Work colleagues

[Aufc]

Not sure what you expected from a payday loan company. Only someone stupid enough to be in charge of a company like that would be stupid enough not to think of perhaps having two options for food considering their diverse workforce.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

16 hours ago, scottsdad said:

When I was a PhD student (seem to have started a few posts like this today) I spent a lot of time computer programming. Anyone who has done this knows that after a while it can be hard to look at the screen. Come 2ish in the afternoon it just became impossible to see it properly. do, enddo, if, endif, and, or...all of these things bled into one. 

There was a 9 hole pitch and putt course nearby, and a mate of mine and I would go there for an hour. Come back, having been away from the screen, and it was fine. I could go for a few more hours. 

 

15 hours ago, scottsdad said:

I had a great summer job for two summers when I was a student. I was employed as a roads surveyor for Stirling council earning a massive £150 per week. The first year was me and one friend of mine, along with half a dozen other students. Show up at 8, into the vans, stop for coffee/newspapers/bacon rolls and then a nice drive up north. We surveyed the trunk roads and motorways in Stirling and Perth & Kinross. Great scenery, a few nice folk, a couple of bell ends. The second year a few more of my mates joined the group, and the bell ends never came back. 

Our boss, Neil (a middle aged guy heavily into Acid Croft music) was a great guy. Early on in the summer though he had some sort of blow-out with his boss and he was removed from being in charge of us. We were in charge of ourselves. It was a fantastic summer. Me and my mates going all over, having lunch in places like Strathyre and Crianlarich. The work was easy and we couldn't work in the rain. SO on rainy days we would drive up north and sit in the van reading the paper and listening to the radio. 

I remained friends with a lot of these people for a long time afterwards. Probably the best time and work colleagues I ever had. 

Fast becoming the academic equivalent of Gunther. 

[sugna]

18 hours ago, scottsdad said:

When I was a PhD student (seem to have started a few posts like this today) I spent a lot of time computer programming. Anyone who has done this knows that after a while it can be hard to look at the screen. Come 2ish in the afternoon it just became impossible to see it properly. do, enddo, if, endif, and, or...all of these things bled into one. 

There was a 9 hole pitch and putt course nearby, and a mate of mine and I would go there for an hour. Come back, having been away from the screen, and it was fine. I could go for a few more hours. 

Sounds like the campus at Stirling, a very picturesque wee track.

My equivalent was a full-time MSc that I did in 1996-97, where I'd resigned my job and gone all-in with a (nominally not too radical) change of direction. I was routinely developing software coursework well after midnight, and my reset after that - switching off for sleep straight afterwards was impossible - was to go the squash club and hit a ball for 20 minutes.

In contrast, my weekly golf game with my old flatmate now ends in his complaining that working at a screen all day scuppers his eyesight for evening golf. Except, of course, when he wins. Then he's a triumphalist Dundonian git who apparently has 20:20 vision.

[DiegoDiego]

A few years ago I worked in a small company. The were about six of us core staff and two management (mother and daughter).

We usually went out for Christmas but they noting the lack of morale they realised spending time with us outwith work might not be for the best. Instead they bought us each a box containing a panettone and a bottle of prosecco. Two staff couldn't eat the panettone due to allergies and three didn't drink alcohol.

[V.Aye.R]

A few years ago I worked in a small company. The were about six of us core staff and two management (mother and daughter).

We usually went out for Christmas but they noting the lack of morale they realised spending time with us outwith work might not be for the best. Instead they bought us each a box containing a panettone and a bottle of prosecco. Two staff couldn't eat the panettone due to allergies and three didn't drink alcohol.

You could do anything and someone would still moan though.

Could give everyone a £100 amazon voucher and someone would 100% pipe up about Amazon/Tax/support local businesses.

My old work did similar during lockdown, posted out hampers to every member of staff at great expense. Was ok but soured by all the hourly paid getting an extra days holiday. Way to promote the us/them divide.

Just give everyone a £100 bonus instead.

[scottsdad]

35 minutes ago, sugna said:

Sounds like the campus at Stirling, a very picturesque wee track.

My equivalent was a full-time MSc that I did in 1996-97, where I'd resigned my job and gone all-in with a (nominally not too radical) change of direction. I was routinely developing software coursework well after midnight, and my reset after that - switching off for sleep straight afterwards was impossible - was to go the squash club and hit a ball for 20 minutes.

In contrast, my weekly golf game with my old flatmate now ends in his complaining that working at a screen all day scuppers his eyesight for evening golf. Except, of course, when he wins. Then he's a triumphalist Dundonian git who apparently has 20:20 vision.

Spot on. I did the first half of my PhD at Stirling before our group moved to Cardiff.

[Newbornbairn]

Worked for a company that banned partners after an incident at the Xmas do.

 

We had two women in the office who were huge, I mean, really huge. The floor shook when they walked past. Nice girls, they were best pals and got on well. Both of them were married to wee guys - seriously wee, think if @Bairnardo had stunted wee brothers. It was quite funny at the meal because all 4 of them got wired into the booze - and that's where the trouble started. They were dancing, which was quite funny because they looked like pot bellied pigs dancing with hamsters. Anyway, one of the wee guys started getting upset because he was convinced the other wee guy was eyeing up his wife and they started giving it verbals. This continued until it all kicked off on the coach going back up the M6. The two wee guys started knocking lumps out of each other and their big wives joined in. The bus driver thought they were going to tip the bus so he pulled onto the hard shoulder and called the cops. Somehow the message to the cops got confused and the full anti-terrorist squad rolled up in riot vans toting machine guns.

 

Boss got told all this the next morning and instantly banned partners from future events.

[Thorongil]

24 minutes ago, V.Aye.R said:

You could do anything and someone would still moan though.

Could give everyone a £100 amazon voucher and someone would 100% pipe up about Amazon/Tax/support local businesses.

My old work did similar during lockdown, posted out hampers to every member of staff at great expense. Was ok but soured by all the hourly paid getting an extra days holiday. Way to promote the us/them divide.

Just give everyone a £100 bonus instead.

At my last work we used to all get a bottle of champagne at Christmas. Then staff who didn’t drink alcohol complained and it got changed to a box of chocolates. 
 

The entitlement was off the scale. The chocolates would get delivered to our part of the building and we would invite teams down at a time to collect their chocolates. From the moment the deliveries appeared we would be getting people from all over the place turning up demanding their chocolates or emailing or messaging asking when they would be getting theirs. One woman, two years in a row, turned up at our desks making a big fuss because HER team hadn’t been called down yet and she needed HER chocolates pronto because she was finishing up and didn’t we understand that this was her mother in law’s Christmas present?!?!

Then people started complaining because there was liqueur in some of the chocolates. The company rightly then just knocked it on the head. 
 

People are awful.

[thistledo]

16 hours ago, Boghead ranter said:

I do.

Self employed dog walker, so like a lot of you, I work with puddle drinkers all day. I work hours that suit me, and now that my business is built up, I have the ability to turn down work I don't fancy doing.

See I like dogs (Tommy from Snatch meme) but, I don't think I'd fancy walking around half he day with them picking up shite and trying to stop them pumping each other. Out of all of the one's so far who enjoyed their job this would probably be the winner so far though. 

[DiegoDiego]

You could do anything and someone would still moan though.

Could give everyone a £100 amazon voucher and someone would 100% pipe up about Amazon/Tax/support local businesses.

It wasn't someone though. It was the majority of the staff.

There's a difference between moaning and being given something that will make you ill or is against your religion.

As I said, it was a small workplace where everyone knew each other. There was quite clearly zero thought put into it being "how can we do this on the cheap?"

[V.Aye.R]

It wasn't someone though. It was the majority of the staff.

There's a difference between moaning and being given something that will make you ill or is against your religion.

As I said, it was a small workplace where everyone knew each other. There was quite clearly zero thought put into it being "how can we do this on the cheap?"

I'm speaking from a Scottish perspective in general though, where 96% are white and the majority of which are miserable, joyless @rseholes.

In the case of your example, I agree completely.

In general, drop the crappy gestures and just renumerate people better.

[thistledo]

Many years ago now, I used to work with a guy in my team who was prone to moments of just bonkers behaviour, but was otherwise a really sound guy. He was the sole reason why the company no longer allowed alcohol to be consumed on premises (they used to crack open the champagne when we won contracts or renewed them) something to do with him running around semi-naked outside with one of the bosses chasing him. I never witnessed this but I'm told it was a good laugh. 

Anyway, I attended this Christmas night out in Paisley and this lad I worked with was there, the company always provided loads of booze vouchers, to the point it was more or less a free bar and so it was always very well attended, to the point this year the actual managing director was there, a sound guy and it turns out probably a very good sense of humour. Some point during the night I hear a commotion on the dance floor, the lad in my team has his breechs down as I turned to look and is bending over doing some kind of Ace Ventura thing with his arsecheeks right in front of the MD! One of the managers was scrambling to cover what was going on and the guy was just laughing at it. The lad got carted home in a taxi and the night went on. 

The next working day the boy in my team is just talking about it with me and comes away with "you know it's funny [insert MDs name] has actually seen my bumhole" *laughs" having got used to his antics I'm just fucking laughing about it. There was no reprimand for the lad and apparently everyone saw the funny side. Looking back now, I think the guy may have had some mental issues and probably shouldn't have been drinking. I think the place I worked made certain allowances for him. 

[TheScarf]

10 minutes ago, thistledo said:

Many years ago now, I used to work with a guy in my team who was prone to moments of just bonkers behaviour, but was otherwise a really sound guy. He was the sole reason why the company no longer allowed alcohol to be consumed on premises (they used to crack open the champagne when we won contracts or renewed them) something to do with him running around semi-naked outside with one of the bosses chasing him. I never witnessed this but I'm told it was a good laugh. 

Anyway, I attended this Christmas night out in Paisley and this lad I worked with was there, the company always provided loads of booze vouchers, to the point it was more or less a free bar and so it was always very well attended, to the point this year the actual managing director was there, a sound guy and it turns out probably a very good sense of humour. Some point during the night I hear a commotion on the dance floor, the lad in my team has his breechs down as I turned to look and is bending over doing some kind of Ace Ventura thing with his arsecheeks right in front of the MD! One of the managers was scrambling to cover what was going on and the guy was just laughing at it. The lad got carted home in a taxi and the night went on. 

The next working day the boy in my team is just talking about it with me and comes away with "you know it's funny [insert MDs name] has actually seen my bumhole" *laughs" having got used to his antics I'm just fucking laughing about it. There was no reprimand for the lad and apparently everyone saw the funny side. Looking back now, I think the guy may have had some mental issues and probably shouldn't have been drinking. I think the place I worked made certain allowances for him. 

Who's MD hasn't seen their bumhole?

[DiegoDiego]

In general, drop the crappy gestures and just renumerate people better.

Aye, I'm with you on that. The place in question couldn't even do the simple gestures correctly though. In two years nobody got any feedback, not even a "well done" or a "you need to do a bit better on this". It got to the point when I thought "why am I bothering to do good work when I get the same response for half-arseing things?

I'm in a similar position at the moment. I've just done 72 hours overtime this month. The manager had unscheduled double heart surgery and has been off recovering. Head office didn't even get in touch. We all just worked our arses off to make sure the place kept running. I can bet there won't be a word of thanks at the end of it.

I'm not fussed about renumeration to be honest as I knew what I was signing up for. Taking one minute out of their day to say "thanks for your hard work" would make a big difference though. Without it I'll certainly think twice about doing more than contractually necessary.

[scottsdad]

18 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Who's MD hasn't seen their bumhole?

Standard induction practice in most work places, isn't it?

Day 1: here's your desk. Day 2: scants down. 

[scottsdad]

9 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:

Aye, I'm with you on that. The place in question couldn't even do the simple gestures correctly though. In two years nobody got any feedback, not even a "well done" or a "you need to do a bit better on this". It got to the point when I thought "why am I bothering to do good work when I get the same response for half-arseing things?

I'm in a similar position at the moment. I've just done 72 hours overtime this month. The manager had unscheduled double heart surgery and has been off recovering. Head office didn't even get in touch. We all just worked our arses off to make sure the place kept running. I can bet there won't be a word of thanks at the end of it.

I'm not fussed about renumeration to be honest as I knew what I was signing up for. Taking one minute out of their day to say "thanks for your hard work" would make a big difference though. Without it I'll certainly think twice about doing more than contractually necessary.

We get reviewed annually. The first reviewer I had, before he retired, always started his reviews by saying "The rest of the year, nobody else will thank you for your work. So I will." But he retired and I was given a new reviewer. The reviewer is a known bell end. A couple of years ago  I was talking about a course I was teaching and the feedback from students was very positive. He looked at me and said "You didn't win a teaching award, so it can't have been that good."

He doesn't do reviews any more. Always negative, never any thanks. He marked one guy as underperforming, this guy who had been pulling 60-70 hour weeks - a few of us backed up the complaint against this reviewer. Thankfully punted. 

Edited August 24, 2021 by scottsdad
edit to add - if by some chance the bell end reviewer ever read this, he wouldn't recognise I was talking about him. He always thought he was being constructive.

[V.Aye.R]

Aye, I'm with you on that. The place in question couldn't even do the simple gestures correctly though. In two years nobody got any feedback, not even a "well done" or a "you need to do a bit better on this". It got to the point when I thought "why am I bothering to do good work when I get the same response for half-arseing things?

I'm in a similar position at the moment. I've just done 72 hours overtime this month. The manager had unscheduled double heart surgery and has been off recovering. Head office didn't even get in touch. We all just worked our arses off to make sure the place kept running. I can bet there won't be a word of thanks at the end of it.

I'm not fussed about renumeration to be honest as I knew what I was signing up for. Taking one minute out of their day to say "thanks for your hard work" would make a big difference though. Without it I'll certainly think twice about doing more than contractually necessary.

Motivating people is easy and free for the most part.

Companies seem obsessed with surveys and forums rather than just expecting managers to manage and lead people.

[The Moonster]

1 minute ago, DiegoDiego said:

Aye, I'm with you on that. The place in question couldn't even do the simple gestures correctly though. In two years nobody got any feedback, not even a "well done" or a "you need to do a bit better on this". It got to the point when I thought "why am I bothering to do good work when I get the same response for half-arseing things?

I'm in a similar position at the moment. I've just done 72 hours overtime this month. The manager had unscheduled double heart surgery and has been off recovering. Head office didn't even get in touch. We all just worked our arses off to make sure the place kept running. I can bet there won't be a word of thanks at the end of it.

I'm not fussed about renumeration to be honest as I knew what I was signing up for. Taking one minute out of their day to say "thanks for your hard work" would make a big difference though. Without it I'll certainly think twice about doing more than contractually necessary.

I think this is spot on. I don't know if British folk being terrible at talking to each other is a factor but there isn't enough positive reinforcement at work IMO. It's basically driven me to the situation in your first paragraph - why should I do more than I'm required to when nobody says thanks anyway. I went to a job down in Middlesbrough a few months back as we were short of guys, to be fair to the boss he arranged for me to be paid overtime for it but when I came back the following week and had over 600 emails to get through he started asking me why things weren't done. I went home at night and fired up my laptop again to get through the emails, at about 10pm that night I just burst into tears with the stress. Went in the next day with most things up to date (barring a few minor things) and all I got was "is that you caught up?" followed by the next task I was to start doing. I worked the rest of that week, had a panic attack the following Monday and my GP gave me 5 weeks off. 

I leave at 5pm every day now (sometimes earlier if I can play golf) and don't worry about a fucking thing until I clock back in. I certainly won't be offering my services to help out if we're short again. 

[Arthur daley]

Used to have a guy years ago called terry working for me ,before he  got married and moved to Australia,some of the things he used to get up to , you could have made a tv programme about him . 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

1 hour ago, V.Aye.R said:

You could do anything and someone would still moan though.

Could give everyone a £100 amazon voucher and someone would 100% pipe up about Amazon/Tax/support local businesses.

My old work did similar during lockdown, posted out hampers to every member of staff at great expense. Was ok but soured by all the hourly paid getting an extra days holiday. Way to promote the us/them divide.

Just give everyone a £100 bonus instead.

This (Amazon's business operation) is one of those principles, like Google, that I find it embarrasingly difficult to act upon. Living in the sticks, and having a hobby which requires sometimes exotic materials/equipment means the tax-dodging tw@s are often my only realistic option. 

Anyway - Christmas work do's. Haven't had one for over 25 years, as there's not a lot of difference to working in a nick over the festive period, other than you're guaranteed to be on either Christmas or Boxing Day. Hated the BREL offices idea of an extended Friday lunch (having to use TOIL) and back to the grind, but enjoyed Terrys and the "Let's get fucked up all day Saturday and see if we can face a curry" option. 

One thing we did have in the Prison Service was the Governor's Ball, a formal dinner dance during the summer at either York or Beverley racecourse. A great idea in theory, getting a couple of hundred screws together and adding alcohol is never going to end well, especially given the amountof extra-marital activity the profession is noted for. We had about four before two (married) Governors ended up being ejected from York Racecourse for scrapping over which one of them was in a relationship with a young (also married) SO, and which was just shagging her. Fucking great entertainment, but that kinda put an end to it.