Angry doesn't come near to describing how I feel

Head of department had a long chat with me last night, arising both from a jokey comment of mine and from some prompting from her secretary.

She reckons that it was L who first raised concerns about my behaviour at work. (I freely confess and have done before that I am a flapper and a shouter - when I feel out of control and stressed about something I tend to get into a real tizz and start yelling. It isn't personal, it isn't aimed at anyone in particular, I just get worked up and the pressure is relieved by dint of a lot of waving of arms, slamming about and swearing a blue streak. Not the most grown-up of ways to behave, and something I have worked hard on not doing any more, with quite a degree of success. A notable degree of success where it matters).

Yes, indeed, it was L who raised concerns with uberboss about my behaviour even before Head of department came on board which was a couple of weeks later.

H of d also reckons that this girl who came on Friday is a long-time friend of L's from Leeds, and that it was not in fact a chance meeting at court one day that lead to L telling her there might be a position going at our place.

H of d also commented that I have made real improvements in my work - when I do something well, my work is excellent. (She inserted the caveat that there are times when it appears that I have just abandoned one or two matters in the past, but that that seems to be resolving). A lot of that was down to inexperience and my basically needing to get to grips with the workload and the job again after so many months out of the profession and a little over a year after I'd last done this type of work.

The upshot is that she would like me to stay. I have her permission to tell uberboss that. She also thinks we need an Asian solicitor who can speak Urdu and Punjabi as we have a lot of Asian clients with little or no English. If it is a choice between me and this girl, I will lose out. But - and this is a big but - she says that there is no reason why we cannot have four fee earners in the department. There is sufficient work to justify that - we are all overworked and struggling to keep up, but the billing hasn't been too good in the last couple of months and we need to work on that. We need to really be bringing in a set figure, and we hit maybe one third to one quarter of that last month. I have several matters approved and awaiting payment, so I am going to check out how much I can expect to see on the fortnightly BACS statements coming up that is attributable to me and see how that goes down with the boss.

In the meantime, I am in a quandary. H of d knows about L and uberboss. She said I should tell L myself that she is on to her - I don't want to be doing that. H of d agrees that that ought to come from her as she doesn't want the situation ongoing. Anyone who can do what she has when she has a husband and two small children is more than capable of doing what I am told she has done, according to H of d.

I'm not sure who to believe. There have been one or two things that himself has commented in the past looked a little weird where L was concerned. I raised a couple of those with H of d and she was gobsmacked.

I don't know. I just don't know.

I have two interviews next week though, I can tell you that for nothing.

Today may very well be interesting.