The grumpy thread

[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?

[Rust Collector]

Just now, barefoot said:

SLA?

Service Level Agreement - an arrangement between organisations or departments for the supplier of a service to deliver a set amount or time frame or other measurable parameter. There's normally a bonus or penalty associated with the SLA depending on if you meet it or fail to meet it.

Senior managers get super excited about them in meetings as it's a chance to bust out a presentation showing KPI's... 

[cort1977]

4 hours ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

 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.  

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.

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

There are various studies showing how after each distraction it can take several minutes to get back in the flow of what you are doing. If it's continual then your work quality suffers.

That Text Message Is More Distracting Than You Think (forbes.com)

Couldn't agree more about instant gratification.  Good thing I can moan about it on here, young people today etc. etc.

[horriblemercedes]

5 minutes ago, cort1977 said:

There are various studies showing how after each distraction it can take several minutes to get back in the flow of what you are doing. If it's continual then your work quality suffers.

That Text Message Is More Distracting Than You Think (forbes.com)

Couldn't agree more about instant gratification.  Good thing I can moan about it on here, young people today etc. etc.

Anecdotally, I definitely find it makes a difference. If I'm concentrating on something, getting into a working rhythm and flow etc, when someone calls I can't just continue at the same pace that I was before.

 

Even more annoying when it's a call to ask if I've received an email nine minutes after the email was sent (as happened this morning) when I'm trying to work through the 120 or so I've received over the weekend. Especially because it was something non-urgent.

[Rust Collector]

8 minutes ago, cort1977 said:

There are various studies showing how after each distraction it can take several minutes to get back in the flow of what you are doing. If it's continual then your work quality suffers.

Visits to Autoshite are obviously the exception to the rule and definitely* focus your work.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

27 minutes ago, cort1977 said:

There are various studies showing how after each distraction it can take several minutes to get back in the flow of what you are doing. If it's continual then your work quality suffers.

That Text Message Is More Distracting Than You Think (forbes.com)

Couldn't agree more about instant gratification.  Good thing I can moan about it on here, young people today etc. etc.

We are hopefully employing a phone monkey (official job title) to triage as, in fairness to my employer, they fully understand these challenges and they've been very understanding when I've complained about it.  They've been trying to get me off direct support and into something more strategic for at least the last six months but it's proving very difficult to find a direct L2 replacement, especially one that meets our specific requirements.

We have an outsourced support team that do a chunk of our L1 but they're in the middle of training a UK dispatch so we're not happy with just diverting the phones and some of the customers will be a bit resistant...

[EyesWeldedShut]

Fuckin' lying twats on YouTube/Interweb.
"Here's how to quickly flush the ATF in your barge"

No. That. Is. A. Lie.

That and the fact I nipped the thread on the cooler  fitting and had to pull it out of the car to recut it, and it rained, and wet ATF is slippier than a bucket of KY Jelly. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

2 hours ago, horriblemercedes said:

Anecdotally, I definitely find it makes a difference. If I'm concentrating on something, getting into a working rhythm and flow etc, when someone calls I can't just continue at the same pace that I was before.

 

Even more annoying when it's a call to ask if I've received an email nine minutes after the email was sent (as happened this morning) when I'm trying to work through the 120 or so I've received over the weekend. Especially because it was something non-urgent.

I'll see your 120 and raise you a couple..... I gave up and went out to tinker with the car - see elsewhere in this thread how happy* that made me.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

@EyesWeldedShutThe worst I've ever seen was 1,400 unanswered emails in a work inbox in my last job.  Not our inbox thank goodness but one of the other teams.  We had to intervene.  It was a disaster.

[New POD]

1 minute ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

@EyesWeldedShutThe worst I've ever seen was 1,400 unanswered emails in a work inbox in my last job.  Not our inbox thank goodness but one of the other teams.  We had to intervene.  It was a disaster.

I have over 1000 unopened emails after 18 months in a job. 

Get about 5 daily MOP and Project Status emails automatically every day, including weekends.  I never open them.  I gave links on my desk top to the relevant information, which I look at occasionally. 

There's another which sends me an email daily telling me how many overdue tasks I have.  

Anyway, wife thinks I should resign next week.  I've emailed in sick this week.  I've listened to her figures and they seem flawed to me. But I will be getting my spreadsheet out and working out how little we actually need to live on. 

I did also did a little search on linked in a total jobs. 

There's a part time job 3 mind walk away, making dental implants. And false teeth. 

There's 3 jobs as manufacturing improvement engineers within 30 mins drive. 2 at Leyland trucks. And one at a ceramic brake disk company. 

There's also a consultant job at The MTC in Liverpool. 

My problem us I don't know if it's me, or the job.  Even after 35 years in industry, I feel like it's me. I can only do one thing at one time.  That seems to be the problem. 

[cobblers]

4 minutes ago, New POD said:

I can only do one thing at one time.  That seems to be the problem. 

I have ADHD, so as soon as I get pulled off one job onto another, the first job is totally wiped from my mind. Then halfway through this job, the phone rings and something else pulls me away, and I start another job, rinse and repeat all week and nothing really gets done.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Dental implant manufacture is quite specialised.  I've got a mate that has done that (and is a dental nurse, apparently it's very unusual to be qualified in both) and there's certainly call for it.  Not without its own stress though.

If you're feeling unwell mentally or physically it's equally valid.  If you can afford a month out of the industry to evaluate your options then it might help.

[New POD]

https://www.totaljobs.com/jobs-at/udl/jobs

 

[artdjones]

I hated being called away during timing belt changes, and any work on brakes or suspension. Times when you just can't afford to be distracted.

[artdjones]

4 hours 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*

That's one reason WhatsApp is good for fairly simple stuff. You get a notification when the other person gets it, and when they open it.

[Markeh]

7 hours ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

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.

I wish your brother's project team and manager could teach my manager/higher ups - I get pestered several times daily some days!

[Rust Collector]

4 minutes ago, artdjones said:

That's one reason WhatsApp is good for fairly simple stuff. You get a notification when the other person gets it, and when they open it.

I manage to upset people on that as well, apparently it's bad form to read something then not respond until later.

In my defence, I only use WhatsApp for my private life, and I read everything as it comes in and then decide if it needs my immediate attention or if it can be delayed. I personally don't see what the problem is if I don't respond to 'what you been up to lately' the moment I read it.

Which reminds me, I forgot to reply to my friend the other night and I'm sure the countdown on the 'he's ignoring me' clock is getting close to zero 😅