Remind me where Arab Senior's power come from. Is he a salesman with tons of Arab clients?
Remind me where Arab Senior's power come from. Is he a salesman with tons of Arab clients?
The Arab's dad controls the markets of Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, which are probably 3 of our 8 biggest markets (especially Egypt and Algeria), and over there business is done entirely on personal loyalty and backhanders rather than any kind of rationale or logic. For instance, our biggest customer in Egypt buys from us despite getting better prices from our competitors, because the Arab's dad did him a favour / laundered some money for him 20 years ago. So if he left for one of our competitors and told his loyal customers to go with him, they would.
This results in comical scenarios like when a couple of years ago the South Africans tried to tamper with his contract to make it more company-friendly, he told them to fuck off, and needless to say his contract remains as was to this day.
Same for the Arab himself in Iraq, UAE and to a lesser extent in Saudi, which are also important markets.
Time to have a pop at IT again.
Thank you for contacting us, my name is [name of bloke I've known for 7 years] and it will be my pleasure to assist you.
The severity of ticket has been set to: Triage
If you would like to speak to me directly, please feel free to reach out at any time.
He might as well have set the ticket severity to Mustard, or Diplodocus.
They are donning you. Time to stroll in and crack some skulls.
When I first started here I had issues accessing most of the stuff I needed because the system thought I didn't have the correct authorization. Contacted IT and some Indian don fixed it in about three minutes. Then a few weeks later it happened again and it took three weeks and like ten people at increasing levels of the hierarchy to get involved for it to be resolved.
Our company has a massive divide in IT still. When you’re actually working on a functioning construction site, you just walk into the IT office (or at worst pick up the phone) and it’s sorted there and then.
Head office has the classic corporate ticketing bullshit.
This went out to all staff about 20 minutes after my (correctly submitted) ticket:
These cunts just can't stand the idea of having to do anything not conceived in a meeting 2 months ago. Time for direct action / terrorism.Dear All
All issues reported to IT must be done through a ticket.
A ticket must include the following:
1. Screenshot of the error
2. A description of the error
3. How long the error has persisted.
Any ticket without those requirements will be immediately closed.
Teams or Phone are not an appropriate ways to report system issues and outages and will not be actioned.
They need to do reports on metrics so they can see how many they can lay off without imploding the company.Originally Posted by Ben
I'm right on board with the screenshot thing, and if it comes in the form of a jpg pasted into a Word doc they should be immediately fired.
We had something like that recently. Taking a screenshot of a PDF, pasting it in a Word doc and then forwarding that to head office to be scanned. I see that and think, "Girls, just select Print to PDF and pick the page you're after."
@Giggles you'll be delighted to hear that my employers dropped the bombshell today, powerman 5000 style, and have advised that the entire organisation will be moving towards ending hybrid working arrangements.
We are hoping our department will get some sort of exception, as we do bullshit hours, but I doubt it. I am one of the exceptions that proves the rule cus my performance is (and has reluctantly been confirmed by management as such) slightly better at home than in the office, but sadly as much as I take the piss out of G's hobbyhorseism about WFH, it's absolutely the case that a solid majority of my colleagues are lazy bastards at home so it was always inevitable.
Aye, I have to admit Giggles was right on that one.
My objection was never that @Giggles said WFH was bad, more the way he said that literally every single person who WsFh is a workshy lazy bastard who does literally nothing, I think it works with certain people/industries/contexts, but if people are already lazy and the systems allow them to be lazy, then they will absolutely take the piss with it.
It's like Souness and Pogba, he's fundamentally right but...
Yeah, he overestimates how many people will skive. In our case, it was made very easy by a lack of timekeeping software/timesheets at the new office. Even then, we had very few piss takers.
Ours is the other way round, all our work is deadline based so if you fuck up that by not doing your work then you are out. Can't really sit about doing nothing. Yesterday I did 10 hours grinding out a full plan to get it finished: I never did 10 hours going into the office, I would have spent the best part of 2 hours commuting there and back.
Ironically the biggest fuck up in living memory at our spot has just been overseen by the guys on the other part of our team that rarely WFH
I spent all yesterday morning (and Tuesday afternoon) unpicking an eight-month catastrophe. Took about 8 hours, half of which was just getting the info I could feed back to the surgery. It's more of a team effort than a couple of idiots. DWP, the old company, the new one and some ... astonishing human error from a couple of my colleagues.
I'm hoping that's the end of it but I'm certain this will happen again.
I preferred the abuse, it sits better with me.
My boss has forced me to go to one of those think-wank events today called something like 'Wanking and Growth: AI and Delivery in a Strategic Wank Sock'. Local bigwigs and that. Want to shoot him in the face.
I'm still in bed.
God this was so shit. Like some kind of bad dream. LinkedIn Live. It's all just people saying words.
Vision.
Partnerships.
There we are, I'm a business expert. Give me a book deal.
We were asked what would happen if our business disappeared. I said 'Our customers would be ripped off by the competition.' He almost gasped. 'So frank! I love that level of frankness.' This is all in a Canadian accent, obviously. Send me to Switzerland, Dignitas calls.
Very boot licky reply that, Jim. Gross.
EDIT: Unless it was extreme sarcasm that went unnoticed.
Also, they just kept saying AI. Constantly. What does it even mean? It doesn't mean anything. 'AI tools'. What does that look like? What is one? I don't have any.
I have a full day of it in Huddersfield on Monday and it's irked me no end.
Not very synergistic of you, Jim.
My condolences.
It means everything that has a bit of code in it.
That's the business people whenever they have to talk about anything technical tbh.
I've got involved in some warfare involving the Arab recently. We hired an Algerian young lady (I sound like a perve using that phrase, but it's a fact) to bolster the team and add some extra languages, she speaks Turkish as well as Arabic and French. I'm her manager, but most of her work is for the Arab, an arrangement that was made deliberately so that he didn't end up with any line management responsibilities. This was borne out within a fortnight, as he declared her 'too ambitious' and refused to give her any more work to do. He caught her outside and told her: 'I've already asked for one assistant - that's you. Don't make me ask for another one.'
She reported this (and his general carry-on) to me, and me in turn to the director, who sort of shrugged. I asked what the Arab would have to do to incur disciplinary measures. He shrugged again. £1 million of business in Iraq > any behavioural issues. So there we are. I had to go and sweet talk the Arab (who still loves me) to get him to start sending her work again.
Now the Arab's super-illness which he brought back from Kurdistan has taken out basically the whole office. We had five out today and I'm now shivering under a duvet writing this because I'm too feverish to fall asleep. He refused to go and see a doctor with his mega-severe version of it because 'doesn't trust UK medicine' (i.e. he's a stupid conspiracy theorist).
It will come to a sticky end for him, the question is how.
I wouldn't pick up that fight unless you fancy going back to Korea.
What did you choose as your gift?
I chose for him not to get me a gift, so he got me a $100 bottle of cologne. He then complained when I wasn't wearing it the next day. I'll probably put it in a raffle for the cricket club.
Oh cool, he's brought MERS25 into the country.
'young Algerian lady' would sound way less pervy.
Does sort of invite 'It's a man actually, Derek' the way I wrote it.
I think The Arab wants to shag you and won't take no for an answer.
Decided today that I may have to resign my Head of Year position. The demands are excessive for the time and remuneration and through line management it has become clear that the Head is not interested in hearing it. So I've written a letter to outline the issues in detail, welcoming the opportunity to meet and hear how the points will be addressed, or else to take it as my resignation of that post.
I fully expect him to 'call my bluff' and just accept my resignation, and I'm ok with that. I will happily go back to being full time in the classroom. The workload isn't less that way, per se, but it is different and nowhere near as demanding or high stakes. For the 3.5 hrs a week I get to do the HoY role, I'll likely pick up a Y7, Y8 class and maybe get another hour at A-Level. I can live with that.
I’ve been asked to go into the basement of the building where my old office used to be, cos there’s some cabinets with paperwork in that belonged to the woman who did my job before I started. Turns out they say ‘to destroy in 2022’ and the retention policy is 7 years, so they’re from 3 years before I started.
I had to visit the room they’re in a few weeks ago where they three people pointed out the 15 locked cabinets (there are actually 13) and I confirmed they were indeed cabinets and the paper stuck to them said the paperwork inside can be destroyed. The service they apparently related to has been outsourced since 2017 and everything is now stored digitally.
I was told it was my job to open the cabinets, move whatever’s inside them into boxes, then arrange for confidential waste to collect and destroy them.
This has all taken place over the course of a month. Begrudgingly I ordered 30 boxes and am currently waiting outside the buildings main doors for someone to let me in.
I’ve been reliably informed that all basement rooms have a rat problem. Great!
I'm a twit
"My job is asking me to do work"
I make spreadsheets, not empty old rat infested cabinets.
I'm a twit
Admin covers a variety of tasks.
I’m not admin.
I'm a twit
Ratman.
Ratmin
The old man (who used to pay me bungs) has finally been SACKED this morning, because we found out (at the age of 75) he's just started a new contract with an Italian company.
Now I have to compete with him in the market.
I must have missed the bungs part. What form did they take?
He used to give me, under the table, £100-200 out of his commission at the end of the month, to recognise the fact that I was doing pretty much all his work for him. I don't think there was anything technically wrong with it, as it was his money to do with as he pleased, but it did feel incredibly seedy.
He did have a heart then. Sort of fair play to him.
Good luck. Make sure to double lock your door every night.
I hope he's got an alternative universe Jimmy translating for him on every deal.
Up the ladder for Jimmy, and I'm glad to see it.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
