Farewell to the sorcerer’s apprentice

There are saints who wouldn’t have the patience to put up with me for more than half an hour, but an amazing apprentice has just survived a whole year.

I’ve never had the word ‘Manager’ in my job title, and for a very good reason – I’m the kind of anally-retentive, OCD-ish, sociopath that tends to alarm people at a distance so great, you can only just make out my threatening scowl using binoculars. And that’s before the true extent of my shirt collection becomes apparent.

Imagine my surprise when I suddenly found myself with ‘staff’ just before Christmas last year, after the departure of my own manager.

True, I had been doing a large amount of the training involved in having an apprentice, but I’ve spent the vast majority of my adult life letting someone else tell me what needs to be done, attend meetings, talk politely to others about priorities, deal with the paperwork and smile at me tolerantly whilst I point out what’s wrong with everything and why it’s all not fair. And tidy up after me when I’ve made a mess of things.

Actually, now that I come to think about it, that largely covers my childhood and married life too.

My first act of responsibility was breaking the terrible news that I was now in charge to my youthful apprentice. She took it surprisingly well, although I did detect fear, alarm, panic and a hint of horror momentarily reveal themselves before her remarkable default setting of calm, composed and enormously helpful kicked back in.

During our time together, I’ve taught her everything I know about Marketing, which meant we had to find something else to talk about after lunch on my first day as boss.

Together we’ve managed to do some objective setting, coped with the tricky world of appraisals, and throughout I’ve been surprised and delighted about how lucky I am to have had a first-ever member of staff who was so thoroughly nice, helpful and talented.

In fact, probably her only failing has been the inability to make coffee on anything like a regular basis, but hey – after some office chums got her a mug with “Keep Calm and get Pete to make a brew” on it, I can’t really blame her.

She’s survived the bitter chill of an office in winter with the insulating qualities of a super-thin piece of tissue paper, and hasn’t threatened to kill me, even though I’ve been the only other person in the room for almost all her time with us. Even when I played Gary Numan CDs.

And now it’s over – by the time you read this, she will have finished her Apprenticeship and moved on to pastures new.

Learning new skills, having to look at things in a different way, figuring out how to do stuff you’ve never done before... these are all things I’ve learnt with her valuable help and assistance. (There was some work stuff too, I seem to remember.)

Thanks Kate. You’re a star. Best wishes for the future.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 5th of September 2014, where it was retitled 'Good luck to a brave apprentice'. You can view the version used by the paper on their website here

I was so busy preparing for Kate's departure, that I hadn't actually considered how I would feel. I'm usually the last person to leave the office, and it wasn't until I was looking at an empty desk and chair and realised it would still be empty on Monday, that a sudden attack of sadness showed up.

Guess I'll have to get used to that.

(Tunes tonight from the 5 CD box set "A Piano: The Collection" by Tori Amos. Tuneful, intense and scary. Sometimes at the same time.)

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