The end draws near. Or does it?

A little bit more on the saga of my redundancy today. This week should technically be my last week in this job because, on the recommendation of my manager, I have booked two weeks of holiday from the end of this week to cover up to my eventual leaving date. This should be cause for celebration then?

Unfortunately not. I believe, after she proposed a leaving date of 10/02/06, my manager asked me to book this holiday in good faith, in order for it to act as a safeguard to cover any mucking about concerning the two 'required' weeks between leaving interviews as I described the other day. However, the final decision is not up to her and I am still told my leaving date is coming, but nobody can give me an exact date.

I am fuming. I have already thrown a strop today after a chain of mildly irritating events that started with my computer crashing for the umpteenth time. My line manager, apparently in a wildly misguided attempt to placate me, said if was worried about leaving I could always resign, not passing 'GO' and not receiving my redundancy money. Gee, thanks for pointing that out. Fortunately I managed to stop short of telling her, very plainly and in front of the whole office, to fuck off. It was a close call. Getting sacked for misconduct at this late stage would be unfortunate.

After being told the company would be sympathetic to releasing people who were able to get other work once we were 'nearing the end', it has now descended into this kind of thing:

"Well, we have to prove you are actually 'redundant' before we can let you go which means you have to spend your last few weeks mucking about sorting out and handing over loads of crap. In fact, all the crap you could have been sorting out and handing over properly during the last few months if we could have been bothered to organise it better.

Therefore, even though you stated you would like to be one of the first out of the door - and even though we have already let two of your colleagues go - we feel it important to muck you about, increase your already high levels of stress and absolutely positively just agree all of this 'off the record' until it's definite. BTW, don't bother complaining to anyone because, if you do, the 'powers that be' probably won't say 'yes'. But hey, cheer up - we really are on your side!"

Aaaaaaaaargh! Make it stop. Now. Please.