The grumpy thread

[Richard]

Neat way of defeating any wage at all as far as I can tell.

[M'coli]

Just because there is less unemployment doesn't mean there are more jobs, just that the hours are spread more thinly - I suspect that if you worked out the full-time-equivalent hours there wouldn't be that much difference.

 

There are more part-time jobs than there used to be and many of these are people on zero-hours contracts which offer just enough hours to get you off the dole queue...and it's not just menial jobs that offer this, I know of one organisation in computer forensics that have had staff on zero-hours contracts.

 

16-20 hours at minimum wage pays more than the dole, but doesn't give the worker much scope to improve their lot.

[dollywobbler]

Indeed, but is it better to have a part-time job than no job at all? I'm seeing an increasing trend for women to WANT part-time work after giving birth, which is fair enough. Though I do accept your point that it's difficult to live purely on a part-time wage. 

[beko1987]

I've always said that if the shit hits the fan I'll go and work at mcdonalfs just to keep the bills paid.

 

Last resort, but id do it...

[Mr_Bo11ox]

You might find yourself at the back of a very long queue

[Lankytim]

I think employment is deffo going down, the problem is the jobs available are low paid, part time unskilled shite.

 

Plus theres loads of new self employed workers earning a tenner a week or something.

[fordperv]

I've always said that if the shit hits the fan I'll go and work at mcdonalfs just to keep the bills paid.

 

Last resort, but id do it...

Couldn't agree more, i would get a job cleaning the graffiti cocks off tesco toilet doors to keep my head above water, I'm not too proud to earn no matter how shit the job

[xtriple]

I'm one of the great unwashed/benefit cheats: I get disability living allowance and a pension from my last employer (they sacked me when I broke my back, even though I'd been there years - big mistake for them, they have to pay me for EVER!!!!) and I still feel guilty. In the past I have done some right menial jobs: cleaning loos at a petrol station - lovely! I've been a van driver (really enjoyed that actually) delivering crap and an odd job man for another petrol station.

 

I hated being unemployed but the way that some employers treat their low paid workers was/is bloody deplorable. But, anything is/was better than 'signing on' and if you look, there are still crappy jobs around in abundance - no bugger wants to do them/they are too thick to even do crap jobs properly, employers would rather have decent, intelligent, diligent  people than chav scum only there because they were made to be.

[hairnet]

horn not working on bike

 

wiring looks ok had a look inside switch and no chaff or broken

 

spades on end of wiring look a bit skank - so went to look for more spades

 

none

 

ffs - wait till tomorrow go get some - hope that fixes it

[twosmoke300]

I've always said that if the shit hits the fan I'll go and work at mcdonalfs just to keep the bills paid.

 

Last resort, but id do it...

I've always said that if I didn't have any skills or qualifications I would try and get into MacDonald s . I think that if you grafted and weren't the usual student waste of space you would be a manager within a year and that is a well paid job with the perks that come from working in a multinational company.

[vulgalour]

Hey, Mikeknight cured the mystery banging door!  It was the new neighbour's back yard gate that was left to just flap in the wind.  Nobody was home so he wedged it shut with some cardboard and left a nice note explaining what he'd done.  It's weird, neighbours that side seem to have moved furniture in but not themselves.

 

As for the other side, apart from the child screaming for most of the day today, a bit of sleep-deprived thinking has seen the bedroom reorganised so that we have a sound-deadening wall of furniture and I might, just might, get a good night's sleep.  Here's hoping because tomorrow I've got some pattern making to do on an Alfa and it's got to be as close to perfect as possible.

[Lacquer Peel]

Working at Tesco or McDonald's would kill me.

[M'coli]

It's weird, neighbours that side seem to have moved furniture in but not themselves.

 

 

Wait for the "to let" signs to go up!

[dave21478]

Vulg....Can you line the "noisy" wall with something to help deaden the sound? foam? polystyrene? even some heavy cloth would help. You could even go Full Russian and put up a rug.

 

[AlabamaShrimp]

I always thought I would just do any job. Then I had some found them mind numbing and left. Probably has something to do with me being a gobshite and getting bored easily what changes is why I didn't stick at them. I always feel a challenge is better than having money.

 

I can understand the not wanting to sign on thing but I've paid my tax why shouldn't I get it back when I need it.

[Lord Sterling]

I've done various jobs and never whinced at any of them. Some of them included cleaning out student accommodation which also included toilets (and trust me man, some of these places resembled the "Young Ones" place) plus doing jobs like loading trailers, factory machine work/tool setting and robot machine welding. But I've sort of found a niche that I'd like to continue in; administration. Ok, it can be a bit mind numbing at times, menial and the pay isn't the greatest but I like it and I'm trying to keep in that sector as I know how dfficult it is to get into. The only way I was able to get into it was by agency and by making a few past jobs sound a little more "office-like" than they actually were.

 

There are a lot of jobs out there that are not for everyone. I remember doing kne job in an envelope factory where you had to work to the speed of the machine keeping an exact count of how many envolopes were packed in each box. I ended up almost hurting my back.

 

The job market has now flooded with people finding themselves out of work which is why employers are being extra picky. This has mostly stemmed from this "lean working" bullshit whereby employees find themselves doing the job of 2 or even 3 people whilst the 2nd and 3rd person finds a P45 in thier hand and directions to the nearest job centre. This in turn has created a rather tense atmosphere in the marketplace, there are loads of people after the same job in every sector, everyone is mostly grabbing wjat work they can to pay the ever increasing bills and lifestyle.

 

Sadly we have got to the point where employers can send you the "after careful consideration, we we wont be offering you... fobbing you off you with excuse about experience when really; your face simply doesn't fit or your not enough of an "aggressive go getter" or whatever bullshit employers want these days.

 

I didn't want to sign on, I refused to do it in the first place, but pretty much all agencies were enthusiastic about signing me up only to promise me jobs that never happened, then I reached a point of having piss all money and embarrassingly having to borrow from family so had to sign on to tide me over until a job or agency actually came up trumps. Only according to the DWP I hadn't been in the country long enough to be entitled to receive any benefits. Only by the fortune of telling them that I'd worked for a British company (which is something that I made clear during my "habitual residency" test but seems to have been missed off) might I be able to be entitled to any money. I'm not that bothered now, I've got a new job starting tomorrow but I'm still gonna have to wait 2 weeks before I see the colour of my own hard-earned.

 

There just seems to be a lot of pointless rule-making and ticking-boxing going on. But hey ho, there are those in far worse circumstances than I'm in so I should be greatful for what I've got.

[vulgalour]

I loved doing secretarial work, I found it surprisingly rewarding and a good balance of pay/workload as a rule.  Trouble is it's difficult to get a job as a secretary when you're a bloke, I still don't really understand why it's considered a woman's job, we're well past the 70s ideal of pencil skirts and push-up bras being part of the job description.  Plus I'm bloody good at secretarial work!

 

My problem is I never want a promotion.  I'm happy to carry on doing a job and doing it well for a sensible wage.  I'm not a grasping gobshite who wants to be fired by that Amstrad fellah.

[purplebargeken]

Plenty of blokes in NHS admin doing just fine and dandy mate.

[Pillock]

McDonalds quite a nice place to work. They do a lot of qualifications in work (and hence they pay for them) including GCSEs and stuff which if nothing else will help getting other jobs.

[RoadworkUK]

Administration is, in its own special way, terrific.

 

I think it's because folk think there's some kind of mysterious black magic that administrative bods perform. There are things that I do on a daily basis that nobody else wants to get their head round, and this suits me just fine.

[Cavcraft]

I would do pretty much anything if I needed a job, though I would draw the line at anything I didn't agree with morally.

 

Aside from that, if im skint I'll try all manner of hard graft to put a couple of quid on the table, no bother.

[chaseracer]

...I've got a new job starting tomorrow...

 

Glad to hear this, Mo - all the very best, mate 

[jakebullet]

Amazon.

 

Or more precisely their courier. I got fooled into the free trial of prime, and like a div forgot to cancel it. But all is not lost, as the fulfilled by amazon books are often £1.80, and turn up the very next day.

 

Until this weekend. Yesterday's one tracked as delivered, but plopped thru the letterbox an hour later. Today's shows as delivered, but hasn't been at all. I think whoever the courier is gets bollocked if he doesn't deliver, so he's marking stuff as delivered, then dropping it off when he gets round to it. As a long term job strategy this is not the most cunning of plans.

[Albert Ross]

I went to buy fruit today.... yes, at Morrison's. On the way out of the ridiculous revolving door, a chap behind me kept bashing into my bags full of soft fruit. I asked the chap to refrain, explaining about the contents. He tutted.... and carried on.... wanker.

[Richard]

Amazon.

 

Or more precisely their courier. I got fooled into the free trial of prime, and like a div forgot to cancel it. But all is not lost, as the fulfilled by amazon books are often £1.80, and turn up the very next day.

 

Until this weekend. Yesterday's one tracked as delivered, but plopped thru the letterbox an hour later. Today's shows as delivered, but hasn't been at all. I think whoever the courier is gets bollocked if he doesn't deliver, so he's marking stuff as delivered, then dropping it off when he gets round to it. As a long term job strategy this is not the most cunning of plans.

 

I think this is quite common, especially with timed deliveries. We quite often get deliveries at work that the driver has already signed one of our names against.

[jakebullet]

I think this is quite common, especially with timed deliveries. We quite often get deliveries at work that the driver has already signed one of our names against.

 

Amazon are only expecting delivery on the named day between 9am and 9pm though, so a bit of a no no to mark it delivered at 3pm and then not to.

 

DPD is amusing, as they're the one that does the 1 hour time slot. It's not uncommon to look out the window and see the DPD van parked opposite with the bloke reading the paper until exactly the start of the delivery time.

[Cavcraft]

Good luck, Mo!

[Pillock]

Hermes in that case are a damn sight more honest, since their website shows my parcel has been on their driver's van since the fifteenth, and that's because it's still not been delivered. Complete and utter honesty, to go with the complete and utter failure to give a package to the person whose name is on the outside of it.

 

I seem to remember that Hermes will try three times to deliver a parcel. If that includes rocking up to a business address on a Saturday like a genius, then tomorrow is their last chance until it gets moved into the presumably tardis-like dimension-bending hole for failed deliveries. It can't be a simple three dimensional space since it would be visible from Mars by now.

[cobblers]

Citylink have fucked us around on "before 9am" deliveries at work so many times we stopped using them altogether. We are in a shared building, but have our own delivery bay (we get dozens of parcels a day so it's a nightmare for couriers to drag them all through the building). They always sign for the parcel at 8am, then drop it off on the floor in the main entrance at 4pm before coming round to us at the normal bay to bring us the rest of the parcels. Then claim the parcel has been there all day and someone called "steve" signed for it. 

 

The last one cost our customer £1500 to hire a replacement bus. The parcel was full of Actia IO units which are big switching jobbies in aly cases. They were delivered on a freezing cold day last year. This parcel had supposedly been in a well heated office building for 8 hours, but a few of the IO/Us were water damaged and the water was still frozen solid inside,

The ones that weren't full of water told me the internal temp was -3c, even after they had sat about the office for 20 minutes, but even with that the driver and citylink said that the parcel had definitely been in the heated reception all day, and all 15 of us had walked past it every time we need a piss or a brew all day and not noticed it.

[RoadworkUK]

Good luck Mo!