I have an interview for that internal thing just after we get back on the 6th. Not sure if I have much of a genuine chance but it's something I guess.
I have an interview for that internal thing just after we get back on the 6th. Not sure if I have much of a genuine chance but it's something I guess.
Anyone not phoning it in two days before Christmas should be hanged.
"Mate, if you come in today, you're not coming in forever."
I'm dreading today. Already got two customers snapping at my heels demanding parts to be delivered immediately. No one gives a fuck about Christmas in this industry, they see it as an unwelcome distraction from working on engines.
I’m doing a last run around today with bottles of whiskey for people and I’m gone. Left all the Dublin ones for today as I knew I’d have to show face in the office.
I've had a weird week where the days themselves have gone quite quickly but this morning just have an overwhelming feeling of HOW THE FUCK IS IT ONLY THURSDAY MORNING?
What time is the TTH Teams bonanza?
Last full day today. Then finishing at lunchtime tomorrow.
Time has become an alien concept. Minutes have become hours. Days, full seasons, and now is the winter of my discontent.
It's a Teams thing that has properly done for my sense of time, I reckon. They decided they were gonna get our department all on for a quiz (second place snagged me a £20 Amazon voucher they will likely forget to buy) and that felt like such a Friday afternoon doss rather than a Tuesday thing that it's fucked me for the rest of the week.
All my work for tomorrow morning has been cancelled and we finish at 12. I'm tempted to just stay at home and see if anyone notices.
Bottles are dropped, van is parked, out of office is set. Next stop some pastries and a can.
Today has gone quicker, principally because we've reached the point of maximum desperation. I had a grown man on the phone just now choking back the tears because the new water pump for his Komatsu PC138 excavator hasn't arrived and so now won't be delivered until 5 January. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO, he wails. I dunno mate, have an excavation-free Christmas?
I'm surprised the people in your industry all seem so emotionally charged.
We're not finishing early tomorrow but I'm working from home. I can improvise.
I've really not been helped by the shifts today. Pretty sure it's just me and the gaffer for the first three hours. 30 minutes in and my to do list has doubled.
I'm about to enter the year's dark day, when business has officially closed but Ebenezer requires us at our desks anyway. One last chance to catch omicron before festivities begin.
Is there anything you can actually do?
Are you still going to be getting calls from men weeping about delayed tractor engines?
I'm in but y'know, it is at least possible there'll be real productive shit for me to do (if our customers are twats.)
Yep, the calls will still come in. I can take orders but nothing is allowed to leave now until January, so even the ones who beg and scream that they will drive three hours here and pick the item up themselves will have to be turned away.
The reason it's so emotionally charged (from their side) is that if their machine goes down it leaves them fucked. The difficult part is that they then transfer this emotional weight onto the person they hope can solve their problem, as if by not having that particular water pump in stock I am as good as personally breaking into their homes and stealing their children's presents from under the tree.
The worst one ever was a bloke who begged me for 20 minutes not to have to pay up front, because he was going through a messy divorce and didn't have any money.
I'm in from 9 until 12:30. It is utterly pointless. There is zero point calling anyone about anything as their outrage at being hassled on Christmas Eve will ruin any chance of a productive conversation and, to be honest, I just don't fucking want to.
I've got a full shift. We usually leave early but nothing about this year has been business as usual. Good job I work faster from home and our productivity doesn't get updated live. Gives me a nice window of doing nothing.
"I just feel like I'm being punished." gets thrown about by our claimants. I did enjoy catching a claimant out at the shops (when they were supposed to be having an assessment) and then hearing them rush out of the shop enough to trigger the security before continuing the call.
Do we have a picture of Shinners we could photoshop onto the 'And your little dog, too!' scene?
(Another of my searingly up to date pop culture references.)
We were cancelling on them. DWP won't suspend a claim on that. And they can be wherever they want for a telephone assessment. I just find it odd when they're out doing other shit at an appointment time. Almost everyone else is hovering by their phone waiting for the call.
This is brutal.
1 hour left but I checked out mentally about 3 weeks ago.
27 minutes to go. The Arab has just been singing me the lyrics from his brother's alleged top 40 hit on the Jordanian charts 20 years ago. Somebody get me out of here.
With just five minutes to go, he told me that he thinks gays are disgusting. Five minutes! We came so close to Christmas.
Palestinian Jeff had a Jordanian (Palestinian diaspora) mate who was a massive homophobe, but it was a weird sort of comedy homophobia that was so over the top as to be entirely non-threatening (like their lol anti-Semitism and perving). He actually lodged with a man who was clearly gay, but, because the bloke was 'normal' and not constantly trying to bum him, he didn't suspect/realise anything.
Christ, the last couple of days have dragged.
You forgot the phwoar.
Our office shuts at Christmas, it always does. Nobody has been made to work between Xmas day and new year for the last twenty years.
Basically all year my managers manager has been trying to guilt trip/force us to work it, and we basically refused and pointed to the bit of the HR policy that states pretty clearly that NOBODY can be refused holiday for that period if they request it.
Anyway, the big appeal that was meant to land early Jan has accidentally been sent out a week early. Hilarious. So now there's nobody to take the dozens of telephone donations. I've volunteered to work 1-5 today from home cus major brownie points and I'm like doing fuck all anyways and a half day back
Anyways, some other senior management guy (who will be off work, at home with his family like everyone else) has sent an email to my manager's manager saying "well this is a good argument for [Igor's department] actually working?!" but he didn't realise I'm CCed in, lol.
You’ve let your colleagues down.
No such thing as major brownie points. No one will ever be thankful. They will just expect you to do it next time, since you agreed this time.
If you work with cunts, yeah. My rota co-ordinator wangled me ten days off over Christmas (without me even asking) using one day of my annual leave because I am super flexible the rest of the time and take a lot of the shifts she can't otherwise fill.
These are people that are asking their employees to work during days where their contracts say they should not be working. Being cunts is a given at that point.
It's a bit of both. In a job with shifts, there's usually reciprocity since everyone needs to adjust their schedule here and there so you tend to get back what you give in a sense. In an office job, I'd say it's not that much of a thing.