The grumpy thread

[High Jetter]

Ouch, tho.

[danthecapriman]

8 minutes ago, omegod said:

I only needed 2 whacks for what I was doing so couldn't be arsed finding it, whack 2 was rather painful so lesson learned 

Must admit, I’m guilty as sin for doing things like that. Going and finding the right tool is too much effort or time so you use something else!

Using a ratchet as a hammer, screwdriver as chisel etc…

[Dick Cheeseburger]

14 hours ago, cobblers said:

Most builds like this are started by some overenthusiastic maniac who would cut the bottom out of the allegro, slide the underside of the integra underneath and just weld it together where it touched and then use some 60x60x6mm box section to "reinforce" random bits, then it would end up passing through 3 or 4 owners who all think they're the guy to finish it before finally being scrapped.

This one's textbook. What a gopping bag of shite. I'd have assumed that a fundamental part of car design is ensuring the dashboard doesn't block ¾ of the door opening. Unless it's some sort of selective thing to ensure those carrying chub have to lose weight before performing limbo moves in order to sample the unique driving experience...

 

[Cheggers]

You can often take your pension some years before the normal retirement age. Obviously you'll get less but with the 60k it might make the bridge to normal retirement age a lot easier.

You can usually "cash in" a pension from 55yo.

Ignoring physical wear & tear, almost everyone has some work or money related stress. It seems to be the less stressful jobs command lower salaries so you worry about money, while the higher paid ones take away the financial stress but are more pressured.

[chadders]

4 hours ago, Cheggers said:

You can usually "cash in" a pension from 55yo.

Ignoring physical wear & tear, almost everyone has some work or money related stress. It seems to be the less stressful jobs command lower salaries so you worry about money, while the higher paid ones take away the financial stress but are more pressured.

I did mine at 55, a bit over 5 years after I retired. I think that if you can prove ill health you can do it earlier.

I disagree to an extent about stress. Our eldest son is a teacher in a Special Needs School; I never had a client throw a fire extinguisher at me or try to cut me with glass shards from a broken window.

[jakebullet]

Some cunt has fucked both front doors on the c1 to steal nothing. Dozy cunts didn't even take dashcam.

Any top tips to fix?

[Rocket88]

9 minutes ago, jakebullet said:

Some cunt has fucked both front doors on the c1 to steal nothing. Dozy cunts didn't even take dashcam.

Any top tips to fix?

Fit one of these?

[jakebullet]

Have lathe will make totally invisible* repair. It was that or weld a plate on and try for invisible paint match on pearl metallic. It will keep scrotes out while I can find doors.

[iainrcz]

Factory shutdown.

Purging the machines with polystyrene.

It fucking stinks 🤮

[Low ontime]

7 hours ago, jakebullet said:

Some cunt has fucked both front doors on the c1 to steal nothing. Dozy cunts didn't even take dashcam.

Any top tips to fix?

I’d be rigging it up to mains electric…. Absolute fuckers.

[Low ontime]

1 hour ago, jakebullet said:

Have lathe will make totally invisible* repair. It was that or weld a plate on and try for invisible paint match on pearl metallic. It will keep scrotes out while I can find doors.

Better than my first idea  of penny washers to cover the hole… 

[Pieman]

Driving home today along the A5, suddenly *BANG* and I have a nice big stone chip right in the middle of my fucking windscreen.

A few weeks ago I had a quick look over a car at a dealership.  Since then my Focus has had a wing mirror smashed while parked, a puncture, a blown headlamp bulb, and now this - and I am also fairly sure I got done by a scamera van last weekend.  I've not even mentioned selling it but somehow it knows I looked at another car and is doing all this to fucking spite me.

(edit) Oh, and after work today I returned to said Focus to find bird shit all over it as well!

[artdjones]

9 hours ago, jakebullet said:

Some cunt has fucked both front doors on the c1 to steal nothing. Dozy cunts didn't even take dashcam.

Any top tips to fix?

You need one of these:-

A Sykes Pickavant door lock hole reforming tool. No059600. Trouble is, they are £50 and I'm not sure they make them anymore. But something could probably be knocked up to do the job.

[EyesWeldedShut]

12 minutes ago, artdjones said:

You need one of these:-

A Sykes Pickavant door lock hole reforming tool. No059600. Trouble is, they are £50 and I'm not sure they make them anymore. But something could probably be knocked up to do the job.

"Tools you never knew existed" thread starts right here?

[artdjones]

7 hours ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

"Tools you never knew existed" thread starts right here?

There are more of these than you could ever imagine.

[Parky]

Someone did the same to an old Vauxhall of mine back in the early nineties.  I ended up removing the knackered passenger door lock and a mix of fibreglass and filler smoothed it all off so it had that smooth look

Drivers side called for a bit of hammering and a bigger, thicker  washer (vaguely recall cutting up a thick rubber floor mat to make it with a school compass) and along with a new lock it all ended up looking ok.  Meant I couldnt unlock the passenger door from the outside but that wasnt a problem ever.

Bloody annoying.  I know who did it so if you were an MOT assistant at LJK Setright BMW in Barkingside in 1992, I havent forgotten sunshine....

 

 

 

[Dyslexic Viking]

Changed from winter wheels to summer wheels on the modern today. And it's terrible what winter driving here is doing to the cars now. The chemicals and salt that are dumped on the roads now are killing cars. 

[Rust Collector]

On 4/8/2023 at 11:55 PM, omegod said:

I only needed 2 whacks for what I was doing so couldn't be arsed finding it, whack 2 was rather painful so lesson learned 

Look on the bright side though, 2 whacks and only one crushed your hand - that’s a 50% success rate!

[sierraman]

18 hours ago, artdjones said:

You need one of these:-

A Sykes Pickavant door lock hole reforming tool. No059600. Trouble is, they are £50 and I'm not sure they make them anymore. But something could probably be knocked up to do the job.

Nothing there that you couldn’t fab with some big washers and threaded bar. Might need a blob of weld at the back if it’s split. 

[Rust Collector]

On 4/8/2023 at 8:20 AM, New POD said:

Are all jobs shit? Does every manager want 2lbs of flesh? Does every person have totally impossible workloads with more than one boss dictating what's you need to do. 

Given how I feel this morning, I'm going to phone in sick all next week. Then maybe start to push back on all the conflicting shit I'm expected to do. 

I think there’s a lot less money around and so a lot of SME’s will be trying to do either pre-covid levels of work or greater with a smaller staff than before the lockdowns. It’s not exactly fair, but for a lot of businesses and their employees there probably isn’t much of an alternative.

A few weeks back I just couldn’t face the levels of stress at work and so I phoned in sick for two days - that’s the first time I can recall ever phoning in sick because I couldn’t mentally face work. Other than that I’ve only ever been off work for covid or physical injuries that meant I couldn’t work, I’m not one to call in sick on a whim. It did help to have a breather though and rally myself, so I’d recommend doing the same if work is damaging your mental health.

I’ve made things more manageable by doing a lot of overtime in the early mornings, any work or deadlines that are stressing me I’ve been working on before the office opens, that way the phones aren’t on and I can ignore my emails. The thing that was killing me was people constantly phoning and chasing when things would be completed, it was making me feel physically sick every day as I hate confrontation and my workload isn’t achievable by one person - there’s nobody to share the load though so it is what it is. Working in an empty office with the phone lines switched off let me get so much more sorted every day. Plus, doing overtime in the morning means I don’t miss out on spending the evenings with my partner and son.

I am a little worried that my employer will freak out when they see my overtime submission as it’ll be quite large, but they knew I was in so hopefully they won’t kick off too much - if they do then I’ll point out that my work has added value to the business in terms of completing projects that otherwise would have stalled.

[artdjones]

4 hours ago, Rust Collector said:

I think there’s a lot less money around and so a lot of SME’s will be trying to do either pre-covid levels of work or greater with a smaller staff than before the lockdowns. It’s not exactly fair, but for a lot of businesses and their employees there probably isn’t much of an alternative.

A few weeks back I just couldn’t face the levels of stress at work and so I phoned in sick for two days - that’s the first time I can recall ever phoning in sick because I couldn’t mentally face work. Other than that I’ve only ever been off work for covid or physical injuries that meant I couldn’t work, I’m not one to call in sick on a whim. It did help to have a breather though and rally myself, so I’d recommend doing the same if work is damaging your mental health.

I’ve made things more manageable by doing a lot of overtime in the early mornings, any work or deadlines that are stressing me I’ve been working on before the office opens, that way the phones aren’t on and I can ignore my emails. The thing that was killing me was people constantly phoning and chasing when things would be completed, it was making me feel physically sick every day as I hate confrontation and my workload isn’t achievable by one person - there’s nobody to share the load though so it is what it is. Working in an empty office with the phone lines switched off let me get so much more sorted every day. Plus, doing overtime in the morning means I don’t miss out on spending the evenings with my partner and son.

I am a little worried that my employer will freak out when they see my overtime submission as it’ll be quite large, but they knew I was in so hopefully they won’t kick off too much - if they do then I’ll point out that my work has added value to the business in terms of completing projects that otherwise would have stalled.

It makes you wonder how much productivity the telecoms revolution has really added. When I worked at the garage I was the only one capable of giving technical advice and the like when customers  phoned. The other guy in the workshop was a great worker and workmate, but was Polish so difficult to understand over the phone. It gets annoying when you get called away from a timing belt 3 or 4 times. If all the customers had no mobiles it would have been a lot easier.

[Rust Collector]

1 hour ago, artdjones said:

It makes you wonder how much productivity the telecoms revolution has really added. When I worked at the garage I was the only one capable of giving technical advice and the like when customers  phoned. The other guy in the workshop was a great worker and workmate, but was Polish so difficult to understand over the phone. It gets annoying when you get called away from a timing belt 3 or 4 times. If all the customers had no mobiles it would have been a lot easier.

Emails and phone calls make up most of my day, which was how I ended up in the situation of needing more hours in the day to actually do my project work and move things forward.

I think there’s a lot to be gained by having your phone or email off for a portion of the day, but admittedly that’s not practical for small businesses where there may only be one person with the relevant skills/knowledge to sort a query out in order to win business. That said, the company is still there whenever I come back from holiday so apparently the world doesn’t end if I don’t come to the phone immediately when summoned by a client.

I was thinking about computerisation of workplaces the other day. Computers were meant to speed up tasks and provide us with more free time, but as far as I can see from my grey cubicle all they’ve done is devalued our work by allowing it to be churned out in larger volumes using the same human resource. Bulk production was already a thing, so maybe we should’ve seen it coming and stuck with getting less done for the same money.

I fucking hate working in an office.

[cobblers]

I got about the same amount of work done on friday as I did monday-thursday, because I wasn't being distracted  every 15 minutes with "when will my xxxx be done?" or "Can I just pick your brains?"

An honest response would be "I don't know when it will be done, and if everyone would stop fucking phoning me it would have probably already been done! Yes, I know your customer is nagging you, just fob them off. When you sent it in I said it would be a week or two - it's been here two days! Call back if you don't hear from us in a fortnight!"

Very soon this is all getting turned digital and progress questions etc will be directed to the repair portal website thing.

[LightBulbFun]

On 15/06/2022 at 03:40, LightBulbFun said:

the hot weather has clearly been too much for the 20W Philips SL-E in my room pendant which has just shat its filter cap

flickered a few times then went to half brightness, upon  spotting the liquid gunk on the bottom of the glass I thought ah ha and pointed a Camera at it, which confirmed my suspensions, its a HF lamp those 50Hz scan-lines should not be there! so Im pretty positive the main DC smoothing electrolytic capacitor has just blown its load all over the insides of the lamp LOL

its been installed since the 17th of the 1st 2021, and run 24/7, it managed 13140 hours, which to be fair its only rated for 10K hours, but I still expected better from a quality Polish made philips lamp

I mean, well the tube its self is still perfectly good, and shows minimal electrode wear, its just let down by the electronic ballast which goes to show is why I dont like electronic ballasts

its been replaced with another pinched from another location in the house hold, lets see how it holds up!

 

honestly give me a proper magnetically ballast Philips SL lamp from the 80's or 90's any day of the week! very temped to nab some off ebay, but id feel bad about using up a vintage lamp LOL

so the 2nd one I fitted to replace the above one, failed in exactly the same manner, alright fair enough the ballast of these enclosed CFL's cant handle base up 24/7 running so a short while back I fitted a spare* open tube 23W PL-E I had kicking around

which has just failed in the exact same manner, fucking electronic ballasts seriously

(*which itself was another let down, normally Philips CFLs are/were the best on the market so I explicitly ordered a bunch of these high end ones new in 2015 to outfit the house with but every single one very quickly failed with a strange fault of what looked like a bad internal connection, on this particular one above If I put torque on the tube in just the right way I could get it to make a connection and light, as long as I did not turn it off again and let the thermal cycling disconnect it, which is why this one was kicking around unused until now, but was fine for this application since my room light runs 247) 

 

so nothing for it, in goes the reliable Old soldier! hastily  pulled out of retirement at 4:50AM because the modern has failed once again, a good old Philips SL lamp, 30 years old, a heavily worn tube, still fired up after the first action of the glow starter no problems

good old magnetic gear! will remain until I figure out a proper replacement (as this is only an 18W one a bit dim this application and as mentioned it is heavily used and I would like to preserve it rather then use it up)

[GrumpiusMaximus]

9 hours ago, cobblers said:

I got about the same amount of work done on friday as I did monday-thursday, because I wasn't being distracted  every 15 minutes with "when will my xxxx be done?" or "Can I just pick your brains?"

An honest response would be "I don't know when it will be done, and if everyone would stop fucking phoning me it would have probably already been done! Yes, I know your customer is nagging you, just fob them off. When you sent it in I said it would be a week or two - it's been here two days! Call back if you don't hear from us in a fortnight!"

Very soon this is all getting turned digital and progress questions etc will be directed to the repair portal website thing.

I did actually say that to a customer once: - "If you stopped calling for updates every five minutes and making me stop what I'm doing, it would probably be fixed by now."

Being on demand at work is a pain in the arse and it's why I'm envious of people like my brother (a developer) who sits there all day just writing code and only has to update the manager or project team once every couple of days.  I don't think a lot of people realise how difficult it is to stop what you're doing, answer the phone to deal with something else and then pick up what you were doing again.  It's a major drag on productivity and it leaves people right on edge all day in case the phone rings again.  If you're working in a team it means you're constantly having to negotiate your breaks around everybody elses' availability as well and it's much harder to be flexible around working hours if you need a favour.

Phones are the worst for it because they're 'active' and will interrupt you.  Emails are at least passive and get dealt with on your time scale.

We are going to be trialling a phone triage service soon, which will make me outbound-only most of the time and I am seriously looking forward to that.

I do think that the public have become accustomed to a World where everybody is always available and everything can be obtained next-day.  The number of times staff in my old job used to complain that I couldn't get them a new laptop next day delivery, that couriers prioritised Amazon and that we weren't, in fact, Amazon was infuriating.  Other people are seen as this cog in a machine and that the 'customer is always right' because they've been conditioned that way by consumerism.

It's utter bollocks and instant gratification in society is a fucking awful thing.

[fairkens]

On 4/7/2023 at 11:11 PM, GMcD said:

 

When I was a very junior lawyer working in conveyancing, pre-crash, I said the same to an arsehole estate agent - if you and your colleagues would stop ringing for updates every 5 minutes  I might actually be able to get some work done. I received the absolute adoration if my colleagues but management were livid - my first official warning. It did seem to work though.

Appreciate not possible if its your own business

[EyesWeldedShut]

1 hour ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

It's utter bollocks and instant gratification in society is a fucking awful thing.

Anybody remember "Please allow 28 days for delivery?"
Even out here in The Boonies we are getting 24/48 hour delivery on a lot of gear - not just Amazon - and I think it's incredible . Visitors from 'the city' think its crap as they want it all 'right now' and actually have been known to try and order a 'fuckaccino' or whatever they're called from their bed for breakfast delivery? Really? You pay £6 for a cuppa and then get a peasant to deliver it?
Anyways - back to moaning - sprog #2 on last Thursday is here checking her phone non-stop - not Tinder, work - she's a conveyancer. Arsehole client from hell plus the boss from doom has her (on her day off) stressing over a completion. Some bosses seem also seem to expect instant gratification from their peons and the youngsters are terrified of saying no to them, not saying I was ever the happiest twenty-something but, by the time I was in my thirties, I was grumpy enough to tell a shite boss where to shove their job.

Consumerism is not making the younger generation happy methinks....

[Rust Collector]

3 hours ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Emails are at least passive and get dealt with on your time scale.

*Phone rings*

'Good morning, Rust Collector speaking.'

'Hello, it's Idiot Client here. I just wanted to check you got my email.'

*Checks emails*

'Ah, the email you sent 20 minutes ago?'

'yes, I hadn't heard anything from you yet so I just wanted to make sure you had it. Would you be able to come back to me please?'

*Soul leaves body*

'Not a problem, I'll come back to you shortly.'

*leaves email until last*

[GrumpiusMaximus]

10 minutes ago, Rust Collector said:

*Phone rings*

'Good morning, Rust Collector speaking.'

'Hello, it's Idiot Client here. I just wanted to check you got my email.'

*Checks emails*

'Ah, the email you sent 20 minutes ago?'

'yes, I hadn't heard anything from you yet so I just wanted to make sure you had it. Would you be able to come back to me please?'

*Soul leaves body*

'Not a problem, I'll come back to you shortly.'

*leaves email until last*

We have a 4-hour SLA on emails, which is a bit annoying.

My last job had a 24-hour SLA on initial response and I loved telling staff this was the case.  They lost their nut but it was right there in the automated reply.  The best thing about that was getting a member of staff that was a total arse.  So you waited until the 23rd hour (i.e. three days) to respond with an initial contact, asking them more questions.  They would then reply but that used to reset the SLA counter, so you didn't have to reply for another 3 days.  I could make a fairly simple (but not first-contact fix) ticket last three weeks this way.  It was glorious.

[barefoot]

SLA?