Be Excellent To Each Other

Yes, but you can for faulty pattern recognitions.

My girlfriend was telling me about how she had to take the minutes of someone else's disciplinary meeting last week.

The guy being disciplined had booked a holiday and then requested the time off afterwards, only to have the request refused because other staff had already booked it, and taking the time off would leave the company severely short staffed. He decided to just go on holiday anyway and not bother turning up or calling work for the whole week. The guy is apparently a massive arsehole anyway, and others in the office had been hoping this would finally be enough to get shot of him.

Turns out the guy actually taking the disciplinary meeting though is one of the few who actually really likes this chap though, so has decided to just give him a slap on the wrist for it.

A slap on the wrist. For bunking off work for an entire week without bothering to call or tell anyone after you've specifically been told you must go in to work that week.

I'm clearly doing this 'employment' thing all wrong.

He'll be the guy that knows COBOL

He's a car mechanic, and a shit one too apparently. A shit car mechanic with friends in high places.

Fucking Hell.

That's ridiculous.

This is a Yay?

It is for the guy in the meeting.

APOD's thing about not sacking someone reminded me of it, and I forgot I wasn't in the Bits & Bobs thread. I have form for this sort of thing and am totally unrepentant.

This is fucking outrageous.

I blame the new mods... This wouldn't have happened under the previous administration.

Gone up a grade. (Slight) Pay rise!

You should go up a mountain!

Ford every stream, too.

Whoop!

\0

Baby free night! Woo! Bring on the jaegerbombs!

0/

Yay for being dumped via email.

Oh.
Wait.
The other one.

Wrong thread.

I know, but...

I have £6k sitting in an old pension account from a previous employer from about 8 years ago. I think I only paid in about £2k out of my own money into that over 9 months, so not a bad return in 8 years. That isn't the point though.

The point is that the fund is being wound up, and because it is less that the £16k limit in these circumstance, I can opt to get the cash out as a lump sum now, rather than waiting till i'm 55
I could really do with that cash at the moment, so that is a big yay!

Take care, you could get raped for tax at a stupid rate. Unsure on the rules though, but be sure to ask the question.

It comes out just like any other pension in this case. first 25% tax free, then the rest at 20% tax. I'll have to pay a bit extra next time round the self assessment merry go round to bump it up to 40%, but I should still end up with around £4.5k in my sky rocket in the end.

You're investing it in sky rockets? Sound!

Of all the rockets, sky rockets are the ones with the most potential, certainly.

* tears up shares in Underwater Rockets Ltd *

I'd love it if something like that happened to me. I've got about £10k sitting in a pension account from a company I worked at a few years ago. It's being slowly eroded as I can't afford to contribute to it further. If I could take the cash now, I'd be able to make a massive impact on my debt troubles and start a new pension.

Bit of a shit really.

Dont do it ! - invest it in strawbery mivvi's instead

It won't be being eroded because you aren't paying into it, it carries on being invested so should still be going up in value depending on the funds you chose.

Pensions are annoying though, it's my money, why can't I have it back when I want it? These days I just take the companies contributions into my pension, and use ISAs and other stuff instead, so at least I have access to the money if I need it.

I have about 9 grand sitting across two pensions from former employers but my dad (who knows about pensions) told me to leave them where they are.

I keep getting statements about them and it annoys me that the money is just sitting there, but I'll be thankful for it one day I'm sure.

You can't take the money anyway, so you have to leave them

The only thing you can do is transfer them to another pension provider I think? Which most likely isn't worth it with the fees etc...

The last statement I got from it seemed to imply the administration fees Legal & General were charging were slowly diminishing the actual total amount sitting there. Perhaps I was reading it wrong - my mind was more on seething at the fact that I have all this money sitting somewhere that I can't access, when I could really do with it about now!

Maybe this is what he meant? Strangely enough I've had another statement today which seems to be a different amount? How strange? Maybe I've got two pensions with them? I think I need to investigate further.

The fees will be coming off, but hopefully the amount invested should be increasing.

Pension statements are annoying though, they never tell you how much you have put in or how much the final sum has gone up or down, they just tell you the final sum.
Compare it to the last few statements, it should have increased I would hope.

If your total is being reduced, transfer that shit into your new company pension asap.

I wanted to do that with my old pension for ease but then I paid attention to the numbers and, absurdly, it's been doing 12% Year-on-year since the company fund was wound up and it was put into balanced unmanaged. Doesn't make sense at all to move it.

Loved my first week of work. Feel happy there and there are proper rewards for upping one's game. Supplier meetings next week and travel beckons.

Good jobs are good.

Balanced unmanaged is the way to go. Fees are a lot less and it tracks the stock market. On average over the long term, all traders will return the stock market increase, coz it's a zero sum game, innit. Might as well take the cheapest route to get that.

My film has been shortlisted for ANOTHER festival!!! Yaaaaay! That's 6 so far. Really bloody surprised actually (that's not me being negative about the film, but there's a lot of competition out there!) but very proud of the whole team

Nice work

Great stuff!

A mini-yay:
A client sent a very stroppy email about our software not working, and copied in my CEO and hers (who pays the bills).
I went TECHNO-SNOOP MAD and very politely listed all the mistakes she'd made leading up to the software doing exactly what it was meant to. Reply-all, obv

Yesterday, on day 3 of my new job, I got so embroiled on a repair job I was doing in the workshop that my boss had to come in to point out it had passed chucking out time, and I should leave now unless I fancied being locked in for the night.

Which is my little way of saying I'm really liking this job so far! I've never not noticed it creeping up to clock-off time in any other job before.

Yay!

I had my eight-year anniversary at my job last week.

[edit]Which means my eight-year wedding anniversary is fast approaching. Shit. "Wool or copper"? What the fuck?

Knit something out of copper wire?

Wikipedia has wool/copper as seven years, eight would be bronze/pottery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_anniversary

Heh, check out the modern US list; "desk sets/pen and pencil sets" is some pretty fucking romantic shit.

Shit.

Shit.

/looks at order conformation for cardigan

Save it for next year.

Does Mrs G actually give a shit about such things (aligning the present with the material I mean)? If not, and it's presumably a cardigan you think she'd actually like, then fuck it.

Feex for Grim not being Dr Who.

No. But I like to be right, damnit! It doesn't happen that often.

It's Mr Chris' cardigan, isn't it?