The General Conversation Area

Ddaldjfb. New car this week/next week. Will be rocking in my 08 Fiests ZetecS :D Shame I can't afford/get hold of the Fiesta ST. Those fuckers are like gold dust.
 
I've just sold some books to someone in Argentina, even quoting postage of £40 (3kg via Royal Mail International Signed For with added Comp [value is £75, so at least if it does go 'walkies' I can claim the money back from royal mail]), he still purchased them!

Just a shame I can't shift the getbackers :(
 
I found out that AmiAmi have pre-orders up for a replica Gekota badge from Railgun S....urgh, I want it so much but will probably need to wait to compile things into a huge order to make the postage worth it.
 
I consumed my first wild blackberry of the season today. On a roadside hedgerow did I find it. Regrettably, I came across it not long after brushing my teeth. One can imagine the resulting gustatory experience.
 
4 months of traffic lights as the railway bridge is stripped back to bare metal and repainted in a lovely shade of green, hopefully the remains will be removed in the next few days as the wrap has been removed.

The plans of replacing the bridge as it was too weak to support the larger trucks must have been put on hold (or knowing network rail, come Christmas the bridge will be replaced)

Woohoo, easier journey to work in the morning.
 
Congrats!

I wouldn't be able to last in that job of yours for very long. I am an absolute cheese fanatic. I attacked the cheeseboard full of "drunken cheese" tasters at M&S yesterday. I'm a crazy cheese lady :D
 
Good job (see that thar?) on getting into employment. :) Not my favourite places, as I only like cheese on my burgers, and that's not saying much for cheese-kind. Even my bro's mild cheese makes me want to puke. XD

All the best in your new line of work.
 
-Danielle- said:
Is this week monumentally sucking for anyone else?
Click to expand...
Eeeeyuuuuppp.

Late last week I was randomly contacted out of the blue by my absent father, who wanted to arrange a holiday for him, me, my older brother, my first younger brother and my half-sister at Centre Parcs later this year. I checked my emails one morning to find out that overnight, he had sent two emails enquiring about dates - first August, then September, then a booking in October. I looked at the dates and that period covered the one day I absolutely could not do - 12th October. 12th October is the international launch day of Pokémon X/Y and me and my older brother had already promised my youngest brother Luke (who won't be coming with us due to being from my Mum's second marriage, not her first) that we would go up to London with him and buy the games together (as my older brother usually lives in London). I spoke to Mum about it and then emailed my father, suggesting that I simply meet up with Luke on the Saturday. It's been 3 days and he hasn't replied. So now I fear that I've offended him, but then that leads to only two possible options - I offend a 40-something year old man, or I disappoint an 8 year old who has been excited for something since January. I wish my father had waited for me to comment before booking...he listened to my brothers >>.

Then, on Saturday, it's a friend's birthday. She's booked a table at a restaurant for me, her and some of her friends. The plan afterwards is apparently to go and get drinks but...I haven't found more work since I had to quit my job 2 months ago and any money I did have, I had to lend to Mum to cover bills (I'm still owed about £250). I've already said I'll have to pass on the drinking afterwards, but I really can't even afford to go to the meal - and on top of that, I still need to buy her a present, because I haven't had any money at all - the only money I've had back since lending any to Mum went to cover my Madoka blu-ray pre-order (which I almost forgot about). If anything, any money I do get needs to be put towards getting a new phone, as my old one was accidentally put in the washing machine and absolutely destroyed.
 
I have an absent Dad too.
Your Dad really shouldn't of booked. You are so right to go to London with your brother. Your brother's been around, your dad hasn't. It was his perogative (sp) to ensure he'd be able to see all of you.

As for the money situation, that sucks. Where you'd be going for food...is there no vouchers for there or maybe like a set menu with a 3 courses for £13 between 5-7pm or something?

I'm deflated. My bubble has burst and I feel so low. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to cheer myself up? :(
 
Watch an anime series that's cheerful and you know you'll enjoy? Or get outside and do something fun.

@Josh - Go to London with your brother. It's on your dad to ask you about these things before he books them.
 
-Danielle- said:
I have an absent Dad too.
Your Dad really shouldn't of booked. You are so right to go to London with your brother. Your brother's been around, your dad hasn't. It was his perogative (sp) to ensure he'd be able to see all of you.

As for the money situation, that sucks. Where you'd be going for food...is there no vouchers for there or maybe like a set menu with a 3 courses for £13 between 5-7pm or something?
Click to expand...
What I've suggested to my father is that, as the holiday is a week long, that I merely see Luke on the Saturday. The suggestion is that instead of going to London, Mum comes with my brother to the nearest city to where we'd be, then I merely get a life to meet up with Luke for the day.

With the meal, it's a standalone restaurant as opposed to a chain. It's not too expensive, but it's not cheap either - kinda in the middle. I imagine a meal would cost me about £20, but even then, I doubt I could afford to spend that much. Definitely not any extra drinks afterwards though.

I'm deflated. My bubble has burst and I feel so low. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to cheer myself up? :(
Click to expand...
I'm the same tbh. I try to watch a lot of comedies, but I end up laughing at jokes, then quickly returning to a deflated face.
 
Damn i wrote out this whole reply to you lot and then went home on tuesday (my work pc was locked not turned off) and somebody restarted it whilst i was off yesterday which buggered up everything.

I've noticed some misting on my drivers side headlight! so i now need to find the cause and get it fixed. hopefully this weekend i'll have it all sorted and be able to raise the light level anyway (currently its dipped so low that you can't see its light over the nose of the bonnet) might even sort it out tonight before the gym.

Tuesday was an eventful gym night, i said to my friend to put 20kg on his end and i'll do the same on my end as a warm up, then we'd increase from there (bar itself is 20kg, i dont want you guys thinking i was doing 40's haha) so anyway the end result was that we were benching 85kg, me doing 8 reps and my friend doing 5 reps, both of us going for 5 sets..... then we finish and start to pull the weights off as we needed to do incline which is much harder and cannot lift the same weight above your head straight up.... its at that moment that i realised the dosey pillock had put 25kg on the left side not 20, no wonder both of us complained that it felt unbalanced *facepalm*

I'm rather happy with my fitness though, in the months that i'd quit the gym i hadn't lost any strength at all but my recovery time went from a few hours (with the aid of protein shakes) to 5 days (without shakes) and 3 weeks in, i'm still not taking any supps as i want to trial myself to see if the gains are actual muscle or water retention (in the case of creatine roughly 50% of any gain is muscle and the other half is purely water retention which goes as soon as you stop taking it) BUT creatine is good for hydrating and keeping the muscle fibres well supplied with blood supply, so it does allow you to push that bit harder and for that bit longer whilst keeping your muscles and skin from tearing or stretching.
 
yeah i'm the exact same when i watch something funny i'll laugh but return to being melancholy as soon as my laughing has stopped.

i'm feeling a bit better as i'm now dealing with what burst my bubble but dealing with it is going to take at least 2 days to fix so I need to try and "be happy" whilst I wait.
 
Lawrence said:
So wait, why did you quit your job? Shouldn't you have at least applied for job seekers to keep you ticking over?
Click to expand...
I was pretty much made to feel like I had to quit. I was in an apprenticeship at my local hospital, but around a month into the apprenticeship, I noticed that a lot of the work I had been trained to do was taken away from me, that I was pretty much reduced to the filing and other menial jobs. One of my biggest jobs was literally to get a stack of A4 headed paper and a stack of A4 plain paper and make them into one pile that alternated between the two, as well as placing blank sheets inside empty folders .
Then one morning, I received an email from my manager, asking me to meet her in the office for a 1-to-1 informal discussion. I found out that it was actually a 2-to-1 with her and the head of appointments, who was pretty much the unofficial #2 of the office. That 2-to-1 discussion was actually a one hour long rant about how I was doing everything wrong - all based on the speed it was taking me to complete the tasks. I was confused as I didn't think my review wasn't up for another 2 months, but whatever. Then the next day, I was called into my manager's office again to sign a typed up version of the 2-to-1. At which point, that's when it clicked in my head that this wasn't an informal meeting at all. I went home and spoke to my Mum, as well as a person who worked for one of the back-to-work agencies who helped me get the job, who were equally outraged - they then got in contact with the apprenticeship co-ordinator at the hospital, who revealed that she wasn't informed of anything and that under normal procedure, if any such action was being taken with an apprentice, she would have had to have been notified.

I was starting to get really bad tension headaches a lot at work, so I started seeing my GP regularly. It all came to a head on a Friday late in May, when after a particularly rough week, Mum decided to phone the head of appointments (who I had recently found out was actually the one written down as my mentor - not my manager, like I had previously thought) just to ask how I was doing etc and according to my Mum, she received an absolute rant, with my mentor outright slagging me off - Mum even asked her if she knew what Dyspraxia was (which I had declared on my application) and my mentor refused to even Google it. I was called into my manager's office and was told that if Mum came to the office, they would have to call security (lolwut?). So I went outside and phoned Mum to find out what had happened, then I went back to my manager and basically told her that I know that there is two sides to every story and that I knew of the way my mentor spoke to Mum. My manager then started making comments like "Well, if you leave now I'll have to record it as leaving with permission" and such. So I packed my bag and walked out.

On the following Monday morning, I didn't receive a single phone call or anything from work at all. I was in talks with the apprenticeship co-ordinator for a week or so about the possibility of me being moved to another department, but there were no vacancies. So I received a sick note from my GP covering the time I had been absent, as well as my 2 weeks notice and handed in my resignation.

I haven't claimed Jobseeker's yet because iirc, if you left your job, don't you have to have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks? I received some money from my father to cover me for a bit...but I didn't expect to have to end up lending Mum so much money or the bills and such. Also frankly, the Job Centre is ridiculous at the moment - when I was signed on, I was being pushed to apply for Saturday jobs in areas more than hour away and the Universal Jobmatch system is an absolute load of balls - keeps on giving me job listings in places as far away as London or Thetford, when I live near Cambridge.
 
Josh all of that was gorss misconduct.

Being in the NHS these days is mostly: who can I dump the work and blame onto and get out of this mess with my head held high, sod anyone else.

Whenever a manager asks to speak with you in their office and a second person is present there would be 2 reasons: 1 is that they are having someone else sit in to be a witness to everything said (which should strike alarm bells) and 2, if they are meant to be there informally then a 1 to 1 would suffice, the second person being there automatically formalised the meeting. To which point you are well within your rights to postpone the meeting until a colleague, family member, friend or union rep is present to support you.

I’ve been pulled into meetings that where meant to be “informal” where the management staff have tried to give me a bollocking and its just a case of being prepared, I walked in and argued everything that they brought up and disproved their information when we went back to the office, the main thing is to cover yourself in everything you do. So if you are asked to do something, make a note or a email to the manager confirming that it was done, so long as there is an audit trail for anything you’ve done, you will be untouchable (well, considering you’ve done everything right…. If you’ve cocked up and have an audit trail of it… its harder to get yourself out of it lol)

I have a team leader which I don’t get on with, since I’ve returned she’s been changing my data on one of our systems (when she shouldn’t even touch the information) and has been purposely creating errors and then blaming me as she knows that that one system doesn’t have a digital audit trail to link her back to it… the only trouble is, she’s colour coding her amendments so in a roundabout way she’s earmarking herself for blame, as this is gross misconduct and a form of attempted bullying, attempting to discredit my work and to effectively get me fired or on a disciplinary she is infact giving me all the ammunition I will need to get her fired.

You’ll learn the harsh life of office politics through working with people who have nothing better to do with their day than try to ruin yours. Its just a case of playing them at their own game, knowing the signs and being prepared.

I’ve got 4 members of staff fired in my working life, 2 team leaders and a manager, I’ve fought against every HR department I’ve ever worked for and shrugged off a disciplinary (they revoked the disciplinary once they realised that they where actually the root cause of the issue and where actually liable to be sued)

Its just life, and life can sometimes give you lemons…. Its knowing who’s eyes to squeeze those lemons in and move on that makes life interesting.

I’ve worked in recruitment, in HR and now for a team of 50 odd people as part of the management team, if you ever want any advice or help then feel free to drop me a PM or say here and I’ll help where I can.
 
Back
Top