The only two options.
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The only two options.
Pretty much, yeah. I don't know if you've ever worked in an office, but chilly hostility because you don't agree with all someone's life choices isn't the best way of being collegiate.
There are definitely options between actively choosing to socialise with somebody and hostility.
You're going to end up helping him cover up a crime to avoid the awkwardness of saying no.
That said in his case that might just be the best survival option, he'd only shank you and bury you with the other body for dishonourable behaviour.
Will you two fuck off, the stories are tremendous and worth any peril caused.
Plot twist: The Arab is the Martial Arts teacher that stole Magics wife.
This ends with The Arab standing over a body and asking Jimmy to take the fall.
Or he discovers this thread and you get elbowed.
And jimmy going ahead with it to avoid the awkward confrontation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
He is clearly the Jez to Jimmy's Mark. They need each other
When Jimmy finally gets the keys to South America and has The Arab as his number 2 :drool:
It's going to be Arabian sex crimes on tour that Jim will be forced to out himself to escape being dragged into when the police come calling.
Are you ever in contact outside of work?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Only when he texts me about the Barshelona (sic) score.
Shame they're made up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
Don't know if it's just me but I imagine him looking and sounding like Alexei Sayle in the Young Ones Era.
Today I've whittled a proposed action plan down from 110 actions to 58.
Now I've the fun task of assigning each to an identified desired outcome.
Can I set my out of office yet? :happycry:
yesterday was my last day at the old place, just had to go and hand over my tobacco stained laptop and fob and stuff. oh, I had also managed to accumulate 4 locker keys, and had to spend about 29 minutes looking for the one which matched up to the one the number had fallen off. which was empty. twat.
am now on a surprisingly not shit Avanti train to euston to have my documents scanned and receive my new laptop from the new place. then off until the 3rd. :cool:
There was a rare and very brief meeting today between the boss (who I went to Spain with) and the Arab. It involved, as I was scanning the boss out of the building, the Arab making a bee line for him and doing a ridiculously over-wrought hello-and-goodbye that went on for about three minutes. As he walked away the boss said to me: "Bloody hell, that bloke must drive you mad". I lolled. The Arab had lingered behind a door, seen me lolling, and asked me what the boss had said. I told him and he seethed about it for the next hour.
I'm logged off and done until next year. Roll on the Glühwein and stollen.
I’m in tomorrow but I’ve set myself up real handy with a follow up from earlier in the week down in Clare that will have be home at midday latest.
I've already checked the earliest I can finish with my abundance of flexi time and I'll be done by midday until the 4th.
The fucker just cancelled and I'll have to go to the office now. I'll be delivering fucking bottles all day in the Dublin Christmas exodus traffic now :(
I'm working Christmas day.
I've just got back from my last home visit of the year, featuring a chronically ill and very lonely, depressed man that has been let down by every support agency in the country. I'm visiting again on the 3rd of January with a Welfare Officer, but I wouldn't be surprised if he has done himself in by then.
Fa lalalala, lalalalaaaaaa.
Did you not tell him to have a wank and a festive pot noodle?
The care industry seems rife with good natured people put under so much stress that they stop giving a shit. Social workers do fuck all.
Social workers are damned if they do and damned if they dont. If they take someone's kids off them they are wankers and if they don't they are negligent.
Nah, they're just shit. I have lost all respect for them over the last couple of years.
I have reported:
A blind lady living with her schizophrenic son, self meditating with alcohol and cannabis. She can't go upstairs, he has destroyed it.
A registered paedophile living with an 11 year old boy and his alcoholic and diabetic mother (that spends most of the day asleep). Said paedophile also did the school run for his neighbour (that didn't know his status and neither did the school).
A woman living completely alone that called me 4 times in one day panicking about the same letter, each time completely unaware that we had already spoken.
I got the same form letter in reply every time. Zero follow up.
I also struggle to feel anything positive towards social workers.
my dad forced my mum to be a sole breadwinner while he spent 2 years training to be a social worker, then within about a year he was sent down for 6 months for stealing a load of money from some old vulnerable people he was looking after to fund his speed addiction, so personally I'm a big fan!
Classic.
The French company I work for announced the sale of it's UK division to the Americans (instead of the whole global company) on Christmas eve via email. In French. With a scan of a French newspaper article that you can't copy and paste to translate. Assuming the entire group got the email. It's not been followed up internally but there's UK articles about it. Fucking French.
Use the camera in google translate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
Any imminent risk of restructure and redundancy?Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
My promotion came through in this months pay and they back paid me for November too. :drool:
No more than usual. Freaks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
This is a good take:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/20...ram_publishing
Godspeed. The company I work for got bought out 12 months ago and fuck me it's been a painful experience since. I leave at the end of April and it cannot come soon enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
Got something else lined up or is that way too far off?
Hopefully an FM save with TTH
On the money.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don
Back to work tomorrow. :cry:
Same. Including a home visit with the suicidal man I visited before Christmas. I haven't had any failed calls from management, so I'm hoping that means he's not done anything silly.
Same here. It's a TD day at least. Easing back in by being bored to tears when I could be doing something useful.
My work phone ran out of battery on Christmas Eve so I’m looking forward to the shit that awaits. In theory there should be nothing because everyone has been off due to us being on shutdown but I’ve learnt to expect the unexpected.
I'm on the hook to train someone this week. They wanted us to start it last week which was never going to happen.
I’ve just driven 3 hours and 20 minutes to be told I’m not needed for at least 6 hours.
Disabling notifications for 'reactions' on Teams was one of my top 5 decisions of 2022.
Annoying you can't disable the chat sound without also disabling the incoming call sound though.
Started the year with the first grown man on the phone in tears because some piston rings aren't available until next week.
'But I need them now! Machine is down! This is costing me thousands! *voice cracks*'
'They're still at the port, what do you want me to do?'
'Can't you help us!!!?!?!?! I can't even wait until this afternoon, let alone next week! *sob*'
A remarkably emotional industry, this, sometimes.
Does the boss know? Because presumably if he asked you to go there and fashion some new ones with your bare hands you’d be on the way already.
No chance for a set of 6 piston rings, chicken feed. We're a wholesaler, so end users come to us for the prices but then cry salt tears when we're out of stock. They could get these rings from any local distributor in an hour, but for five/ten times the price.
Bodyclock shifting by a good couple of hours, at least, over the last 10 days or whatever has made this morning a real struggle. Need to keep calm and remember only 35 or so more years to go.
I changed one of my passwords on Friday. I didn't write it down right and the helpdesk number I need has vanished. I am completely locked out of our systems now. The IT guys on staff don't appear to have it. Contacted them an hour ago and have had no response.
Accidental day off :cool:
Well, the dude is still alive, but he'd probably be better of if he wasn't. Poor bastard.
An absolutely bizarre start to the new year from the Arab. He's just gone around the office inviting people to submit their guesses as to what his December electricity bill came to, with the closest winning a prize of £20. I guessed £309, but the real answer was £654, with the Indian guy collecting the prize.
Now he's talking about how his jeans cost £120. I think he's having a meltdown of some kind.
How the fuck has he spent £654? I'm doing a steady £6-7 a day at the moment and that's with the heating on 24/7 due to having a baby.
Cryptomining?
Did not expect the Arab to wear jeans to work.
Bet they look wet.
Anticipated most people not being back to work until tomorrow leading to relatively quiet and relaxing days.
Turned out to be exactly the case. :cool:
Also had a major thing I wanted/needed to do today, and we might’ve just gone and done it on day 2. If it works, I’m coasting the rest of the year.
Also, my job title now has “senior” which makes me feel much better about being extremely bald.
First day back and been landed with two full-day of negotiations for a maintenance contract for a fleet of planes (didn't realize 737s were still a thing). Obviously all super urgent, written in technical gobbledygook and completely new to us/me, so that's fun.
The return from Christmas also means recruiters are back en masse, so my LinkedIn inbox has been busy today. I've been contemplating a move in-house and have been offered an interview for a fairly interesting company, but undecided if I'll take the leap, partly because only been in this job 8 months. Won't hurt to interview though.
In a meeting about potential weather-related power outages and the guy presenting it is hammering home how low risk it is, and one person I work with is doing her best to start laying down contingency plans - so we shouldn't travel into the office? Traffic lights will fail? All buildings will have no heating or lightning? No hun, he's saying nothings going to happen. Now get your arse in the office every Thursday like the rest of us.
Got my complete itinerary for South America now, I think this flight is definitely the winner from the sixteen:
22 Feb 2023
Wednesday
Flight: Boliviana de Aviación - OB 741
LIM, Jorge Chávez International Airport, Lima, Peru
Depart: 01:00
VVI, Viru Viru International Airport, Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Arrive: 04:30
Class: Economy
What’s the weather gonna be like?
Nacional Potosí - Independiente Medellin in a Copa Libertadores prelim on the 22nd. :drool:
Managed to oversleep on my second day in the new job :cool:
what a fucking MORON
There's no fear like the fear when you wake up and it's just too light outside.
What alarm setup does everybody go with? I don't snooze because that's playing with fire. I have two alarms that go off the same time so I have to wake up enough to turn off my phone and the alarm clock. Think I've only overslept enough to make me properly late once.
https://i.imgur.com/BDNcy76.pngQuote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Haven't needed to set one since having children. Pricks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
I had it in the 20s / maybe high 20s inland, no detailed knowledge though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Isn't February the wet season over in South America?
I put my phone over on the window sill so I have to get up to turn it off.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
It's October-November in Colombia as far as I know.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir Andy Mahowry
yeah I need to get a proper alarm clock cus I am entirely wedded to listening to podcasts on my phone as I fall asleep, which leaves the handset far too close to avoid the risk of just turning the alarm off and going back to sleep without realising I've done it
I have just the one. Most of the time I'll wake up before it's due to go off. Then I stay in bed for another 15-30 minutes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
It will be when Jim gets there. Oi oi :huhu:Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir Andy Mahowry
Re: alarms. My Fitbit usually is for between 645-730 depending on whether or not I'm working out. My kid usually wakes up at 6 anyway so it's a bit pointless.
Day 2 back in the office and really CBA.
definitely noticing subtle differences between new place and old place. the stupid mandatory training stuff about how to sit in your chair and how you shouldn't get pissed on shift made me go "oh yeah I spose I had better plug my laptop into my monitor and not just sit on the sofa all day", until I realised my new laptop doesn't have a hdmi port lol, spose I better get a VGA adapter
A vga adapter? What sort of laptop have they given you? Is it from the noughties?
Presumably it has no display port at all and you just need a USB to HDMI adapter.
Is it a Surface? Need a Mini Displayport to HDMI adaptor.Quote:
Originally Posted by igor_balis
It seems my employers want their revenge. So after agreeing in early December a new part time shift I was to permanently switch to, I assumed that was that. I've double checked today to see what about I might get paid and I've noticed that, instead of immediately changing me over, they put me down to switch to that shift on the 1st of January.
In the meantime they've had me as authorised absence for half a day and let me work the other half. Now Decembers pay was halfway ish between a full time pay and a part timers, so I didn't really question it as I thought that should cover the bit early in the month where the crossover was.
Turns out you get paid as normal this way until you switch, so essentially they overpaid me by pretty much double in December, but some was clawed back. Now they're going to want the rest back in January as all through December I've been on the same. So pretty much come payday in January I'm going to be lucky if I get anything at all.
I forgot you pulled that stunt. HR remembers. :D
Luckily enough I've seen them pull that one before so I was able to stick some aside ready for this day.
I have 3 interviews in the next couple of weeks so hopefully something good comes my way.
Are you still in Spain, or am I completely misremembering things?
Are they all for similar jobs?Quote:
Originally Posted by Adramelch
Do you feel prepared?
I am not. Got my PhD there, then worked for a year in Paris and now I am back in Greece doing a very boring job for relatively little money (though it's fairly good to have on the CV, it's for the regulatory authority for energy).Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
@Baz: The jobs are actually quite different from each other. One is R&D in McLaren in my actual field (computational fluid dynamics), the other one is on wind turbine patents in the Netherlands (fairly bureaucratic but pays a fuckton) and the last one is for the R&D department of the major electricity provider here in Greece.
The first one sort of terrifies me as the interview will be with all the heads of the CFD department, who have been in McLaren for like 15 years each, so I expect it to be highly technical and quite challenging, the second one I've passed the technical interview so it's more so HR stuff, the only "challenging" thing being that I told them I know German, but I haven't spoken in like 10 years (I do have a B2-level degree) so we'll see, and the last one is a very initial sort of interview where they get to explain what exactly the position is and the likes, so nothing too scary there.
Got fired and re-hired in the same day. Love the bar job world.
Why are you still doing that?
'cos he needs money.
I think what he means why is he still pulling pints when he used to [claim to] have a well-paid job in a specific field.
He's probably still applying for that stuff but getting nothing back. Still, I'd be taking entry level admin over pint pulling.
That or some SvN figure offered you twenty-five grand a year and it turned out that your well-paid job was actually just living in a wealthy country.
Yeah, it was obviously that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Maybe he enjoys it.
Pulling pints is great. I used to love it.
Once a month for a year. And they won’t hire me for those 25k jobs because ‘you have too much experience’. The job market is dumb.Quote:
Unfortunately, we will not be offering the role to you on this occasion. It was very clear that you had a great range of creative and technical skills and abilities, but we had a number of very strong applications and there was another candidate that more closely aligned blah blah blah
There is some merit to the "you have too much experience" argument in fairness, which is that they mean "you'll probably leave at the first opportunity". I do get that.
I can't get the first opportunity though. It's a fucking dumb situation. I'm too good for the bad shit and too bad for the good shit. It's absolutely absurd.
Sign me to a non-compete if it's that much of an issue.
That just boils down to companies despising recruiting.ore than anything else on Earth..I've never seen the money side of it, is that why? Or is it just because people hate interviewing?
The amount of shit cunts I've seen get waved through their probation because people would rather suffer an utter shitheap of an employee than do more recruitment blows my mind.
Keep plugging away and eventually the ball falls to you.
It's the whole thing. The cost of advertising a position, time for interviews, comparing interviews according to the bullshit grading criteria, background and reference checking, waiting for the successful candidates notice period, setting up new log in details, freeing up staff for training, etc. It must be a pain in the arse.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
Go work for a local authority.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
I think he wants to earn some actual money.
Any money > no money
Also ‘some money for very little work’ > ‘lots of money for lots of work’
I sent six email requests on Friday and classed it as a productive day.
He's working in a pub. He's already making Civil Service money.
After 3 weeks off I cannot bear the thought of being back at work on Monday. :sick:
I’m pretty lucky then, because I went back last Monday and I was actually quite looking forward to getting back to it.
Both for the routine and the fact that I don’t actually hate my job.
Yeah, first day back tomorrow since 16th December. Sleeping pattern in the mud.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
My work has decided to add photos of staff members to Teams / Outlook so you can see what the person you are talking to looks like. Or, atleast, that's the theory. In reality, you can see what the men look like. For the women (especially the under 50's) you get a heavily filtered version of who you are talking to. Most of them are genuinely unrecognisable.
I'm tempted to raise it as a concern just to watch the meltdown.
Wrong approach - the correct idea is to use their weapons against them. Make yourself look like an glow-in-the-dark satsuma or some horrific Legion Of Doom maniacQuote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Just use your avatar, Spikey.
I genuinely do not understand the widespread use of filters, they look absolutely dreadful.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Are we talking, like, instagram style filters? Sepia tone or what have you? Explain to an out of touch cunt.
I assumed it was more the ones that slim your face/smooth out your skin/whiten your teeth etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
There's a company wide meeting later today (not that we're a particularly big company) that I assumed was about us getting our first customer signed (it's been in the pipeline for weeks now) but just been told by my manager here that it's because the CTO in the US is leaving. Even better news. He's a pain in our arse. That's made my week already.
Company wide meetings are always a hoot.
We were all coerced into joining our last one (remotely) with the promise of being entered into a draw for a Ford Mustang E. The CEO then dialled the winner live on air and was told, via a Czech-German translator, to fuck off because it's obviously a spam call. Nobody gives away free cars.
There only are about 16 of us tbf. And four of those are contractors.
But still, I'm delighted.
What Boydy said. Flaw removal. Perfect teeth, thinner face, no second (third or fourth) chins, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I might get them to restore my hairline actually. Brb.
The sort of shit lots of people use on dating apps.
I didn't even know that sort of thing existed. Pathetic.
Can we not just use chatGPT to generate AI images of what perfect employees look like in our new dystopia.
The Arab's brother - who does our IT - turned up today looking about 4 stone lighter than he was before Christmas. Turns out he has had an operation to remove most of his stomach in order to stop his 'larger than life' proportions (he is/was about 6 foot 5 and massive) from destroying his back and leaving him paralysed. He can now only eat liquids or Huel, until about a couple of months' time when he says he might be able to eat half a cheeseburger, and that's the most he will ever be able to eat again.
Anyway, the main discovery from this event was that our company's MD believed that humans have two stomachs. 'What about your other stomach?' he said, in all innocence. 'Can't the food go in there?'
And they’re an MD. :uhoh:
It’s great running my own meetings now rather than just supporting someone else. What would previously have taken at least 40 minutes, and often upto the full allocated hour, is now done in 15 and I’ve 45 minutes to do some actual work.
okay this post might be the one to make me do a full Manc style heel turnQuote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Is it some sort of clumsy insult, calling him a cow?
Someone I went to school with went to Turkey to get a gastric band put in. He's lost an absolute fuck tonne of weight, but his occasional dinner photos are depressing beyond words. Here we have mash potato and carrot. :happycry:Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
https://iili.io/H72ZmMB.md.jpg
They have four stomachs.Quote:
Originally Posted by SvN
I'm sure I saw on QI that one of our pointless organs (possibly the Appendix) is technically stomach, it's just shrunken and unused because it's a throwback to when we ate nothing but leaves.
I think the most likely explanation is that he'd confused it with intestines, of which we have small and large.
That's your dick m8Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
> Sent out two different templates with very discernible filenames
> please fill in Q3 with actual spend
> please fill in Year 2 with projected spend
> received year 2 spreadsheet with Q3s actual spend on
:mad:
I get useless shit like that all the time. I end up always reading my sent email back to myself to see if I actually made sense or not. Always the same conclusion: people are idiots.
I am finding increasingly that people just can't deal with more than one query at once.
"I haven't heard from you since we last spoke in November. Has the noise from your neighbour improved? Have you been recording the time and dates of disturbances as I requested? With regards to your repair, I can see that this was due to be completed yesterday. Is everything OK now?"
"Hi, he had music on last night."
I blame WhatsApp.
There's a consultant who, whenever I email them about a patient, will reply about a completely different patient and answering a completely different question.
I start all my emails about patients with their name, hospital number and date of birth.
Just had a recruiter pitch me on a job that requires a security clearance. On a scale of 1-10 how evil are Boeing?
Who cares if they’re gonna pay you?
At 105k a year for 40 hours a week. I'd require like a 14.
You ain't Will Hunting, son.
Worry about that if you actually get the job.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
This is the worst humble brag I've ever seen.
You people are so miserable. If a ray of light came through your window, you'd shut the curtains.
You are not a ray of light. More like a tsunami of shit.
Jk we all love you.
Can't believe you'd give up the pint game for Boeing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
Ray of light.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
Meet shutting curtains.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
Not really sure what you expect, phonics. You seem to come here and post something then have a bit of a strop when we don't all fall over ourselves to suck you off these days.
But:
1. A recruiter contacted you about the job, it's still far from certain so my advice on not worrying about it until you get the job holds as a recruiter contacting you about a job doesn't mean much.
2. You had a good career before and you now seem to be languishing in some sketchy pub after moving to the UK again. I'd take whatever to get back into your field before that gap in your CV gets big enough to be a concern for potential employers. Boeing are probably evil but if you get offered the job, I'd take it and then look for something else once you've been there a while if you find it corrodes your soul too much.
I’m just lightheartedly posting. I really don’t mind. Think what you want. As I said to Baz it could be a 14 and you act like I’ve said no to the job.
Who gives a fuck if they're paying you? Not that an email from a recruiter means all that much anyway, they've sent the same one to hundreds.
I would give Boeing a 7 but they seem more negligent than evil.
Also:
https://www.zippia.com/answers/does-boeing-drug-test/
The other end of the scale from junks r’us.
They've got the world's biggest factory but nobody's allowed in, suspicious.
I haven't done drugs in over a year.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggles
I would give them a 747Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
:henn0rz:
I got my first ever job offer on LinkedIn today. The bird said it’s mine if I want it. Local to me, £50k + “excellent benefits” + car. Seems a decent package to offer without an interview. It’s not even in my specialty.
:sherlock:
Sounds like you are going to wake up in an ice bath one kidney down.
But he still gets the job, right?
Get a load of Uncle Steve here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Am I wrong?
Tells somebody to be be aware of what they should expect from TTH replies then questions snark from Lewis.
I wasn't questioning the snark!
Uncle Steve is right.
I suppose now I'm questioning your snark. Fuck you, Ian.
Not really. Post it again, but this time tell him to 'catch yourself on'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Stop lapping it up. Phonics probably got his decent-paying jobs via his mum.
If only. I tried that and failed Proctor and Gambles 7-step interview process during the ethics section.
She's messaged me again. We've got plenty of mutual connections including one of my good mates and she's local so someone I know must know her game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
Very sus.
Someone at work doesn’t exist. I swear she’s AI. So much so I made an AI video of someone claiming to be her and how much they were looking forward to the staff night out at the end of the month. I shared this with 3 people. If it “gets out” I’m surely done for.
You're putting a lot of eggs in the 'bantz king at work' basket hoping you're not actually 'work weirdo'.
Why not be both?
I've worked with plenty of both and the weirdos are always far better value.
Work weirdos > Bantz kings.
The weirdos give you memories to last a lifetime.
A banter cunt in a workplace is some dose.
What a small dick cunt you really are.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Dquincy
So unnecessary.
Today we had 'Lloyd' from Jamaica in the office, in full rasta hat and not using phone or email or disclosing his surname, on a complete cold visit trying to get discounts on gear for the tractors on his uncle's peanut farm. I didn't get saddled with him thank god, but the guy who did had to sit there while Lloyd put his uncle on speakerphone in full patois, and rather than translating it just kept saying 'Y'heeeaar th'maaan'.
Naturally, the Arab bowled in ultra-confident and asked him if he liked reggae. Lloyd didn't like reggae but he did tell the Arab about Jamaica, breaking it down into 'd'peeeaanut farms' and 'd'paaaarty place', which turned out to be Montego Bay. Then they started arguing about whether Kingston or Baghdad was home to the world's best smoked fish.
I got this job from an agency ffs.
There's your sitcom, @Yevrah.
God I hope that midlifer has run its course. Maybe he got an MX5 or something.
Phonics new manager after his first day at Boeing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I suspect bantz king is less likely to get grassed up to HR.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Worked a charm. Added about 7.5% capacity to the plant in the short term. :drool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
Now I actually feel paid appropriately by the company and don’t really worry about a “career” I actually quite enjoy work.
Had my first week of 3 office working days and it is completely unnecessary. On the plus side, more chips.
https://i.imgur.com/MIIKgAi.pngQuote:
Originally Posted by Lofty
:D
Outstanding.
:D
:D
:lol:
That's up there with the broom cartoon.
Has anyone on here completely changed employment type? I'm looking for a new job, but the idea of stepping into yet another office / wfh job is knocking me sick.
Ideally I'd like to do a "propper" job, on a building site or digging up roads, but I have zero experience and a family, so the likely entry level wage would make that difficult.
Anyone know of any courses etc. That could run alongside full-time work and possibly lead straight into a decent paying manual job?
Alternatively, oi @Foe, can you get me a cushy Oil job?
Does @Bam need a labourer?
What about this, Spikey?
:D
I'm already selling wax melts, hun.
I can't believe that Avon's still going, it's got to be a criminal front at this point. Tupperware too
Happy Blue Monday.
I thought about electrician/plumber courses during past meltdowns as I hear they get paid solid figures but never did look into it. I assume you're still looking at a solid couple years of training and work exp, no?
I imagine so unfortunately. Which leaves the question of living off savings until I start earning more, but that's a bit high risk considering I have no idea how long that's likely to take.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don
Keep calm and trudge on champ, there's going to be similar widespread existential crises all over the gaff soon leading to the breakdown of society as we know it :yn:
There's loads of major infrastructure jobs going on in and around London at the moment, we've had to bump wages up to stop men leaving. Have a look at some of those (HS2, Crossrail, Tideway etc etc), they'll all have tons of jobs going. Depending on your office experience you might be able to get in at a decent level (basically there's more jobs than qualified men right now). It's always paid well but the shift patterns can be a twat if you're permanently on site. It might be not for you at all so I might be pissing into the wind but it's one of those industries where once you're in and willing, you're in for life. Some companies are so desperate at the moment that they'll even train you up and pay for the tickets.
Swish, I'll have a look tonight. Cheers.
One of thesethings is not like the otheris clearly a massive tosser:
https://i.imgur.com/JT6m7z6.png
Mid-life crisis. Get a hair transplant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Watch him quit after one day of 'digging up roads' because his wrist hurts.
Cries off when the 'lads' find his Faceparty and pin it up all round the site office.
Oil jobs hard to come by these days as basically job freezes all over the shop.
If you can hack it, the opito scheme to become a technician would get you into an offshore rotation as a technician - but unsure how that compares with just doing a trade apprenticeship. The guys where I work are 3/4, 3/5 and seems to be basically alternating day shift/nightshift.
If you’re handy with a spanner and good at turning valves it’s not a bad way to earn a living. Although you need to be able to withstand some brutal weather.
One of the smartest people (first class out of Cambridge eccentrics, consultant who would just derive equations for calculations himself) I’ve ever met was pestering management about going offshore to be a technician for a while until they told him to wake up. He’d have been more qualified than the person in charge of the whole rig. Some of the ones who will have been doing in 15+ years will be clearing £100k I’d bet, to work half the year.
Deal. When do I start?Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
Aren't you basically a flouncey academic?Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
I am.
TTH may sneer, but the best job I ever had was an agency job for the summer while I was at Uni. It consisted of putting shit on, and taking shit off lorries. When there were no lorries, we smashed wooden pallets up and chucked them in a skip. What times they were. £6.30 an hour, granted, but still :drool:
They'll not find a hard hat in your size.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/..._AC_SY355_.jpgQuote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
I'll take an egg cup.
What do you enjoy doing?Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Nothing that would translate to a job.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
new job is cool. spent the entire day doing little reports and searches of our database looking for potential prospects to invite to an event, and for some reason I found it really fun. sorta like player search on FM except looking for high previous donation amounts and general engagement/compatibility with the charity rather than low release clauses and suitable attributes and shit.
if only I had obafemi martins to guide me in my professional searches like I do for Livorno's player recruitment.
Nope, I'm not seeing it. Which one is 'clearly' a massive tosser?Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
I'm reckon it's the Dame.
The one who provided a mock painting for his profile photo.Quote:
Originally Posted by mo
I assumed it was the Dame.
whoa now blasphemy!! She’s a goddess in the public health world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
Literally everything anyone does in the sector is because of THE DAME CAROL BLACK REVIEW.
Not convinced. A bit dim maybe, as those types invariably are, but harmless I would have thought.
I'm not convinced that's not actually Pep Guardiola.
Well I look forward to finding out, during the 9 - 5 Microsoft Teams boreathon.
Events that long need to be in person. Guarantee I’ll spend most of it on my phone scrolling Reddit.
Hang in there Spikey. I was a few moments away from handing in my notice today, but remembered I now have a mortgage. Grim.
Obviously, I just wanted to take enjoyment from you not being able to do those things whilst you learn your new career lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
:D
Spending time with my children more than 2 days a week is one of those things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
If only Mellin had made us all rich. :(
:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
It's Rafa Benitez rebranding himself as Pep Guardiola.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Facht.
It's very rare nowadays that you meet a man and he doesn't look like that Danny Ahmed picture. Most men look very like him - even the ones with hair, when they wear hats.
I could tell you every single one of his political opinions off that picture.
At the weekend I got a load of vaccinations which are recommended for South America. Tetanus, dyptheria and the other one, yellow fever, typhoid fever, hep A, you name it I had it pumped into me. There also seems to be a requirement for Bolivia that you have a yellow fever vax especially if you come in from Peru, as we are doing. I then emailed the MD asking him to confirm that these could be expensed. He came back and confirmed that they could. Fine. Only problem is that I was also stupid enough to copy in the reigonal manager, who I'm travelling with. 78 years old, this guy has been visiting the region for decades and knows it inside out. He replies with the following:
Cheers mate.Quote:
Which country is requiring vaccinations I have never had any.
I suppose it is better the precaution rather than the cure.
They're probs lolling you off as a soft shite as we speak.
My job seems to be just asking other people for stuff.
Been rotad into two different jobs at the same time from the start of March :thbup:
Honestly, you haven't experienced incompetence until you've dealt with medical staffing in hospitals.
Do some overtime and get quadruple pay.
I can almost guarantee that rather than paying me for both they'll play me for neither.
absolutely love that both CRMs I've used at the two ~£50m turnover charities I've now worked for are about a decade behind the functionality of the one I used for the tiny 3 person business i worked for in 2015. it's practically green text on a black screen.
before I joined the sector I had the usual assumption of charities spunking money on bollocks they shouldn't, but the reality is that there's a constant paranoia about optics, and it means that so many stupid penny pinching decisions that will cost money in efficiency in the long term get made, cus they're scared Private Eye are gonna run an exposé about spending donations on literally anything except the actual work on the ground.
My spot ran a major software upgrade on a key program last week and it's basically been unusable since :D
Try having the absolute balls-out Salesforce licence and it being so locked down and restrictive and badly designed that it's worse than using a notepad document.Quote:
Originally Posted by igor_balis
Try working for the public sector. I do think it's not so much waiting for new software to be adopted but rather waiting for the the current utilised software to become so outdated that the provider has to make the decision to stop continuing it. The productivity savings would be so great they'd probably cause problems in terms of the loss of jobs.
We’re pushing updates Thursday night so I expect everything to be broke on Friday.
Do you work with grants?Quote:
Originally Posted by Don
My job is basically get big pots of free money and decide how much providers will get, once they've told me how they plan to spend it. The latest grant is massive and there's so much underspend it's embarassing so we (me and 2 providers) had a meeting on how to spend it before the government take it back in April. £10k worth of Love2shop vouchers was legitimately mentioned, along with buying a minibus, new office furniture for the entire teams, pre-paying next years rent, it's mad. :happycry: I'm just like sure sure, get it spent, cos I know the procedure for reporting spend is easy but I've no clue how to return unspent money.
And therein lies a nation in ruins.
SalesForce is absolutely dogshit. I commiserate anyone having to use itQuote:
Originally Posted by Magic
We develop stuff that integrates with Salesforce and sometimes I have to log into it to test things and I fucking hate it. Don't know how anyone uses it. It's disgusting.
+1 for Salesforce being a steaming heap of poo.
They're all shite to be fair but Hubspot is probably the best/most user friendly one I've used.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raoul Duke
We haven't been paid on time today (another fine job by our sith ifrican overlords), so everyone is just sitting around lolling and chilling. Even the Arab is pretending to be dead broke.
Some nice anti-strikes rhetoric has started up in the corner. Fuck the nurses, crush the poor.
Missed payments? Is the company doing alright or is the money being filtered through to Johannesburg as we speak?
I'm going to Seattle tomorrow for a week with work. I really cannot be arsed. There's work shit every day and the CEO said the other day in a message to everyone "we will have lots of team time for fun/connection in the evenings" so the evenings won't even be our own.
Work-related after hours "fun" is just the worst.
Especially miles from home in a city where you'd rather do anything else.
Anti-Strike rhetoric whilst hoping they remember to pay you, there's a reason they never fuck the wages on railway :D
I don't know if I mentioned it in here, but a while back I visited an old boy that wears nappies (for some reason he can't have a colostomy bag) and he sat there for the duration of my visit slowly shitting himself.
Well, guess who's been racist to one of his neighbours and needs another visit later today? Fuck sake.
Strange to think you've been considering a career change.
:happycry:
Considering accompanying you to South America and starting a new life as a drug mule at this point.
Work night out tonight for someones 30th*. They're all meeting at 5:30 and going for food at 7, so when I rock up at 8 when the kids are in bed all the work talk will be over and done with and everyone will be merry. :youpi:
*Sat in the office yesterday people watching members of other teams going to and from the kitchen made me realise how old I am now. Like I'm not one of the fresh-faced 20-somethings anymore, but one of the old heads. Depressing.
Peru is kicking off big style, which is making life interesting. It seems to be impossible to actually plan anything properly, as the senior road sales type guys here (and no doubt everywhere) are impulsive shitheads who can't sit still. If we can't go to Peru (which is in the middle of the itinerary), I would have thought we should just bring forward the subsequent destinations and skip it, but no, Old Man Idiot seems to want to delay the start of the whole thing so that we can attend a company sales seminar. You see, it was booked for the first Monday of our trip, and he recently found this out and started a massive seethe, believing they're trying to force him out. He also had a diva strop about not being invited to the Christmas lunch, even though he lives 250 miles away and so a trip down south for a pub lunch seemed silly.
All the while, I can't plan anything in my life at this point, as I have no idea whether I'm flying in two weeks' time as has been booked for the last two months, or not. In these guys' minds, because I don't have a wife/kids, my life only involves work, so I can operate on this basis forever. They even asked me if I was willing to travel alone to the Ivory Coast in May (I lolled that idea into the bin).
Mate, you're 79. Fucking retire.
Have you been paid yet?
Yeah, we got paid at about 11am once the finance department had finished their artisan coffee and gourmet pastry selection, and decided to log on for the day. Just hadn't bothered doing the payment run on time.
Can't help but have a rye laugh when you've got private sector workers moaning about not getting paid until 11am on payday whilst we have doctors being paid over a year late and having debt collectors sent after them for money they were never told they owed (and actually didn't owe).Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
What's that an argument in favour of? Privatisation?
Strikes. :cool:
I guess it's an argument about private sector workers saying they have everything just as hard and the public sector should stop moaning.
Surprised you even have energy bills when your halo can light and heat the place.
"When I were a lad I had to to walk 10 miles to school, barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways"
Was it even really moaning though? More wry commentary.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
This is a depressing reality. Particularly when there’s a new hottie in the office and you have to screen out the “will she think I’m a creepy old guy?”. The answer is always yes, because as it turns out, I probably am.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
I'm not sure why the doctors feel so entitled. I clapped for them which is more than I did for the parts sales people.
I thanked the surgeons that delivered my kids, meanwhile I called the MOT geezer that charged me £180 for new brake disks and pads a cunt under my breath.
Sucks that you have to do both together now. Bring back asbestos!
Got a 5% pay rise even though still on probation. :drool:
Well I fucked up. Had to rebook my flight for monday as I didn't know what an ESTA was and that you had to do it before turning up to the airport.
I swear someone told me once that you just signed a visa waiver form on the plane?
On the bright side, missing one of the days of the corporate shite on monday.
:D
Haven't ESTAs existed for most if not all of your adult life?
On a side note, the new EU one sounds like it's going to be a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare so that may put pay to going there for a few years until everyone has been sufficiently fingerprinted etc.
I have no idea, I've never been to the US before.
The girl at the desk said it normally comes through quickly (within an hour) once you've submitted it. So I did and waited around at the airport for like an hour and a half as I had time. Gave up and got them to rebook it and got the coach home again. It came through about 15 minutes after I got on the coach. Would've been too late then anyway.
Also have to go via San Francisco on monday instead of direct. I'll probably fuck something up there too.
I always figured they checked ESTA's at customs rather than check-in.
:console:Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
ESTAs are valid for two years as well, so bear in mind it can run out
Probably some bollocks about the airline being held liable for the costs to customs to turn you around. Same reason they were arsey about COVID forms.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
Yeah, airlines get stung for loads for any type of entry failure, which is why they won't let you on a plane unless you have over the actual maximum allowed expiry left on your passport.
I can't remember ever being asked for it at check-in. Speaking of which, now's probably the time to ask this:
Can you change contact details on an ESTA? If shit were to go down, I don't want someone bothering a hotel I'm not even staying in.
So creepy as you know he's smiling when he's typing these posts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
You what?
Yeah that post has me baffled too.
It's always good value when Magic calls someone creepy. Remember when he posted on here saying he was considering setting up secret cameras to film his wife doing spray tans?
And he calls us boomers. Learn to use a plane you gobshite.
Giggles on his 3rd pint.
No. You’re flying and you’re doing connections then you plan and have everything covered. Not moan afterwards like you’re entitled to something.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don
Taz halfway through his first Smirnoff Ice.
Remember when you got a boner after finding garlic in some seven year old's cunt.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
:weeping:
Coming out with stuff like this doesn't really help your case.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic
In the air now. Got up at 6am this morning to get the coach to Dublin at 7:40. By the time I get to the hotel in Seattle, it'll be 4am UK time. :cry:
Enjoy the team bonding mate :)
If he can get through customs.
A completely unrelated person has just told me that I'm now leaving for South America a week later than planned (as far as I know, we're leaving in 12 days' time). First I'd heard of it, not heard a peep from the guy who's going with me and organising the trip, but he's clearly told the unrelated person. I've emailed him asking wtf.
Am I really expected to suspend normal life on the expectation I could be leaving for South America for 2-3 weeks at any random point in the next month, or is this just amateur hour?
Both.
These bloody snowflakes these days aren't even prepared to write off months of their life in case a work trip happens during that time. Makes me sick to be honest.
Already done that. Preclearance in Dublin.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
That's thinking ahead ... two days behind. Enjoy.
Only been in SF airport for an hour or two and seen two service dogs already. Not guide dogs, mind. "Service" dogs. Americans love that shit, don't they?
Maybe get some universal healthcare instead of having to drag service animals around with yiz, yiz mad cunts.
We got Shinners for these anecdotes, get a fucking hooker in and eiffel tower him with your boss.
At Seattle I saw a fat cow get wheelchair assistance so she could use it to carry her one bag of luggage.
Not a peep since 1am. He's definitely been arrested. An Oxbridge Communist was never going to go bowling in.
Especially one who got his entry documents muddled up. Some sexually frustrated TSA agent is currently rummaging around his bowel.
More than 12 hours now. Should have hid in the Venezuelan Embasy lad.
Him and the boss are still trying to get rid of the hookers body.
:D
By the time I got to the hotel I'd been awake for 23 hours. I had two beers and went to bed. Just up now. All ready for a day of BUSINESS.
Make sure you read the financial news with your breakfast of black coffee and extremely crunchy toast. Wouldn't want to miss a change in the NASDAQ.
I just had to spend a day in the office after my home gear decided to brick itself. :moop:
Been offered 9% pay rise over two years (5% then 4%), the first part being backdated to April 2022. Suspect that will be accepted rapidly despite the various strings, though the strings mainly fuck over new starters.
Spent a while yesterday colour-coding my Outlook calendar and my god it's glorious. All 25 available colours have been utilised to great effect.
I went on strike today. Couldn't make it to picket in time, but went to a rally at the town hall instead. Will strike on the three other proposed dates too.
Good man :cool:
Workers unite.
My daughters school was open as normal. Something to do either being an academy. Do they get better pay or something?
No. My wife's school was the same - 2 out on strike, so carry on as normal. One teacher has been really unwell recently, but came in in case people thought she was striking. Mentalist.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Well in.Quote:
Originally Posted by mo
There was nobody in my booked parking space today, and didn't have to turf anyone out the meeting room I'd booked. Frustrating that these are seen as positives and aren't taken as a given.
What's TTHs view on this: You book a parking space in the work car park but when you arrive, someone has parked in it. There is public parking elsewhere which will add 5 mins onto your morning. Do you drive off and park in the public carpark/street, or do you just find an empty space in the work car park and fuck someone else over? I always drive off and park at the Church nearby, but it seems most of my colleagues just nick someone elses spot.
Having to actually book a parking space aside (is this normal?), be a decent person and park in the public car park. Then pour a tin of paint over the offender's car.
This frequently happens to me as there's a driving test centre right opposite my allotted space (don't have to book as obviously I'm in every day) and there are often trembling teenagers with their loser instructors sitting waiting in my spot. I just take someone else's space, and so in turn do they, etc.
The more annoying issue is a certain group of south Asian instructors often get out their fold out chairs and sit down for a smoke in my space while their charges are off doing a test, so when I wind the window down and ask them to move, they start seething.
I have to pay a monthly fee to park in the staff car park, and if I start in the afternoon there may well not be a space so I have to pay again (£12) to park in the public hospital car park.
:thbup:
I hate that I have to book a desk in the office, booking a parking space would drive me mental. Do you just block book for like 3 months or something?
I’ve decided I don’t mind going back to the office 3 days a week.
The chips are seriously good.
We've just had an order to create/update LinkedIn profiles. Groan, but OK. I go on there for the first time in months/years and what do I find: colleagues I thought were reasonable human beings posting absolute wank. "Love the technical side of my job - amazing to work with *customer X* on evaluating his needs and achieving a great value solution". What the fuck are you talking about, Dave?
It really does reveal the hidden bellends. Some lad I used to play grid iron with is on there with twenty letters after his name waxing lyrical about being a global big player in industrial health and safety. I once saw him put his cleats on the wrong feet then swig a bottle of other people's piss.
Obviously he wasn't a hidden bellend but amazing the facade people put on for that shitshow.
Are they actual qualifications or has he gone Jack Munroe and started listing diseases he's self-diagnosed with?
I think they are but it's a bit like the nonces you see on facebook with degree letters after their name, except it is minor industry certificates.
It's a complete load of toss generally (people posting/messaging) but I got headhunted on there so it's worth keeping updated if you've any ambition about progressing your career.
The day I have LinkedIn, is the day I have completely given up on taking any enjoyment whatsoever from my life.
Also why is everything such a ballache. :mad: For some reason all the contracts I’ve inherited are set up for 12 months, renewed every year and have been since at least 2014. And every year some schmuck (now me) has had to renew them, after advertising the service and confirming no other providers are interested. I assumed it had to be done that way but nope, so wheels are in motion to extend them for 2 or 3 years this time. Why has nobody else ever done this? :mad:
I had one, but some cunt I worked with once started writing glorified blogs about the dangers of silo working and other shite he definitely doesn't care about. It cringed me all the way to the delete profile button.
I got this job through it and hired my last two people through it, so it’s definitely worth keeping. Never read the bullshit in the feed though, and make sure to immediately block anyone sporting a preferred pronoun in their title.
Yeah similarly, I was hired through a recruiter looking on LinkedIn last time out and actually try to use it as my most up to date CV. Then I just update the CV document when I'm looking without as much effort.
This day of business started with seeing a homeless man doing his business on the street on the walk to the office. Right next to his sleeping bag too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Also saw someone shooting up in the street on wednesday on the way back from the office. And a few others at various points who looked like that's what they were doing but I couldn't tell for sure.
Downtown Seattle is grim. It's just a bunch of skyscrapers that rich people drive into, park underground, ascend to their offices then go home from in the evening while the streets outside are full of homeless and mentally ill people.
Spent the last couple of evenings in a more residential area which had a main street with bars and restaurants and stuff. A lot nicer than downtown but we still witnessed a load of police cars zooming past with sirens blaring towards what was apparently gunshots so that's still not great.
Food was disappointing. Some of it really quite crap. The better stuff - a couple of burgers and some Mexican stuff, honestly, I've had better burgers in Belfast and Mexican just as good in fucking Belfast.
Customer service, which is something I thought they'd be really good at, was ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SHITE. Like seriously abysmal. We were late into the office a few mornings because apparently it takes over 20 minutes to make a breakfast muffin or a ham, cheese and egg croissant. They take fucking ages in bars too. And then they still want tips, the cunts. Even Starbucks was extremely slow compared to what it's like back home.
And yet we wet our pants with excitement when Ryan Reynolds is on BBC1.
California. :harold:
All downtowns in US cities look like that tbf, except for like NY, Chicago, and Boston. Horrid stuff.
As for the service, see 'California :harold:' above. What can you expect from those hipster wankers?
Seattle, California.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Why are you talking about California?
Edit: Spikey has it covered.
Wait, I though he said he was going to San Francisco?
Anyway, Washington is the same but even more hipster.
Because I suck at reading. In any case, all my comments still apply.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Did fly to SF and get a connecting flight to Seattle tbf.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
At least San Francisco is pretty.
Nobody has used the word "hipster" since 2014, grandad.
What are we using now?
The shit service in the US was something that surprised me, too. I suppose when tips are automatic then they stop giving a shit.
Heroin. Did you read any of Boydys post ffs?Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
You'd think with their terrible employment laws they'd have to at least worry a bit about keeping their job?Quote:
Originally Posted by SvN
The nicest way I'd describe service over there is 'direct'.
Would you like to add a tip?Quote:
Originally Posted by SvN
20% 50% 200%
Oh, another absolutely insane thing I forgot - and I'd heard of this before coming to the US but didn't realise just how bad it was - the gaps in cubicle doors in public toilets.
No wonder the mad cunts all shoot each other when you can't even take a shit at work in peace.
The mexican food in California was good when I was there, in fact all food and customer service was notably good. I was there for a month splitting time between San Diego, San Francisco and LA. Not sure where the lolling is coming from? This was 2010, mind.
That sums up my experience, to be fair. I also never got the whole preciousness about the homeless problem over there. It's just a fact of city life.
To be fair, he is from Canada, the Better America™️Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Maybe once global warming makes it pleasant enough.
See you on the beaches of Nunavut. :cool:
:drool:
I'm on the flight back to Dublin. I have never been so happy to be returning to Ireland/the UK.
Sinne fianna fail/God save the King.
Unreal isn't it? Who's idea is it too leave that much of a gap when you just want to have a shit?Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
There was times in work where I could see someone waiting through the gap. I mean fuck off.
As part of my job every 4 years I have to go to a training centre put on a “survival suit” and escape from a helicopter being dumped in a swimming pool, and let me tell you, it is unpleasant.
I’d rather just sign a form saying I accept likely death if I was ever involved in an actual incident.
I don’t back my chances of escape if it ever happened for real.
Starting from today, my next day fully off work will be Saturday 11 March. Absolute fucking ironman stint coming up.
First of all we have a company sales seminar on Wednesday which will seemingly decide much of the future of this place, then on Saturday it's Bogota...
I will be expecting some real life contributions to the new "where am I" thread.
"Our first day in cartel country and none of these blokes look like farmers. I asked them what crops they grow as a way of making small talk. The mood soured quickly."
I suspect Jimmy's boss will end this trip paying off more than just Jimmy.
I except Jim's lot take that out of his annual leave allocation.
We are having a work beano to Normandy next week to see the D-Day beaches and hopefully the Bayeux Tapestry (I can take or leave the beaches). I managed to duck out of doing a presentation by jokingly offering to be the liaison officer with the locals, and the organiser appears to have taken it seriously.
'Le fry up, mon ami? Comprende?'
"What you mean you got no facking chips. I come ere on a plane you caant".
Drama here earlier. At about 12.25, the South Africans called a 12.30 meeting for all sales staff. Everyone goes upstairs with uh-oh faces on. The announcement is... they're setting a 40% growth target for the company next year, and to achieve this they're putting us all on same salary + commission for our own markets, which will be re-allocated on Thursday.
On the face of it a quality deal for us all, but jesus christ, I'm going to get Togo and Mali or something and end up getting kidnapped by Boko Haram.
🤞
Does that mean the south America trip is cancelled?
Well, no. I'm going. Whether it's going to have long term significance or just be good general experience, we'll have to wait and see.
Well don't rule out being kidnapped there before Boko Haram even get the chance then.
40 percent growth seems alot.
It is a lot, but this is what happens when you get bought out by South African venture capital. That said, we have been doing things on a 1970s basis for years so there's probably a lot of room for growth.
The firm is full of virile young go getters after all.
Had another encounter with our wonderful French counterparts today. They're really massive arseholes.
Mad that despite it being a universally ackowledged fact, the pro-Brexit lot (who were probably their biggest detractors) reckoned it would all be hunky dory with Anglo-French relations in the aftermath.
Lads I need your input to avoid something turning out really really shit.
So at work they have these awards ceremonies where you nominate colleagues for certain categories. The shortlisted nominees (3 for each category) get to go to the ceremony as do those who nominated them. I didn't get to go last year but some of my team did and it basically turned into a mini Christmas Do, with free 4pm wine that spilled over into the pub for an afterparty. So obviously this year I'm going.
This came round:
tldr: I can come up with any idea for a video talking about why I voted my mate for the Wellbeing Champion Award, and work will film it.Quote:
This year we will have 28 videos to prepare and produce and will be supported by colleagues in our comms team and from an external professional production team. As you can imagine we will be working within fairly tight deadlines, so your flexibility would be grately appreciated to enable us to complete the task on time, within budget and to a high quality.
You will see from last years' videos that we had a variety of themed, avatar illustrated, and voice over/cut to the workplace videos, (sorry I'm probably not using the correct terminology here, but hopefully you get the gist), which we would like to continue this year. So, if you're happy to do something a little bit different, like be a quiz show guest, great, but if not, no problem.
The production team are currently preparing a schedule for us, so I will be in touch again shortly, but in the meantime could I ask you to have a think about ideas/themes for you video please. I have some thoughts which I'll share with you next time.
Turns out two of us voted for him, and the other person is my line manager. :uhoh: Why she voted him and not me, I do not understand either, but we digress. Your ideas should probably incorporate her having a supporting role though.
This video will then be played at the awards ceremony before the winner is announced.
I'd forgot about it and just had another reminder, with the following suggestion:
Quote:
. To avoid repetition and the event becoming overly corporate we are aiming to create light-hearted, humorous content in a mix of styles, but we also want to ensure that our nominators feel comfortable with their recording. With that in mind I wondered what your thoughts were about doing your video in the style of Family Fortunes? Maybe answering some questions based on your nominations - 'we asked our workforce..... our nominators said'
Your video will be a minute long and I would provide you with a short script based on your nomination.
Toggle Spoiler
Hit me with it. How can I steal the awards show, without actually being up for an award?
Just show them the TTH awards video instead.
Just film Garden Soccer.
I'm not reading that shit in detail as my brain is melting currently from a long meeting so apologies if misunderstood but...Love island if the audience are into that. You all have a short clip in which you say why the geezer is a don but dress it up with a few 'he's a proper peng sort'/'he doesn't stop grafting'/'id put all my eggs in his basket' and a load of love island editing which you'll obvs be able to pull off. Get one of those z-list celeb videos from an old love island contestant for ultimate melty points.
Is all this happening in a professional setting? Am I missing something?
i ain't reading all that
i'm happy for u tho
or sorry that happened
Is there enough time to get Vince Russo involved?
Yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Some workplaces aren't complete misery.
One team at my spot used to have a daily lunch time quiz, a leaderboard for their daily jogs in work time and a badminton round robin league. They were unsurprisingly wank at their jobs.
I'd leave Vince off the table for this one. He's done more than enough.
Floyd getting it from all angles recently.
It doesn’t sound like a place it work at all. Absolute bluffers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Shit like this would make me more miserable than just working. I absolutely fucking hate this type of wankery.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Don't be mistaken, I've chosen to get involved. It's easy to avoid/ignore. It passed me by completely last year, until I asked the nominated colleague where his glasses where and he explained that he'd lost them after the awards ceremony. Awards ceremony?Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
What could be better than a Domestic Abuse Champion? An award-winning Domestic Abuse Champion.
I wonder how many people up and down the country are genuinely stealing a living.
I think you could sack ten per cent of my organisation and nobody would notice, and if you replaced a couple of people with better ones then it could probably be twenty per cent smaller.
You couldn't lose anyone from my place, at least not in the serious departments. Everyone hammered to the bone and holiday cover is a nightmare. The South African private equity whirlwind has blown through again this week saying they want massive annual growth from the same number of staff.
You could get rid of the overpaid yanks in my place and we'd probably be much more productive.
We only have two complete wastes of time. One is finally going this month, I don’t know what he’ll do if the new place expects him to work.
We're so tight on staff you wouldn't even sack the bad ones.
My company has an annual awards do but rather than the bollocks Baz is on about they just hire a venue, put on a free bar for attendees (nominees and nominators) and book a professional comedian.
Sounds identical, only I shall fulfil the role of said comedian in a 1 minute video where I'm pretending to be Les Dennis.
It's 4.42am in Bogota.
I'm here with my 79 year old colleague for the start of a 19 day trip. Such an odd dynamic between us. He mainly calls me 'old son', 'young man', or 'Steve', which is the guy he used to travel with in the 70s and 80s. I had to start by driving to the office, then walking 20 minutes across town to meet him at the crap hotel and wait for the taxi. During this time his opening gambit was to tell me that he doesn't have any friends now because they've all died. He listed them off - Richard, Tony, Andrew, Stephen, Victor, etc etc. None of them had surnames.
When we got to Heathrow and had a couple of beers his stories became a bit less morose. I can only really remember the punchlines. One was 'Well, I tell you, she had some body, but not sure about the face'. Another was 'I looked down [from an opening in a rickety plane in Honduras] and it was all pineapples, man.' I hope he has plenty more to get us through the next three weeks. A notable feature is that he'll be telling a story that sounds like it's just from a few years ago, and then he'll say 'Yes, this was during the Mexico 86 World Cup, so we watched the final in a bar and then...'
10 hour flight to Bogota, in economy obvs, perched between him and Big Mama Sanchez, was no fun. Having to wear a mask for the full ten hours and still having to provide covid vaccine status at both ends was a bit of an eye opener - they still take Covid extremely seriously down here I think. After about six hours the mask started to wear me down and I felt like I was going to throw up several times. Fortunately managed to keep it down.
When we arrived we looked for the booked airport shuttle but apparently it doesn't start until five in the morning. We then got in a taxi and asked to go to the hotel which is a big brand one about 5 minutes from the airport. Unfortunately this, and everything else about his home city, was well beyond the taxi driver's ken and in a proper 'you couldn't make it up' moment, within minutes of being in Colombia we ended up being driven into some murky barrio with boarded up windows, massive security bars across every house (not sure if this is widespread or specific to that neighbourhood) and a live ambulance situation. Right in the middle of this area, his sat nav said ha llegado a su destino with no corporate hotel in sight. We then both started berating him until he turned back and after another half hour or so we managed to navigate him to the right place.
I'm going to bed. See you on Monday.
And so it be begins.
It begins. :drool:
And yeah, a long-haul in a mask is no fun.
Jim listening politely to grandad reeling off his favourite clunge tales :D
I hope you let your neighbour know you're going away Jim?
Although, thinking about it, your car isn't there this time, so she'll probably think you've been Nicola Bulley'd. I await your channel 5 documentary with interest.
The interview with the arab will be epic.
The security features are pretty common across the entire continent.
I would have lost my mind if they made us wear masks when I went home in November.
How's this going?Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon
Nearly three weeks in and it's great, cheers la. Got a 7.9% pay rise before joining and flexi time is incredible, plus it's genuinely interesting and very relaxed. God has blessed me with this one.
You've smashed it out of the park there.
Great stuff, nothing like actually loving your job or at least wanting to go to it each day,
I think the weirdest thing about Colombia (a very pleasant country full of pleasant people, as far as I can make out) is that the coffee is absolute shit. I've had about 10 cups and all taste like dishwasher tablets dissolved in wee. I woke up at 5 this morning, spent 9 hours with a customer going through the product line in incredible detail and 98% in Spanish, it's now 7.20pm, I'm meeting the old fella again at 8pm to write up our reports to be sent back to England before they get in tomorrow morning, I guess we'll be done about 9.30pm, will get about 6 hours sleep and then up at 4am for a flight to Ecuador that takes off at 7am and seeing the next customer at 10am.
Only 2 weeks and 2 days to go.
Our assessments close and go over to the DWP automatically now. Slip of the pen errors are (potentially) going all the way through the process. :D
Although I think the most annoyed claimants are the ones DWP repeatedly misgender.
It's amazing and it'd take an awful lot for me to move to a job without it I reckon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon
Do you lot have core hours you need to keep?
At my spot we are contracted 37.5 hours a week and our boss expects us to be available between 10-3 most days (aslong as you aren't wandering off in those hours every day it's fine).
Since we went to flexi time, everyone in our team with children / who lives more than half an hour away has gone on to early starts/early finishes, and I am the sole person who doesn't care and sticks to 8.30-5.00.
A foolproof system that never goes wrong.
In my case, without checking in with a manager to work around this, you:Quote:
Originally Posted by SvN
- either have a start or a finish to stick to (8am, 9am, 5pm and once in a blue moon 8pm) to make sure enough people are about across the day.
- shouldn't work less than half your shift if you're knocking off early / starting late
- shouldn't owe or accrue more than three days.
So in my case it's not total free rein but still more than enough to get lots of early finishes and build up some days off.
Got to work and Children's A and E is closed because there's sewage coming out the sinks.
An hour later, someone's drilled through a pipe in the drug room in the Paeds ward and flooded it, destroying all the drugs in the process.
Absolute chaos :D
Flexi-time with us is core hours of 10-4 but you’re supposed to work 7:24 minus at least 20 minutes for lunch. Same as Ian’s place, we can’t go beyond minus 3 days. I don’t know if there’s an upper limit. People with no lives start at 8 and finish at 5 every day and make at least an hour of flexi. It’s absolutely mad. That’s on top of having about 30 days holiday (plus public holidays) if you’ve been in the organisation long enough.
My job started out as flexi time and it seemed mega but then switched to “agile working” and there’s definitely no going back from it. No core hours, so long as you aren’t noticeably never around.
Sure I don’t get the flexi time buildup back to book additional annual leave, but I more than make up for it on going out for breakfast and doing school runs.
Also just banged out a 22 page service spec from scratch (well, plagiarised one I found online for Hertfordshire) and feel like I’ve just shagged Nicki Minaj. :cool:
You can either accrue overtime as hours banked to take back or cash. I get mine paid but there's a guy I know who goes to New Zealand for a fortnight every year purely on his banked overtime hours, no holidays used.
Christ, when I said we're on flexitime I mean we can start 1 hour earlier or later than and it has to be balanced within 2 days. True luxury.
The idea of accruing time or taking extra whole days would make this lot keel over with shock. We don't even get TOIL (he says, typing this from fucking Quito at 6.30 in the morning).
I dunno, it rather sounds like you get to toil most of the time.
I do half-eight until four and take my break at the end of the day to go home slightly early.
The sewage is radioactive. Not joking :D
Looks like the UK office is immediately going to rack and ruin in my absence.
Quote:
As many of you are aware, there will also be a Ping Pong Tournament held in Unit 2 which will be a great opportunity for members of staff to come together - details of this are to follow from xxx.
I also intend to try and organise some 'Social' lunches each month which can include a group walk, a crafting lunch, a card game lunch etc if people are interested in joining.
I've predicted a number of twists, but not even I saw Baz becoming Jimmy's new boss coming.
Any work activity featuring "lunch" that isn't just having your lunch on a work day can fuck off.
Current job and last one have loved doing what they call a 'lunch and learn.' Absolutely fucking not.
My work have tried to make it fly a few times and got the huff when only a couple of tragic cases have turned up.
Leave employee's alone at lunch time. If you want to do some boring bonding shite, do it during your time, not mine.
Nah I don’t get involved with force networking/socialising in the workplace. I’ll go for drinks outside of work with the sound ones but everyone else knows not to approach me with shite like ping pong, well-being walks and the town businesses sports day they did.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
You lot work in some bizarre places. Between liberal flexi time and lunch time orgies, no wonder the country is fucked.
We've got radioactive shit coming out our sinks but it's Flexi time people think is MENTAL.
I'd swim in radioactive sewage before I took part in a "crafting lunch".
Even if we get food brought in to the office for lunch I won’t have any. That way I owe them absolutely nothing more than my actual job that they reimburse me for.
What if they offered you a financial bonus?Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggles
That would be for reimbursement for my actual job.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dquincy
What if they offer you a burger for a job well done?
Depends if the bank will accept it in lieu of cash.
Then they’re being cheap.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Anyone have to do a self assessment tax return?
How much of a pain in the ass is it?
I might have to this year and trying to work out whether I should shunt a bunch into pension in March to avoid it (I might already be too late).
You aren’t too late and you probably should hung it into your pension especially if you are a higher rate tax payer. Needs to be done by the 5th April thoug.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
What’s the tax return for I assume for stocks and shares income?
Sex services.
My accountant does it for £100
Yeah going to dump some into pension.
Promotion plus large bonus expectations will see me into “high rate tax payer” but I’ve sold a shit load of shares (below capital gains allowance) but filling in the tax form could be a fucking nightmare for that, so I’d rather avoid that hassle.
I’ve made £0 from sex services, but my net expense for sex services is also £0.
I'm an equity director so need to submit one for dividend payments. So a relatively straightforward process.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
Having done it, if it was more than dividends then I'd farm it out to a pro.
Unusually it's my job to lighten the tone. This morning we flew from Quito to Guayaquil, which is a 55 minute flight within the same country but in terms of climate it's like flying from Edinburgh to Marrakesh. Gone are the spectular high mountains, fog and altitude sickness, and in come palm trees, crunbling colonial edifices and the general sense that the place has at one time been fertile hunting ground for a military coup involving blokes in dark glasses and peaked caps.
We head off to see one of our three customers in the region, who I will call Sr. Xavier, for that is his name. We get to his office quite near the centre of the city and as so often in these places, we are welcomed into a bustling engine workshop, with our boxed product conveniently front and centre all across the shopfront. Out comes Sr. Xavier and his brother, Bolívar, and they invite us into the honcho office upstairs. Suddenly the vista is transformed from concrete workshop with sweaty blokes everywhere into a pseudo-plush office with mahogany walls. My usual strategy in these situations is to look for a football team colours and point them out (people in little countries are always stoked when the English know their football teams) but the colours are blue with a light blue sash and not even years of FM has taught me enough to know that.
Sr. Xavier is a man with a similar hairline to me but whereas I've gone number 3 all over, he has taken a different approach: grow the front hair island out to its absolute maximum extent and then comb it all the way back. It's like a hybrid of Bobby Charlton and Pat Perez. This man owes us $30,000, which the old fella pushes home in really quite aggressive terms (I can't imagine myself ever showing such emotion), and eventually he signs a letter saying it will be paid within a month. Relations then thaw and after about an hour of tough negocios he says 'almorzamos', and we leave with the current Mrs Xavier (he has been married 4 times) and his boy - not son, but a young man from the shop - drives us all to the banks of the Rio Guayas where there is a row of restaurants. Here we all order 'Moro' which is apparently an Ecuadorean favourite involving a sort of rice mixture alongside your chosen meat and (as seems to appear with every course on this continent) fried bananas
The Rio Guayas is a very very wide river, maybe 4 times as wide as the Thames, and has a lot of vegetation floating in it as flotsam, presumably washed in from far upstream. The old fella tells Sr. Xavier that he wants a Stella Artois, which they are serving in this particular place. Sr. Xavier, having never heard of Stella Artois, agrees. (side note: one of my favourite things about South America thus far is that the beer glasses, as well as the beer, emerge ice cold. I haven't seen this in Europe before).
The rest of the afternoon descends into a right mess. Stella proves to Sr Xavier's taste and he just keeps ordering the fucking things, more quickly than we can drink them. In between he keeps asking questions about the same topic that has fascinated all our customers so far: how come el Principe Carlos is el Rey de Inglaterra mientras que ya no está coronado? Just getting through that constitutional explanation gets us through another couple of Stellas, but Sr. Xavier does not stop. Tres mas, he keeps saying, when the waiter comes anywhere near. Tres mas, tres mas, like a death rattle every time. I think we ended up having about ten and then he clicks his fingers and his office boy - who, I must say, was muy muy guapo - drives us back to the hotel. However, this was not before a promise that on Friday evening we will go to his house for more booze and some kind of food, which sounds a horrendous idea to me as this guy drinks for Ecuador, but uh, I dunno. We're here.
Throughout the entire day I just kept thinking: how the fuck have I ended up here?
Sr. Xavier :cool:
What a man. I can't wait for the house party.
Food is not that good in most of South America and the Caribbean. Ice cold beers are quite excellent though.
Come to think of it, whether plantains are involved is a great predictor of whether a Latin country's food is worth your time.
I’m here for the Jimmy <> Office Boy love tryst.
They definitely do ice cold beer and glasses in Greece.
Steel yourself Jim, Xavier's lining up a bunga bunga party and you might be publicly molested by a prositute.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Manc
These lined up nicely. Jimmy’s tractor diaries are always a good read. Keep em coming.Quote:
Originally Posted by SvN
Pub is under new management. It’s a hell of a lot better but I’ve also been given day shifts which are the absolute pits.
I’m fucked. Checked my taxable pay and even if I lob 100% of my salary into pension in March I’m still over the threshold. Did it anyway because I might as well shove it in pension rather than pay an effective 63% tax.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luke Emia
Better not forget to switch it back in March. :uhoh:
Looking forward to torture in September as I scramble to do a tax return.
Apparently I can tweak my pension any time (although the window on the website says I have two days) so I've bumped up to 9%. If the rumoured pay bump hits in the summer, I'll max it out.
Back to training next week and we're hiring new agency staff. No doubt I'll be training some of them as well. :moop:
I had a quick glance at the FAQs and I think I can change it each month.
If not, I’ve locked myself into 0% salary for the next 10 months, which would be brilliant.
I went to Babahoyo today and grafted about 10 hours there to come away with a $14,000 order.
I can guarantee that you haven't been to Babahoyo, no one you know has been to Babahoyo, and no one they know has been to Babahoyo. What a place.
The Wiki page is incredible.
Quote:
It is a prototype of the activity and height of different orders of national life, and will continue to be so, because it has its own resources; it is the backbone of two regions: coast and mountains; being the most influential point in between the two, where the forces of many enterprising villages are bonded; because here the agricultural and commercial aspirations were founded.
Why I do I feel like there's a Geoguessr round related to this entire trip?
We are now entering the worst part of the year for me. Rent Review season. Always an annoying time, but this year the government have capped rent increases at 7%, which we have implemented, and people are not going to be happy.
The letters only went out Wednesday afternoon, and already the emails and call back requests are rolling in.
My first one is from a lady that lives in the same block as her sister and her sister is paying less rent than her. She NEEDS to know why. So now I get to phone her and explain that developments are made up of various tenancy types, from Social rents to affordable rents (that aren't particularly affordable) and they're set at a different percentage of the market average. It's basically luck of the draw which one you get, and no that isn't fair, and yes I understand why you're upset, I know, I hear you, it's terrible isn't it? When all I want to scream is UNIVERSAL CREDIT ARE PAYING YOUR FULL FUCKING RENT ANYWAY YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
At the other end of the scale I've just picked up a case for a bloke who was told to make a note of his desktop shortcuts and shared mailboxes so he doesn't lose them when we reset his profile to try and fix an issue and he's responded saying it's too "difficult and worrying."
Imagine your life being so easy this constitutes "worrying."
To top it all off it transpires he's a mental health first aider. Fat lot of use he's going to be if somebody comes to him with an actual crisis.
Leave him alone.
More of an island/beach resort thing I'd say, but ye it's fairly common.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lofty
I always liked to imagine these people were just a figment of the Daily Mail's imagination but jesus christ almighty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
It's 2.10am in Guayaquil and I've just come back from Sr. Xavier's party. Absolutely no idea how I had the strength to come through it, at one point I thought it was never going to end and I'd actually physically accessed one of the circles of hell.
I'm not telling you the whole lot but if you want a flavour, his living room / party room / bar room (all one large salon) is dominated, decor-wise, by a fifteen foot high floor-to-ceiling painting of a tiger.
Alright People, it took a while, but we're finally going Scarface. :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Did you partake in the yayo, Jim?
First you get the tractor parts then you get the women. So ... erm ... try to look like you're into it.
Longer version. We went to Sr Xavier's shop at the end of the working day. He whisked us into his car and off we went into what must be a rich suburb and pulled into his house. I only saw one room in his house, but what a room - like I said, the fifteen foot high tiger painting is what first catches the eye, but there's also a bar, an oil painting of Lionel Messi, a huge Ecuador flag, several replica World Cup trophies gleaming around the room. A long table was set and there was some help which I can only reasonably call a butler, since he was constantly on hand to top up your drinks, and dressed like he was about to take on Nigel Bond for a place in the UK Championship last 32.
First of all things seemed to be going ok: guests gradually arrived for what appeared to be a dinner party. Most of them were part of a vast, sprawling extended family (who also make up the employees of the family business) and I couldn't get all the names or who was married to who. His son, also Xavier, appeared with his novia Paulina of whom more later. His brother was there, then some old geezer who he said was also his brother but looked 20 years older. There were loads of interchangeable women, most of them dressed up whereas none of the men were. I was placed opposite a bloke called Edison who was nice but enjoyed the sound of his own voice. His wife was awful. All of them were very friendly. I would say, from the two countries I've been to so far, Latin Americans are more friendly than anyone that exists in Europe or North America.
Eventually some food was served - once you've had one meal in this region you've had them all (some meat, rice, and slimy vegetables). Full dinner party style conversation ensued. At times I was embarrassed because although I'm probably at the top of the tree for Spanish skills if you limit the field to people who have never lived in a Spanish speaking country, when 15 muchachos are talking at once it can be hard to keep the thread. I held my own pretty well and kept thinking, you know, I'm a lot better at Spanish than any of these fucks are at English, so I'm doing better than they would be in the reverse situation. This kind of logic is the only technique I really have to keep my confidence up, as I tend to lose it quickly otherwise, both as a foreigner and one of life's natural introverts.
I was thinking right, you just have to get through this meal and you can get back to the hotel and everything will be fine. No. After we finish up, three blokes and about five women file into the room carrying a large speaker, some jungle drums, and a tin bucket which turns out also to be a percussion instrument. One of the blokes is in a sort of beige tracksuit with a shabby cap, and he's the lead singer. Another, with a hawaiian shirt, plays the drums; the third hits the bucket with a stick. The Ecuadorean classics start rolling, to the sound of a really naff backing track. After a few songs, people start dancing. Now, there is nothing in the world I hate more than dancing. I am bad at it and it makes me deeply unhappy, so in normal circumstances I just don't do it, following the principle that if things really make you feel uncomfortable then why do them. In order to try and validate the host's hospitality and look like I'm enjoying myself, I got up and shuffled through a couple of songs, much to their good-natured amusement.
I sat down again and in the endless, endless period of time that followed they dragged me up maybe a couple more times. However, in a way, sitting down watching was almost worse, because it meant I had to bear witness to what my elderly colleague was getting up to. Now, this guy is 79 years old, so in a sense it's quite impressive that he's up on the dancefloor at all. However, I started feeling quite uncomfortable in the way he was constantly inviting the youngest three women to dance with him - not in a lovable grandad dances with the girls way, but in a really squeezy breasty dirty old man way. Many more men then you want to admit are basically creeps, and he is one of them (I didn't get the same vibes from any of the Ecuadoreans).
Towards the end of this hellscape, probably the best looking of the women there (if I am any judge) decided to adopt me as her useless Latin dancing partner so that saw out the last few songs and finally it was time to fuck off. I watched the cringe on the face of Xavier's daughter in law as my elderly compadre slobbered all over her. Even though I'd contributed very little to the evening in terms of conversation or bailando, they were all really nice to me at the end and told me how wonderful it was I was visiting their country, etc. I came away thinking well, you know what, I did as well as I could here. Now I just have to spend another 11 days travelling with this man I know to be a dirty old perve. Profesionalismo.
That sounds absolutely brilliant. What a night!
Stunning.
How did the old guy get on with the conversation at dinner?
There's a sitcom in this.
He's lived in Mexico for 40 years, so no problem, even though he speaks it in a Yorkshire accent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
No wonder laddo isn't keen to finish up and retire to the land of Yewtree.
I definitely got the sense that he has a last dance feeling on this trip. When he wasn't groping women 50+ years his junior he was sitting moaning that the music was too loud and why couldn't they play God Save the King instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lofty
Ah, I thought he didn't speak Spanish like the guy you were travelling with in France.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
This is Jim's warm up to a life where he takes over and has to go to Xavier Sr's parties every three months.
You should collect evidence of his letchery and use it to userp his position Jim.
Old Father Time should do my work for me on that one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
As if anyone would care.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
He's not old enough to ascend the ladder.
Indeed. If anything, egg him on and hide/swap out his heart medication.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Isn't this whole trip kinda your audition to take on one of these roles from the ancient fuckers?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
In all probability yeah, but these guys just don't retire so he'll have to be punted from above.
The 82 year old guy at the company had his retirement announced for him last week but then claimed he wasn't going anywhere. Fun times.
It’s absolutely crazy you’re still even working there. Glutton for punishment?
I assume the money's alright. Plus the backhanders.
If he’s not getting paid for every second he’s travelling or the salary isn’t massive then he’s just nuts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
He spent years with the South Koreans as well so he probably does like the grind.
My basic salary has doubled in the last 8 years (across two companies) without me ever kicking up much of a fuss about anything, and now I'm weeks from going onto a salary + commission I believe. Quiet extreme competence is the strategy that suits me.
The one time I lolled them off was when they wanted me to go and work off site in Hampshire using my personal laptop. I said I wouldn't go unless they gave me a company laptop. The MD had a massive cry and said the company didn't have the resources to just give people laptops willy nilly. I said well you've just been bought out for £12 million so you should have the resources. About twenty minutes after that I had a laptop.
And got to go visit a dog in the process.
It’s always just a pet hate of mine.
Probably more than a pet one.
While I respect that, if you're in sales, you should probably be blowing your own trumpet a bit more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
If that ever becomes mission critical then I'll probably have to stop, as I'm just not that guy. In a way it's an advantage as customers don't care as long as product and price are good, while internally I'm always confounding their expectations and flipping the bigger egos, or should I say the louder egos - I am aware of my own strengths as well as weaknesses, as one must be in any job.
Same here. I'm not interesting in climbing the ladder. I could land a senior admin or team leader job but I detest the idea of taking extra time (unpaid) just to get today's work done.
There’s not climbing the ladder and there’s not being a doormat.
I mean, I literally am climbing the ladder. It just doesn't suit me to whinge all the time. They have 12 sales guys or something who travel weekends and aren't paid for it, why would they change it for me.
They don’t have to change anything, but you’d get that paid in 95% of proper companies that you’re well qualified for. Keeping an employee meek is a long known tactic.
When you actually get a job with a more normal working culture your quality life is going to explode.
You’re clearly very good at what you do, but hopefully eventually you get to put that to use in a 9-5 that doesn’t take the piss out of you.
How’s the sun tan coming? Must be summer down there (and fucking hot?)
In this market everybody should be going for jobs they're barely qualified for.
I don't know if this comes across in my posts (mostly I write them as a means of organising my own thoughts), but I actually enjoy aspects of this job. I mean, how many of you have been to Ecuador on company dollar?
I am also highly rated by and get along well with the guy who has just been appointed sales director, so unless things go south in the next while there's no need to go through the stress of looking elsewhere. Adult life is mainly about reducing stress where possible. There are people who thrive on spontaneity and chaos and constant change; I am not one of them.
Aye, if you don't hate it and the money suits, why bother doing anything else. :thbup:
You’ve led us to believe it’s fuck all company dollar though. Going to anywhere on company ‘dollar’ should make you money, a lot of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
A literal ladder? You working in the warehouse.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
As if to illustrate the point, I just bought 2 bottles of water and a mask in the airport while waiting for a flight to Lima, and the old fella says I won't get the expenses approved for that. Now, I am 98% sure that I will, but it shows you how the 'traditional' company man thinks. Also explains why he's only eating once a day and seething when the flight doesn't offer free food, though that could also be because he's from Yorkshire.
Now then, now then.
How much is 2L of water anyway? 60p?
I liked Colombia and Ecuador, but Bolivia is a dump. Loads of weird communist type images of subsistence farmers everywhere, dreadful roads, and a real Papers Please vibe at the border.
This is my schedule the next few days
Tomorrow 5am: wake up some place in Bolivia
7am: flight to another place in Bolivia
10am-6pm: with customer
6pm-11pm: fuck knows
11pm: to airport
Thursday 1am: flight from Bolivia to Paraguay
3.30am: land in Paraguay
4.30am: arrive at hotel in Paraguay
8-9am: wake up
10am-5pm: with customer in Paraguay
5pm-6am: fuck knows, we don't have a hotel booked, when I questioned this he just said 'I've got it all under control mister', as he says every time I question his daft itinerary.
Friday 6am: flight from Paraguay to Uruguay
9am-5pm: with customer in Uruguay
Only then does the madness slightly abate.
The opportunity for whorehouses on this trip sounds like it's right up your gaffer's street, surprised he's not slipping off for some of that :drool:
Surely the more grandad indulges his lust the more chance Jim has flying back with his coffin.
Today we are selling a load of stuff to these lads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites_in_Bolivia
They're not quite as weird as the Amish but definitely in that ballpark. One of their rules is that if you have a tractor with a combustion engine, it's not allowed to use rubber tyres. Also is just plain odd to see all these blue eyed, blonde haired people in a country which is shoving indigenous rights down your throat as soon as you get into the airport.
Is it acceptable to work all day in a Starbucks while waiting for my car to have its service and MOT? I’ll be buying drinks, like.
Yeah.
Cool. That’s tomorrow sorted.
On strike again tomorrow. Joining the picket this time which will be an experience, I suppose. Don't expect it'll garner much attention.
Read the other day on Twitter that so far, primary teacher applications are down 15% on this time last year, secondary up 2%. Both horrendous figures that will lead to a crisis imminently (alternatively, will deepen the crisis that is already underway). Reason enough to strike on its own.
Teaching is absolutely fucked.
Has it not always been fucked?
It's just getting worse and worse. So many teachers are leaving and as Mo's stats point out, people have finally cottoned on to how shit it's got so there won't be enough fresh lambs to go to the slaughter to replace the burnt out ones.
It's a completely unmanageable and unsustainable job. My wife moved to be a teacher in a specialist school this year - which is marginally better - but she'll be out of the career within a couple more years. My auntie and uncle have both been teachers for 35+ years and are packing it in because it's by far the worst it's ever been.
That's the thing that struck me. Plenty of people I went to school with went into teaching but they never, ever sounded happy with it.
My cousin was a teacher for 15 years and she left to be a private tutor a few months back. She didn't paint a pretty picture of the situation either.
Toggle Spoiler
My observation of the several teachers I know is that to have any holistic satisfaction you have to go into it as a vocation (i.e. something you love beyond everything which also happens to pay you), because as a job it's fucking shit.
Also nursing.
A few times my wife has mentioned that some nurses on her ward are clearly there for whatever status it brings socially, because they clearly hate the job and have no intention of doing it well.
The problem with teaching as a vocation is that teachers are not even allowed to teach. New requirements are shoved their way every five minutes and every ill of society is then blamed on them.
Exactly. Easily more than 50% of a teachers workload is not teaching nor anything done in aid of teaching (like planning). It's bullshit form filling and producing data for Ofsted.
I would not recommend this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Starbucks is expensive and they blast the aircon so it's also cold.
We have one fire drill every term (so three a year) - we're already on five due to kids vaping in the bogs. Shit like that has been a massive drain on time because if you're mid-lesson, the rest is a write-off. Dealing with behaviour, punctuality etc takes up way too much of my time.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
Good turnout for the picket today, 8 in total. 4 NEU members crossed, scabs. Couple of v signs from white van men, but more beeps/thumbs up, which was pleasing.
Got into Paraguay at 4am, got three hours's sleep, still sat in their office examining ancient John Deere spindle kits. Up at three in the morning and they're desperate to take us out for a beef dinner tonight.
Latin Americans are the most friendly and hospitable people I have ever come across. I just wish they weren't.
When you call the shots can you not fiddle the itinerary to account for this?
Yeah an old girlfriend of mine is a nurse but it's definitely a calling for her, every year she takes two weeks holiday and goes to Lordes to help the sick with their pilgrimage. Don't even bother asking me for a train time when I'm off the clock.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
I assumed you knew the expensive bit, it's well known? If you go to a proper cafe (as in not a chain) they usually do half price refills etc and it's cheaper to start.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
What sort of hours do teachers work? Genuinely interested if anyone is or lives with a teacher.
Hard to define. Their proper hours will be something like 8 - 3:30. So, what, 7 and a half hours with some breaks thrown in. But then there's lesson prep, homework marking, and bullshit forms to fill in which take as long as they take and have to be done in your own time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dquincy
The mental amout of holiday they get is the only positive.
Anyone working in their own time is a mug.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dquincy
My wife was a teacher for years - she'd often work until 10pm to prep stuff for lessons/marking, parents evening etc. Often a sizeable portion of the holidays would be take up by the above as well, plus they don't get paid for the holiday (I think).Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
The unions are absolute pussies here. They should be on strike until some massive fundamental changes happen, or (like nurses) they'll just be guilted ever more into minuscule pay bumps for ridiculous hours. In any other job there would be people hired to take care of the admin guff/digitise it so the experts could focus on the thing of valueQuote:
Originally Posted by Manc
7:30am til 10pm with some weekend days wasn't unusual when she was in mainstream. She would also work plenty of days of her holidays. It's better now she's in specialist; probably 7:30am til 6pm or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dquincy
They also end up having to spend loads of their own money on stuff for school as well.
If public sector workers all decided tomorrow they were going to stick to that then public services would fail immediately.Quote:
Originally Posted by Manc
She literally never, ever has the opportunity to take a break.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Marking I can see, and keeping up with the latest Islamist sensibilities and tranny theory must take a bit of your free time up, but how much 'prep' goes into teaching kids? Surely once you're a few years into it you can recite your subject and lessons in your sleep.
Had a two hour teams in Starbucks today as the office is too noisy for that kind of shit. Was absolutely fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Curriculum constantly gets changed, you get moved to different years, you have to supply suitable work for the various different SEN kids you might have in your class, doing displays in the classroom, writing reports, doing parents evenings, producing the mountains of data Ofsted requires, filling out EHCP applications, running after school clubs, helping at the school disco, supervising at breaktimes. It is literally endless. Surprisingly enough it's not some big conspiracy that all teachers are in on. It's just a completely unmanageable workload.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Yeah my ex was a teacher it was a fucking nightmare.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
I was in there 9-3.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luke Emia
Didn't mind really because a) they played Elliott Smith, b) the woman serving me was quite fit and c) the service and MOT were both free cos I'd bought my car from there.
I'll tell you what is rubbish though - Cheshire Oaks.
Paperwork problems and having to bend over backwards for spastics notwithstanding (I am more than sympathetic there), I feel like if somebody knocked on my door right now and wanted some lessons covering in my particular subject (TTH History), I could do that without overly taxing myself. How much rapid curriculum change is going on to throw a teacher off a subject that they supposedly specialise in?
The people coming to your door wouldn't be kids.
Lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Maybe the sheer breadth of my TTH knowledge is blinding me a bit here, but if I think back to GCSE English (say), the teacher would read the stuff out along with you, and then offer/ask for analysis. If I have a relevant degree and a teaching qualification, I should be able to do that off the cuff with an entirely new text to a level that keeps me ahead of fifteen year olds. If I'm teaching it regularly and know the text[s] a bit better, how hard can it be?
To expand on the frustration behind that useless post, your starting point with regards to understanding teaching is just so far divorced from reality that it's futile trying to convince you, especially given you are reluctant to being convinced. Most of the general public are the same. They genuinely want to believe teaching is an easy job they could all do and teachers en masse are just lazy and useless.
There's a similar attitude towards other public sector workers, but it's by far the worst towards teachers.
What do you think happens to the teachers who leave teaching because it's unbearable? They go and work in private sector jobs. Where they do well. Because they are drastically less demanding.
I can only comment on primary school teaching, but if the lessons you are putting up are "read stuff along and ask for analysis" you'll be shitheaped pretty quickly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Regardless, actually being a teacher (i.e planning and delivering lessons) is not what makes up the majority of the workload. If teachers were allowed to just be teachers I highly suspect the majority of them would be happy and staying in the career. But it isn't. There is basically a full time admin (+other stuff) job on top of being teacher.
Right, so now you've changed your nappy, the administrative burden is clearly the problem. I'm not saying they're lazy and useless. But knowing their actual subject, that I presume they have a degree in, to a level where they should be able to impart it to kids without having to expend that much pre-class effort (compared to the other shitty burdens) seems like a pretty basic expectation. That's all I've questioned.
No, it's still not as straightforward as that. There is an expectation that you actually deliver interesting, engaging, innovative lessons. Rocking up and reading out of a book and asking for analysis isn't deemed an acceptable standard of teaching.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Understanding something and delivering it to children in a way which is accessible and makes them actually want to learn are totally different things. You can have a PHD in rocket science and still be useless at teaching 7 year olds about gravity.
Without wanting to cast aspersions, a surprising number of primary school teachers are found to 'lack secure knowledge of x, y or z subject' by Ofsted.
I think the actual killer is the cultural obsession with inclusivity [without appropriate support being available] which just leaves them firefighting the [many] fuckheads who are all too happy being disruptive. But this is me looking at my kids' primary school education through the eyes of a 41 year old, part of the colonial patriarchy, so it's a tricky one.
For all my defence of teachers, this is 100% true.Quote:
Originally Posted by niko_cee
Probably be the police.
Nowadays my prep time for the 4-5 classes I teach goes from about zero to thirty minutes per lecture, but I am allowed to do whatever I want. Teachers are probably asked to employ specific 'inclusive pedagogies' that change every couple of years, and that must get really annoying.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
It also makes a difference teaching adults who have chosen to be there vs children who are forced to be there. I can deliver a pretty decent seminar to med students. I could not teach kids.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Most don't really act like they chose to be there, but agreed.
EDIT: Then again, the material is actually complicated. Algebra is piss easy.
Schools and teaching must be massively improved on when I was there if the 'expectation' is that lessons are engaging and innovative.
Lewis has had one job in his entire life but presumes he knows everything about everyone elses. There's legitimately no point in engaging with him.
Not when you're not even capable of reading what I've put.
Teachers definitely have it tougher (mainly because of all of the surrounding stuff, not the teaching itself) and get paid less than me. Then again, that is why schools get less than stellar people to fill the role.
I reckon that if Lewis and I (and Spikey) were allowed to run the TTH Academy for Quite Excellent Youths, we would create the next golden generation no problem.
"How hard can it be?" says man who has worked 1 job ever ignoring the multitude of other things they have to do outside the lesson that has been pointed out to him over and over again.
Most jobs are not all that hard.
Hence why most people are unable to comprehend that some (like teaching) genuinely are that hard.
Google says 18 per hour is a decent teaching salary. I pour pints at a pub for 5 quid an hour less.
LOL I just realised this is for someone with multiple years of experience and an entry level teacher is making less than I do to educate 30 children than I do to make sure a Staropramen is put in the correct glass.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
I asked how hard a specific part of it is whilst repeatedly acknowledging the things you claim that I have ignored. Why can't you read things properly?Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
Everything RL has said is true.
The Mrs is a primary teacher. Sets off at 7-7.30 each morning and never back before 6pm. Then works at least 4 hours each weekend and spends plenty of her money on class "materials". It really is a crap job.
I've shown her how her quality of life would be able the same stacking shelves. So any decent job would be far better.
She's off on maternity leave now though. so i think shes at least got another year or so there to avoid paying anything back. I can't wait for her to decide to pack it in
Bad news: the Paraguayan hotel forgot our 3am alarm calls
Good news: my circadian rhythms are so fucked that I never got to sleep in the first place
Mine is the same, she worked from the time she came home yesterday til about 8pm, and will have to at the weekend too. They'll probably rob her pension before she retires too.
The Mrs is a TA and this is also very true. She's said it's very surprising just how hard it is to get a disruptive dickhead kid removed. That's not even taking into account the ones who have genuine issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by niko_cee
Sometimes the parents will work with you on it, but others it's very clear the parents have caused the problem child and you're just their babysitter for the day.
The easiest solution is to just gather the problem kids in their own class, however with teaching numbers way down it just isn't possible.
Tbf, that's not too bad. I do those hours for work. Out the house by 7am ish and leave the office around 6pm.Quote:
Originally Posted by neo_hippy
Without knowing your salary and commute time it's hard to compare jobs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dquincy
But someone as qualified as a teacher would be can get far better terms elsewhere
My ma used to work for children's services to try and tackle absentee kids and the amount of parents who were just like 'can you not just pay for a taxi to get them to school' rather than wanting to sort the issues out was unreal.
Aye, the problems don't just stop at the kids.
Yeah, it's usually a drug/alcohol feuled abusive hellhole all around.
My wife's a teacher and the part where you're just getting to teach (the kids who aren't pricks) is the part she loves, you could parachute her in and tell her that year 9 are at whichever point in the curriculum and she could wing an hour of wo ist die bahnhof bitte with no problem. It's the constant changes and all the other stuff that grinds them all down, things like having to deal with non-caring parents who couldn't give less of a shit if their dickhead kids aren't doing any work and having a 'senior leader' team who avoid getting involved in the kind of thing that surely falls well within their remit.
That’s a lot of TTH’ers with teachers as their partners.
I think Scotland will accept the new offer that’s due to come in - 7% backdated a year, 4.5.% from January to August this year and further 2% from next year I think.
Interesting stuff to read as I’m in the process of quitting teaching (I’m on study leave atm and don’t intend to return). I do echo the sentiment that actual teaching is great and I loved that part, but there’s so much unnecessary and time consuming shit that comes with the job that it really ruins the overall experience. Add in the fact that the wage is pretty shit and it’s no wonder people are jumping ship.
The wage is terrible, mental really. I have this argument regularly as she is in the 'teachers do fuck all' camp and I'm a militant bleeding heart leftie who's mum was a teacher etc so I naturally support the right to strike. People are so angry about teachers wanting more money as if they have to pay the increase themselves, surely you want the best candidates available due to it being an attractive job. Same as the police 'oh no it's full of fucking morons' yeah because the pay is hilariously bad for anyone with a brain.
My mum was a teacher and the changes drove her to retire early. She’d be coming home from work and then working until midnight. It was absolutely mental to see.
Shame really, as I can imagine actual teaching being really rewarding. Isn’t sousepig a teacher? Be interested to hear his view.
Time consuming? Sure. Soul sucking? No doubt. Full of annoying as fuck tasks? Definitely. But hard, as in requiring people with high level skills and/or talent to do? I don't think so.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
I'd pay good money to see Lewis try and teach some year 9 set 5 class.
Being a good teacher definitely requires skill/talent. The difference between a teacher phoning it in and a good teacher is absolutely stark.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
It's not talent for the same sorts of things as being some world class authority in an intellectual field, but that doesn't make it less valuable.
Genuinely brilliant teachers can make a lifelong positive difference to a kid's life.
Of course being a good *insert profession here* requires skill/talent. But being a median teacher does not. Nobody expects Robin Williams level teaching from everyone. Saying open your book in page 54 and do the exercises does not require some elevated intellect.
Of course there is the 'if we wanted better teachers we would pay more,' which I agree with, as long as it goes together with 'fire all of the shit ones.'
Pepe teaches American 21 year olds that care about mental health and feelings. Put him in a city school made up of 14 and 15 year olds and see how easy he thinks it is.
I would have a mental breakdown / end up facing a murder charge within the first week if I was confronted with the shit my teachers had to deal with.
My wife has worked in schools across the entire range of Ofsted gradings and that kind of teaching would not have been accepted in any of them. They are regularly observed by senior leadership and given feedback on their teaching.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Yes, there are shit teachers. But the idea that you'll get by fine by just turning up and telling the kids to do a worksheet whilst you mark books just isn't reality.
I would not do it because it would be a waste of my time and actual skills/talents.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
But yes lads. The wives of TTH could be finding cures for cancer right now plus solving Millennium Problems on their free time, but instead they choose to spend their time teaching rowdy toddlers how to count and where their knee is. Bless their hearts.
Sure, but then that doesn't make the teachers talented, unless 'willing to put of with shit' is the talent we're taking about here in which case they are indeed very talented.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
You are a proper boring idiot to discuss anything with. It's amazing you're apparently some sort of academic. Or maybe it's not, actually.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
You misunderstand. I'm not saying their skills are wasted on teaching, I am saying their skill IS teaching. And it's a skill you are underestimating because lecturing at a University is easy. In a school, especially a rough one like I went to, you would be effectively bullied unless you can control the room. Which most of my teachers couldn't. The type of calm but menacing authority needed to do well is pretty rare.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Not willing to put up with. Able to prevent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
I agree that lecturing at a University is easy, very easy indeed, but I would like to see most of those quite excellent teachers try to explain the Navier-Stokes equation to a group of students. Most of them could not, since must of them couldn't even get a degree in Engineering.
As for 'controlling the room,' I agree that is not for everyone and it sucks that it is just made harder by idiot administrators.
Clueless.
I think the kids are just different over there. In my school the kids didn't dream of attending Uni, or becoming a doctor. Their dream was simply to make the teacher lose their shit by the end of the lesson. And then the teacher had 30 little cunts :harold:ing them for an hour and a half while they get tormented.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
Maybe that happens in "I pledge allegiance to the flag" America too, I dunno. I doubt it though. I've seen Freedom Writers.
This is what happens over here:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...r/11199382002/
:harold:
But then you already knew that.
It's not even just about having good behaviour management. It's about actually inspiring and engaging kids in learning, which is what good teachers can do. It's not something anyone can do, it's not something that can be easily taught and it also takes time and preparation.
"Yeah but they can't do engineering equations mate" so fucking what? Yes, a university lecturer in engineering will have knowledge and talents a primary school teacher probably doesn't. Are you that insecure that you can't deal with the fact that they will have different knowledge and talents that you don't? You have to be "above" them in some way? Such a fucking bizarre line of argument.
Yeah we get the violence too, albeit wothout the guns. This is different to that.
Alright lads, got to go TEACH THE YOUTH. Behave yourselves while I am gone, alright?
I bet he's really boring lol
You could replace ninety per cent of academics with pretty much anyone with a relevant PhD, which, as I used to point out to my supervisor whenever she was complaining and striking, is why their terms and conditions will always be a bit worse than they think they deserve, because there are lots and lots of PhDs for every academic position. At the same time, producing all of those surplus post-graduate qualifications is what keeps the majority of them in work, so they end up being boxed in between their current middling terms or better conditions for the half of them that keep their jobs in a drastically reduced university sector. For all the complaints you read about the big professors on massive salaries and everyone else not, it seems like the natural result of that system.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Writing my name on the board, '...and I am the six-time "Beee-st Poooo-ster". Got it?'Quote:
Originally Posted by SvN
My wife teaches me all sorts of things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waffdon
No means no etc.
Can't say no if she's asleep.
All very good points. Fairs.Quote:
Originally Posted by neo_hippy
Don't make me pull out my course evaluations, mate.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
The 'ArtSci' crowd over here has been bitching about their salaries via email lately. If any of them could find a job elsewhere, or if the university couldn't find fifty people to replace each of them within five minutes, they might have a point. As is, I just say that if they don't like their pay, they should just work less.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
I can't see Lewis lasting an hour without calling one of the kids a slur. It's just written in the stars.
Still alive, Jim? Or have the Paraguayans* got you?
Had one of those days today where something broke that’s nothing to do with me, and it’s immediately my problem to fix whilst nobody wants any of the options available. :moop: high five to the drilling engineers who broke the equipment, provided the problem for me to deal with and then are telling me they won’t take their shit back.
Had my pay review today though, 5.4% pay rise and a double digit bonus means it’s almost tolerable.
Handy teaching. Lewis teaching :D
Two donuts. Final offer.
I’m going with one, but I’ll up it if needed.
Entered Uruguay this morning on no sleep and immediately (in the immigration queue) got the shits. Would like to think it's another dirty Luis Suarez trick but the Paraguayans (what an awful country, jeez) must be to blame via the one rodizio meal I ate there. I did what I could in the airport and then much to my horror, we aren't taking some crappy taxi into Montevideo but instead the customer has come to pick us up in his gleaming white pickup with (now formerly) white leather seats.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
You can't give in to these things so after spending an hour on the toilet I went all stiff upper lip with four pairs of underwear underneath some fresh trousers. Pressed the down button on the lift and off she goes again. More new pants, more trousers, sorry I'm five minutes late gaffer and out for a steak lunch with the customer before business.
They say 'don't fill up on bread' but when that bread basket came I was going at it like a starving peasant. Mas pan señor? Sí sí por supuesto que sí.
Managed to hide it all day thanks to having mainlined some Sainsbury's tablets, got back into the hotel at 5, and ayayayay.
Well that sounds pleasant.
Send an angry tweet at roque Santa Cruz in retaliation.
Another things that's really been pissing me off about the coverage of the junior doctors' pay dispute is how it's reported as £X salary for "full time". But for most people (and what people will think of) full time is considered to be 35+ hours a week. For junior doctors it's 48 hours a week. A full 12 hours shift more. I work 36 hours a week and am considered 80% of fulltime with the commensurate 20% reduction in pay from the headline figures you'll have heard.
And that's before you even consider all the unpaid hours we end up doing.
I might have already moaned about this point. If I have then I don't care, I'm moaning again.
All I'm reading is you're working part time.
It always weirds me out when there's barely an element of disguise to it. Hide those bricks, son.
You'd have to be thick as shit to even attempt that. Hopefully he spends the rest of his days getting buggered in a maximum security prison by gentlemen who grew up fucking pigs, as they all do here for practice.
I bet Colombian prisons are a right laugh.
Reminds me of this that I read the other day: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-64770716
"The jail will eventually hold more than 40,000 people." :|
Imagine all the *ahem* special treatment you'd get being a lone British bloke in there.
Exactly. Another benefit of brexit.
Today (a Sunday) our customer in Chile took us out for lunch. It was a nice restaurant, but the conversation, jeez. This guy is 77 years old, his wife in her 70s too so I was giving up 40 years plus to all three of my lunch companions. It started off ok but we were right next to a massive air conditioning unit and a speaker playing crooner hits at maximum volume, which meant I had to sit through a 20 minute period where into my left ear was coming a lengthy of explanation of why General Pinochet was a great man and the best thing for Chile, while in my right ear I had a seemingly endless loop of this.
After a manzanilla on the house, I thought I'd got away with it at 3.30 but no, the geezer and his wife insist on furthering the hospitality which involves driving us up into the hills outside Santiago where he has a suspiciously nice house. More Pinochet chat followed in the garden, followed by everyone agreeing that the men should go out and work and the woman's place is in the home, and then it was inside for G&Ts - it was like living in some kind of Conservative Club nightmare, but in Santiago. I then sat there for hours while this man talked at me about topics as exciting as how they don't have wills in Chile, and the legal gymnastics involved in acquiring the plot of land to build his office back in the 80s (you guessed it, the Pinochet government loaned him loads of money). Finally at 6 it was time to leave, but even in the car there was no escape from the General as we drove past what used to be his house, a massive estate located conveniently close to where the customer lives.
Day 16 of 19 nearly over, nearly at the end of this mission.
The only South American country to back the British in the Falklands. Great man, Pinochet. RIP.
I thought you'd have enjoyed the Pinochet chat tbh.
I mean it is (post Pinochet) a free country and he can stan who he likes, but jeez give it a rest. If I have someone over to my house I don't spend the entire time telling them that Thatcher was great.
Really?
Yeah, I'm calling bullshit.
I tell everyone who comes to my house how great Salvador Allende was.
The postman is sick of my shit.
It's the only 9/11 worth talking about. :uhoh:
The Pinochet fan has done two Nazi salutes today, one when the boss asked the waiter if they had apple strudel, and another when he chose Jagermeister as an aperitif.
It's actually quite refreshing how they lack the stupid baggage around these things that we do. I have heard 'negrito' a LOT on this trip, if any Suarez fans are interested. It's literally just a physical description, nothing more.
Jesus, utd melts taking hits everywhere.
Day 17 of this thing now and I've finally had enough. Fed up with coming back to hotels where you can't drink the water because it's unsafe or tastes like shit or both, so to get water you have to go downstairs and change your dollars into the joke local currency and buy water and then do about 3 different forms to expense it. Fed up with this old cunt extending our working days by 2 hours every day because his hands shake too much to use a laptop competently but he also won't accept my help to speed things up. Fed up with him saying 'the young man doesn't understand' when I consistently come up with correct solutions for the customer, 10 times faster than his method of using 40 year old catalogues and folk memory. Fed up with eating out with customers every single day and having to listen to dogshit anecdotes about the 1970s in Spanish all the way through meal after meal after meal (I've become amazing at picking up laughter cues even when the mind has shut down).
Also very fed up with the pricks back in the office complaining that my absence (i.e. them looking after my day to day) is making them busy. Try and do this iron man effort and not have any time off for a month, you arseholes.
Literally can't wait to get home on Wednesday night and cook scrambled eggs and you know, do the washing or something.
Someone will have already kicked your door in to do the washing.
At least treat yourself to a takeaway for surviving the ordeal.
I reckon I'd have hit the point you're at no later than the first Nazi salute, Jimmy. But possibly also as early as literally any of the other things you've described.
Jimmy’s optimistic to fucking hell I hate this mood for this trip has mirrored the majority of my extended business trips but exchange nazi salutes for Elton John being a prick.
On my second to last one and my final day there, I realised my refreshing Coca Cola had an ice cube in it half way through and spent the next 3 days including multi hour flight pissing out of my arse and had to justify to an attractive Swiss pharmacist why I needed anti-laxatives.
This is going to lead to more South America trips, too.
An anal cavity search on the way home will round it off nicely.
Jimmy is going to need some deradicalisation training when he gets back. Pray he never gets sent to Afghanistan.
Barney will be sabotaging Jim's promotion so he doesn't get stuck taking calls from Francois and Juan in his absence.
My main takeaway (as well as the renewed respect and love for solid turds) is that to do this regularly I really need to get paid quite a lot more than I am.
100% should be minimum of £200 a day whilst you are away on top of your wage. Or double your daily wage which ever is higher.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Haven’t people on here been telling you that for ages?
I agree, it's quite hard to explain how out of date this industry is and how dominated by 1970s norms it is. For instance I've just performed a 2.5 week trip around South America without a company credit card.
Now going to airport, the very last chat with Pinochet man was about how Jewish financiers organised 9/11. I just smiled. What a way to finish.
Do you at least get a heap of commission out of the South Americans?
On the plus side you’ve many stories of extensive travels. On the downside your stories will revolve around talking about work, rather than wanky tourist photos.
Good effort though, Turkey dinosaurs and smiley faces to celebrate your return.
I am on no commission at the moment, this trip is for experience and the plan is when I get back I have a one to one with the new boss (who is my age thank fuck) telling me the terms of a new deal with salary + commission and which countries I will have to go to and how often.
Should be interesting. I would leave a biggish hole now so it's time to be more assertive.
Have you done much to benchmark your worth elsewhere?
Ie a 10% payrise might sound like a lot, but is it really in the grand scheme of things?
All I know is if they want me to do this sort of thing even twice a year I need to be earning (via whatever means) double what I'm currently on.
You should be interviewing a couple of times a year for other roles just to test the water. This place seems horrifically backwards on literally every measure
Yeah, that’s the advice our VP of HR told us on day 1.
I’ve never really done it, but applying for other jobs and getting internal interviews kicked the firestorm in the same way.
What sort of job do you fancy Jim? Or is this it, and they just need to pay you more?
Definitely. I’m not doing it currently because they’re upping my pay annually by a satisfactory amount and I can be at home every night which is a luxury in my industry. When that ends in a few years I’ll certainly be back to shopping around.
At least Jim doesn’t hate his job. Nothing worse than the thing you have to do everyday grinding you down and making you miserable.
The contrast in my job satisfaction between now and 5 years ago is phenomenal. :drool:
We hired a new developer 2 weeks ago, and he's absolutely hopeless. I really need to change how we interview and assess candidates because there's no way this idiot should've been hired.
Another brutal firing by SvN :drool:
What’s he managed to do in 2 weeks to earn such a scathing review of internal SvN inc. policies?
What do you do for interviews?Quote:
Originally Posted by SvN
I imagine it's the usual 'tell me about a time when you had to do x' stuff that is useless for determining someone's suitability for a skilled post, but is the blagger's dream ticket. Our lot have been caught out by that before.
I like this but they do need to pay me or it won't be worth the hassle going forward.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
Just done a 6 hour flight from Santiago to Bogota, operated on Easyjet terms i.e. they don't give you even water or a coffee or let you recline the seat. Avianca honestly the shittest airline in the world, so it's lucky I now have another 10 hour flight with them back to London taking off in a couple of hours.
It's international women's Day and the state of Berlin celebrate. Thanks for the day off.
It's just the quality of his work. We've given him a really basic internal project to get started with, that hits on a few different areas (managing performance, third party API integration, database design) that make up a big part of the job. The plan was to let him do it, review and then show him what would need to change to align to our standards/practices. The problem is a 1-2 day project has taken 2 weeks (so far) and our Lead Developer's feedback yesterday was that it was just a massive shitshow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
Some of his choices are baffling even to me, who hasn't developed anything for about 5 years and was poor at best when I did.
An introductory 30 minute chat where we ask about their experience, technical skills, etc. Then a second interview where they prepare a technical walkthrough of a project they've worked on, where they can explain their technical decisions, we can ask questions, and generally get a feel for how competent they are. We prefer this approach over some sort of task because it means we see their approach to larger projects in terms of architecture, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Are you getting people to show you their code from previous jobs? Or are you expecting them all to have hobby projects too?
The candidates we interviewed either showed freelance projects or redacted code from previous jobs.
Redacting code from most likely your current job (you're probably not going to remember or still have access to code from jobs before that) sounds like more hassle than just doing some sort of coding test.
What did this guy show in his interview?
Some sort of custom CRM he'd developed for his last contracting position. It was fine, but was basically a CRUD app with some simple PDF generation and automated emails. But there wasn't anything wrong with it, and so I decided to give him a shot.
We will be changing our strategy for future interviews.
Can Boyd have a job?
My work has just hit the "restructure" klaxon. :moop:
We have had two minor re-structures in the last twelve months, and every issue that was obvious to us but apparently not the people making it happen has come to pass. The lol thing is the latter group aren't some distant crowd who have no idea what we do and how we do it. They work very closely with us, and in some cases are still part of it; but it seems all sense and knowledge goes out the window when these things come around.
Mine went great. Happened in December, new role began in February, and will go up the pay scale in April. Madness.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
A crud app? Hardly a ringing endorsement!!
We are overdue another rewire. I’ve seen 4 in ten years.
I’m getting binned at the next one I suspect.
Today I was sorting out some decades-old paperwork that came with the desk drawers I inherited at work and it was all worthwhile when I discovered somebody whose middle name on an application was He-Man.
You sure that wasn't their pronouns?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
He's Marvels new wheelchair bound hero. "SuperInclusive".
Finally back, the final verdict.
Colombia: lovely people, clearly a bit of a shitbox in some respects and narcotraficantes are still the single defining thing about it.
Ecuador: like a more shambolic version of Colombia. Awful food, but Quito is beautiful.
Peru: so unsafe that we called off the visits. Rapidly falling into shit
Bolivia: a complete toilet, but at least they have some kind of visible national identity and believe in collective improvement. Morales has been yewtreed and exiled, so whether his dogshit socialist replacement can achieve this I don't know. Enormous signs of Chinese soft power everywhere here.
Paraguay: an unredeemable shithole that has no aspirations to improve itself and is very happy making its living off importing contraband goods from Brazil. Do not go there, it's a toilet and you'll need the toilet.
Uruguay: best country visited by a mile. Would go back on holiday if it wasn't as far away as the moon. Montevideo is beautiful and the open plains around it were a lovely break from the jungle bollocks everywhere else.
Chile: is currently quite nice, even if much of the landscape looks like Mars, but can see it very rapidly going to toilet in the next few years. They have a 36 year old socialist president and women are advised not to drive alone because of widespread carjack rapes. Good luck.
UK: you come back and you just marvel at how fucking well organised it is.
My travelling companion: old, old man who knows his stuff but is horrendous at using a computer and in the second week started belittling me quite a lot in front of the customers. I would say he felt threatened but he really shouldn't have done.
Bloody Jehova's Witnesses turning up at the door as I'm about to start training someone. :moop: Also, there's a growing consensus among our HP's that Fibromyalgia is not a real disease. :uhoh:
Give us a sample of his belittling japery.
I called that years ago. It's awfully convenient how only people that are also lazy cunts seem to have it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
And yet, if a claimant has sent paperwork that moans about their pain (complete with a stairlift and bathroom hoist), I'm putting that down as the primary condition.
Hmmmm ....Quote:
Currently, there are no specific laboratory or imaging tests for fibromyalgia.
Well this bit of paper was from 2003 and Team Twitter Mong have reliably confirmed that pronouns simply weren't invented until the woke made them up in the last few years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raoul Duke
What's an HP? Perhaps you have cause/effect reversed Spikey - perhaps people who have it are seen as lazy because their condition precludes them from being able to do much?
There are plenty of disease for which there is no confirmatory lab test or imaging test. Epilepsy, for example.
Nah, it's just a benefit con. Easy to fake, impossible to test. It's the same people that make Whiplash claims when the bus hits a pothole.
To clarify, I'm not saying it's entirely made up (although it might be), I'm just saying it's the leading benefit scam these days. Closely followed by depression and anxiety, but you don't get as much moolah for that.
Health professional. As for being easy to fake, it's an evidence based system so they need to con a handful of people. I don't doubt there's some conning going on but I also know legitimate claimants can be completely undone by the opinion of the bloke handling the assessment. Or the claimant not being able to provide great input/evidence. Or the health professional not being able to contact the specialists they need for further input.Quote:
Originally Posted by randomlegend
So much of this process is in the lap of the Gods.
The number of legitimately struggling people I've seen that have been rejected is ridiculous too, granted. The problem is that the system is just so playable if you know what you're doing. Meanwhile, you get people at deaths door marked suitable for work because they play down how bad it is. It's immensely frustrating.
The 77 year old was onto something.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Have you ever felt safe at your job? Seems like you're always on one end of the scale from depression to immense pay rise?Quote:
Originally Posted by Foe
That's how it works. It's similar for me, the underground workers earn well into six figures because it's in lieu of long-term (/any) job security.
Has anyone been in their job/with their company long term? 15 years here, changed roles during though.
Just the 10 for me.
4 for me. Planning to leave when my boy starts school and I don't need WFH and hours that revolve around the school run.
I'm at about 4.5 years currently, which is by far my longest tenure. I can see myself staying a lot longer unless company fortunes/attitudes drastically change.
7 months. 😎
5 years, which in theory should take my holiday from 20 up to 22 days annually but I see this hasn't yet been reflected in the HR system.
20 days of holiday :D
I moaned about it in my last review, the MD said he wanted it raised but the South Africans wouldn't agree so it was out of his hands. I said good luck as it's not even slightly competitive in the current labour market.
I’m coming up on 8 years now which I think is my longest.
You've probably covered this before and it's probably a stupid question but do you get the/any public holidays?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
He must do, otherwise he won't be getting the legal minimum.
I'm not sure they'd be too concerned about that.
Yes, all of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
Well that's something. Wouldn't have surprised me at all if they were trying to wangle their way out of that somehow.
Still, as you've said you can do better elsewhere. Get them applications going. Your haunting tale of brushes with Nazi holdouts will tug the heartstrings of any potential employer I'm sure.
The boss (European one who I went to Spain with) phoned me this morning to welcome me back and says he reckons that the old fella deliberately made our South American trip have an overly punishing schedule to try and break me and show I wasn't up to the job.
As conspiracy theories go, it's right up there.
15 years hereQuote:
Originally Posted by Lofty
That sounds like exactly the sort of shit a 'ready for the scrap heap' tosser would pull on an up and comer in the business, so I'd be inclined to believe it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
What’s the Arab’s take on it all?
Imagine the carnage if The Arab went with them. :drool:
The Arab went on a two week trip to Iraq and is now on holiday for a week. Part timer.
When does Barney get his chance, that's what I want to know.
Barney would go sick after a half day visit to Slough based on Jim's insights.
There was a re-allocation of markets going on while I was away which I have missed, but all indications are he's getting Ireland.
I'm rumoured to be getting Central America which would be a genuinely awful result from every conceivable angle. We'll see what happens.
Wasn't that what you were promised?
I was 'promised' (as much as these things mean anything in business) succeeding old man river in Central & South America when he retires. As far as I can see he'd be keeping all the big markets for now and I'd be getting the countries that make up the bottom part of the Concacaf hexagonal.
Old fella, MD and the guy from the photo with General Pinochet are all now having a meeting to run over the trip. Should I be seething that I'm not invited? Probably.
Next trip to Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua then :drool:
There is no way in this world you shouldn’t be job hunting and holding them to ransom.
Yeah, by all accounts they don't have anyone under 70 to do the jobs you are doing/being promised and as already said multilingual candidates will lol at them when they see what package is offered. You have the advantage.
Jimmy doesn't like to rock the boat. Unless the boat belongs to Barney. In which case you should definitely be leading him to believe the "£44k" is a thing of the past.
Nah. The industry is so cyclic and leadership often just pivots as a way to show they’ve done something.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
Now I’ve been promoted I’m into a tier which is quite broad and has a lot of very senior engineers or team leaders, of which I am neither. Performance wise I’ve always been assured I’m well thought of but I’m much more exposed now than I have been previously.
How they treated me the last 2 years doesn’t fill me with confidence they actually care. My (new) line manager who pleaded my case told me recently he was surprised it hadn’t been done previously and how much resistance he faced making it happen.
I’m not on 100k though, so guess I should be applying for underground roles.
After an hour they called me up. 82 year old vice president, 79 year old I went round with, the MD who is 50, and the 35 year old new sales director who, I think, really likes me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
First MD asks me how it was, etc. I said the time with the customers was great and I learned a lot from it, but the rest of it was really hard - body clock, lack of sleep and all the various other issues, especially once you get towards day 12 onwards. MD says yes, well we used to have a 2 week limit on trips, but we don't anymore.
Then he asked me how we can grow business in these countries. I gave a series of well thought-out answers around marketing, product development and so on.
Then he asked me how my Spanish was. I say I think it was fine but the old man (3 of these 4 people are called John FFS) would be in a better position to judge. The old man says yes, it was perfectly good. When I think about it, this verdict in itself is a massive fucking achievement given that I have never lived in a Spanish-speaking country and have no qualification in it higher than A level which was 17 years ago. A massive fucking achievement and I'm even better at French with the same restrictions, but anyway.
Then MD wants to talk about the future. He says are you willing to travel in the future. I said yes, I am, but only to a certain extent - I have a life here and don't want it to disrupt it a huge amount or have to make sacrifices. At this he becomes instantly rather flustered, and starts going 'Well, you know, if you want to make it in this industry, this company, you're going to have to travel.' I looked around and the 82 year old was nodding sagely. I said well, I know, and as I just said, I am very happy to travel as long as it's manageable. I then started listing things - my parents are here and I want to do things with my dad before he gets old, my sister lives nearby and I spend time with her, I'm not in a relationship at the moment but I might want to be in the future. He said 'You're not married, though', and started listing things he had to give up earlier in his career to travel for work - golf club memberships and tennis club memberships. Seething to fuck inside, I said 'No, I'm not married'. What I didn't do was mention my side career as a cricket umpire, which is very important to me but I'm well aware won't play well with these types and I suspect the golf/tennis mentions were an attempt to satirise/belittle this.
MD then turned to 79 year old and asked him how many weeks a year it was to cover Latin American markets. He said ten weeks. MD turned back to me and said 'There you go, ten weeks'. Ten weeks a year sounds a fuckton to me. I said right.
Then, somewhat out of the blue, the 79 year old asked him about business class travel and got lolled out of the fucking building. Having just spent 9 hours on company time with a Colombian child clambering over my cramped airline seat as I tried to sleep, I didn't really see the funny side personally.
The MD then said right, in that case, your next trip (also with the 79 year old) will be to central America in May/June and then to Guyana and the Caribbean in September/October. I said right, ok. This all came as a shock so couldn't respond logically while taking it in.
He said you're going to get a few of 79 year old's markets, which he wouldn't specify but I suspect it will be the ones that currently perform poorly under the 79 year old i.e. Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, possibly Jamaica if I want to complete the set of high murder rates. He said we'll make you a new contract before 1 April to put you on salary plus commission. I said ok.
I was starting to feel quite rubbish at this point but, call me weak or whatever, in front of those 4 people I couldn't stop and say 'fuck you pay me'. I just couldn't, and the MD's attitude and the fact that he insisted on doing it in front of all of these other people really put me off both him and the prospects of putting my point across. Instead, I left the room, went downstairs feeling horrible, and waited for the 35 year old sales director to come back. When he did, I went in and said to him 'I want a meeting with you on Monday, because there are quite a few things I wasn't comfortable saying up there in that environment with those people'. He said of course.
I have three options: a) meekly go along with them, b) make a bit of a fuss, c) blow the whole thing up and hold them explicitly to ransom. I am very well practised in a) but just at the moment, I don't know what it is, maybe it's the jet lag, but I'm feeling closer to c).
It's happening.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir Andy Mahowry
Have a think about what you want Jimmy (salary, lifestyle etc) and think about what you would accept as a minimum. Also think about where else would benefit from your skills and put yourself out there, even if it's a feeler.
If you don't know what you want, it's much easier to be bullied out of it. You clearly have a valued skillset that they don't want to lose. I'd also demand to set the timetable next time so it's not ridiculous early morning flights.
Definitely don't do a) Jimmy, for fuck's sake, they're clearly taking the piss. They might genuinely not think they are, because they're thick and clearly indoctrinated by what they think the job requires, but they are. 'Well, you know, if you want to make it in this industry, this company' is a massive red flag and a phrase clearly designed to make you feel like you're at fault for not wanting to bin off a fifth of your year for not enough reward. At least have a look at what you might get elsewhere, and even if you'd rather stay where you are for whatever the reasons may be at least use that (plus the fact that you know the company, the customers, etc) to wangle yourself a better deal.
They're taking you for a ride.
And 'You're not married, though', this attitude just winds me up whenever people use their families/your lack of one to wheedle you into or themselves out of doing something.
Jimmy, my wife's Uncle - another one, not Keith - used to work for a pharmaceutical company selling drugs to new markets and regularly traveled to Asia and the Middle East. Doesn't speak a word of the lingo. I don't know what he was earning, but he retired at 50, has bought his 3 children a house each and drives a top-spec BMW.
Obviously a different market, but I think it highlights quite how majorly you are being "mugged off" here.
You’ve a lot to offer by the sounds of all you’ve said here. I’d do any of them and start looking.
Yeah, this really winds me up too, and possibly has an extra needle of irritation in my case.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
Thanks for the advice all, posting on here really helps sometimes.
Biggest cliche of all time but ‘work to live, not live to work’ is correct all the same. It’s no business of theirs if you’re single, married, or whatever. No job should rely heavily on any home situation.
One of my uncles used to commute weekly to Abu Dhabi. Night flight Sunday night, work through the week, night flight back Friday night. Some sort of engineering consultancy work or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
There's no way this doesn't end up with you somehow ending up managing Paraguay for an unlikely tilt at the 2034 World Cup :drool:
My advice would be to make sure you know what your number is - make sure you don't blink first in the negotiation (get used to some uncountable silences). Whoever says a number first loses. You clearly passed the "interview" and it's now down to the details. It sounds like you hold a lot of cards as they're clearly succession planning (20 years too late).
The problem is, without wanting to appall my mother by talking about money, I'm currently on £35k. To do three of this kind of trip a year I'd want minimum £50k plus commission. Even that might be low, I don't know. The chances of them putting me on that are, I reckon, fucking zero.
I'd be perfectly happy carrying on as I am as basically an account manager for what I'm on now, but under the South Africans that doesn't seem to be on the table, I think if you start introducing this kind of long range travel to shithole countries it turns into a completely different gig.
Anyway of finding out what the 2 people you travelled with are on?
No matter what they offer you, get another job.
The European sales manager brings in around £8k a month, as far as my best intelligence has it. Not sure what this old fella is on but I bet he's underpaid as he's an old Yorkshireman with a frugal attitude to expenses. The Arab's dad, who does the MENA countries, is said to bring in about £25k a month. These are all mostly commission - somehow I doubt El Salvador is going to generate the kind of commission that Spain, France and Germany do.
The Arab is on only very slightly more than me (no commission) for managing a market that makes £1 million a year in sales, or about 5% of our turnover, and spending 6 weeks a year bumming round Iraq. He's very unhappy about this but has no choice until he's served out his 5 year British visa tied to the company, they have him utterly over a barrel until that point.
Couldn't he just elbow them to death?
Do you want to earn more money Jim or is it more that you feel you should be paid more for the shit show they want you to do? You'd breeze into plenty of 35-40k roles with less hassle and proper fluffy modern corporate cultures.
Sounds quite similar to Magic's job in that he's a sales guy who has to travel around shithole countries. But he's paid (a lot?) more than that from what I remember.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
£35k in London for that level of work, plus language skills, is absolute banter money though
£50k + commission sounds low as fuck for that travel itinerary to me, unless the percentage is good enough to net you at least a few more grand a month.
Travelling might look cool on Instagram but travelling to work is a right cunt on.
He might enjoy it more if he goes solo but his bosses love to tag along.
I suppose you could take a camera with you and be a more sophisticated and less pervy version of Bald and Bankrupt and make millions as an unlikely YouTube star.
I value a work-life balance, so it's basically being bought off to do all that shit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lofty
You definitely need to do some research.
An extra 3-5k to go travelling around the world without any time in lieu to pretty tough countries seems completely out of touch with reality.
I’d get yourself on indeed or wherever and start seeing what other jobs you’ve got transferable skills for. Sounds like you’d be suited to procurement or contract management roles in BIG INDUSTRY.
I'm not in Jim's industry, but you could come and work for my company as almost anything in sales for more than £35k, you wouldn't have to travel half way around the World to earn it either.
In my experience there are two types of employers when it comes to the package, those that are reasonable and even proactive about salary and those that are not. Your lot seem to fall squarely in the latter camp and if they do, they won't change.
Get the old CV/linkedin dusted off and start firing off a few applications and having some conversations with recruiters. Even if not to actually move on but just to get an idea of the market and what you could be getting.
Change jobs then. You would get a far better work life balance for the same if not better renumeration elsewhere, I guarantee it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Barely slept last night, whether because of jet lag or stress or both I don't know, but it's a bad way to start my 27th consecutive working day. I think the boat is going to have to be rocked at last.
The wage you are on for London surprises me to be honest. Effectively working in a sale type role I can’t see that anything less than 50/60k should be acceptable and if you went elsewhere I’d expect something in that line. Hell you can earn that in Norfolk as an employee mortgage broker so fuck knows what they earn in London.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
What I would say is that I worked for a firm very similar to the one you currently work for. It was all about doing free overtime, wages were screwed down as much as possible and everything was always done with a nod and a wink. “Next year will be your year.” It never fucking was.
And you can tell the old bastards are cooking the books. That little industry under the radar with all that money getting pocketed. The backhanders being a cheap alternative to paying you every week.
Had a chat with the Indian guy in the office, he thinks exactly the same as me about all this but god bless him he's even more of a doormat than me. He recalled the time when he was on a work trip in India over a British bank holiday weekend (which wasn't a BH in India), came back and asked for the bank holiday back which he'd been working through. The company said sorry no, bank holidays apply in the country you're working in at the time.
He also revealed that he'd once been in a meeting where bosses had repeatedly cited my unmarried status as a good opportunity to get me on the road. I mean, lol.
Sounds like you're in the market for a sham marriage.
:D that's fucking cheeky.
They're proper pisstakers.
For fuck's sake, these guys get worse every time you talk about them. And not even giving you a long weekend after all this is a sign of people who couldn't give less of a shit if they work you to death.
I'd now suggest just going along with whatever this contract discussion is, start applying elsewhere and then when you go to hand in your notice if they talk about trying to keep you tell them they'll need to blow out of the water whichever offer it is you've planned to accept elsewhere. But honestly I'd just plan to get out as soon as you can because these cunts sound like the worst.
I was getting the piss taken out of me to a much lesser extent a couple.of jobs ago but eventually it's what drove me off and eventually changed from the last job to my current one too, which is by no means a dream job but the work-life balance is incredible. Don't settle for less just because these pricks want you to think you should.
Pull the pin Jim, you could even really go against your sensibilities and change to an office job with union representation.
For example, here in the grizzled north wasteland at my wife's haulage contractor spot (no bed of roses by any means but still) the foriegn speakers who work the international desk are working Monday to Friday 8-3 on 60k a year. Annual pay rise and christmas bonus guaranteed.
You haven't even been given the weekend(s) you missed while you were away? Holy fuck Jim. Just get out of there.
However crap the rest of it is, this bit isn't actually unreasonable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I dunno, I think "you're not married so we're gonna get you to work loads of extra hours outside the normal hours without TOIL or extra pay" is pretty fucking unreasonable.
If you're working for MI6 in about 1958 it's reasonable, otherwise it isn't.
The issue there is not being paid extra and/or generally being taken for a chump, not that clocking he isn't married means that he might be able to do things outside of normal hours.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Jim, what is actually stopping you knocking up your CV and testing the waters on the open market?
Nothing, I've done it today.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
Great stuff. Good luck!
Today was the deadline to submit a plan on how I'm gonna spend £1m today (lol) which I've just sent.
I'm in next week, with no real urgency around anything, including a doss day in Liverpool on Wednesday and an all-day virtual conference (watching Cheltenham with my laptop on in the background, most likely) on Thursday, and then I'm off for 2 weeks.
Celebrating tonight with Chinese food. :drool:
Still need to find time to have this silly University Challenge 'I necknominated my mate bcoz I luv da sesh' video though.
Baz's job sounds great.
Look at the life you could have, Jimmy.
Good man.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Had a chat with two of my colleagues at the end of the day and got some incredible juice. Apparently when the South Africans came over a few weeks back they slashed the pay of all the travelling sales guys - all except the Arab's dad, who upon being told his pay was being cut by 10%, told them that actually it was going to be raised by 5% or else he'd be off to work for our competitors the next morning. Out-chadded by him (not the first to experience this as the Parisian Burberry shop assistant will testify), they backed down and gave him what he wanted, which led to all the others coming back and also demanding improved terms, completely fucking their strategy.
They are now left in a complete mess with the rest of us having been promised commission markets which now aren't available, or only the very crappest ones are, which will lead to basically the whole office being in a similar position to me when told to travel.
Anyway, we've agreed that I'm going to go in Monday with a suicide vest on and say that I'm not travelling anywhere unless they raise my pay by a large, unnamed amount. Upon refusal I will then either resign or simply make their lives a nightmare by saying I'll stay on my current contract and do office work only.
I feel bad for the new sales director who is a really good guy, but unfortunately it's either I do this or we all get fucked.
Tremendous stuff.
Perhaps the pretend funerals wouldn't have been so bad after all.
The place is fucked but you still have bills to pay, sort a new job before falling on your sword.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I'm alright for a bit, but yes ideally I won't actually have to can it. But one has to be prepared to do so.
The arab's dad's face turn is amazing.
Arabs Dad smashed it there :cool:
Couldn't you wait until the trip to Central America and then get a job in Nicaragua?
Grab a canoe and some witnesses who know how to keep a secret, Jimmy.
Jimmy does your contract state anywhere "we may expect you to travel" or any such vaguely worded shit that if you say you're doing office only they can go "Erm, actually..."?
The Spain and South America trips were a riot but this time I'm really on the edge of my seat. :cool:
Christ you private sector lot are a right bunch of whinging fangitas.
Come to the public sector. All the cool kids like Spikey, Manc and Taz are loving life.
Well, except Spikey who's trying to get a gasman apprenticeship, but he's public facing. :sick:
Public Sector Office Job ftw.
My contract says all kinds of dystopian stuff like you can't take more than one week off outside August. Most of it is ignored and I'd be signing a new contract to do this anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
Good. And it's just reassuring when anybody actually knows what their contract says because I've been astonished in my last few jobs how many people don't.
"They can't do that!!!" say the morons when a threat of less agreeable shifts looms, not realising that the contract says they can be asked to work all hours and weekends it's just there hasn't been a call for it.
In people's experience here, is it the norm that you would get more money (whether built into salary or as stipend) to travel overseas (aside from covering expenses) and more still to travel intercontinental and/or to third world shitholes?
It's really hard to research this kind of thing.
Full time golf betting. :drool:
I've no experience of this, but if there isn't a premium built into the salary as standard if your job involves spending a huge amount of time out of the country when there are a fuckton of equivalent positions where you don't then I'd be very surprised.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Have a look for international sales roles and see what the salary's are, but I'd put money on £35k taking the piss.
Floyd, just ask for more basic money. If they make you do another dickhead trip to Val Verde, because they will obviously ask the younger man without kids or a nattering wife, just like I get the days out and overnights in my cossetted occupation, then at least you are getting a better salary. I think a few people here are being a bit cavalier about thinking you can push it beyond that and get x, y, and z in writing.
They're clearly the sort of company that won't just give people more money if they ask without leverage. If Jim has some then fine, but if he doesn't then the best way to get it is to secure another position. By which time whatever they counter offer will probably be irrelevant as he'll have found somewhere on the money he wants that's also a much better place to work.
Yeah, but they do seem like the sort of company that will sooner just throw him an extra ten grand (say) than give him some special contract saying he doesn't have to travel further than x and if he does he can claim for y and get z when he comes home, with various future promises thrown in, which a couple of people seem to think he should be pushing for.
Yeah, that's never gonna happen, even a reasonable company wouldn't do it as it just isn't necessary if you are one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
They want me to do (best indication is) 8-10 weeks a year in these places. To my mind that changes the job and warrants a massive salary bump. In their mind it means the same money and a little commission on top if I hit sales targets in certain territories via visiting them. Due to the fracas above, there are not going to be any lucrative territories available to me, only arse end Central American jungle republics, so it's nonsense.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
No, that kind of stuff is never going to happen. It's just about what consitutes getting paid properly for this kind of work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Yeah, so get the salary bump or leave. No need to complicate it with clauses and expenses and whatever.
I'd be prioritising getting the fuck out of there in the medium term, but yeah I think if Jim is willing to put up with it for a little while longer, it's probably better to just get more money. That seems more realistic, and even if they do give some concessions in the contract or whatever, they'll just find some other bullshit to make you do that you'll hate anyway .
Whatever about salary, I wouldn’t be backing down on getting all the weekend work back as time owed. They’re most definitely breaking laws with the amount of hours expected.
Coming up to 16 years in July.
Jim, an industry standard of ours if overnight on a platform = £100+ a night pre tax. It varies quite a bit, some small vendors heavily incentivise staff to go offshore, for bigger players it’s not worthwhile.
Time off in lieu is, and should be, standard for most if not all companies.
Does your contract opt you out of the Geneva convention 48hr working week limit?
I was never paid more for travelling or being away but the standard was any flight over 5 hours = business and €50 a day expenses. But then my base salary wasn't £35k which I think is the biggest piss take considering the work they're asking you to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yevrah
Isn't the role an Account Manager? I don't wish to break free from the Jimmy Sympathy Club but £35k isn't exactly daylight robbery for such a role. And free business trips to whorehouse heaven, there'll be a queue of graduates happy to take it on.
I think it's a pretty fair salary for the job it's for, which is sitting in the office organising everything, having 5 years knowledge and experience doing so (I started on 25), speaking languages, and being unbelievably reliable in every sense.
About £3 million of business goes across my desk each year and the company was sold for £12 million. There are 8 others who share the rest.
I think if you ask me to do that for 80% of the time and then go to Honduras for the other 20% and miss weekends, it's a fundamentally different job.
1. Enjoy your first day off in a month
2. Make sure your expenses (out of pocket) from the trip are covered before you kick up any fuss.
3. Be rational in your approach - which you are. You can set your expectations if that’s their expectations, and your expectations can be terms and financial if there’s are ability and willingness to put their interest first for 20% of the year.
I met the sales director.
He says they'll be kicking the old man out within 12 months, and after that I would (on current figures) be in line to earn £17k commission on top of my existing salary with this 8-10 weeks of travel per year.
He was really good about it but I'm not sure if that adds up. I now have a massive decision to make and about 1-2 days to make it, as the contract offer is coming apparently.
Sounds like this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luke Emia
8-10 weeks is fucking loads, no?
Yes, it is fucking loads. Basically we're looking at 3 trips per year of about 3 weeks each, all to Central/South America/Caribbean (and by Caribbean I'm not talking a 2 week all inclusive at Sandy Lane, I'm talking ducking and diving in the Dominican Republic and Guyana). Economy flights.
Essentially I'm inheriting another man's career.
In my heart I don't want it, I just need to develop the courage to abandon the 5 years I have built up here.
It's a sixth of a year, so yeah. I don't think 17k would be enough for me to do it. Maybe if I was already on a decent wage, but considering they're currently robbing you blind, half of that 17k is just bumping you up to where you should be if you were just sat in the office doing 9-5.
Think of the memoirs.
Sounds very much like a promise that might never materialise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
You can always sign the contract and keep looking for other stuff though.
While he may or may not genuinely believe the old guy will be gone within the year, he's what, 79? If he's doing it at 79 he'll be there at 80 unless he conks out. If he was going to retire and walk away he'd have done it by now.
They're going to force him out (according to the sales director).
After tax that commission works out at, what, £150 extra for each night away on them silly cunt jollies? And that's if you get ten weeks away, and if current figures remain. I would be wanting most of that in regular salary.
Yeah. In my mind I was thinking if we're going somewhat over fifty plus commission opportunities of whatever, then it could be worth it. But at these figures, I think El Salvador might have to struggle on without me. I just need to build up the courage to actually bosh them.
I’d sign the contract and then just look for something else.
You wouldn't be abandoning it, merely transferring it to another company who'll be paying you for it anyway in the form of an increased salary.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
By all means sign the contract in 2 days as (as long as the notice period/non compete clauses aren't ridiculous) it doesn't mean anything anyway, but £17k commission (and no increase in salary) sounds like a piss take for 20% of the year on economy flights in banana republics.
Feeds into the theory the old boy was trying to make you look like you couldn't cope with the schedule if he's clocked they want him out.
And also, what the hell is that man doing still working at 79? He's taking some serious bungs in these places, right?
This is the key bit obviously. However:Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
This, surely? Or are you either not wanting to lead them astray (for what it's worth, they and basically any other company would happily lead you astray if it suited them) or worried if you sign you'll just commit to the bit and not leave?Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
If I sign the contract then I'm going to Central America in May with a man who knows he's being sacked and I'm taking his job.
It's either sign a contract I'm happy to fulfil, or don't sign it.
Can't remember being this racked/wracked (can't even spell ffs) with stress and doubt and indecision in my life.
£17k (take home or gross?) for that amount of time away feels like a pisstake. Especially as it'll be on the assumption you work eight days a week whilst you're out there
Any chance you can spend 4 of those 10 weeks on a beach in Jamaica and not tell them?
Will you get to build your own itinerary?
If you wanted to be properly ruthless then you’d leverage the time to swan in with your new job offer elsewhere at the point where they had already cut ties with the old boy and you can get proper terms, or leave.
I would say so. Consider those are three 19-day trips a year. Ask yourself, could you do what you've just done .... three times a year. Every year. Forever.
I’d turn it down and tell them you need a big salary bump and more commission. You clearly don’t want to do it, so see just how much they really need you.
They thought they were pulling the rug on all the senior men until the arab's dad jedi mind tricked them, not the most shrewd negotiators.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Maybe if all the travel and weekend work was given back, or paid extra. And even at that it’s only barely worth it. And even further at that, it’s still only an empty promise.
I’d honestly get looking asap. Sign if you need to secure things short term but you’re obviously a skilled man at what you do so you need to sell that.
I'm ok short term, and the CV has gone out. Weirdly I had a chat with the Russian on the way out. He says in his view travelling is a bonus and he's done it for years with no extra pay or commission. Those Russians.
Makes it easier for them to spy.
That’s probably the reason you’ll need to move on. There’s an unfortunate amount of individuals who are willing to do unreasonable things on unreasonable terms for obscure reasons that benefit the company.
This company is searching for a cohort of those individuals.
Good you’re putting the feelers out.
See if the travelling gave you enough time to actually see a bit of the places you're going to then that would be one thing (still not enough, but it'd be something) but that you're just racing around to fit in as many of these backwater weirdos as possible in a short space of time just makes it sound hellish.
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Tell them to fuck right off.
Surely depends where you’re going.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Nah, any long distance work trip which might be fun at first would surely become monotonous after a few repetitions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
I think if Jim hands in his notice (once he has a new job) they will counter offer him so fast. Far more hassle to train someone nee up, especially if the current one is extremely competent.
I think Jimmy's the only Spanish speaker they've got.
Imagine having to go for a week each year to a place which first time around gave this impression.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Yes it does - if it was Europe on the same terms I'd probably do it, or at least would be far more likely to do it. Ironically the schmos in the office who have no languages and frankly are less able than me are being given markets like Norway and so on - sure they'll make less money, but they also won't have to do transatlantic flights with children shitting in their lap.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Salesman of the year over here was given the reception of a king, wined and dined to his heart's content everywhere he went, and has the audacity to complain. Enjoy your corporate park in that gloomy hellhole of yours for $1k a year more.
Hang on. Did you actually shit yourself out there?
Had to run for it in Montevideo airport, but after that I had control.
I don't know if you've ever been outside the west, but the shits are basically unavoidable if you're there for more than a few days.
Can confirm. 'The shits' were common occurrence in my youth. Nothing to worry about though. Like the common cold but even shorter lasting.
The Sandy Lane is the greatest place on earth. If you negotiate for them to stick you there, I say go for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
The universe, clearly enjoying my plight, has decided to draw me against the MD at lunchtime today in the company table tennis tournament.
Smash him. Assert your dominance.
Jimmy's place having a table tennis tournament isn't what I expected. Isn't that time you could be spending flogging more engines / hating your job?
Ping Pong*
It started while I was away and I somehow got auto-entered into it due to not being there to say no. Games played in the lunch break obvs.
There are 56 players drawn into 14 groups of 4, sounds like something Infantino would come up with. Didn't even know we had 56 staff members tbh. Most of the results so far involve small women being smashed by large men.
The last bit makes it sound like a lads night out with Lofty.
V surprised by how many people haven't turned in today. How's morale on the picket line? @Don
I'm having a top week working at home, WFH 4 days a week rather than the usual 2 thanks to the bravery of those dossers at TFL.
It really is hard work to even casually look for a job while in a job. I submit my name to a couple of jobs and a few recruiter sites and I immediately get like 8 phone calls a day which I can't possibly pick up in the office.
Recruiters are so fucking annoying. They always want to get you on the phone.
Imagine wanting to speak to someone you're trying to find a job for. Subhuman scum.
They're right to phone me, I just literally can't talk, or at least not more than 1-2 times a day.
Some very serious competition has opened up shop merely a stones throw away recently and has slowly been poaching staff from our place. The response has been to plug the gaps with agency workers, because core staff is a massive struggle for them to find now. Though even that has been drying up lately.
It all came to a head yesterday. We're short on staff big time. Add in that I know several people who are currently working notice periods too, it's only going to get worse. Once the agency staff get a look at the place most lol and walk away too. Speaking to the training team, they reckon 40 agency guys are sent each week and by the time inductions and orientation have taken place, you'll be lucky to have 5 left.
There was mass panic yesterday, which involved anyone who was physically able being sent down from offices above to muck in with the common folk. So of course they were delighted to hear that because of the school strikes I can't turn in on Wednesday and Thursday of this week either.
I'm not sure how many other people there have also been affected, but any more losses to their numbers at this time will have alarms blaring.
Our call centre staff had a team meeting this morning so for 2 hours we had to fill in for them. Brutal. I don't know how people do this stuff as a job. 2 hours of people pissing and moaning while I call around trying to find out who they need to actually talk to. :sick:
I did about two weeks in a call centre as a stopgap job once, the subject matter wasn't as bad as in your place but it was still by far the worst job I have ever done, and I've cleaned out a kitchen fridge on my hands and knees while an enormous Frenchman stands behind me shouting plus vite! plus vite!.
One of the phonecalls was from a lady with a blocked toilet and I honestly think I would rather deal with her shit filled toilet than her shit filled mouth.
It did shine a light on the way call centre staff are treated by the public though. People are generally fairly polite when they get through to me in my normal role, but working as a call centre agent your mere existence appears to be a source of irritation. It's impressive they don't all go postal in all honesty.
There's definitely a growing OI!OI! :chiefskanks: tone to your posts Jim.
That's what you read into them, I am but an innocent flower.Quote:
Originally Posted by niko_cee
Did he have a cheesecake that needed setting immediately or something?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I think it was working in that role and a few others like it that taught me not only never to give lip to low paid staff myself, but that the vast number of people who do are arseholes. Particularly applies to waiters, people in call centres, and service staff generally. These people are all being paid peanuts to act as a barrier between you and The Man, giving them lip is just unseemly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Yet I know a guy who works for *some bank* and earns six figures and the rest, and his take on this is that you're a paying customer and should expect service accordingly. I don't know, I just don't think that checks out.
He needed to put all his meat back in before it warmed up. Oi oi, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
After I'd worked for a call centre I made a point of explaining to people when they then talked about some terrible call centre experience that a) the systems and access are invariably garbage, b) no, there almost certainly wasn't a manager available (they may have been nearby but refusing to take a call) and c) and this is the most important one, if you give them shit on the phone you're at least 50% less likely to get what you wanted from the call. Why is some undertrained, undersupported, minimum wage drone going to put up with your shit for a job they're probably trying to leave anyway?
Sure some call centre staff are just useless cunts but plenty are just ground down by 40 hours a week of being treated like shit by employers and customers.
It just slows things down too. You can say "look mate, I Just need repairs" as many times as you please, but there isn't a repairs team. There are several different teams that deal with different types of repairs, so like it or not, you need to tell me what the problem is. And who you are. And where you live. Otherwise nobody will take the call. I know they won't, because I probably wouldn't either. People don't like being caught on the hop unnecessarily.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
People like your banker mate should have to do a day of National Service in a Call Centre to ground them a bit.
Isn't this just called being British?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
You can only hope that the other great British trait [passive aggressiveness] leads to worse outcomes for the shit givers.
I had a meeting with the powers that be.
They presented to me the plan. There was a list of countries being given to me with a total profit target of £140k. If I were to meet this profit I would get commission of 2.5% of what I make. Against each country was a column showing the number of times I am expected to visit each year. Suriname, Trinidad and (not sure where this came from) the Cape Verde Islands showed zero visits expected. All the others - the Dominican Republic, the seven small Central American republics, Jamaica, Barbados, Argentina and Brazil - showed one visit expected per year. My salary will remain the same. I will also consider shadowing Europe for the other boss.
There is an expectation that the old man will get axed and I will then inherit his countries as well, which include the more lucrative selection of Mexico, Guyana and the ones I've just been to in S Am. That would net me 2.5% of a total target around £700k if I met it, with visits due to all those as well.
I began to express some quite mild concerns about the extent of travel expected versus the rewards on offer. The MD immediately lost his temper and said 'I hope you haven't come here to lay down roadblocks or make demands. This is a great opportunity'. I thought, well, there is no point turning this into a fight. I told him I was disappointed he was using such language as he has employed me for five years and I have never made salary or bonus demands or tried to leverage him for anything. I said I just am not sure whether this is an offer that makes sense to me and need some time to go away and consider it.
(I don't even have a contract or anything on the table even now, just some verbal proposals and a spreadsheet on the sales director's laptop).
We had a long and annoying discussion about life priorities. He told a story about when he had young children and kept having to make month long trips to the US and Far East, and how he didn't want to do it but realised that it would be in his long term interests to do so and that he had no choice but to say yes or his worth to the company would have been shot. I said ok, but your worth to other companies would still have been high. At this point his face turned into a kind of Alien-style hybrid between human and extra-terrestrial as the realisation kicked in.
It went on and on with me continuing to emphasise that this level of travel, to these countries, is a massive undertaking. He alternated between saying Listen Mate, I Know It's Hard and making veiled threats. First he started saying that the US office are building up their export capacity and if I don't take this now I won't get the opportunity again. I said well they'll obviously take over the Americas anyway, so where does that leave me in two years? He said well, you'll have proved yourself and can move on to better things.
I left it by saying I'd have to think about it properly and will come back to him next week.
I don't think it's a good offer tbh.
Time to run.
Tell him to get fucked.
Not that I know anything about anything on these matters, but he sounds like an absolute prick who's taking you for a ride.
Nb, a propos of nothing, I think they think the Cape Verde Islands are in the Caribbean.
I thought, well, there is no point turning this into a fight.
That's as far as I got. Own worst enemy and probably deserves the shite hole.
I mean, I went on to turn it into a bit of a fight. But there's no point being aggressive, rude and unprofessional in response to your MD doing the same. Then you're just as bad as him and you close doors that may otherwise open to you.
Wait until they add Madagascar to your route. For 2.5% of £1.5k, worth it.
They're taking the piss out of you Jim.
Imagine doing all that work for a whopping commission of... *gets the calculator out* 17 grand.
If he meets the targets. What if he doesn't? Zero commission?
That's only after they get rid of the old man too.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
TBF 17 grand probably goes far on Bolivian Slum Hookers.
Putting that kind of 'opportunity' to someone while offering a £0 increase in basic salary and then getting aggressive about it when you question it is genuinely disgusting behaviour.
Get out of there as soon as you can Jim, they are awful, awful people.
Imagine seeing an experience to do business in that many different cultures purely as some fucking £ figure. You've all been reading Shindig's posts too much.
Edit: That timing, yo.
More guaranteed responsibility = more guaranteed money. It really is (or should be) as simple as that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don
Sounds like a ridiculous amount of extra work for a relatively tiny commission bonus, and the same salary is proper cheek.
The main issue you have now is only having one data point - you need alternative (realistic) comparable jobs to weigh it against.
The vibe is definitely horrific, from your description.
From what I've seen so far I can walk into hundreds of similar jobs to the one I'm in now at the same salary, and then the progression doesn't involve spending 15-20% of your life in Guatemala.
I've tried to scout out what people do get paid for travelling to Latin America this often but the truth is (at least from the UK) I don't think they do.
Just tell them no, don’t ask for an improvement or give them reasons. Just ‘no thanks; I don’t want to’
So ... that doesn't sound like 10 weeks of travels if you've got like a dozen+ countries under your belt. You'll never see home again.
It is a rough deal but the threads will be banging.
Think of TTH.
Massively. As soon as he isn't needed he's gone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Oh hello, it's me again. I'll see what everyone else says so then I can say the exact opposite. I hope that will get me noticed. Gammon gammon gammon gammonQuote:
Originally Posted by Don
We really have to get you two to meet up.
Just get out Jimbo. Plain and simple it's the only real advice and the only real course of action. Never mind comparisons, that place is a shite hole.
I think he well knows he's got to go now, it's just getting that courage to leave a job he's quite comfy in. Or was until very recently.
Fast forward 12 months and we’ll be reading about his trip to Jamaica to sell diggers.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be accepting that deal.
Mike isn’t far off. Those terms aren’t appropriate for that level of commitment.
Start answering those recruitment calls.
2.5% of £140k is £3.5k pre tax. All that shit for if being well, an extra £2k cash in hand. You’d be better off just cutting Camembert out of your life and doubling your system betting stakes.
The MD is fuming because they thought they had you by the balls, but little did he know about the secret council of retards that is TTH. Another fantastic victory over Asia. :cool:
Who needs rescuing next then? This could lead to the greatest series of threads we've ever seen.
They've groomed you to be their gimp Jim, this is why the MD is having an anuerysm, all his lolling about old soppy bollocks Floyd shovelling the unsociable hours shit in closed doors meetings is leaving him with egg on his face now you've developed a spine.
As someone who has been both a junior and senior employee, the response of Jim's MD genuinely makes me annoyed from both perspectives. It's such unbelievably poor form and indicative of an organisation that are both shit with people and don't understand them.
They've literally being bunging him for like a year. I'd be mad too if I'd laid those backhanders down only to get told they wanted more money.
Bunging him what?
EDIT: Opportunity with no actual increase in salary at the end of it? Amazing.
The MD (IIRC) has given him a few brown envelopes.
Seriously? I missed that amongst all the general bad management, foreign lols and his door getting kicked in.
I don't think there's anybody Shindig wouldn't bend over for. He probably wishes he'd been born in 17th century West Africa.
I've quit half the jobs I've ever had. :D
I wouldn’t worry about the twat, he just needs to log off for good for his own brain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
Giggles, go do a jig and calm down lad.
It was his line manager bunging him.
Nah, OT has been a blight that has hated everyone for far too long now not to be called.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don
Anyway, who the fuck are you to be making demands? Shitebag :lol:
Not the MD lol. The European agent usually gives me £100 a month from his commission for my contribution to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir Andy Mahowry
Have you started midweek drinking ffs? Friday Giggles need not be extended.
Ah the same old tune. I suppose it can’t get old a second time around.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don
You’re a Dyson in reverse. Complete spoofbox.
https://www.thethirdhalf.co.uk/searc...earchid=101014
I'm bigger than a Dyson. Massive.
You think being bigger than a hoover makes you massive?
This is an insane accusation from you, especially after I left you alone to be embarrassingly Irish in the gig thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggles
I also don't hate Shinners, but he bent over for Ashley time and time again.
Ashley? Nah, Bruce was my stupid hill to die on.
Did someone say Steve Bruce?
Good manager is Bruce. Did alright.
I've only done contact centres. Absolutely fucking love it mate. Easiest job in the world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
I had a voicemail (I don't log in to the work phone system so all calls go straight to voicemail which get emailed to me as an mp3) the other day from a distressed old man having problems with his catheter. DELETE.
Also:
https://i.imgur.com/CV5NF57.png
No point pretending, is there. :baz:
Government agreeing to come to the table within 12 hours of the first strike ending. Seems they've finally realised we/the BMA aren't messing about.
Just had my final showdown talks. The result is that I'm not doing Latin America anymore, I'm now going to carry on as I am, with a 2 year plan for future succession in Europe and the new sales director backing me for such.
It feels like I've won. Dunno if I actually have.
So you’ve kept your current job on your current salary and instead they are planning on how send you to Europe (presumably on similarly miserable terms at Latin America).
At least you’ve got your answer. They won’t be paying you more so you’ve got 2 years to confirm an exit strategy (although I’d suggest sooner).
How was the reaction? Were they fizzing?
You only win if you leave. Can guarantee that "succession plan" might as well be written on unicorn hide for all the relationship it has with actual reality
Your new mate will jump ship for greener pastures before you ever see that promotion, Jim.
You've won by not taking their pathetic job offer but I would take any "plan" for your future there with pinchiest pinch of salt.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
I've won because I don't have to do the shitty job, I keep my work-life balance, they clearly want to keep me by whatever means necessary, and we went from a horrible tone of conversation last Wednesday to a miraculously positive one upon my next appearance in the office today. They were the ones pushing the future planning for Europe, I just said whatever happens in the future happens.
If you like the current state of affairs, then you did well.
If you're still there in two years time, I'm going to boot your front door in.
Save the cops doing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
https://i.makeagif.com/media/9-16-2015/aYVb23.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Yep. For all the drama he gives this thread, he does seem to like the bread and butter of the job. Increasingly being dragged out to mind a geriatric sex pest around the arse end of Paraguay, maybe not. If travel has to be on the menu, the least he can do is aim for locations more manageable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
I'd never admit it to the employer, but I'd love travelling around the arse of South America to hang out with lunatics all day. Plenty of people pay out of their own pocket to do that.
If he could actually spend time in those places, yes. But he's flying at 4am to work at 7am. It's not a holiday.
This is what it's quite hard to convince people (more so IRL than on here) who have never been on a work trip. Even when I was attending that wannabe drug dealer's party in Guayaquil, it was still work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kikó
Even more reason to get coked out your skull.
What and miss a week's worth of Newsnight and the weekly bridge club session (or whatever you fucking gammons do with your spare time) for a measly £0.014 per minute?
'This'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lofty
Been working on a “project” in the background for about 9 months.
Tested my theory last week and unleashed it when he had a problem with a compressor. The fucking thing worked like a charm and unlocked so much value. Somewhere between £500k-£1m a day for the next two weeks.
Properly good when something comes together and works.
:drool:
Scampi and apple crumble for lunch today too. Jackpot. :wub:
You still alive jim, or have the tractor boys had you harvested?
I'm still alive. The Arab is not pleased with my decision. He thinks I should have taken their offer. He then inadvertently revealed that the commission rate they've put him on to go to Iraq in a flak jacket is, like, half of what everyone else was offered. Obviously he still thinks I'm the mug out of the two of us.
The apple falling very far from the tree on this occasion.
Doesn't he pretty much have to say yes due to his visa?
These are the mugs you’re competing with. Happy to undervalue themselves.
Yep, but even after I explained this to him he seems blissfully unaware of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Probably just has loads of money from his dad so doesn't care.
How bad is agency work? My mrs is on a decent wedge at her place but the culture has changed massively and I can tell it is making her miserable now. She's worked there for 10 years but it has been on the slide for a while and I think the straw that broke the camel's back is they've promoted the resident retard to be her department manager (no mention of the job being available just announced.). I have told her we can afford for her to take a pay cut but even then it seems hard finding suitable work at the moment. She had applied for train driver but didn't get past the weird 'personality' test after the initial sift.
The main problem is she has all experience and no formal qualifications and now it seems like you need a degree to write parking tickets, Blair's legacy.
It has pros and cons, but mostly cons. Weekly pay usually which I always liked, but you live life knowing that you can be let go at any second. Holiday has to be accrued at something like half a day per week worked. So you have to work for 3 months before you can have a week off (paid). And if you are working with non-temps you usually don't get any of the company perks they get (healthcare, staff discounts, etc).
On the plus side, it could lead to something permanent, depending on where she winds up working.
Not ideal then, she will just have to keep applying for stuff. I did suggest telling her employer that she needed a change of role and department which I do think they would consider but she doesn't think it would help.
Agency work got me in the door to a few places when I was younger. Wouldn't reccomend for a fully fledged adult as you have no rights.
Yeah, I did it in my early 20's. It's no way of life for an adult with responsibilities.
I hated it even when I was 18. Gave me some good life experience though across a range of dogshit workplaces.
Horrible flashbacks to working in warehouses circa 2006.
Does your wife have any interest in pursuing a career in refuge collection?
I would like to know more about this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lofty
Did a 50 hour week and got sacked for having my hand in the till despite not taking a thing so they’re not paying my wages.
Essentially it is a questionnaire where you have to put answers to scenarios in order of what you think is most likely the right answer to the most unlikely answer, but the answers are very similar so it isn't immediately apparent what order they should be in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
I thought it would be stuff about being punctual or, "How likely are you to be traumatised by a someone jumping on the tracks?"
Why does he think you're a tealeaf?Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
I was thinking that, and whether they would prefer you to be completely not arsed or wringing your hands over it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shindig
From what I've heard it's a running theme of pubs that he runs that money suddenly goes missing during peoples shifts that he wants to get rid of.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
Why does he want to get rid of you?
I think they can't be that overt so it's more like 'how far would you go beyond what is expected to provide excellent customer service, within the parameters of the question.' I would guess they prefer answers that suggest you will just do whatever they tell you to do even if it exposes you to liability in the real world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
I had to do like 5 different tests for a job at Proctor And Gamble. I passed them all but the ethics test. Whoops.
What was the question?
'Having worked a 50 hour week behind the bar do you feel you've earned a few pints on the house?'
Was stuff about long distance phone calls and stuff. They don't give you the HR manual before so I said 'I would ask my boss if it was acceptable'.
I met an Army man a while back who was going on about some test they give you where they fire a load of information and then questions at you and WHATEVER HAPPENS YOU HAVE TO KEEP CALM. I suggested you just say 'dunno lol' to every answer, if that is all that matters, and he made out like I didn't understand what he meant.
"Keep Calm and Carry On" went from WW2 to the walls of every house in Essex. But we've moved on. It's 'Live, Laugh, Love" now, mate. How are Zoe Essex and Debbie Billericay ahead of our armed forces? Embarrassing.
Teams exchange earlier:
Boss: "Hi Igor. Please can you advise on annual leave plans, do you have any dates that you are planning to take. It's advisable to book well in advance so that we are aware. thanks"
Me: "Hey. How far in advance would you prefer as a rough guide? I'm happy to follow whatever process makes life easier for everyone. I do not currently have any extended holidays planned, but I will add a couple of long weekends to the HR site shortly, unless you'd like me to check with you here first."
Boss: "Submit annual leave request using HR site, and I will accept/decline. If you have concerns because of the diary then please check in with me. Leaving booking to last minute is not ideal so planning ahead is important for our processes".
okay, fair enough. booked my long weekends, then followed up with
"To confirm - I have sent leave requests for 3 long weekends. I will have a think over the weekend regarding longer holidays, and endeavour (lol) to book in some proper extended breaks next week, leaving plenty of notice time. I hope this is okay."
Boss: "I have the emails, and action in due course, no need to teams me about this. We can pick this up in 1-1. Please consider when you write to me. Is this of value to me, is there an action here, or a question, or can it wait"
What lol, I was just aware she was a bit arsey about me not taking leave, I tried to be polite and make sure I was following what she wanted, and it's like NAH fuck off, don't message me!!
Earlier this week she asked me to forward an email chain I had with a venue we are looking at booking. Today I forwarded an almost identical chain from a different venue to pre-empt her, and she replied
"No need to send to me - upload on working word document
Please consider the information I need to see now, and what can wait, what is important and what is of value to my work."
what the fuck. I might just tank my probation period and initiate igor_balis on the third half dot co dot uk 2015 and just constantly spam her teams with weird youtube videos
I have had a day of pure politics.
After they decided to restructure they held company wide team meetings at the start of this week and rolled out "the vision". The good news was that our team is essential and safe. The bad(ish) news is we are absorbing another team and will have to learn their roles too. Ok, cool.
*we open the door to leave*
"oh, and by the way, you have to decide if you are willing to sign a new contract agreeing this by Friday, or we go to "consultation". AND, this is all hush hush. Do not discuss with the other team"
So we crack on, I think we're all happy to sign and enjoy a more "agile" role.
Then this morning, it emerges that the team we are absorbing is being made redundant. We get their work, not their staff. I suspected some redundancies were coming, but mate... what?
The team in question deals with lease holds, joint owners, commercial let's, retirement schemes and a whole host of shite I have ZERO experience in. None of us do. Plus, you know, these people are friends and colleagues. Not cool.
So we spent the day in various secret meetings, deciding how we can fight the redundancies and this culminated in me ending up sat facing 2 directors trying to explain that "full training will be provided" is an unworkable solution. Lease law in particular is complex as fuck, never mind the rest of it, and muggins here will have to lead on the court hearings. I don't need training. I need another degree. And, if every single one of that team is leaving we will have nobody to turn to on a day to day basis. So what do we do? Ask our solicitor at £75 an email? M8.
To make matters worse, our HR lead is on Annual Leave this week and our Union Rep (not that I'm a member) is on the redundancy heap. All very cloak and dagger.
Politics is exhausting.
Jimmy, does your gaff still need someone to flog sparkplugs to druglords? Give them my number.
Who (apart from school staff nonces) is in a union these days? The old fogies who still pay for it, do so so that we don’t have to, right?
Everyone should be in one.
Anyone who is in the union at your spot should be on to their full time officer immediately, Spikey.
Why? Seems like a total waste of money. Should something ever happen where union involvement is necessary, it’ll likely benefit those who don’t pay for it just as much as those who do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggles
If the official union doesn't exist / isn't any use then that's when it comes in handy to be on decent terms with all your colleagues to form an unofficial one, as it seems like Spikey and co have done.
Unless you're being hauled in for sticking TTH stickers in the ladies toilets and posting heart eye emojis on the new girl's instagram posts. You'd be better off with representation then. Even if you are getting finished a good rep with a good union is the difference between you walking out the door with the bare minimum or getting a financial settlement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Even companies that don't recognise unions I have seen start wobbling when union involvement is mentioned. They were trying to get rid of a lad at my wife's spot a few years ago and u turned from printing off his P45 to looking a bit shellshocked when it turned out his dad was an experienced union rep and had helped him put together a defence. Look at Jimmy's octogenerian MD, he'd probably crumble into dust if someone corrected him on his instructions citing the current UK employment law at him.
Some unions even offer additional benefits. The RMT have discounted London accomodation available for members to book and also have a few members only branches with alcohol licences that serve cheap booze.
My ex got paid out a shit load after a nervous breakdown teaching maths at an academy school, her union got involved and a large financial settlement reached. Membership fees scale with salary, I'm with TSSA and it's £18 a month. Not being in the union on the railway is a minority position, but I would always be in a union from now on in any industry because I know if some clown decides they want a Lofty free workplace I have my insurance policy paid up.
Yesterday a few of us went to the local Italian for lunch, as we occasionally do on a Friday. There was me, the Arab, a couple of others, and the Arab's brother (head of IT), who also invited two people who have been newly recruited to his fledgling department as software developers. One of them is about 40-45 and clearly quite experienced. The other one is clearly very young, either straight out of university/college, or pretty near to it. Can't be more than 23/24. He's very white, has an earring. I'd never met him. He came up to me to introduce himself. Can't remember his name now, because I was just knocked over by how he talks exclusively like a black teenager. I said 'Nice to meet you', he said 'Beast'. He asked what I did, I said sales to Europe and South America, he said 'Bare sick'. He asked me where I lived, I told him, he replied that nearby Kingston was his 'yard'. As well as the stupid lingo, all his vowel sounds were just wrong, as if he was trying really hard to sound like Stormzy or santan dave or one of those people, despite being whiter than white.
Throughout this conversation I was just thinking: why is this happening? Even the Arab, who normally has the cultural awareness of a ham sandwich, pulled me aside and asked why the guy was talking like that.
Is this guy just an idiot, or is the workplace genuinely about to be invaded by the next generation who talk like that and it's down to us old folk to get with the programme?
My next door neighbour, has a 14 year old (white) son and nuuuh, trus me king, he is on it. You don't even know he's bout dat life. No cap. There are about 7 non-white people in the village(s) and none of them talk like that.
More fuel for Yev's sitcom.
I don't think it's a particularly new phenomena. I Imagine this is how the people born in the 20's and early 30's felt about the Hippies in the 1960's. Groovy man. Then how the Hippies felt about the Punks and so on. I just think Social Media - as always - makes this stuff more accessible and, well, usually worse.
Why must you have brown skin to talk like that? That’s just how young people down south seem to talk. It’s calm.
It's calm If you live and go to school in South London. It's entirely put on when you have lived in the Essex countryside for your entire life and only started talking that way 18 months ago. Which he did.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Selhurst Park is about 20,000 of these folk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multic...London_EnglishQuote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Good luck to them speaking whatever they want in their own time, but in the Standard English environment of the workplace it's a bit of an issue I would say.
While that particular road man (?) dialect grates on me personally, it’s always fascinating to me how this tiny island has so many accents and dialects.
The only bit of this I generally notice is the mass proliferation of 'oh my days'.
That’s how I imagine offshore talks.
Sounds peng to me.
Text came in this afternoon asking me to come into the office next week to train the new starters. That didn't take long. :moop:
Better than sounding like a paralytic leprechaun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggles
Original.Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon
Wigaaaaaaaaaaa!
I grew up in an area of London where a lot of people spoke like that, so I always made a conscious effort not to speak like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spikey M
You get told you think you're better than everyone when you do that, though. I'd just tell them that's not how my teachers and parents taught me to speak. So the way I saw it, the ones trying to rebel were getting out-rebelled. And if you've got enough contacts who've got your back because you played football with them, you're ok. Whenever someone tried to attack me, I'd just mention a certain person's name. 'Do you know them?' and suddenly there was a lot of backtracking, so that was good for me to call people's bluff.
There's a mighty white guy who's in his early 40s that still lives in the area. I've only ever known him to listen to rap or ragga music. Speaks like a Jamaican. I'm not friends with him but a mate of mine shows me what he writes on Facebook. The way he writes, you'd never think he was white. Posts photos of himself drinking rum, and photos of lighters and weed, and goes on about his bedrins and people who best not be snaking wid him cos he gon' take dem to war. At the time when you're young, you put it down to a phase people will grow out of eventually once they go for job interviews and find full-time employment in the real world. You just never imagine they'll keep that routine going into their 40s.
That certain person's name? Harold Bishop.
Didn't he live in Hertfordshire? :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Hatfield I think. I'm sure I drove under some shopping centre claiming to be in Hatfield on a motorway once and it made me think of Harold. M1? M11?
A1(M).
The shopping centre was The Galleria.
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-ma...paign=Advocacy
What happens when you assume doctors are just alogrithm following machines and try to replace them with people without the same level of training and knowledge.
This is happening over here because of all the gimps like Lee who think our job could be done by a monkey just because theirs could. The public should be worried.
The public does not need to worry. The computers will replace both registered nurses and doctors soon enough.
The use of nurses for everything is a massive issue over here too.
After my daughter was born, we took her to a highly recommended pediatrician's office. We went three or four times and we were not seen by a pediatrician once, only nurses. Mainly one nurse in particular, who was complete dogshit. Of course this being the US, consults are expensive as fuck, and it's not like you get a lower price if you're seen by a nurse instead of a doctor.
When my wife called the office so that they would send the documents to our new pediatrician, they asked why we were changing. After my wife explained, they told her that the nurse in question had been fired, and whether that would make us change our mind. She asked whether we would be seen by a doctor each time. They said no. We left. The new doctor is a bit shit too, but at least she has the right degree.
Some old fella on my apprenticeship has his own special printouts cos he reckons he can only read Comic Sans size 10.
Gonna make sure I don’t get sat next to him ever again. :moop:
Oh get lost.Quote:
Dear colleagues,
I hope you have had a good long weekend and if you have been celebrating one of the religious festivals that you have enjoyed them.
Passover vs. Easter vs. Ramadan vs. Thatcher's Death. They all count.
A lad at my work spent just short of £9,000 on Just Eat last year. ~£180 per week. Staggering. I honestly thought it was bullshit until he showed me the proof.
That's basically having it every day, right? I hope you get the food equivalent of air miles.
There are people here who get Five Guys on Deliveroo for lunch, they'll surely all need government bailouts at some point.
I don't know how people manage it. The closest I've experienced is when on holiday at an all inclusive. By day 5 I'd sacrifice body parts for a healthy meal.
There are so many people that give everything they've got to maximise their salary but then piss it all away because they're miserable. Jersey is terrible for it. I honestly think people are better off earning 30k in a job they like over 60k in a job they hate. The amount of people in finance over here spending £200 a gram to mask their self-hatred is ridiculous.
There's an epidemic and I for one am a big big fan of it. The 'sacrifice your avo on toast for a house' masses were mocked but this generation is spending mad mad prices on food and convenience without a second's thought. The croissant index I put together this week is a nice summary, we have:
Artisan Bakery- £5.00
Pret - £2.30
Waitrose - £1.20
Sainsbury's - 85p
Lidl - 35p
I'm yet to try the Lidl but the Sainsbury's one is superb and there's no way the others are justifiable in comparison yet these fuckers are out here pouring their laughable salaries into these exploitative margins.
Fuck me you can get a ball for that up here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Offshore Toon