Working from home with a puppy is... challenging to say the least.
Working from home with a puppy is... challenging to say the least.
Everyone told us puppies would play and play and play and be mental but then they'd get exhausted and go to sleep a few times throughout the day.
Ours did not do that. We had to enforce sleep time by putting him in his crate for an hour at a time throughout the day otherwise he would just become completely overtired and a total shithead.
Having a puppy was a fun thing to do once, but it's also pretty hard and if/when we get another dog my preference is definitely to adopt one that's out of the puppy stage.
In other news, I'm pretty sure my work have double paid me for the locums I did last month somehow. Trying to get a response out of Medical Staffing about what's happened and whether I need to pay the money back is like pulling fucking teeth, they just do not respond ever.
Moving to a new team on Monday. Nice of them to give me plenty of notice.
Is that doing the same job but with a different team / for different customers or something? Because yeah, that's a bit rubbish to just drop it on you.
Is the new manager dick waving?
His name is Richard Waving, Spikey, you know he doesn't like the nickname.
I came across a CFO yesterday called Nick Diligent, which struck me as apposite.
Been offered an interview for a job that would almost double my salary. London salaries really are something.
However, it's probably my second choice atm if I do choose to leave my current firm. Alternative option is a firm offering a bit less money but more of a technology focus and fewer billable hours which means I'd probably enjoy the job/life more.
Either way, much love for the frothy lawyer market.
London does look like it's paved with gold. I may have to hit it if the outcome of this takeover isn't favourable for me.
The flip side of the gold rush is what you spend in rent.
Only if you're stupid enough to want to live there.
You should live in London if you work there. It's most of the fun of the place
Sadly my partner would rather live at the bottom of the ocean rather than in London.
We'll probably end up moving from Cambridge (also expensive, but wonderful place) to somewhere in Kent like Canterbury, which wouldn't be too bad a commute for 3 days in the office.
Agree with Kiko about making the most of being in London. It's looking like a necessity for me regardless, but the opportunity to see friends is as much a pull as the $$$. TTH meet-ups here I come.
It's ŁŁŁ in London, silly.
Saved you a massive faux-pas there. You can thank me later.
There is no "enjoying" London. You can enjoy things that happen to be in London, but having to go to London for them wounds any experience.
The Tubes, buses, prices, crime, pollution, people, traffic, it's fucking exhausting.
I had a week there for work over the summer and it was a "we need you when we need you affair" and it was genuinely one of the best weeks I can remember having. Always stuff going on, just amazing.
I agree however, that living there and doing that all the time would be genuinely exhausting.
Id rather risk a stabbing to enjoy some culture than going to see some dogs with pretend horns attached to them, pay Ł7 for a large glass of pissy lager and get some pikeys try to sell me some plastic tat from the back of a wooden hut and then go actually wow this was amazing, let's find another one to go to.
I enjoyed my three years living there, but I wouldn't go back. Well, not unless the price was right.
That said I live about 300 yards from the London border now so I'm not exactly away from it.
A colleague of mine had managed to do something like this when he was contracting. Worked three days in London then went back to Yorkshire for the weekend with his family in his golden palace. Could expense the hotel as well for business so lived the dream.
On the busyness front, live somewhere quieter if you don't want to be in the bustle. Islington was close enough to work but still full of restaurants and bars if you wanted without being Soho.
I've just had an almighty barney with my manager and her stunned silence at the end could well be the end of this job.
There's an eviction taking place next week that has been managed by another department the whole way through, but now one of them has Covid and they want muggins here to step in. Fine. Or it would be if I didn't know the family from school. Said family are dodgy as sin. In and out of prison, drug dealing, assault, the works. It's basically half family / half gang in reality.
So I told my manager;
"Ordinarily, no problem, but I know the family from school and they know me"
How do you know them?
"From school. We're not friends or anything, but we nodd if we're passing each other and me being there would definitely make it personal and aggravate matters"
Well someone has to do it
"Agreed"
So why not you?
"Because they know me, my family and friends and it's likely to spill over into my personal life"
Is that really likely?
"Yes. Very likely. Look, I'm not doing it, at the bare minimum it's a conflict of interest on my behalf and at worst this is a complete lack of regard for my safety on yours."
....
I just need to hold firm until April and I'm applying for every job I can find.
Take the job, fudge the eviction, and embrace your new life as a crime bod.
Thats poor on her part. Conflicts of interest in our work (housing applications, etc) are always avoided whenever possible. Indeed youd probably get the book thrown at you if you didnt say anything and it came to light later.
Isn't that just basic conflict of interest stuff? A proper manager would step in and do it themselves if there wasn't another option available.
There's loads of options available, I think that's what has annoyed me the most. I would only be there as "anonymous eviction bod 4" to tape the Tort to the door. Any mug could do it.
How likely are this lit likely to blame you for it regardless? Like, do they know youre in that line of work?
Are you not in a union? Fuck applying for a new job I'd be lubing her up for an anal destruction derby at tribunal if she doesn't fuck off.
Bonus I presume.
Reminds me of when I worked for Kwiksave as a teenager and one of the head office bods was encouraging us to approach shoplifters after they took our security guard away. I said that I lived round here (here at the time was hardly the bronx, but could still be pretty rough) and didn't want to run into them in the pub having done that. Her response? "You should think about drinking in a different pub".
Got no holiday until then to attend interviews, annoyingly.
I think the only other thing I've refused to do was when she tried phoning me in the middle of the night because there was an 'emergency' and I lived closest, despite her living about 5 minutes from me at the time and her being paid to be on call. Generally speaking I'm quite happy to do anything that'll get some 50p miles onto my next wage slip.
Surely it's worth keeping an eye out in case there's anything you really want and just pulling a sicky for it if need be? I get why you wouldn't want to do that for a job you're just moving to for the sake of getting out but what if a job for the Mark Noble Appreciation Society came up or something?
Yeah I've been keeping an eye on Indeed, but no such dream job has come available just yet. It doesn't help that I don't really know what I want. As much as I want out, I don't want to be a Housing / Hearing Officer any more. I'd rather take a job as Boris Johnsons fluffer at this point.
My two colleagues have been talking about World of Warcraft for over an hour now. Whilst it's fucking annoying and because of the Arab's complete lack of self awareness I can barely hear myself think, I think rather than telling them to shut up, in the context of new owners in town, I think the better play is to stay out of it and allow them to talk themselves out of any kind of credibility with the two senior managers who are well within earshot on the other side of the room.
Are they Horde or Alliance though?
Classic Horde edgelord attitude.
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PvP Horde, PvE Alliance.
The new team is awash with absoutle nerds. Within five minutes the "weekend catch up" turned into a marvel discussion. Fml.
That's a huge problem at my workplace. I'm in a room with six other men, not a single one of them into football or any sport (aside from the Indian guy who half-follows the cricket), every single one of them huge on Marvel, Star Wars, Warcraft, RPGs, Stranger Things, and so on. Then they tell me I'm quiet.
The 60 year old shipping woman watching the fucking F1 is the closest I get to a relatable water cooler conversation.
It'll be interesting to see what the dynamic is like whenever we end up in the office, if I'm still there, as the team has changed quite considerably since the start of lockdown. The Monday morning chat was invariably Old Firm talk that I didn't get involved in but the core group of people who drove that and were the ones who'd been in the team the longest have all fucked off to other jobs so it's hard to see who or what will be driving the conversation in the office.
I also have a feeling the new manager is going to try and pretend like we're all great mates in the team who want to socialise and do activities together when we're just not and trying to force it isn't going to make that magically happen.
I have 2 Marvel Mongs on my team but they know not to talk to me about it. There are some colours that have to be nailed to the mast and "Don't talk to me about your noncy Comic shit" is right up there.
26 Jan is when this WFH dream ends, isn't it? What a ride it's been. I struggle to see how my twice weekly commutes aren't gonna give rise to a shift towards Islamic extremism.