Happy Muslim Mama

After the intentions in my last post I had the strangest day today. I went to work with the intention of keeping my head down and just working hard and not giving anyone an excuse to get on my case. I had my one-to-one with my manager and had hoped to talk about development and opportunities.

That wasn’t how it turned out. The senior manager who annoyed me the day before seemed to have got it into her head that I had a bad attitude towards other people and towards work. She gave four or five examples of comments or actions that I felt had been misconstrued totally – a joke, or an attempt to stick up for myself when I felt I was being dumped on or made to work too-late hours. I was wary because of things I had heard about her previously which I don’t want to repeat (because I don’t know for certain and don’t want to backbite her and also because I don’t want to get “duced”!). Anyway, I was deeply upset. I have never, ever had my attitude or work questioned before – I have always worked as hard as I played, it is a work ethic which is so strong in my family and very evident in my sisters. We all complain that we get trouble because we work so hard we inadvertently show people up.

My line manager is wonderful and tried to stick up for me but encouraged me to keep my head down and just do what I am told. I was just too shocked to discuss development, or opportunities by this point. I had hoped to salvage the senior manager’s view of me by just keeping my head down, but I was still upset especially because there were four vacancies in my team which were the ones I wanted to try for, but instead of opening them up for open competition, the office decided to hire temps to cover the post. The team is also getting four graduate trainees to hand projects to. This means that the rest of us, who are also graduates and also have ten years upwards of experience have to watch whilst the best work goes to them. Couple this with rumours that our service will be targeted for the next round of money saving reviews and I was wondering what I was doing here.

A few colleagues heard what had happened and expressed their shock and anger. I have been doing the work of my seniors without any extra pay or recognition as it is my habit not to say no to work and because in the past this is how I have progressed. From preparing a business case for a £3.6 billion project and developing measures of success for our borough’s Olympic preparation service, to printing off documents for people and taking minutes of meetings, I have not said no to anything and I have taken the work with a smile, starting each day at 7.30am.

By lunch time I was a bit more philosophical and remembered my husband’s advice that Allah (SWT) provides and that nothing happens that he doesn’t decree and that no-one can harm us if Allah (SWT) wills us to be safe from them.

A little later I met my previous manager in the loo. She asked me if I would consider coming back to her team, at an increased grade and pay and doing completely different work. I was shocked but said I would consider it. She encouraged me saying she really, really wanted me in her team. The new jobs in her team are being advertised tomorrow, I feel like someone has really been taking care of me when I am down subhan’Allah. I will be having a look at those job adverts tomorrow insh’Allah.