Making me look bad in front of my Mum

My Mum's never worked in an office and, no matter how hard I try to explain, simply doesn't understand what I do.

Not that I do anything particularly special or important and it can be quite boring to talk about...

But I have felt a bit miffed the last half dozen times I've gone through the exhaustive public service recruitment process (even if the last three times it was to keep a job I was already doing) when Mum hasn't seemed that impressed when they chose ME over ALL THOSE OTHERS.

I say "Look Mum, I'm called a Manager and I have an office with a door that shuts and a window with a view and they've paid for me to go to uni and they're letting me do this special thing because they like me, they really like me."

And she only asks "When are you going to be important enough for work to give you a mobile phone?"

This makes me sad because they just DON'T DO THAT HERE - unless you're the IT manager who gets paid to come and fix the network when it breaks at 4:00 am and even he might use his own phone.

Today I caught up with a mate who was so worried about our restructure that she went and got a job somewhere else doing similar stuff for roughly the same money. They gave her a Blackberry on the very first day.

I really hope my Mum doesn't find out. I'll never hear the end of it.