English, French, Spanish, German in decreasing order of proficiency. I can read Italian and Portguese but can't produce them myself. I've started learning Russian as well, just to put the wind up my lazy Russian colleague.Originally Posted by Yevrah
I'm not native in any of them sadly. As Le Carre wrote of Toby Esterhase, 'He spoke no language perfectly, but he spoke them all' is the most useful skillset in my particular role.
Yas Queen.
Impressive stuff. How did you learn all these? Presumably not just from trips with the boss or taking them at GCSE level.
Last studied them at A level, so 18 years ago. I'd love to say I've worked hard at them since then, but to be honest it's just pure natural talent. We all have something we can just do easily, and that's mine.
Repetition helps, sending 30 odd emails a day at least in frog and spic.
Not really. You know if you're boozing at 5am that you're meant to be working later so better to just call in sick rather than have me chase after you. I'm not your dad, if you can't handle your personal time then you need to stop boozing during the office week.
We once had someone ring in sick because the wind had been bad in the night and kept her up blowing a fence.
My daughter is on the mend, no pox either. She did, rather kindly, pass whatever she had on to me. I feel dreadful.
My brother in law watches everything with subtitles, apparently tv is being geared towards narrative stories due to people scrolling when watching so they don't lose track. I mocked my brother in law but he is immune to mockery unfortunately.
Have you tried holding up placards with the mockery written on them?
Someone asked to meet for my input into gambling harms work.
I replied saying sure but I've only ever attending one event for it, not much input to give.
She replied asking if a certain afternoon was good.
I said yeah I'm free except 1-2 as I've another meeting them.
Meeting invite received. 1pm. And she's called it an ambling catch up like we're going for a walk.
I'm a twit
Either they didn't read or didn't process the word "except" - it's not that uncommon that I get a meeting request for the specific time I identified as me being unavailable.
“I just have the commissioners meeting 1-2 on that afternoon, and don’t have the school run, so any other time is fine.”
I'm a twit
She'll have just skimmed and seen 1-2pm. It has happened enough times for me to make sure I list times I'm free, rather than times I'm not.
I assume you’ll be bringing your pro gambling pictures of your kitchen, car and drive way to the meeting
I'm hoping my watch is back from servicing.
I'm a twit
I'm currently in a classic shambles situation with my new role. I'm starting it on 2 January, but until just now I hadn't been told what the package was. I've now been told what the package is, and it's actually better than I thought it would be, so that's good news. What isn't good news is that the South Africans haven't signed off on it yet - because they only got round to sending it to them this morning, and the South Africans have all buggered off on holiday now - so they're going to announce me in the new role on 2 January without me having signed a contract or been given official paperwork for it.
Such a great company. I told my boss it was a shambles and he agreed, but we're all basically forced into going ahead with it. Having the announcement actually gives me more leverage in the event of things going wrong, so I'm quite happy for them to carry on with that, it's just funny how they can't get anything right ever.
Not back till Monday but the dread is kicking in already. Knowing this is the last day of actual holiday is prompting it, I guess.
I'm not sure I can do another 30 years or so of this.
I was actually glad to go back this week to kick off with a two dayer.
I've been back for 2 days but we've had major system issues so it's been about as soft a landing as could be.
Yeah, we got a free hour when ours went down yesterday. The only thing that bothered me was how quiet the office was.
We have a new hire in, 29 so not really Gen Z. My boss wants rid of her already as she asked to work flexible hours on her first day and 'questioned his decision making'. I urged him to see how she settles in, but Jesus Christ, it seems impossible to hire anyone useful these days.
Can't believe it's back again FFS, it's been barely a day. I'm basically going to have to use my holidays on paternity leave (Germany's is shit) but at least it means I'll be away again by April latest.
Presumably they aren't paying well enough to get useful people.
There are no useful people.
Is it the occupation you dread, or the company that you're in?
Gen Z staff do seem to have the most self entitlement compared to other generations. It can be infuriating.
The company. Just the Americans in it at that, the local office is grand. But it's a very small company and we have too much interaction with them.
I was already looking before Christmas and will be looking again from next week (hopefully with a January uptick in hiring activity) but there's still a reasonable chance this company could take off so it might be worth sticking around despite the pain.
Feeling the back to work dread. Haven’t even got a TD day on Monday to ease back in - just straight back into trying to remember how to teach. Scandalous.
It's mad how many people have this back to work anxiety (including me and I own part of the company).
I've started my new job and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.
I am the head of a new division (Network Services) with one member of staff (me) for a small CCTV/Fire/Security company lol. I am responsible for strategy, growth, profit & loss, recruitment, sales but more worryingly it also looks like I'm responsible for design, implementation, installation and support as well.
I am remote, the office is 100 miles away.
As far as I can make out, they think this is a great opportunity to make loads of money and want me to do it all for them. If it was that easy, I'd have just done it myself.
Please send help. I give it 6 months before I am fired or quit.
I'd start with design and go from there.
I meant design of solutions. I'm kind of chicken and egging it here.
How am I supposed to sell without anything to sell? The best vision I currently have is to hop on the back of the other solutions and try and get involved in some way. Unfortunately Networks and associated services isn't box shifting it mostly is professional services and I don't have any professionals.
Might just fall back on reselling Telco services in the meantime as that's just contract based.
Sounds like you have all the power you need to pivot the whole company into an inclusive restaurant review company.
I guess I could just recruit a bunch of trans students for minimum wage and see where that goes.
But seriously...what do I do? Is there some sort of template I can follow? So far all I've done is Windows Updates, messed around with visuals in Windows 11 and argued with their IT company. It's been 3 hours. #productivity
My first step would be to sit down with your manager to try to get some kind of direction. A bit late in the day, but you're going nowhere without understanding what they actually want.
My manager is the owner, and he's very much just like 'go do your thing, be patient'.
He wants a profitable division by the end of the year. So that's about 300k worth of business @ 30% margin, on the basis I don't get to hire anyone.
I think I should just focus on actually creating a product/service, getting suppliers on board and scoping out good recruits rather than trying to sell anything at the moment.
Anyone who is capable of achieving what they're asking would be getting investment and starting up themselves.
Basically you've joined a sinking business and the owner has no idea how to turn it around so you're hismagicTragic bean.
Exactly. I mean, I probably am but it just doesn't interest me enough to slog it out.
Not at all, they've had amazing growth since they started up in 2020. Now employ 15 staff and turnover around £3m, admittedly 2 of that is from a single contract.
This is the guy's 3rd business and he's always been in this industry so he knows his stuff.
Maybe I'm overcomplicating it, this is only my second day after all.
Christ, and you lot have the audacity to go on about public sector incompetence.
Private sector is wild. It's basically all luck and being a cunt to succeed.
I was listening to a podcast about Bernie Ecclestone the other day. Been an absolute duplicitous cunt for 95 years and counting, but in so doing has made both himself, his family(s) and innumerable thousands of other people over many decades incredibly wealthy and enhanced the lives of many more with the sport he moulded.
Hero or villain? I tend towards the former. Sorry, civil servants.
I have the misfortune of speaking to many business owners in my profession, and without exception, they are all cunts.
I've applied for a position at MUFG. One step closer to leaving this shithole.
In your profession? It's your first day mate.
Just pepper the D&B fit out contractors with BD emails until they agree to meet you. Do the same with commercial tenants. Also get a list of extg clients to understand if the majority are from a certain sector. If there is a dominant sector, then reach to companies within the same sector with BD proposals.
What type of role?
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