The grumpy thread

[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.

 

[Kiltox]

Now that’s what I call good old fashioned trivial crime - some little shit has nicked two of the valve caps from my BMW (they were shiny ones with the BMW logo on) 

 

[Rovorsche]

1 minute ago, strangeangel said:

 

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

Brown bread maybe. or take a trip to the seaside and put the bread on the roof of any brand of car you dont like.

[New POD]

2 hours ago, sierraman said:

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

I don't think it's possible.  Which on the one hand is good that our civil service has thought about loopholes. Which is bad because who doesn't want Lord Sterling to be united with his wife.  

I don't think I was asking in a criminally intent way, not in an incite to commit an offence, more in a "let me understand the system" way. 

I have a dilemma when it comes to immigration. I see much of the criteria to be fundamentally a bit you know rascist. And yet I can that we need rules. And fair rules at that. 

[New POD]

44 minutes ago, Kiltox said:

Now that’s what I call good old fashioned trivial crime - some little shit has nicked two of the valve caps from my BMW (they were shiny ones with the BMW logo on) 

 

Just 2. 

I would start suspecting someone with a bycyle. 

I had 2 anodised bullet shaped caps stolen a few years back. The other 2 went on my bike. They corroded and were a bigger to remove in the end. 

[stonedagain]

4 hours ago, Rovorsche said:

Brown bread maybe. or take a trip to the seaside and put the bread on the roof of any brand of car you dont like.

Throwing the bread on the roof of someone's caravan is more fun!

[DoctorRetro]

Got a message the other day from a company I used to work for, asking if I'd be interested in being shortlisted for a job. I thought, what the hell, and went to the interview. 

Long story short, they rejected me because 1) I want too much money (I only wanted what I was on when I left) and 2) Because I'd have to work with someone who I'd previously had issues with (I raised a grievance over their bullying) and they had basically vetoed my return. 

Dodged a bullet or missed an opportunity? Who knows, but I could have used the extra 3k per year. 

 

[BorniteIdentity]

I would nearly always dissuade people from returning to a previous company unless the team was significantly different to the one I left or the money was irresistible and I was doing a short term ‘smash and grab’. 

I’m not sure about bullet dodging, but I wouldn’t be giving it a second thought. If it’s got you in the mindset of changing jobs then go to the whole of the market rather than just taking the odd approach. 

Good luck man. 

[New POD]

1 hour ago, TheDoctor said:

Got a message the other day from a company I used to work for, asking if I'd be interested in being shortlisted for a job. I thought, what the hell, and went to the interview. 

Long story short, they rejected me because 1) I want too much money (I only wanted what I was on when I left) and 2) Because I'd have to work with someone who I'd previously had issues with (I raised a grievance over their bullying) and they had basically vetoed my return. 

Dodged a bullet or missed an opportunity? Who knows, but I could have used the extra 3k per year. 

 

They phoned you and then rejected you? 

Wankers.