Yeah, no, um, er ....

Since early April, your humble host has been "transitioning" to a new role in his job. I have to say that this is entirely against my will, but was the decision of my managers (yes - plural, I have lots of managers). I've been in my current role for some five years or so and have built up good relationships with my clients and service providers which, to be honest, makes my job pretty easy.

Nevertheless, my managers have decided I need a new "challenge" and are moving me to a new role - so over the last few weeks I have been assisting my replacement in getting "up to speed" - i.e. training her.

Yes, my replacement is a she meaning that my current department will become an all female department at long last. Over the last few years I've sat and watched while every other male has been made redundant leaving me as the sole representative of my gender. She's a pleasant enough woman, late twenties and just back from maternity leave (for the second time). She's been working part time as she eases herself back into the rigours of employment so the transition has taken a little longer than it really ought to.

The thing that infuriates me, though, is the way she speaks. Ask her something, anything, and she always starts her reply with "yeah, no .....".

"Did you have a nice weekend?"
"Yeah, no ...... we had a barbecue on Saturday"
"Lovely! It was the perfect weather for it!"
"Yeah, no .... it was really sunny"
"Just you and the family?"
"Yeah, no ... we had some friends over too."

And so on. Which is it - yes or no? What is with the indecision? To be fair, this seems to be a common practice among people of that age group - the "yeah, no" along with a rather annoying habit of adding "Aussie" stress to the latter part of a response to make it sound as if they are asking a question back - or somehow expecting you to give your approval.

On top of all that, she intersperses her sentences with copious amounts of "ummms" and "errrs". We all need to think a little sometimes and we all sometimes ummm or errr, but seriously, this is so frequent it drives me potty.

"When you .... ummm .... prepare the ....... errrrr ....... report ....... ummm .... for .......errr..... for the ..... ummm ...."

Jeeeeeeezzzzzzzusssssssss!!!! Just spit it out for God's sake!

Anyway, today I start my new role. So if my posts become a little less frequent I hope you'll understand why. As it is an entirely new role which no one has done before I don't have anyone to help me "get up to speed" - I'm just expected to deliver on it straight away. The reason I used the quote marks for "transitioning" in the first paragraph is that I didn't get any transition time to this new role at all.

I was doing my old job - while training my replacement - up until Friday and today I start a completely new job with no preamble. It's funny how, in business, it's always us old dogs who are expected to learn the new tricks on our own.