The grumpy thread

[sheffcortinacentre]

10 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

The SNP freeze on council tax was a stunt to make them look good to the voters while passing on the problem of providing services without enough money to the councils. I’m no fan councils , they love spending other people’s money on vanity and other unnecessary projects, but they have been shat on by the Scottish government. 

Sheffield council have been experts at vanity projects for years.

[robt100]

On 07/03/2025 at 21:36, barefoot said:

Have other folk experienced the same? Am I being priced into having a metered account?

AS far as I can work out, even on the highest rateable charge it shouldn't be that much, maybe £40 a mont max? Mine was £25 a month on the same supplier at my old property. highest pence per £rateable value is 209p.

Think a water meter is roughly £4 per m3, so thats 1000 litres/219 gallons. So according to your current charges, they reckon you are using around 5700L per week, unless you're running a full time window cleaning/car valeting business and purifying water at home you shouldn't be using anywhere near that much. That would be the equivalent of filling a 4m x 3m pond half a meter deep every week.

[Metal Guru]

2 hours ago, robt100 said:

AS far as I can work out, even on the highest rateable charge it shouldn't be that much, maybe £40 a mont max? Mine was £25 a month on the same supplier at my old property. highest pence per £rateable value is 209p.

Think a water meter is roughly £4 per m3, so thats 1000 litres/219 gallons. So according to your current charges, they reckon you are using around 5700L per week, unless you're running a full time window cleaning/car valeting business and purifying water at home you shouldn't be using anywhere near that much. That would be the equivalent of filling a 4m x 3m pond half a meter deep every week.

We need to know how much that is in “Olympic swimming pools.” Media SI unit for large volumes of water.

[myglaren]

I've held off a water meter.  I live alone but use a fair bit of water in the summer, on the garden.

I'm paying £46 a month so a meter may be advisable.

[Mally]

15 hours ago, Fumbler said:

Bad words.

I've had similar with a zetec.

I ground the square end of a 3/8" extension to a taper with corners angled so they dug in on unscrewing. May need 1/2" on yours.

Piston on that cylinder at the bottom, Carefully hammered the extension into the threaded remains.

Fit power bar to extension. Long length of 2x2"RHS across the top of power bar, chain round on end of bar and looped under engine mount.

2 blokes weighing down on long end of RHS.

Undo with power bar.

Sounds complicated but worked on a Stock car.

You may want to examine if any bits fall on the piston, but we just span it over and put a new plug in.

Also wing damage could happen on a saloon. if anything slips.

Best take the head off if its a decent car, we just wanted to race in 5 minutes.

[robt100]

9 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

We need to know how much that is in “Olympic swimming pools.” Media SI unit for large volumes of water.

1 olympic swimming pool every 8 years I think 🤣 (Pool is 2,500 m3, and£99p/m would give a rate of 24m3 a month)

[Mally]

4 hours ago, myglaren said:

I've held off a water meter.  I live alone but use a fair bit of water in the summer, on the garden.

I'm paying £46 a month so a meter may be advisable.

My neighbour got a water meter because she lived alone.

Then remembered she had 4 areas of gardens and many plants.

So she used my tap.

[barefoot]

Here's the first of many grumbles about my part time fill in job that I'm doing. Essentially I ensure that a fleet of minibuses are fit to be used. One of the drivers consistently leaves the windows open, so I wrote all over the sheets he has to complete...

He still left the fuckers down.

[vulgalour]

Time for some passive aggressive labels in every part of the workplace he goes, and inside every minibus he drives and maybe on whatever vehicle he turns up to work in.

[Burnside]

My sister said her Panda 4x4 was making a horrible noise. Yep, that's fucked.

Anti roll bar is ripped out from one it's mountings. Feeling pretty gutted right now!

So if anyone knows of a decent rear subframe for a 2006 Panda (169) 4x4. Unlikely as that is, let me know. Otherwise it's game over. 

[goosey]

Tyre fitter thought I was out of earshot-

fitter 1

them tyres look brand new what did the dozy cunt do ? 

fitter 2 

ask the gentleman yourself he’s standing over there 

Fitter 1 just literally runs away staring at the ground while fitter 2 apologised politely 

 

 

[barefoot]

18 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Time for some passive aggressive labels in every part of the workplace he goes, and inside every minibus he drives and maybe on whatever vehicle he turns up to work in.

Sadly I can't. I work for a charity and all of our drivers are volunteers. If a chap were to grumble at them, they just stop turning up. This bloke though, he's ex-military, you'd have thought he could follow a simple instruction. Although having said that, he used to drive tanks, and parks the minibuses as though he can rotate them about fifteen degrees around their centre point before leaping out through the sunroof.

[Agila]

10 minutes ago, barefoot said:

they just stop turning up.

Oh. Looks like the windows will be staying open then.

Zero fucks given, there will be literally nothing you can do about it. Personally if that's the case I'd learn to ignore it as it will only wind you up.

Hopefully one day it rains and he'll have a wet arse the next shift and might learn from it.

[UltraWomble]

I'm very definitely getting grumpier in my old age. 

Spent the last 24 hours arguing with some young woman on a local Facebook group about why her very long winded Facebook post about some below minimum wage Asian blokes failed uber eats selivery from McDonald's was utterly pointless. 

I've very patiently explained to her how she can complain, how she can speak to her bank or use the app to set up a charge back for her non arrival of a big mac, how naming and shaming the delivery guy is a waste of time because uber eats doesn't allow you to pick a specific delivery rider, how to complain to uber eats and how to write a review on trust pilot that will have more impact than the Wrea Green Facebook page on uber eats  business model and customer care delivery

Apparently  I'm stupid because I haven't sent her hugs. 

She's got CCTV footage you know of no delivery bloke even coming down her road. 

[Supernaut]

2 minutes ago, UltraWomble said:

arguing on a local Facebook group

There's your mistake.

Like trying to shovel fog with a colander.

[UltraWomble]

Just now, Supernaut said:

Like trying to shovel fog with a colander.

Ive never heard that expression before but it has genuinely made me chuckle.

I shall now attempt to use that in every day conversation along with other choice expressions (like a nurse I worked with that has decided to go and train as a midwife - I asked her what the attraction was to spending all day every day looking at fannies resembling burst hedgehogs?
She spat her tea out.

Thank you for making me smile this morning

[Supernaut]

1 minute ago, UltraWomble said:

Ive never heard that expression before but it has genuinely made me chuckle.

I shall now attempt to use that in every day conversation along with other choice expressions (like a nurse I worked with that has decided to go and train as a midwife - I asked her what the attraction was to spending all day every day looking at fannies resembling burst hedgehogs?
She spat her tea out.

Thank you for making me smile this morning

I just made it up on the spot, actually!

[UltraWomble]

19 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Time for some passive aggressive labels in every part of the workplace he goes, and inside every minibus he drives and maybe on whatever vehicle he turns up to work in.

I have a Brother Label Printer - great for shit like this.

[barefoot]

4 hours ago, Agila said:

Oh. Looks like the windows will be staying open then.

Zero fucks given, there will be literally nothing you can do about it. Personally if that's the case I'd learn to ignore it as it will only wind you up.

Hopefully one day it rains and he'll have a wet arse the next shift and might learn from it.

TBH it amuses, rather than bothers me. Like the endless phone calls I get telling me that the wheelchair lift has failed.

"Have you pulled the handbrake on?" is my inevitable reply...

[MikeR]

FFS , saw the aftermath of the lorry crash on the M6 today , dust still in the air , 200 + meters of barrier destroyed , concrete barrier damaged , lorry upright , debris everywhere , cars stopped , people trying to help , scary stuff ..... We got past before plod arrived and shut the motorway .. chaos up there now .... 

[M'coli]

On 08/03/2025 at 19:02, Fumbler said:

Bad words.

Pinto?

[wuvvum]

Work has pissed me off again today (well yesterday now).  Due to a combination of planned and unplanned leave, I was the only person working out of a team of five (down from 12 before the bat flu, but that's another story).  So I was covering four other people's emails, and it was fucking manic.

I get that a lot of places sometimes have staffing issues, but this has been going on for bloody ages - the company just can't seem to pull its finger out and recruit people.  We had a guy in the team retire on 6th Feb - he gave loads of notice, but his "replacement" (who is only going to be working 3 days a week) isn't starting until 7th April, and even then she's going to be doing systems training for at least the first couple of weeks.

Then as soon as she's got her feet under the table we're losing another team member (the only full timer apart from me) to a different team, who to be fair are even further up shit creek than we are staffing-wise.  So we'll be back to square 1 again.  Or rather to square 0.6, given that the new person is part time and will take a while to get up to speed anyway.

I really like the people I work with directly (the main reason why I'm still there to be honest).  The head of department in the London office sent me a Teams message saying to let him know if there was anything he could do to help out (he meant it too, he wasn't just being polite).  It's just the HR situation which is one constant clusterfuck - we could just about muddle through when the team was big enough to pick up the slack, but now it's seriously starting to take the piss.

[chadders]

Sometimes the best thing is not to do the extra mile and not fill the gaps.

One day it'll fall over and you don't want it to be because you've been signed off due to overwork.

I found this out the hard way.

Assuming you're using the same system can't the HoD second someone to help you?

[EyesWeldedShut]

7 hours ago, wuvvum said:

It's just the HR situation which is one constant clusterfuck - we could just about muddle through when the team was big enough to pick up the slack, but now it's seriously starting to take the piss.

Sounds a bit like sprogette's place - they simply cannot staff up. Three teams of 6/8 are now combined into one of 6 and one of 7 - but the work remains the same and it's manic. It's not a crap place to work it's just that their HR system cannot seem to find new staff anyplace. 
Not helped by the fact that the latest stamp duty changes means everybody wants to complete on their house moves by 31st March - she's working evening and weekend - and, yup, there's nothing in writing about overtime/time in lieu and so on.

5 minutes ago, chadders said:

Sometimes the best thing is not to do the extra mile and not fill the gaps.

She got shat on during COVID doing just that in her former company but here they all are doing it again. When I was their age I'd probably have done the same and stepped in to fight the fire, Nowadays I'd have my trusty stirrup pump and a bucket of petrol to help put it out.

[chadders]

1 minute ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Sounds a bit like sprogette's place - they simply cannot staff up. Three teams of 6/8 are now combined into one of 6 and one of 7 - but the work remains the same and it's manic. It's not a crap place to work it's just that their HR system cannot seem to find new staff anyplace. 
Not helped by the fact that the latest stamp duty changes means everybody wants to complete on their house moves by 31st March - she's working evening and weekend - and, yup, there's nothing in writing about overtime/time in lieu and so on.

She got shat on during COVID doing just that in her former company but here they all are doing it again. When I was their age I'd probably have done the same and stepped in to fight the fire, Nowadays I'd have my trusty stirrup pump and a bucket of petrol to help put it out.

I was in my mid/late 20s and it was my first job after qualifying as an accountant.

I've done similar since when a project was going off the rails but you know with a project there's an end date and the sooner you fix it the sooner you can FRO.

[captain_70s]

11 minutes ago, chadders said:

Sometimes the best thing is not to do the extra mile and not fill the gaps.

This.

If you're working your arse off consistently but still managing to cover 75% of the workload there isn't a massive incentive for them to hire more staff. Stuff is still functioning.

Sometimes the whole thing just needs to fall apart before anybody realises there is actually a big problem...

[comfortablynumb]

Of course @wuvvum, I'd never* suggest that you go to your doctors and get signed off as a result of stress/your recent accident.

No, I'd never suggest that.

Whilst I was typing this, the autocorrect suggested 'stoned' instead of 'signed'🤣

Could also be a solution? 😁

[chadders]

Just now, comfortablynumb said:

Of course @wuvvum, I'd never* suggest that you go to your doctors and get signed off as a result of stress/your recent accident.

No, I'd never suggest that.

Whilst I was typing this, the autocorrect suggested 'stoned' instead of 'signed'🤣

Could also be a solution? 😁

It's a problem if you like your co workers, you think that you're letting them down and giving them even more work to do.

[comfortablynumb]

You're right @chadders, but IME, until HR is forced into taking action, they won't.

Doesn't sound like wuv has many coworkers to let down😕 

Edit - also there comes a time when you have to look after yourself first.

Ask me how I know 

Edited March 11 by comfortablynumb
Additional

[chadders]

1 hour ago, comfortablynumb said:

You're right @chadders, but IME, until HR is forced into taking action, they won't.

Doesn't sound like wuv has many coworkers to let down😕 

Edit - also there comes a time when you have to look after yourself first.

Ask me how I know 

I can't disagree, it's a fundamental failure of management which you have to pay the price for.

It's especially true in my experience in US firms as flagging up issues is often seen as negative, which may have had something to do with me being selected for redundancy twice. Ra!, ra!, ra! only patches over the cracks for so long.

Things were far better when the people part of an organisation were called Personnel and didn't have a mission to remodel the world. I used to be able to have reasonable conversations with them then about my team.