if he thought if he closed the door with me inside, I wouldn’t exist for a while. And quite honestly, that’s how I feel. As if I don’t exist.

After my third attempt to convey my desperation, I extended my usual complaint with the addendum, “Please, could you give me something to do?”

This time, Kurt stared at me with his unblinking, emotionless eyes and snapped, “Then do something that moves you forward!”, in a cold, almost aggressive manner, and turned on his heel and marched, head down and stiff, out of the room, almost slamming the door behind him and closing me out of his life and possibly his conscience yet again.

I don’t even know what that sentence means! I will not be asking him again.

I have developed a method for coping with this situation. As usual, I continue to get up at 6:30 a.m. I perform all my routines: shower, dressing, breakfast, makeup, nails, etc. I make sure I look as nice as possible every day, even though almost no-one is going to see me. I leave the house a few minutes before 8 a.m. and drive the 35-40 minutes to work. The drive is always stressful – a lot of traffic and congestion at this time of the morning. I usually arrive just after 8:30 a.m. at work, having been up for just over two hours, and in peak functioning mode. I fetch a coffee and then start to wind down all my engines, which in the meantime I can do pretty quickly, because I have been practicing it for weeks. I bring myself to a level where I am completely composed and serene, and where I am expecting nothing, absolutely nothing at all to unruffle or provoke me. Effectively, I am in a state where I am not really capable of any kind of challenging work. I would go so far as to say that I am not really capable of any kind of work at all! I am content and relaxed, and I can sit there for the next four hours and just do nothing, if necessary. Essentially, I am almost in a trance. It is my survival mechanism.

Next episode: Siegfried and the Professor

A New Job

This is the first episode in the series "Mystery of the Missing Research".

So now I am working mornings as a secretary at a technological institute in our city’s university. It’s one of the better universities in Germany. It has two campuses, one in the center of the city and one on a campus north of the city out in the middle of nowhere in the forest. I also applied for a job at the city campus, but was only offered this one in the forest. It is about a 40-minute drive for me and it has taken a while to get used to the stress of the journey. They have put me in an office in a separate building, not the one in which either my boss or my team are located. I sit completely on my own in this room and apart from saying Hello in the mornings, nobody speaks to me. It’s a bit of a mystery to me why I am in solitary confinement over here when my boss and team are over there. Apart from that, I have almost nothing to do! I’m certainly not being a secretary.

Except that after a couple of weeks, they realized I could write. And so, since then, I occasionally get scientific academic papers to correct in English. Most of the people here are German of course and they are writing their papers in English. I think it’s a pretty well-known fact how academics live to publish their papers in academic journals. That’s their whole raison d’être. So they are really happy to have a native speaker like myself to proofread them. I also get a little translation work to do – German to English – which I enjoy. All of this work might keep me busy for about five hours a week on average, and I have to be here for twenty hours. So for about fifteen hours a week I have to pretend to work. That is a feat and a half, seriously. That’s even more difficult than actually working.

Of course, my pay grade doesn’t match the work I’m doing, when I’m actually working. I found out that I’m getting paid a lot less than the three other secretaries here, who don’t appear to have one academic qualification between them, while I have a university degree. But I don’t care. Sitting around all day doing nothing at all is the worst thing. I spend the morning here, then I go home and research or write articles, or do translation work, which still pays relatively well, in comparison. Usually, I work at the weekends too.

My boss, Kurt, is gay. He made this quite clear on Day One. It makes things easier, I think. Kurt is from Dresden, in the old East Germany, and he was born and grew up there when it still had a wall round it. I can’t figure out to what extent, if at all, this has made an impact on his character. His partner lives in Bern, and Kurt joins him at the weekends, so he has gone from one extreme to the other really. Communism to Swissness. I find him very fair and I feel that he likes me. I have told all my friends, Kurt is the best boss I ever had in my life. Except he has no work for me.

My friends keep asking, why did they hire you when they have no work for you? I say, I think maybe I am just an outlet for some money they need to spend. Just an item in the balance sheet. That’s why they parked me over here in solitary confinement and hoped I would just sit here like a tiny quiet mouse. I guess I look like that kind of a person!

I don’t know what will happen when they find out I’m not.

Next episode: Not Moving Forward