The grumpy thread

[purplebargeken]

^^ That's just crap, utter crap. What a bunch of knobs.

[taxi paul]

All the way to the arse end of Birmingham for a cv joint for the jap bus and it's the wrong one. Fucks sake . Messaged him and waiting for him to get back to me. So another weeks car hire cos garage can't get it off their supplier till next week. Or another ride to Birmingham to get the right one. 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

31 degrees in the non-airconditioned office (hotter than Kingston, Jamaica), the single electric fan is notched up to "full" and I'm melting. Not only that, but a colleague has booked in a client to see me mid-afternoon, at when the heat is expected to be at its height. Thanks for nothing.

Hopefully this client will stay away because of the heat.....

4 hours ago, Lord Sterling said:

..... The last couple of months have been harsh financially, next couple of months may well be too.  However, there is finally a clear way for me to bring the wife here ....

Wonder if the rejected payrise request is partly down to "management"(sic) not really appreciating you?

Are you having to meet the £18,600 p.a. financial requirement? One of my clients fell agonisingly short on this a couple of years ago, being a self-employed sole trader and having income that went up and down like the proverbial yo-yo. It went to the immigration tribunal and there was an argument over whether the minimum income / gross annual income requirement should be based on his turnover (which met the standard) or after his expenses had been deducted before tax (which was a bit less than the standard). No prizes for guessing which one the immigration judge preferred.....

[clayts450]

@Stanky Good on you for taking action. I was in a similar boat in 2006 and the relief when I was signed off sick was palpable. Whilst I almost certainly did not have the same financial concerns (Civil Service FTW) it did allow me to pause life for some considerable time, and even when (after a year) I was on Incapacity Benefit, I learned to adjust my standard of living accordingly. It was some four years later when, after resigning from the Civil Service, I finally went back to work to a job I did, until fairly recently at least, love a lot.

I think of that four year hiatus as a mid-life reboot - it did me the power of good, and I came back a stronger person, more carefree and, most critically, a lot lot lot less harder on myself when shit went wrong at work when it clearly was not my fault, just piss poor management.

Having no/low income certainly changes your expectations and desire for 'material shite' which, let's face it, most of us don't really need to survive. 

Deffo take out some counselling - hopefully, you'll quickly come to realise 'it's not me, it's them'  

[taxi paul]

Yes good man stanky.  We are all meant to be big brave bastards. But that doesn't help. Nothing wrong with seeking help. Hopefully you will come through this and have better coping strategies for future events. 

[New POD]

Self employeed? 

If there's an income requirement it should surely be based on the figure that the HMRC would tax you on. That is after legitimate business expences. 

Obviously by minimising the expences you could up your taxable income and pay more tax but if it got you above the income limit and a permanent fix, you could perhaps put those costs through in the next financial year and pay less less??? 

I don't think I'm suggesting anything that morally i have a problem with. 

Or you could get a friend who is self employed to employ you at £19k a year, 3 monthly pay slips should  be enough? Then get visa and resign. 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

On 7/23/2019 at 3:59 PM, kirton said:

I got quite excited on this as it is half the price, or less, than the ones I have found, but unfortunately it may fit an e30 but probably noy many e28s which have 23.81mm bore cylinders (15/16ths to those like me brought up using proper measurements which ATE must have been using). 

I have been looking for a european source which would avoid high shipping costs, VAT and customs duty, but only second hand so far.

You might say - rebuild it, but kits aren't available for the later e28 master cylinders and I've seen a post that says they not rebuildable due to the way they are put together, and right hand drive and left hand drive are different. 

So it's nearly £250 and a repetition from Mrs K - "I've  told you many times that you should have sold it"

You tried Walloth?

https://www.wallothnesch.com/en/bremse/bmw-518-m535i-m5-e28.html

[sierraman]

Bloody Jeremy Vine. Today’s topic is ‘should you be sent home from work in this weather?’

Unless you are a plasterer or a brick layer then no I’m afraid. It’s hot but it’s far from unbearable. About the only time I’ve felt it unbearable was in Turkey about 15 years back when it was 48c. 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

They're so precious over there, I used to listen to it a lot then realised Jeremy is on a wind up but the callers are serious ?

[Tadhg Tiogar]

27 minutes ago, New POD said:

....could get a friend who is self employed to employ you at £19k a year, 3 monthly pay slips should  be enough? Then get visa and resign. 

Where the British spouse is employed, they'd be wanting to see not just the payslips but also P60s plus an employment contract. And not just at entry clearance stage, but also when the visa is up for renewal at the 30-month stage. And again when eligible for settlement after a second period of 30 months.

[Lord Sterling]

2 hours ago, purplebargeken said:

^^ That's just crap, utter crap. What a bunch of knobs.

Absolutely. This job is now a means to an end rather than a career that I thought when I started.

2 hours ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Wonder if the rejected payrise request is partly down to "management"(sic) not really appreciating you?

Are you having to meet the £18,600 p.a. financial requirement?

Nail. Hit. Head.

Small things like stock requests, eBay and Amazon account management etc... go through my colleague rather than me. I used to manage to the Amazon accounts but we lost them due to poor delivery thanks to our poor delivery service GLS. The Amazon account management has been taken off me and given to my colleague. I am always given menial tasks such as price checking which is time consuming and very long winded, yet I am expected to finish them bu the end of the day unless I am massively busy with customers which I often am. My colleague is treated more like an important figure than myself. It has been made known to me that she is more efficient than me and that I am nowhere near her level. My colleague though, to give her her dues does try and cover for me if certain tasks are not completed.  We both agree that this is a massively shit company to work for and she finds it stressful, she doesn't hold back on her frustrations being French herself.

Our business manager is leaving because of the way he has been treated. He has been treated like shit even though he is excellent at his job, his French is second to none, his knowledge of the products is also second to  none and his bringing in of new business and getting involved in the work is unquestionable.

I am meeting the financial requirements, just for the visa. I visited a solicitor who confirmed this so now I just need to get on with collecting the evidence and submitting the visa hopefully. 

I am in that job now as a means to an end rather than carry on trying to make a career out of it which will never happen.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

11 minutes ago, Lord Sterling said:

.....I am meeting the financial requirements, just for the visa. I visited a solicitor who confirmed this so now I just need to get on with collecting the evidence and submitting the visa hopefully.....

The bit that made my client quite bitter was that, by contrast, if you were an EU national pursuing your Treaty Rights here, there'd be no need for the financial requirement. And the application for an EU/EEA Family Permit would itself be free of charge....

[New POD]

35 minutes ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Where the British spouse is employed, they'd be wanting to see not just the payslips but also P60s plus an employment contract. And not just at entry clearance stage, but also when the visa is up for renewal at the 30-month stage. And again when eligible for settlement after a second period of 30 months.

Less easy to manipulate then. 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

5 minutes ago, New POD said:

Less easy to manipulate then. 

Exactly. Doesn't stop people trying to be too clever by half, though.

[inconsistant]

It's too hot.

 

[xtriple]

I don't know, you disappear for a month or two (or five!) and when you come back, everything has changed! Put it back as it was, I can't deal with change and this place is my one consistent!

[Tadhg Tiogar]

Just now, xtriple said:

I don't know, you disappear for a month or two (or five!) and when you come back, everything has changed! Put it back as it was, I can't deal with change and this place is my one consistent!

....but the more it changes, the more it stays the same....

[danthecapriman]

20 minutes ago, xtriple said:

I don't know, you disappear for a month or two (or five!) and when you come back, everything has changed! Put it back as it was, I can't deal with change and this place is my one consistent!

Change or not, your back and that’s what matters! Good to see (hear?) from you again! 

[LightBulbFun]

44 minutes ago, xtriple said:

I don't know, you disappear for a month or two (or five!) and when you come back, everything has changed! Put it back as it was, I can't deal with change and this place is my one consistent!

welcome back at least  

happy to see you have returned

[primeradoner]

59 minutes ago, xtriple said:

I don't know, you disappear for a month or two (or five!) and when you come back, everything has changed! Put it back as it was, I can't deal with change and this place is my one consistent!

The  Mods definitely need to move this post. The return of xtriple shouldn't be in the grumpy thread

[kirton]

3 hours ago, BoggyMires said:

You tried Walloth?

https://www.wallothnesch.com/en/bremse/bmw-518-m535i-m5-e28.html

thanks for the suggestion.

I looked there yesterday; they have cylinders for rhd M5, for non abs cars and cars with rear drum brake. I need a lhd M5 cylinder, and preferably a late one that supersedes previous ones (34311155270) just to avoid any compatibility problems.  I think from threads on here that that is a minor selection of possible wrong parts compared to some common vehicles.

I can get a cylinder from the States but at a cost. Time to grit my teeth as otherwise the car will be stuck in the garage indefinitely, and I'll still have  hope it isn't one of the other things it could be 

[kirton]

21 minutes ago, primeradoner said:

The  Mods definitely need to move this post. The return of xtriple shouldn't be in the grumpy thread

What he said

 

[Inspector Morose]

1 hour ago, xtriple said:

I don't know, you disappear for a month or two (or five!) and when you come back, everything has changed! Put it back as it was, I can't deal with change and this place is my one consistent!

Evening all. Nice to see you back. While you were away we had the decorators in but the place is still the same.

[sierraman]

5 hours ago, New POD said:

Self employeed? 

If there's an income requirement it should surely be based on the figure that the HMRC would tax you on. That is after legitimate business expences. 

Obviously by minimising the expences you could up your taxable income and pay more tax but if it got you above the income limit and a permanent fix, you could perhaps put those costs through in the next financial year and pay less less??? 

I don't think I'm suggesting anything that morally i have a problem with. 

Or you could get a friend who is self employed to employ you at £19k a year, 3 monthly pay slips should  be enough? Then get visa and resign. 

Really don’t think you ought to be advising people how to buck the system. 

[108]

1 hour ago, FPB7 said:

Evening all. Nice to see you back. While you were away we had the decorators in but the place is still the same.

Almost the same, but a little more beige!

[HMC]

OK, so I (whisper it) spent out on a mk5 golf gti about a month back- £2k. One month of enthusiastic driving later and I’ve blown the turbo. I. Don’t think I’ve ever been in a place before where my car is too expensive to throw away at this point. What a bastard.

[clayts450]

3 hours ago, xtriple said:

I don't know, you disappear for a month or two (or five!) and when you come back, everything has changed! Put it back as it was, I can't deal with change and this place is my one consistent!

Yay, glad yer back m8

[Rovorsche]

20 hours ago, Stanky said:

Following a family bereavement, and couple of months of frankly intolerable stress at work, culminating in attacks of shakes, vomiting what I think might have been blood, and some extremely dark thoughts, today I cracked, left work early and went to an urgent appointment at my GP practice, where they signed me off for a month. Terms were used along the lines of 'nervous breakdown' which is pretty worrying in itself, and I've had to report this back to senior management at work, who were largely unaware this was going on.

I bit off more than I could chew, and have laboured to make things work largely singlehandedly, and now paid the price in my mental health.

I'm not quite sure where to go from here, I need the time to recover and feel a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, but am in limbo regarding pay for the time I will be off - strictly speaking it will only be SSP which doesn't even cover the rent let alone anything else. I'm putting this to one side for now, and have set myself a list of small jobs which I will tackle one per day to start to rebuild myself. While I've struggled with my mental health in the past it has categorically never been this bad.

I'm also trying not to consider how I go about returning to the office in 4 weeks time and having 'that meeting'. I will have to make my case that managing 3 teams, 50% of which are new staff who need training on top of trying to deliver 50+ projects is not tenable for the foreseeable future and that I need to have fewer areas of responsibility if we don't want this to happen again in 6 months.

For now, I am trying to focus on the positive. The GP was understanding, the triage team were efficient and I've now got breathing space. For anyone else feeling similar, don't let it get to this point.

I have no idea how long you have worked where you are but from the workload you are managing its probably a few years with a suitably senior title for the role.

If your current feelings about your job are dread and negativity you need an alternative, even if you dont go down the route of changing jobs, being prepared to do so will take a lot of pressure off for having to stick with something that has become deeply unpleasant.

 

Pick a few skills you use regularly, maybe even stuff you enjoy and search for jobs on indeed.com that need those skills.
If something catches your eye and its a recent job posting, pull together a two page CV and slap in an application.

I work as a contractor on fixed term contracts, at the end I have often negotiated more work or decided I can no longer tolerate working in that environment and find something else.
Having that light at the end of the tunnel allows me to cope with the stress on any given day and I wouldn't have it any other way.

But Fuck all that anyway!
Put a tarpaulin on the lawn and make a water slide for the kids, take some downtime and , flog some of the stuff in the loft for cash and declutter a bit, walk down to the river and throw bread at the ducks.

[strangeangel]

21 hours ago, Stanky said:

For anyone else feeling similar, don't let it get to this point.

 

Indeed... while work is important, it's never worth dying for.

 

FWIW there are more of us who have been here than you would imagine - well done on taking this (big) first step. To a non-office dweller like me your work situation sounds horrendous - and I accept that may say more about me than anyone else - but hopefully this will be the first stage in leading you to a making a living in a way that's less damaging to you than your current occupation  and, hopefully, something you might actually enjoy. Good luck, chap.

[strangeangel]

22 minutes ago, Rovorsche said:

...and make a water slide for the kids, take some downtime and , flog some of the stuff in the loft for cash and declutter a bit, walk down to the river and throw bread at the ducks.

 

Sage advice, except you should never give ducks bread. Seed, mealworms and grains are great - but no bread

 

EDIT: Hanging out in parks feeding ducks is a very therapeutic thing, which I can wholeheartedly recommend.