The Sturdy Soapbox

A defining weakness

So, Saturday the postman brought a little joy into my life in the shape of another camera.

I've noticed I can resist many things, but cameras and computer equipment are definitely one of those habits I'm a slave to.

As I've been going out on the tankers from work a lot recently, I wanted to get back to working with a compact once more, having sold my Sony WX300 which was a nice camera but not a great camera.

So how do I define a great camera ?  Well, one that's easy to work is important, especially when you are working unplanned (on the fly) so to speak.  Yesterday for work, I found myself photographing both new and safety features on a brand new tanker.

A tech guy came from the tank manufacturer and before we began, I asked him if he could tell me before he did something such as demonstrate a feature, so I could make sure I was in the right place and could make a decision whether I photograph or video.

Whilst he agreed, he just went ahead at speed and showed the driver who will be out driving it today and making things worse, whenever I set up a shot, one of two other onlookers would walk into shot and ruin it.

Fortunately in the afternoon, the visitor was gone, the two pests had gone on to annoy someone else and the driver and I went off to a more aesthetically pleasing location, to go through a list of features I'd been asked to cover by one of the directors.

Before we set off on this adventure, we commandeered Big Stu's office and I sat down with Andy to discuss what we would be doing, how we might go about it and list the things we wanted to cover.

This sort of planning paid off, as in less than 2 hours, we'd made quite a job of it, laughed a lot, for example when Andy was taking his fall restraint harness off which we'd been covering for a Health & Safety video, I said "stop when you get to your socks"...

When I reviewed both still and video footage at home last night, I was most impressed.  The camera worked well in low light, for example when pushed into the chassis area of the lorry to capture a component. I didn't use flash for fear of burn out and yet received excellent pictures.

As for this picture, I'm sure they hold great importance to an experienced tanker captain like Andy.

I also managed to get a half decent picture of the inside of a shit tanker before it becomes a functional container today.

I took a lot of video footage, but this one is probably the funniest. Utter lunatic, Big Stu or Scooby as I call him, came across the yard as I was trying to take video of yet another spoiled shot, so I turned the cam on him. He's a huge ham (all 6'4" of him and daft as a brush)

 

See what I mean, twat even managed to poke an arm into this video

The good thing about using a compact is I can put it in my pocket. The Zeiss lens really does give good results, as it really was a grey day to be trying to get decent pics.

Day off today, hospital appointment. Then Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday will be a rest as much as possible.

 

I 

Where do you see yourself in 5 years...

I didn't think people asked that type of question any more in job interviews, but I got asked it last Monday by the guy who'd been rude to me on the phone (remember him).

Actually, he wasn't rude to me this time and a job which I thought was going to be just cold calling was actually interesting and I would have taken it if offered, but I've not been offered, yet anyway.

I had a bit of a surprise mid week. A phone call from my old boss at the environmental company, asking if I would like my job back.

Anyone who knows me will recall that there were a lot of negatives involved and they were what pushed me into taking the job that lasted all of four weeks.  I've sold just about everything I can to keep the bills covered and I know my improved cv has been getting me interviews, mainly because the first twenty years of my work life isn't on it.

I don't do too badly in interviews these days, even the one last week which was just a stream of text book questions, but my age is definitely against me.

This is one I can't get my head around and I know it's a problem here and in the US, you only have to watch the movie The Company Men to witness downsizing and rationalisation.

If I needed someone to redecorate my spare room, the last thing on my mind would be how fucking old they are. 

Legally, I've 7 full years before retirement age, since the government put the age up by a year.  Most people these days, especially younger ones "building their career" do not stay in a job for 7 years. So that shoots down the longevity argument in a large percentage of cases, especially larger companies.

Older people expect more money. Another bullshit poorly thought out excuse.  You apply for jobs which you can do and at a salary level commensurate with the sort of job it is.  It can be misleading when the job advert reads Dependent on experience for a salary. That just means, we'll pay the least money for the best candidate.

I think there's a lot of mileage in the concept that managers feel insecure having subordinates who are older and more experienced than they are. Of course, if they knew anything about team building, they'd see the experienced team member as a strength.  Older people are less likely to be using a job as a stepping stone.

But what do I know ? I'm not a coven member of the society known as HR professionals.

I've accepted the offer. The one good thing is I know the job and can do it well. I can only assume it is because of that I've been asked back.

I return on Tuesday 16th, as I've a hospital appointment on the Monday.

One word of advice to HR types who come home and find a 55 year old mending their Hotpoint.  

Leave em alone, they know their job every bit as good as a 22 year old with gel in their hair and a tribal tattoo. 

 

 

 

Jobseekers, watch your backs

It's been a funny week on the job search front.  Failed to make second interview for a job in a brewery related company which I could have taken so much to.

I had an interview on Monday quality related which started out rockily but I managed to turn it round, but by the deafening silence, looks like I lucked out on that one too.

Got a call on Friday from a man who's company I applied to a few weeks ago. I apply for so many per week I forget which it was.

My cv hadn't attached so I agreed to send it over.  He spoke to me like he had the opportunity of a lifetime. It sounds like a pure cold selling operation so I am less keen. Then he made things worse by being rude to me on the phone. 

I sent the cv and he called again. Guess what, he was rude again. I was diplomatically enquiring how he generates his business (is it just phoning people). I asked what mechanisms he had for lead generation and he laid in to me.  I'm not going to tell you how I generate leads for my business...

I felt that my line of questioning was polite and quite valid.  He's "granted" me an interview and of course, I'm looking forward to seeing him like I would be a dental appointment.

I've decided that if he doesn't open the discussion, I shall ask him what he saw in my application / cv that made him approach me and we can work our way from there.  If he digs in for a third time, I really don't need to work for a bully so will terminate the chat.

Anyhow, the warning I made in my title was one which I was suspicious of from the start.

Some job sites are less than fussy what ads they allow to run.  I saw one for an e commerce executive and from the text of the job description I smelled a rat.  Testing various market, you must have an E Bay account.

It says you need to write creative copy to sell items like cameras and laptops blah blah blah.

Cutting a long story short, I received a phone call on Saturday afternoon from some bloke who "sounded African" in response to my application.  As I'd already marked this in my head as dodgy, I just asked one controlling question. Do I use my E Bay account to advertise your stuff?  Answer was yes.  I ended the chat.

Like what could possibly go wrong ?  The buyer enters into a transaction with you, they pay you and you are responsible and duty bound to send them the item.

You don't need much imagination to visualise the shit storm that would ensue when the punter doesn't get their goods.

This cretin who phoned me followed up with an e mail written in such badly English... You have opportunity in the tips of your hands went one sentence.

It ran much along the lines of those e mails you get from Nigeria from people who want to share millions with you for help getting their cocoa bean fortune out of a war torn shithole of a country.

I'm going to report this incident to the jobs board it appeared on, as it is quite clearly dodgy.

Rather like the one I saw a few years back offering £ 12 an hour for data entry (usually a minimum wage pursuit).  The MD of the agency telephoned an apology and explanation that an office junior had run the ad without checking its validity.  Nothing to do with the fact the smaller agencies have such trouble competing with the bigger arseholes like Reed that they are like turtles who'll snap at anything that comes within striking distance.

Remember that job I was offered an interview time and date for but had to travel 2.5 hours by bus to the agency to sign up with them, only to be told the employer had decided not to take anyone on that side of Christmas ?

Well the same agency have been advertising at least four times since. The most recent incarnations, the job has gone from IT and social media stuff like I was doing to full blown programming and complex server knowledge, yet I can tell it is still the same job and only through this one agency. Yes, you Trinity Personnel of Amblecote.

Seems odd to me that this job hasn't been filled in almost three months and only appears via Trinity, when most other jobs turn up on several sites.

I had another agency ring me on Monday dead keen to slot me into a marketing admin job in Aston.  He had me give my work history back to my paper round when I was fourteen. He followed up a reference with a former employer (which came back good). But confessed the employer may be looking for a whizz kid and that my age could be against me.  Since then, the phone has been silent.

By law, he nor the employer should use age as a bar, but of course they do and not just in the UK. See the movie the company men for evidence of this.

Actually, I appreciated his frankness, because it was an opportunity I knew not to dwell on rather like the moron with opportunity I hold in the tips of my hands.

The job from Monday, I've not had any feedback yet, but as it was arranged by an agency and taking into account the snapping turtle effect, I think that one's gone belly up and is dead in the water like a dead turtle. Like the play on words there ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Banging the rocks together

This job search is pretty frustrating. Oh, I know there's a lottery element involved and of course, I've touched more than once on the agency element and the fuckwittery that puts in your way of getting a result.

Mind you, I've had three interviews in the past month. The one just before Christmas which I thought went particularly well, brought the Dear John in the new year.  I'm waiting on hearing about one I went for last week which like the first of the three, is a job I could do well and really make a difference in. They said I'd hear if I'd got a second interview by today at the latest and I am now thinking it won't be good news.

Yesterdays would not be the job of my choice, actually I think the guy deliberately undersold it to me, but I soldiered on.  Talking about it after with someone afterwards, I said I'd seen  no "buying signals", but on second thoughts, the fact he showed me round the works was a buying signal, because if I was on the duffers list, he wouldn't have wasted the time.

Had a frank discussion with an agency guy yesterday, very sharp cookie (the boss of the company). He's trying to get me an interview with a Birmingham company.  Had quite a grilling on the phone in two conversations and he took up references by phone too. He was candid enough to say if I was refused by his client it would possibly be due to my age. Whilst he shouldn't say that, he did say that they might well be looking for a "whizz kid".

I do find this possibly the most frustrating part of trying to get back into work. I'm more than competent in the things I do. I'm not going to cost a fortune yet having applied for well over 200 jobs since the beginning of November, the combination of recruitment agency incompetence and being ignored because of my age, is really disheartening.

If I wanted someone to build me a wall and I looked through the yellow pages for a builder, I'd not really care how old the guy was. I'd be more interested to learn that he or she for that matter, had been building walls for X years and one example of a finished wall could be seen at such and such a location.

When I go for a curry, I'm less interested in the personality profile of the person who cooked it, than what's on the plate in front of me.

This leads me on to one of the most saddening parts of this rant.  I know what's ahead of me and I know I need to do more than push over a cv to make someone notice me.

Taking that into account, in the past two years, a lot of my work (which I'm proud of) is out there in the public domain in the form of written work, photos and video work I've done.

So, I dragged the best bits together with a bit of narrative and made it into an interactive PDF and with some other work examples, popped it on to a business card shaped CD with a properly printed attention grabbing cover beautifully clad in a plastic sleeve. It all auto loads with a menu and everything.

Mailed this to several local agencies, with an upbeat letter and received absolutely no acknowledgement whatsoever.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a job online which actually showed the name of the company (which was in my town). Decided that I'd actually write to them on paper and enclose my show reel CD.  Not a fucking dickie bird in response.  This was after I drove up to their premises (in OBC's motor which I'd borrowed) to find they hadn't even got a letterbox, so I mailed it conventionally with a stamp.  This extreme lack of manners really does boil my piss.

Now these little CDs work out a bit expensive to send out willy nilly, so I added another angle.

I put the PDF onto a service a little like Dropbox.  This allows me when making applications online, to draw attention to this content allowing the reviewer to download the file for perusal.  I've added this link to about a dozen applications as part of my cover note.  I check back in to the service which will show me how many times the file has been accessed. To date, the figure remains at zero.

Standing naked in Poundland (formerly Woolworth's) window is definitely on the horizon.  

To keep the wolves from the door, I've been selling off my stuff. Sold three cameras, sold my Xperia tablet and last week decided to sell my out of contract Xperia phone.  I wanted a quick, fuss free sale so I put it on E Bay.

I've bad experience of selling a phone on there before, so I carefully described it, stated plainly that I would not end the auction early, would not accept £ 800 for it to post to some far flung country and in the legal bit put UK post only.

Weekend brought the usual cretinous enquiries.  How much to post to Australia, How much to post to Russia and if I come round and collect it, will you end the auction today.  I'd started the item off at 99p bid, so he really was taking the piss.

Whilst I was out at my job interview yesterday, the auction ended and the phone fetched £ 92. A bit more than I expected, but by the time Pay pal and E Bay take their cut, that will eat about twenty quid.  

Noticed the bidder had a zero feedback rating and on closer looking today they only joined E Bay yesterday.  

Most people who get into a bidding war which appears to have been the case with my phone, pay within an hour or so of winning. Nothing from this cretin.  

Dropped a polite message this morning, nothing in return.

I need the money for these items I'm selling to pay bills, I'm not Freemans fucking catalogue.

If this guy spews on the deal, I'll tear the little bastard a new arsehole as there were two other very keen bidders (with high feedback ratings).   

I've seen people state they won't sell to bidders with less than a ten on their feedback on E bay in the past and often wondered why. Now I know.

A few years ago, I sold something and after the auction ended, I was told I'd have to wait for two weeks til the guy's pension came before he'd pay me.

A bit like going into Tesco, filling your trolley and then saying at the checkout, I don't get paid til the 25th, hang on to this lot will you...

I checked E Bay's rules and fortunately I can put in a dispute after 2 days, which should be made more substantial by the fact he's ignored my message.

As you can imagine, with bill payment dates coming due, this sort of pissing about I could well do without.

So today, is tenterhooks day on the one job I'd really like to land, decent pay too. End of the week for the one I attended yesterday and still waiting to hear from the agency fellow about the other one.

It's all go isn't it ?

More on shitty customer service.

This story is mostly bad but has one star performer.

My December brought grief when the telly which had been flickering for quite a while, suddenly got worse, with the picture darkening as well as flickering.

I reluctantly used my Argos store card to buy a Philips, a brand I used to sell (car audio) and a reputation for quality I remember.  It was an inexpensive smart telly with Android too.

Unfortunately, I got one with no GCE or O levels. Many o the features it boasted, it wouldn't do.  I had it a few days before Christmas and a couple of days after, I called Argos and told them the problem.

Excellent fuss free customer service.  I swapped it for a Sony, exchange went faultlessly.  Nice telly, but the built in media player is shite.  Every time you try to access files on the network hard drive, it crashes before the telly has even part indexed the files.

I did all the troubleshooting possible before contacting Sony.  Three e mails went unanswered.  I called them on Monday, put on hold twice and subsequently cut off.  Four calls in total.

Spoke to a pleasant girl who unfortunately had no technical knowledge of the product, so I had 15 minutes of so of "have you tried turning it off and back on again, whilst facing due north and standing in a bucket of water" ?

Then I could see where she was heading.  "Sony can't accept any responsibility for non functioning files stored on an external drive".

I couldn't get her to accept or understand that a file can only be classed as non functional  if you can get to pressing PLAY and it spews. I wasn't even getting to play files, the browser is crashing (every time) on the indexing of files.

Then she tried to suggest that I'd played a file which had crashed so that was a non functional file.  I told her that happened once,yet she was looking to steer the whole fault finding report she was about to pass on, down a blind alley.

I was rabid by the time I'd put her straight and got her to cease arguing with the customer (me), who's worked in consumer electronics, is a good and logical fault tracer.

So, it was left that the incident is being escalated to  a technical "team".  Can I speak with someone on that team I enquired. No came the answer.  It will take 48 hours to get a response.  

She is due to call me back on Thursday between 4 and 6 and I already told her I have no faith whatsoever in their ability to offer a solution considering the suggestions already made.

I called Argos customer services shortly after and talk about chalk and cheese. Didn't get cut off, wasn't left on hold and having explained the situation, had my options clearly explained and a record of my concern recorded so  I won't have to repeat myself should I call again.  Pleasant people to talk to and totally drama free.

Top marks Argos.

Cut to scenario 2. Virgin broadband.  I switched to their fibre broadband in early October mainly due to the price they were offering for 9 months.  Imagine my surprise just short of 2 months into the deal to get a letter announcing that my package was going up by £ 3.49 a month (not £ 3.50)...  the letter went on to tell me all the wonderful things I could get (but all at extra cost), value added shite again.

Imagine the reception the two Virgin salesmen got when they knocked on my door the other day trying to sell me what I'd already got and then when I told them I'd got it, sell me some more value added shite.

I read the small print on December's  letter today and apparently you can give them the finger even though in contract, so I think that's the deal there then...

On to Vodafone.  Since mid December, my phone keeps ringing and when I get to it, it either stops or I answer and there's no one there.

I called the number back to discover it was a non urgent call from Vodafone.  I managed to field a call from this number middle of last week and gave them short shrift, because they too had value added shite. I told them I didn't want any and would they refrain from calling me again,  just like I asked them last year and the year before.

Monday this week, the calls started again and as long as half an hour ago I answered only to get a few seconds of silence and then the line hang up.  Guess who's going to get torn a new arsehole when I do manage to get them on the line ?

Exactly what happened to customer service, I have no fucking idea.  As for Virgin, back when I signed up, I could not get their website to log the sign up details so I closed the browser, as swapping provider wasn't a priority.  I received an e mail with a £ 50 discount code (more than 2 months rental) if I completed by phone. 

I did this, spoke to a clown named Tony. I told him twice that I had this code and second time I read it out, I just knew he was sitting there but not writing or keying it in to the system and I thought to myself, I'll never see that credit and I didn't.

As for recruitment agencies and my recent experiences with them, don't start me.

I really detest modern life

As we advance as a society, shouldn't things get better?

Well, music appears to be on a backwards journey.Have you noticed as you troll around the supermarket or shopping maaaarl as the Americans like to call them,all the Christmas songs are 30 years or more old. Last  Christmas,I gave you my heart, children playing having fun, it's CHRISTMASSSS (thanks Noddy).

No new stuff to be the classics of twenty years on.

I've a pet hate, which is shared by both Darlo Sue and (oddly) my brother, people walking in to you  I've had this now for such a long time, that I was beginning to feel like Annie the ghost from Being Human, who in the early stages of her ghosthood, couldn't understand why people couldn't see her. I feel like that when walking down a wide,sparsely populated street and someone walks in to me not head on, but from an angle, because I'm in their path to McDonalds or whatever, even at 7 in the morning, because "they're texting".  A  perfectly good activity, apparently whilst not apologising..

When shopping a task I hate and generally reserve for the small hours when most these chav fuckers are under their rocks breeding, I've been knocked out of the way because some victim of cheeseburger overdose has seen something on a supermarket shelf it wants and I just happened to be in the way.

As for holding doors open for people, which I do without reservation, only to be treated as it if was my job. We'll say no more about that.

I suppose it depends on how modern you suggest modern life is. For example, in 1981, I worked in a bingo house in Stone Cross West Brom, serving behind the bar, but during "sessions", people would put their hands up and I would scurry over in my black trousers and maroon velvet Dicky bow and serve halves of mild shandy at the table.

Considering I was raised in a poor working class household and I believe the competitive sport of Bingo is classed as a working class pursuit, yet I found the lack of manners quite astonishing. 

As a teen, I read the likes of Punch and once read that if you have to snap your fingers in a restaurant, you're in the wrong restaurant.  Of course, I was also raised on the concept that good manners cost nothing, so I wonder what happened to such a simple concept, lots of fingers got snapped in this Bingo pit.

One of the reasons for this on street shittiness, is the obsession with mobile phones.  Now we all like a smartphone, those wonderful apps that tell you in an instant that your shoes are on or that noodles are half price in Ling Fat Noodle Co, Shanghai.

How we got along without this information at our fingertips in the 60s and 70s . Now, you can get a watch for four  hundred pounds or so, which tells you what's going on in your pocket. My scrotum retracts in awe !

There's an album, Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick and bassist Paul Kantner put out in the very early 70s, of which the inner sleeve features a poem (and I recite this from memory): We keep bugs in bottles, just to see how they behave and we watch them live their lives out from the cradle to the grave...

The concept of the poem and in many ways the album are that there's more to life than what is peddled to you by radio and television.

Forty years later, I see technology for technology's sake. Example,a fucking toothbrush that reports back to a smartphone. Thank you Braun, how would we avoid the life threatening problem of cavities if you'd not made this revelation available to us at such a reasonable price, buy now whilst stocks last.

The words dumbing down are far too gentle a description for what is happening to modern life. Low standards peddled, every direction you turn.

Monday evening, I met up with a former work pal and we we ended up in Frankie & Bennies.  I got there first and was greeted by a pleasant young lad and sat at a table next to four teenage girls who obviously don't get out much judging by their noise and behaviour.  I got up and picked up the menus I'd been handed only to be asked by the young lad who'd placed me at this table,"not leaving sir".My response was "No, I'm just moving away from the fucking Mickey Mouse club", gesturing to the four giggly fuckwits to my immediate right.

I will say about this hellhole, the staff were excellent, but the food and price wasn't. Someone suggested it's an upmarket McDonalds, but to be honest, that's an insult to McDonalds.

People today, appear to be farmed like veal calves to believe that dining experiences like Frankie & Bennies or Nando's are haute cuisine and they gobble down this concept and substandard processed food with gusto.  In actual fact, the establishments charge top dollar for this slop whilst allowing vile behaviour from the spawn of the witless breeders who gravitate to these chain bedlams thinking they offer good value for money. The pot noodle generation has come home to roost.

A few weeks back, I had lunch in a Wetherspoons, a pasta dish which cost £ 4.75. It came with pieces of real bacon and a delicious sauce. The pasta was freshly cooked. No doubt, the sauce was from a plastic bag, but it was the second time I'd had a pasta dish in a Wetherspoons which had been superior to that eaten in posh Italian restaurants back when I was a marketing luvvy and someone else was paying.

The pasta dish I had on Monday featured penne which had been cooked a long time before I arrived, and then  microwaved. The amount of chicken in the dish was negligible and the sauce nondescript. The single dish cost £ 11 and change (as the Americans say).

I won't detail the other dishes or their scandalous costs, all I will say it was all served to a very low standard.

Yet the place was full, lots of prams too.

At the same time,  independent eateries are going out of business (pubs too) because they lack the marketing budget and don't have a ball pond to deposit the incontinent spawn.

It's a marketing man's (and the likes of that moon faced twat Cameron and his crew), an undemanding massive, who will swallow any old trash peddled to them. Buy that i phone 6, it's miles better than the i phone 5.

I saw a Facebook post (rehashed) about some witless tart saving up her child benefit for an i phone.

Probably the same cretin who claimed she'd "writed it down".

At the rate we're going, as a race,we're fucked.  In the 1880s, it was snake oil, but it was peddled to a smaller number of gullible morons. These days, it's a global disease.

Crazy frog,angry birds, i phones, Pot noodle, Ferrero Rocher,X Factor.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the end of modern society. Make way for the Eloi and Morlocks doing Strictly for entertainment of course.

 

 

 

 

Down with recruitment agencies !

As you know, my disdain with the witless bunch of cockwombles that be recruitment agencies knows no limits.

Applied for a job yesterday online and you guessed it through another fucking agency, only to receive a blow out in less than two minutes.

The person from Niyaa People couldn't have read the cover letter let alone my cv before making a decision.

I dropped a somewhat snooty e mail back suggesting that and the fact that I would avoid their outfit at all costs in future.

She didn't like that.

Am I bovvered ?

I really do have a message for employers all over the country.

It'll cost you a couple of hundred quid to run an ad in the newspaper where you can stream applicants directly and employ one using your own skill and judgement.

If you use one of these alleged recruitment professionals, you will not get prospective candidates properly streamed, you'll get a bunch of prospects pulled from a badly written and oft badly spelled ad run on several websites via different agencies (as for that, I do wonder if they split the fee). Talking of which, that fee is going to be in excess of fifteen hundred, possibly a couple of grand for something you or your HR department could have done for a fraction of the cost. Good business practice or what ?

Who knows,I may even be one of the applicants.  It would be refreshing to read a job description these days that wasn't via an agency.

I've actually got to the interview stage with a job, well sort of. I'm waiting on confirmation from (yes),an agency on whether the company still wants to see me, considering it's a bloody distance to get to and I discovered the working week is Sunday to Thursday with an 8am start.

This I could do on a weekday, but buses and trains don't get up very early on a Sunday and it would not be possible to make 9am let alone 8.

If I do get the interview confirmed, will have to refresh myself on Excel pivot tables and Look ups (whatever those are).

That's the thing about Excel, it's a bit like a car.  I can drive a car, I can change a wheel and at a push maybe a fuel pump, but I couldn't calibrate the engine management system or tune a carburetor on an older motor.

Funny, on the subject of badly written job descriptions, I was reading one of those motivational pieces from Monster Jobs yesterday on getting that interview. It read, "get there name" (when referring to the recruiter).

How indeed do you comfort a grammarian or for that matter some fuckwit motivational feature writer at Monster Jobs ? There, their they're...

 

That time of year again

Regulars here and those who know me, also know that once a year as close to the end of November as possible, Bob the Butcher prepares my Christmas beef which is then hung for almost a month so it's full flavoured and dark and tender by Christmas day.

Part of the annual ritual also includes he has  to wear a Christmas hat and pose with the aforementioned beef joint for posterity.

So here is this year's offering. We ditched the Santa hat for a little elf fascinator theme, which Bob think works well with his complexion, so he kept it on for the amusement of his customers.

On the run up to Christmas, I rein in the teasing of Bob, because it's the one time of year this very affable fellow gets really stressed out. Customers become over demanding and  also fail to realise that he is putting in 15 hour days (no breaks) to prepare bits of dead animal for people to eat.

Since the butchers moved to the high street in Darlaston a few weeks ago, trade has increased, so his Christmas run up is going to be breakneck.  He does have a new helper. Not quite as photogenic though.

And he tried to keep the bloody hat...  Shall have to see if i can sort one out for him.

My tormentor is currently doing so via text from Lanzarote. We were shivering in the cold and wind mid week (with more to come) he tells me he's sitting by the pool with a beer and a steak and it's too hot even for a shirt (there goes the neighbourhood). I'm talking of course of Mick the Bear or MTB as he is now known around the factory where he works (most of the time).

He's staying at a relative's villa and does handyman things to help out. He was painting flowerpots in the week and scrubbing the tiles around the pool.   Pity he's not more local right now as I begin my pestering phase on the run up to Christmas with a bag of props and a camera.

Got him a couple of Christmases ago several times, with Santa hat, antlers and an elf hat too. The Santa look works well doesn't it ?

Quite accidentally whilst looking for something else last night, I found my elf costume. It's still a bit tight but looks the part I reckon.

Good elf everyone...

Should you see me with a camera in my hand and a carrier bag in the other, look out !

Don't ask...

 

What have I always said about recruitment agencies ?

Regular readers will know that for many years, I've had a series of negative and often time wasting experiences with job agencies. 

Today's has been a record breaker.

I'd been told by Trinity Personnel in Stourbridge, that a job I'd applied for had got me through to the interview stage and  I'd got this interview tomorrow at 11am somewhere in West Bromwich. Imagine my delight a week out of work and getting an interview doing something very similar in IT that I've been doing for the past 14 months.

BUT, said the girl, you've got to come register with us over in Stourbridge.They wouldn't reveal the location or name of the employer til I did.

Now it's a bit of a trek from Walsall. Bus to Dudley then another to Stourbridge, but I was so excited about the interview, I spent 4 hours or more, putting together a showreel of my social media and web work yesterday which I hoped would help show them that I was the right bloke for the job, despite being old and up against a load of snot faced 16 year olds who can whiz through a level of Candy Crush in a thrice and are therefore considered experts in IT.

Utterly shit journey over there. Left home at 7am, bus to Dudley packed with what could only be described as extras from an episode of Fraggle Rock. Morning traffic too almost an hour to get to Dudley. Time to change buses. Two failed to turn up.

When one did appear, also late, the number of passengers had swelled to the point of standing room only, thanks to the prams the size of Fiats taking up room.

Got to the agency, was presented with about 6 pages of repeat form filling, then as soon as I sat down with the young lady who had been handling this case, I was told that the interview for Friday was cancelled, as the employer had suddenly got so busy, they have no time to interview any more...

It was a bit like the Monty Python cheese shop sketch where Thomas Wensleydale was making every excuse in the book about not having any cheese, he came to the point where he had to claim "the cat's eaten it". 

"Did he" enquires the John Cleese character,"she sir" replies Mr Wensleydale unconvincingly.

Seething with rage on the bus at wasting quite so much of my day on a wild goose chase, the more I thought about it and the less than convincing answers I received to my questions appeared. I felt there never really had been an IT job somewhere in West Brom or, if there had, the company had pulled the plug on the agency because they either found a better (cheaper) agency or a candidate for the post. Either way, I'm the one who was royally fucked about.

A while back, I posted about an agency in Cannock who phoned me out the blue and wanted me to do work on my cv. When I pressured the caller, I found out that she was leaving on Friday and her boss had tasked her with calling "marks"like me to have us jumping through hoops as an updating of cv exercise, but there was no actual job opportunity in the offing.

Then there was the day shortly after, a similarly junior practitioner of the art of wasting other people's time, called and asked if I would pop in for a chat.  Any specific job opportunities I enquired. No, came the answer.

The last time I went into this place, they sat me down and gave me a typing test, filled out some forms and I never heard from them again.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I don't suffer fools gladly. In fact an old boss of mine put it in a job reference which is something I am not actually sure is a selling point. I really do tire of box tickers and pen pushers justifying their pitifully smug existence wasting my time. 

Fortunately, the four or more hours I spent yesterday is not a wasted exercise, as it is material I can use with my other job hunting activities, of which you are now having to prove to the DWP you spend 35 hours  a week doing.

Additionally, you have to write up a diary to show how you spend your day.

Disappointingly, the commitment you sign has more reasons why you will be sanctioned, than positive points to help someone find paid work.

As for my 35 hours a week (you're expected to do weekends too),  I got my day in !

#File under fucking wastrels 

Local drama

Walked into my lounge yesterday morning, scantily clad (at least I had my socks on), to see a cat in the tree opposite.  Not such an unusual sight you might think, cat in tree, not me naked bar socks.

Thing is, I am on the sixth floor and the cat was even higher than that at about 70 feet.  I then spotted a fireman at about the same level as my floor, so opted to get more suitably attired.  Took a look out and a crowd of about eight people had gathered and another fireman was squirting a fine spray of water up into the air which was not reaching the desired height.

The one clinging to the trunk of the tree, was holding out a hessian sack and verbally trying to coax the cat to jump into it (from quite a distance). Tiddles wasn't having any of it.

I took photos like some cub reported on the scene of the drama and went about  my chores.  Checked a little later to find the crowd and the fire brigade had buggered off.  As we are all of two hundred yards from the town's fire station, I thought they might have gone to get the Simon Snorkel platform to pluck the little blighter from the branch it was perched on.

No such luck and as it got dark, the cat was still there. It didn't seem at all distressed, in fact at one point it sat there licking it's paws and washing behind it's ears.  

It was still there when I went to bed, but gone when I got up at 5am. When I went out to the supermarket at 6:30, I had a look round for a kitty corpse and there was no such item.

I spoke with my sister last night (on a different matter) and as a cat person of many years experience, she said when it got hungry enough, it would find its way down and so she was right.

I'm a little surprised the fire service didn't own the problem and come back to finish the job, but that's the way things are these days in many avenues of life. Best to adopt the mindset that if you're in the shit, you're on your own.

The reason I was at home at 11am on a Wednesday was that the job I've been in for 4 weeks went down the pan on Tuesday.

I'm now a jobseeker again. As for my being in the shit on my own, it applies to relying on the DWP for help.

Filled out my application for Iain Duncan Smith's white elephant Universal  Credit. Have to applaud the simplicity of the online system, but in the summary, it says I will not get any help until December 17th, by which time I will be 6 weeks in arrears with my rent.

As little as 8 years ago, I remember the time when the Jobcentre would actually help you find suitable jobs to follow. A little farther back, I remember when the vacancies there were placed by employers and not like it is now, 99% agencies.

I also remember when employers turned to agencies in the belief they would be sent a higher calibre and pre-screened candidate for the jobs on offer. 

So, if all the jobs in the jobcentre are agencies, they are just screening from the dross (like me) and therefore not doing what the employers think they are doing, QED.

So, in the next few weeks, I have to do something to get noticed. Paper cvs handed out, not just applying online where you're just another e cv or as the line from the Company Men movie goes "you're just another asshole with a resume".

After the socks only encounter with the fireman, I'm considering adopting the technique on a traffic island in the locality with a placard reading GIZ A JOB. Should get me noticed no ?