Be Excellent To Each Other

Is he pregnant?

Have you had a verbal warning before?

It would seem...

Basically just having some issues managing my lifestyle, shall we say. I work 30 miles from where I live and it takes an hour each way to get here. Since Zioette came along (and a bit before to be honest) I'm just finding it very difficult to manage my time and I'm getting quite stressed and tired all the time. My work frowns heavily on employees not being at their desk, logged in, full of smiles by 9am, and I've been creeping in around the 5 past mark, sometimes a bit worse if I hit heavy traffic (for instance I got in about ten past this morning). Plus I seem to keep getting ill all the time.

Anyhow, they gave me a verbal warning a couple of weeks ago and it's been hinted to me that my efforts to correct the problems have not been enough. Entirely my fault all this of course, just I'm struggling to sort it out to the degree required. What's more frustrating is that up till 18-months ago, I was doing really well and seemed to be well-liked in this company, but then they moved my position from my home town (5 minute drive from where I live) to where it is now (1 hour drive from where I live).

Anyway, emo-rant over. Must try harder and all that!

Aw man, hope it pans out ok for you.

They're getting pissy about you being 5 MINUTES LATE? For fuck's sake. Cunts.

Why don't you give them a written warning for all the times you've had to work past 5?

Plus - they have no right to have a go at you for being tired. I'm always fucking tired, because of children. They do you for that, have a sexual discrimination claim at them, because there's no fucking way they'd say that to a new mother.

Have you talked to HR about your issues Zio, that would have been my first step. They might be supportive.

What do you do? Sounds like a call center. Pardon me for the insult if it isn't but it sounds like it..

A while ago I borrowed Miss Malabar's laptop for work (I rarely need one, so have never been able to justify to my boss why I'd need one) and installed DropBox on it to retrieve my work. I forgot to uninstall it when I was done, and now every time I save a document* she gets a little popup box telling her files have been updated. I'd uninstall it, but frankly the angry text messages I get are hilarious.

Of course, she could get me back by completely fucking up all of my work, so I really should get rid of it for her soon.


*I have a habit of saving things after practically every line I write.

It kind of is. I work for a large, well-respected (sorry, wanted to inject some comic relief in there), manufacturer of laser printers and we have a UK dedicated helpdesk for our very large customers. I do technical support for our largest account.

I think the problem may be that I have somehow got on the wrong side of the director of my department. When they moved me to this office, I demanded either a large payrise or a relocation package and they met me halfway by agreeing to pay my mileage expenses, so I get paid 60p per mile (£24 a day). Sounds awesome, but my car, which was barely 6 months old when I started (and bearing in mind I was doing a 3-mile each way commute when I bought it) is getting hammered by 300 miles a week just getting to and from work. It's just had it's 3rd birthday, and I've put 38,000 miles on it's clock. So petrol + depreciation + plus maintenance is costing me an arm & a leg.

Anyway, I can't help but wonder if someone, somewhere is wondering why they're paying me all that when they could just get someone else for cheaper.

From what you've said it does sound like they're trying to performance manage you out, to be brutally honest, mate.

Without any hint of sarcasm you do have my apologies. And, without wanting to make you feel worse that really isn't the kind of job you want to be doing when you have loads of responsibility. It's a horrible job where you cannot have an 'off day' without them acting like a paranoid smoke alarm and immediately flagging you up for being naughty. I worked the same thing (sales but mostly customer service for a cosmetic product) and if you didn't stuff yourself full of fucking happy pills before you got there, or had the audacity to dare go in there with a single problem they would stamp on you so hard your head would spin.

I must have (and this isn't a joke or a lie) been written up about 12 times. Each time was my last warning

Thing is, facts spoke for themselves (constant monthly highest revenue in sales and most callbacks with my name mentioned in thanks for CS) but I just felt like a fucknig racehorse 24/7. Always being whipped, always having my head pulled on.

And I don't have kids, or any debt or anything that stopped me from getting up and walking out.

Three years I took, after which time I had had a belly full and fucked off.

Thing is, everyone that works in those places are usually young, carefree and unreliable. Because that's the MO they are looking for. Hire and fire, treat you like shit and turn and burn.

I wish I had a job for you as I feel enormous empathy toward anyone who has to put up with that fucking shit. Talk about shoot before even looking.

Mr Chris. I totally agree. As I say, turn and burn tactics, human trafficing.. They don't want people who are going to stick around and demand a good wage.

Indeed. Lady Z works in HR for another company and she seems to think it might be that. Happens a lot apparently.

Yep. It's also a reason why most IT policies will be broken by you switching your PC on at the wrong time or looking at the IE icon, so they can do you for gross misconduct if they ever feel the need to shift you.

Sorry mate - hope it turns out OK though.

I hope this goes okay fella.

I agree with Mr Chris, sinister motives and all that. 5 - 10 minutes late a day seems unreasonable for them to get quite so worked up about - given your circumstances and that this hardly sounds like the actions of a reasonable employer.

Even if it's not about the 10 minutes this time (and I really don't want to sound like a massive patronising cunt here, but I know I will so I apologise) but if you think they have a problem with it, get up earlier and be there so your manager hasn't got anything to moan about. *


* I really don't want to offend you, I assure you I am the last person to take advice from about getting in on time, but then I'm lucky that I don't have a manager watching my every move.

Have you worked there for over 6 months?

Ask for child friendly working. They are LEGALLY FORCED to consider this, and have to give a VALID BUSINESS Reason for not allowing your suggestion.

More Info

Malc

I know a guy who's employer changed his working hours to allow for his lifestyle. He's an alcoholic basically, and unable to arrive before 9:30. Maybe they'll offer you some adjusted terms of employment.

Try and keep him unimpregnated, though.

Heh heh, honestly I don't think it would be possible to sound any more patronising than the woman from HR did during my verbal warning. "What exactly do you expect us, as an employer, to do about this, other than move you closer to work? I'm joking of course, we're obviously not going to do that. It's not our problem you can't get to work on time." For instance.

I do just need to try and get up and out earlier, but by fuck am I struggling with it. We had our yearly medicals last week (we get private healthcare insurance as an employee benefit) and I was told my blood pressure was high enough for the 'should probably see a GP' advisory category!

What time do you get up, out of interest?

When will employers learn happy staff do better work?

Sorry to hear of your troubles, Zio. I hope you get it sorted, or find a better job closer to home.

That's crappy Zio, let us know what's said. *hugs* xxx

Get up earlier, you lazy twat.





Hope you sort it soon, chap. Enjoy your 360.

My god, there is SERIOUS MUFF in Bangor.

There were two girls trying to teach themselves to skateboard in the station lot, possibly filming each other's wobbly attempts. And they weren't sk8r chix, they were decent, clean, sexy girls. They'd take turns getting onto the board, giving a gentle push and then rocking back and forth as they coasted along at a snail's pace before panicing and jumping off.

I have been invited to an interview with my manager and a representitive of HR to decide what shall be done with me. So that should be a lot of fun!

Anyway, enough of this bloody place for one evening - home time!

Man, every year people get me the same bloody thing.

END of story: I fucking rock but need to work on my costs....

Charge more, you mean?

Costs were meant to be for the hearing only, not all the other stuffs. So I was only out by a factor of two.

Other feedback was more than pleasing, and i really quite enjoy litigation. Bloke said I'll pass no worries if I do the prep for the exam. I didn't want to tell him my prep for today was 30 minutes, as it was an "in and out" style one. He said he'd do about 20 minutes prep as a barrister for it.

MW2 looking ropey for me at the moment, I'm afraid, I need feeding.

OK, throughsilver daily mindsplurge.

Well, today's B&B was largely silence-related. I was unaffected by the board outage, as I don't come here while I'm at work etc. Hence these randomage posts.
I didn't read that 11.11.11 thread last year, but glad I read (6 pages of) it today. Learned some stuff. Like who removedbyrequest was, and some ting about history and that.
We didn't have a silence today. Well, not at 11. Nobody even said anything about it, and I didn't remember, unfortunately. No pun intended, seriously. But yeah, I spend a lot of time considering the loss crated by war. Maybe too much for my own psychological wellbeing.
My own psychological wellbeing is a bit rubbish anyway, so I suppose it doesn't take too much to be too much.
We had a (non-timed) period of silence this afternoon when someone on my team got a text telling him his fiend had died. The text came from that friend's phone, and my team-mate thought - before it opened - that he was better after having been in the hospital a few days. That had to have been tough on the poor bloke.
In infinitely more trivial news, my blog is currently enjoying it's most hit-ful day ever, thanks to Converge retweeting my review of their album.
I'm growing a moustache this month, for 'Movember'. I'm doing it to raise money in the fight against prostate cancer, which I recently learned an old colleague of mine has. Unfortunate coincidence, there.
Other stuff, as is so often the case.

I assume the reason the DVD I bought won't play on my PC is down to the copy protection that's mentioned on the box?

First thing that comes up when playing it on my PS2? Two lots of anti-piracy guff.

Home net has gone to shit. 135k downstream if you even have a connection.

ISP got BT to do tests, they said fault was in my house not on the line. Tested everything but had leant out my spare router

22 mile round trip to PC world to get a cheap Netgear, plugged it in and alas the performance is the same.

Now not sure to keep the Netgear as a hot spare or sell it at a loss.

Meanwhile net connection still shit. Already had problems with my office phoneline and 2 visits from BT this past week, now I'm going to have to at home as well. Grrr!

Don't bite your nails !

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20091111/to ... 81b96.html

Is it just me or is this better than the fucking original?

I'd never actually heard that song until that episode of South Park.

Me neither. I heard her 'say it'* live but had never heard the actual song.

Out of morbid curiosity I downloaded the actual real one after getting the Cartman one and it is considerably worse.

* The bitch can't sing.

11.15 until 12.30 is business law, followed by three hours of kicking my heels, then at 3.30 it's 90 minutes of revenue law.

I hate thursdays.

EDIT: Best of luck, Zio.

I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Life's too short to proofread BeeX.

Trains 'too costly' for rail firm



This made me laugh this morning.

I saw three Roe deer this morning, I think it was a doe and 2 foals (one was a little larger than the other two and seemed to be leading the way). They were sporting their darker winter coats.

I saw them about here

Malc

Does have been in season for 12 days now.

Sorry to hear of your troubles Zio.

As others have said, I reckon you should try to distill out their 'objections' into a series of clear, bullet points that both sides can agree to (e.g. coming in at 9.05am etc., tossers ), and then just make sure you stick to 'em? I'd also suggest you ask for monthly reviews thereafter, so provided you can demonstrate that you've complied with the various points, you can ask for any written warning to be rescinded after a 3 month period or whatever is defined in their grievance procedure. Formal warnings should only have a fixed 'lifetime'?

Cavey

Failing that, turn up with a shotgun and be an hero.

Excellent. (contains discussion about ladygardens)

That describes 115% of the Internet, guy.

List of hopeless celebs who are going to clog up the TV for the next few weeks announced :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8356212.stm

http://celebrity.itv.com/2009/TheCelebrities

The actual list :

Meh.

Seriously though Zio, whatever you do at this meeting, DON'T LOSE YOUR RAG MATE, whatever the provocation. Judging from Mr Chris' suspicions about this, I'd wager this could be a deliberate strategy on their part for this meeting - stay calm and rational at all times, don't give these people any more amunition.

But it isn't the sort of thing one expects to read about in the Times over breakfast.

Jimmy White?
Oh, Jimmy. How disappointing.

I agree , although given his rather addictive personality I think he's in there to see who he blows up at

Sam Fox and Jimmy White were the only people I've heard of on that list. Gah, I hate reality TV shite like this. I particularly love the ITV trailer which claims they're going to 'make history'...