Make sure you collect your air miles.
Especially silly when footballs coming home so England will be the best place to witness it. Including Qatar.
I'm a twit
There are actually only 4 South American qualifiers this time and I'm only visting two of them, but rest assured if Ecuador win Group A I will be vibing in the streets of Guayaquil for their last 16 clash.
We really do need a cause of death sweepstake. Kidnapping, heatstroke, Yellow Fever, Brazilian Banana Spider, the possibilities are endless.
I thought we said no more get rich quick schemes?
In a welcome break from all that, I went out for lunch with the Arab (my turn to pay) and he told me how Mossad have agents posted throughout Iraq taking out sets of traffic lights, because they want Arab lands to remain chaotic and prevent the Iraqi people from 'learning how to queue'.
We've already had a massive barney between him and Barney today, and you can guess who came out on the winning side of that one. Barney has been running sales to Cyprus for a few years, but the Arab, bored and not understanding that August is a quiet month, wanted to take the territory off him. The key decision-maker: the Arab's dad, so over it has gone to Umayyad control, leaving Barney whining about being 'marginalised'.
I mean, that is proper harsh on Barney.
I'm a twit
Fuck Barney, he had it coming.
Barney screwed Barney.
Yet more reasons why Barney doesn't deserve Ł44k a year.
Mini Israel - Palastine confilct
Partition the office.
The South Africans are running the gaff now. Apartheid is a legitimate option.
Meanwhile Baron Jim is swanning about the Amazon basin telling lads of a darker complexion to build more tractors or he'll have their wooden huts knocked down. Disgusting, really.
Floyd your job sounds like total shit.
It's fine, but they'll need to start paying me more soonish.
There are big upsides to it, such as almost never having a meeting.
It sounds like they just save all your meetings up and then make you do the whole lot in two weeks whilst trekking around South America.
Not sure that's preferable.
It's definitely preferable. I'd rather smash that shit out whilst in holiday mode and being treated as a guest in an exotic country than having a weekly catch up with Jess who has had so much going on this week that she totally forgot.
Ten minutes of awkward meetings versus babysitting a boss who speaks no word of Spanish for three weeks? I'd take the meetings.
I have entire days filled with back to back meetings. But not sure I’d trade that for a tractor ride in a Peruvian field.
Are they uplifting your pay (significantly) for this? Or is it a bait and hook for you on the promise of future opportunities?
I'd take the trip. Life is for living.
Ugh, come back from my week off to an email asking our whole team to fill out a survey - what is our charity's purpose, what is our teams purpose, what should our team strive for going forward and what values should our team live by.
If I was less of a coward I'd be tempted to put variations of "to pay me money" for the first few, and hustle, loyalty, respect for the last one. This stuff is so cringe but the big boss of our team lives for this shit - she spent about 30 minutes sharing "inspirational mantras" from other organizations and asking us to think of our own at our recent away day. I thought away days were for paintballing or some other team building bullshit.
When you're already bending over backwards with no more money then there will never be more money.
The power play would be to hand notice in a month before the trip. As presumably the only competent Spanish speaker, the leverage will be great.
The two sales managers I work for (total about Ł3.5 million in annual business) are 69 and 79 respectively. European guy is a contractor and they'll probably get rid. South American guy is 79 years old, can barely walk and should have been retired for 15 years. They have verbally committed to me succeeding the South American guy - now obviously verbal commitments mean jack shit, but if they're going to spend however many thousand to send me round South America, they obviously aren't averse to the idea of me succeeding one of these much more senior roles.
Now, I'm not the sort to march into the director's office and demand they put these people out to pasture and promote me, so I'm happy to wait it out. However, I feel there is a much better chance of getting a decent promotion here, with nearly 5 years of industry and customer knowledge, than there would be if I upped sticks.
There's worse places to go than South America if you're after a hitman.
"Welcome to Bogata, 47. Our intelligence tells us Mr. van den Klerck is in the Rosary Suite entertaining guests. I'll leave you to prepare."
I was in the 'fuck this job' camp for most of yesterday morning. The spinning plates nature of the job is starting to take the piss. However, just like Jimmy, I'm wary of moving. Not for the possibility of upward mobility but the more likely fact I'll just be doing the same shit in the same circumstances for a different employer.
Rather than fix our air conditioning, the building owners (BAE/Royal Navy) kept sending us more and more plug-in air conditioners and desk fans, and now the electrics have died so we've been sent home indefinitely whilst they frantically try to find a solution. What a tremendous example of civil service thinking.
Being off work is so good.
Gonna be miserable on bank holiday Monday, knowing I’m back in on Tuesday after over two weeks off.
I'm a twit
Of all the weird national characteristics of my customers (French huffiness, Spanish cluelessness, Polish bluntness, Belgian rudeness, German inability to think outside straight lines, British entitled moaning, South American dallying and indecision) I think the weirdest is the absolute refusal of all Irish people to tell you who they are on the phone.
I guess over there people just know who people are, so it isn't a thing. Bizarre.
What, even when you ask?
Not that it surprises me. In my job if I'm getting a call from somebody reporting an issue I always say my name and ask who's speaking and the amount of people who don't listen because they're just waiting for their turn to talk is annoying.
This is something that's bugged me recently too. Been contacting a load of window places about getting some new windows and they'd just ring me back from an unknown mobile number and be like "Hello, you were looking for me?" and I have to ask them who the hell they are. Like if you're a business surely the first thing you'd do is identify yourself when you're calling back potential customers?
Unless of course the window operation is a front for seedy activity.
It’s the obsession here to know who everyone is and what they’re doing that has everyone on the defensive. I went in recently to see about a new van and the first thing the salesman did was ask who I was, who the company was, and why did I want a new van. So I just did a 180 and got one elsewhere.
We just found one of our engineers dead at his home Been off sick for 2 days, but today wasn't responding to texts - we sent a guy round and found him on his bed. Suspected heart attacked at 39.
Earlier this year we lost 30yr old to cancer.
Currently listening to a foreign locum having an argument with a recruitment agency - which is not his recruitment agency and he acknowledges it's not his recruitment agency - about why they can't give him information about his pay slip.
He's now moved on to getting annoyed at them because they can't give him the name and direct phone number for the specific person he needs to speak to at his own agency.
Having phoned his own agency and sorted the issue within about 5 seconds, he's now ringing random people in the hospital telling them he doesn't want to pay mess fees and use the mess...he's making this call from the mess which they've informed him he's not paying for.
The mess? Are you military doctors?