Early Risers.

[monkeysarefun]

3 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

Probably would have shortened it to Llanfairarg. 

Pffff.

Llano.

[Winslow Boy]

I think Bear @polybear was extremely lucky to be paid to leave. I wasn't and I ended up extremely poorly because certain 'people'-other terms are available, decided they're prefer that than doing the decent thing.

Edited August 26, 2023 by Winslow Boy

[Dave Hunt]

Generally known as Llanfair P G.

 

Dave

[southern42]

7 hours ago, BR60103 said:

Polly:  unfortunately, the best view of the Tooth of Time is from downstream.  They put in a lot of concrete reinforcing on the upstream side. The falls also seem to have been reinforced.

 

 

 

Agree. I watched this before I saw the canoe ride which made think that must have been fun!

 

[iL Dottore]

I think the rot set in when “Personnel” became “Human Resources”

 

From comments on here it would seem that in many companies they have transformed themselves from an arbitration group balancing the needs of both management and employees for the benefit of the company to an incredibly zealous corporate version of The Spanish Inquisition. And, like the Spanish Inquisition, their zealotry is based on a rigid and inflexible dogma and woe betide anyone who dares suggest what they espouse isn’t realistic or - worse - ridicules or ignores the prevailing dogma of the day.

 

Unfortunately, HR departments do seem to be in thrall to the worst business excesses that come out of the US. The USA has so much and so many good things, so why do we (and I include most of Europe here as well) take on the worst aspects of American business culture*? (for example: Open Plan Offices. Even The Harvard Business School now thinks it’s a flawed concept: https://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/bernstein-open-offices.aspx) as does the NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/opinion/open-plan-office-awful.html)

 

*and it’s not just corporate culture, with food - for example - the US has many really amazing burger chains and what do we end up with? MickeyD

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by iL Dottore
Spelling

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

Well the overnight rain has stopped, but it is still very wet out there, so I’ll not be able to do any work on the workshop pah! So, instead the plan is to fill in the gaps I found on the bedroom fireplace. As there are only a couple and they artery big, this shouldn’t take too long. Then I’ll get changed and as Mike and Sarah are coming round, I’ll make an early start making tonight’s tea, chicken tikka masala, Bombay potatoes, which will then just require reheating, but I’ll make the pilau rice just prior to us all sitting down to eat. 
 

Back later. 
 

Brian

[The White Rabbit]

Yawning more,

 

Despite a reasonable night. Blue sky and sun currently, though the twirlers predict all that nonsense will stop shortly and we'll have some sudden thunderstorms by lunchtime. I suppose it is a Bank Holiday. I think a little G word is called for, not so far to run if they are right. 

 

I like quiet, perhaps because the opposite is usually associated with negatives, whether crisis management or being under extreme pressure. I've never liked noise. Round here, often 'boring' is seen as a capital offense, much worse than being dishonest or kicking the cat. Though as such labels are usually applied by those who seek satisfaction or justification for their own lives by running others down, I don't take them seriously. Here might be a good place to say I like Dave's photos and commentary; they certainly enrich my visits to the thread. I have some things to sort out first but hope to enjoy a not too dissimilar lifestyle in the not too distant future. If things work out, I'm happy to share photos of the more interesting days.  

 

Work and busy are after all, four letter words. In the phrasing of a 'bon mot' fridge magnet, 'Of course I don't look busy, I did it right first time'. The only trouble with being competent (let alone good) is too many people ask you to do things - and suffer from deafness when you say no. Any organised HR department I've experienced has been known as the cause of more constructive and unfair dismissal claims than any other factor.  

 

Re Llanfair PG and potential aussie abbreviations, I wonder about 'Mary's Pool'? 

 

Anyway, time to getamoveon... 

[PupCam]

Morning All!

 

10 hours ago, Darlington_Shed said:

Only boring if it makes you unhappy/dissatisfied, Dave. Since I retired Mrs Shed often asks if I'm not bored; reply is always "Nope... happy as a pig in the proverbial". I think I was born to be retired 😄

 

Me too.   Although I thoroughly enjoyed and consider myself fortunate with the very wide technical experience my working life provided. There are relatively few I would guess who like me have pretty much experienced, to a lesser or greater extent, pretty much all of the (technical) aspects involved in making things fly through the air, arrive at a pre-determined specified location and produce a particular effect.   Of course this wide experience led to a fairly high degree of "Jack of all trades" however I prefer to ignore the second part of this description!   It also used to amuse me that when working in one particular "Boffin Pit" they assumed, presumably from my knowledge and behaviour, that I was far more academically certificated than I actually am.    What I did have however that they missed by miles, was the necessary engineering background and practical experience of making things fly to add a touch of reality ....

 

2 hours ago, polybear said:

Bear here.....

Work?  Well the last time I recall actually having interesting stuff to do there was in the mid 2000's, after which it slowly (rapidly?) went downhill; sure, there were interesting but short-lived periods usually of only two or three weeks maximum (usually involving rare overseas jollies) but these were few and far between (much less than one a year).

Eventually I pretty much ended up on the scrap heap (Customer Support, against my will - thanks to a certain B'sterd that I very much hope comes to a slow, very painful end sometime very soon**) and after the Boss/very good Buddy retired I knew it was time to get out PDQ.  My only lifeline was I was rather good at appearing busy amusing myself/keeping out of the way and the Big Boss was such a total kn*b he didn't know any better.

The fact that my application for early retirement went through at least three Departments (including HR - who needed help tying their shoelaces) in less than 18 hours showed they weren't prepared to offer an interesting job to me - they were going to the young high flyers fresh out of Uni that, whilst no doubt clever just didn't have a clue - and as soon as they started to find that clue they'd resign and go elsewhere, meaning the process would start all over again.  #Wottabunchoftotalfumbducks.

 

The thing I really couldn't stick (and I suspect it's almost universal in whatever industry) is all the business politics, the management fads and the pretentious twxts that thought they were God's gift to the company as the clambered up the slippery pole.     A certain Bear alluded to the fact that this latter category seemed to be getting younger and younger as the years went by and many got the right 'ump when they hadn't achieved CEO status a couple of years after landing from Uni.    Perhaps this is payback for the "Everyone's a winner, there are no losers, everyone can be whatever they want culture" of recent years?  Perhaps places of further education would do well to provide these people with a bit of a baseline and a reality check about the real world?    And yes, we had it hard in our day too;  a 17% mortgage rate, a single salary for a young family, no free child support (with the exception of the standard child allowance) , no support from the wider family (because there weren't any essentially) - we did it by ourselves and on our own merits and it took us 35+ years to get financially comfortable if not well off.      But our graft, in comparison to hundreds of thousands of poor saps working down coal mines, in steel works, carers etc etc was a cushy walk in the park!

 

Anyway as you may have spotted I maintain a hearty involvement in a wide range of technical interests, just like work, but now I am the management and there is definitely no HR in retirement land!      

 

Hence retirement is fantastic ...... although I hadn't planned on Covid (who had!) and my Great and Permanent Inconvenience that arrived shortly after shaking off the 9 'till 5 some years ago.

 

5 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Boredom gets a bad rap, generally it indicates people are in a bit of a comfort zone and there's not much bad happening.

 

One of the unintended side benefits of years at sea is that I really don't mind solitude, a quiet life and keeping myself amused, which was invaluable during lock downs and when doing two weeks of quarantine in Singapore. I am happy to stay at home reading, listening to music or doing a bit of modelling. And I walk a lot with just me and the camera, I find walking to be a hugely satisfying way to get a bit of 'me time', just think about things and relax. Ditto going out with the camera.

 

I think there's a big difference between being "comfortably relaxed" and bored.    I'm never bored as I'm constantly thinking about a particular problem on one of many projects or eagerly expanding my knowledge.    There is nothing more frustrating than when I'd rather be wielding a soldering iron, writing some code, machining some component, wrestling with the bike or 101 other things but I'm sitting waiting for something or someone to turn up or we've got to go shopping blah blah. 

 

I suspect those that frequently report being bored, whether introvert or extravert by nature, are actually the "disinterested".       Whilst I enjoy others company I'm very happy with my own too. Personally, even though I no longer work I don' have time to be bored!

 

1 hour ago, Gwiwer said:

The UK has no equivalent for the Australian delights of Koolyanobbing, Fannie Bay, Wunghnu (pronounced one-ewe) or the apochryphal “Kickatinalong” although numerous town names do have the -along ending such as Binalong. There is also a saying locally that if you have missed someone they must be “on Binalong time”. 

 

Surely "Six Mile Bottom" must be an amusing contender?

 

In Other News

 

Time to investigate some sporadic behaviour with the little 4 channel remote control modules.  They don't seem to be doing precisely what it says on the tin!

 

If I can get the neighbour round, I might have a go at jacking up a fence panel so that I can Creocote the last side of the shed.   It's very well protected from the weather by the fence panel which is only 6" or so away but it would be nice to give it the once over.

 

Other than that it's MIUAYGA.

 

Crikey, look at that!   It must be mugofcoffee time.

 

TTFN

 

 

[Coombe Barton]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

for example: Open Plan Offices

Quite.

Which is why, for my final year, I'm removing all the clutter (aka taking it home and cluttering up that space more) from the space that I call my desk at work. Since 2020 I've relied on everything coming though a single laptop (My own Apple Mac). I do have a works laptop (Windoze) but it hasn't been switched on for about eighteen months. All my reference books are at home and such is the nature of my work that I've eschewed paper. If people need more then they need to justify that need. As all my information is online I can't see the need for masses of paper. Also, I can bark most effectively.

Yes, it's nice to see people, but ... that's as far as a lot of it goes.

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

I think the rot set in when “Personnel” became “Human Resources”

 

From comments on here it would seem that in many companies they have transformed themselves from an arbitration group balancing the needs of both management and employees for the benefit of the company to an incredibly zealous corporate version of The Spanish Inquisition. And, like the Spanish Inquisition, their zealotry is based on a rigid and inflexible dogma and woe betide anyone who dares suggest what they espouse isn’t realistic or - worse - ridicules or ignores the prevailing dogma of the day.

 

Unfortunately, HR departments do seem to be in thrall to the worst business excesses that come out of the US. The USA has so much and so many good things, so why do we (and I include most of Europe here as well) take on the worst aspects of American business culture*? (for example: Open Plan Offices. Even The Harvard Business School now thinks it’s a flawed concept: https://www.hbs.edu/news/articles/Pages/bernstein-open-offices.aspx) as does the NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/opinion/open-plan-office-awful.html)

 

*and it’s not just corporate culture, with food - for example - the US has many really amazing burger chains and what do we end up with? MickeyD

 

 

 

Now, I'm certainly not intending to diminish or cast any doubt upon  anyone elses experiences that have been outlined here but can I just say in the interests of balance ( since we are giving our opinions  about HR)   that  I've never ever had any dodginess or poor outcomes  inflicted upon me by any HR department of any company i've ever worked for, in fact I've found the opposite. 

 

When the oil company that  I worked for in the 80's and 90's  was taken over by a corporate raider, stripped of its assets and the staff made let go, the legal  redundancy payment that the raiders were obliged to pay was one months pay. However our HR department, in conjunction with the Financial manager used some kind of Jedi mind trick to convince them that they needed to pay us one months pay.......per year of employment.

 

So I got 13 months pay, all thanks to HR. 

 

Even now, as a sub-contractor to a contractor, the parent company -  which is a UK defence company that has a TLA that starts with a B and ends with an E -  has an HR department that  has treated us contractors just like permanent employees, to the point of paying for us to  work from home every second day  throughout all  of lockdown 2021, despite it being obvious to them  that we could not  actually do any useful work because the network we do our work on is not connected to the internet and therefore not accessible from home!  Being contract staff they could have just pulled the "No work - no pay!" trick, but to their credit they didn'tand we got paid our full pay.

 

Recently they announced that we can participate in the upcoming 9 day fortnight arrangement that they have reached agreement with Defence over. All this was organised between the bloke who owns our contract company and the head of HR of the company, so HR should get the credit. 

 

Now, whether Australia actually is  some kind of workers paradise where we are all treated with fairness and humanity, , or whether   its just  the Australian zero tolerance for    bullsh**   that means HR here  don't dare  try dicking us around,   or whether I have simply got lucky and there is  abundant alternative evidence showing  that we have ar5ehole HR departments here  too, I do not know -  but since we are going purely upon  personal anecdotes I just wanted to add mine!

 

AS I said, this is not an attempt to diminish any  other comments here, I just wanted to add my humble experiences, since its usually bad outcomes that get mentioned rather than the positive  ones.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. I can claim to have pulled one over on HR. In the payroll department we worked hard to see that everyone was paid before Christmas. To make sure of this there is a strict timetable sent out every year about when time sheets, overtime and expenses should be in our hands for payment before the holidays. But one HR person in one department decided it didn't apply to them and told their staff that they would be paid for work up to Christmas eve before the holiday, the impossible* we do at once miracles take a bit longer. This is what the payroll manager told them. But then the head honcho from HR came into the office demanding that the payments be made. The payroll manager stood his ground and a heated exchange took place and the payroll manager stormed out of the office telling them to stick the job where the sun doesn't shine. *It was impossible anyway as we had gone 100% cashless a couple of years before and the deadline for BACS had passed. I took advantage of the incident to get early retirement and told HR that the payroll manager had agreed to my early retirement and was about to put it forward when he left.

[PhilJ W]

21 minutes ago, PupCam said:

Morning All!

Surely "Six Mile Bottom" must be an amusing contender?

And Pratts Bottom (where most of the HR personnel come from).

[PhilJ W]

One thing to remember once you are retired is that round tuits are in short supply. Why this should be so is a mystery. Either SWMBO's have commandeered them or someone has cornered the market and only lets a few out at a time.

[Andy Hayter]

Our HR department soon got christened as IR - Inhumane resources.   Sticking to a set of unpublished rules, they went through a downsizing exercise by encouraging people to take early retirement.  

 

Offers were made that seemed to be very generous but closer inspection revealed that the offers included payments made by the state for those out of work.   I had to convince them that the likelihood of the German State offering me the enormous benefits they had calculated were small since I was an Englishman who was going to retire to France.   Sense did eventually prevail and my redundancy offer was more than doubled.  

[Coombe Barton]

3 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

round tuits are in short supply

Round Tuits are not in short supply here. I seem to have an infinite number of them. With all my intentions of doing a GDB SWMBO today ("getamoveon") I'm finding that my next round tuit is in the queue that follows the impromptu coffee I've made myself.

[jjb1970]

I think HR is like most things in that it can be good or bad, it is all about implementation. As I remind people, the best idea in the world can be implemented badly and become a disaster while a bad idea can be made to work if well implemented (within the constraints of starting out with a handicap).

 

In my experience HR reflects corporate culture as well as making it. I've worked for employers who drank the consultancy kool aid, had business change initiatives every year (then wondered why nobody took any of them seriously), fell for every passing fad in management theory and they did indeed have the sort of HR that gets HR a bad name but the strategy and tone were coming from the top of the business, not HR. Other businesses have had an old fashioned personnel department rebranded as HR and they've been very good. At the risk of making a hopelessly prejudiced and purely anecdotal generalization based on my own narrow observations and experiences those that are the worst seem to be government departments and agencies, or very large corporations. As organizations get smaller and people are more connected with more closed loop type relationships things tend to get much better.

 

I'm very lucky to work in a small organization with no HR department. We probably have a higher ratio of lawyers to headcount than many law firms yet it is all very efficient and effective. And it's a US outfit. Although lawyers are another profession which get a lot of hate I have to say that the lawyers I work with are extremely intelligent and also very down to earth and grounded. I suspect one reason is they've gone through careers and have nothing to prove to anyone and as such have zero insecurity affecting them asking for advice or admitting when they don't know stuff. I find people in any sphere who can be quite difficult are often that way because of insecurity. One thing I do admire about lawyers is they are probably top of the tree when it comes to destroying people whilst displaying impeccable manners and courtesy while doing so, the other masters in that field in my experience are Chinese diplomats. They really can get the knife in and twist it all while maintaining impeccable manners (and I say that as a compliment).

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, PupCam said:

But our graft, in comparison to hundreds of thousands of poor saps working down coal mines,

 

Reading that here is weird , where underground  mining is one of the better paid jobs. The average pay of an underground miner is $160,000 (around 85,000 GBP)  once bonuses and loading is added. 

 

Of course the trade off is black lung disease.....

 

 

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, PupCam said:

Surely "Six Mile Bottom" must be an amusing contender?

 

 

The main difference  between olde worlde European place names and Australian ones is that in  the olde worlde like where you live, most  names will be some old Norse word or something  that has been corrupted at some point and now it sounds naughty, whereas here some bloke in 1813 or whatever trudged  up a hill expecting to see a view of the  ocean or some undiscovered fertile lands etc, but instead just saw an even higher hill and so named it "Mount Bu99er this for a joke  Im going home" or similar. 

Edited August 26, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[jamie92208]

I count myself lucky that in my 29 year career I mostly enjoyed myself and got intense job satisfaction.  I did have a few moments of sheer terror and a few trips to A and E but accepted that they were part of the job if you tried to do it well.  At different times I was badly treated by what became HR but was supported unconditionally by an old style boss who had a reputation of being a terror.  Towards the end of my service I got badly treated by a boss who was described as a drunken wife beater but who drank with the Chief Constable. I managed to retire with my pension Intact despite bad financial advice from HR.  Payroll department gave me the best advice.  I didn't then need to go out to work for money and ended up doing a lot of modelling and also various forms of voluntary work.  I have now been happily retired for over 20 years  despite some people trying to make me feel guilty about not working for money.

 

Despite the rather difficult last 2 and a half years I can look back on it without rancour and am proud of having done the job that I did.  

 

I was able to finish a little earlier than planned but that gave Beth and I time to do more thigs whilst her fitness levels were still good. 

 

I left  behind an IT system that is still helping operational officers 24/7 throughout the UK. In fact a friend's granddaughter was only talking about how useful she finds it a couple of weeks ago. 

 

And I am able to smile sweetly  to myself when the boss that I fell out with was sacked as a Deputy Chief Co for corruption and nepotism. I smiled even more sweetly when he later,whilst drunk, fell down some airoplane steps and had to spend 6 months flat on his back in hospital whilst a broken back healed.  Schadenfreude comes to mind. 

 

Jamie

Edited August 26, 2023 by jamie92208

[Coombe Barton]

First round tuit activated, which was checking the stuff I'd already stacked to find something I needed. Not there, so a sigh of dismay later and the BGP** is being investigated, another of the Round Tuits required,

** BGO - Bl00dy Gert Pile

[polybear]

2 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

I think Bear @polybear was extremely lucky to be paid to leave. I wasn't and I ended up extremely poorly because certain 'people'-other terms are available, decided they're prefer that than doing the decent thing.

 

Very sadly not - that's the stuff that Bears (and Puppers) can only dream of, sadly; whilst it was common in the dim & distant past (there were some very big clearouts, with some going on 104 weeks salary + pension) it's practically unheard of now (though it is quietly rumoured that a very, very favoured one or two have got it, but had to sign non disclosure agreements in the process).

Bear was fortunate enough to get my pension early though, but significantly reduced accordingly - enough to keep me in cake though.

 

 

[Coombe Barton]

Turned a floor lamp on so that I could see what I was doing. 

Pushed stuff in front of it

Now I can't reach to turn it off.

[Tony_S]

4 hours ago, Grizz said:

asked numerous times for HR to clarify the company’s legal position when set against the relevant UK employment law.

In her final place of employment  Aditi fell foul of overzealous HR. A very threatening letter about her health record, just after one Christmas she had a chest infection that was complicated by asthma. She had exceeded some arbitrary limit in sick days that triggered ab HR investigation. This was accompanied by an invitation to accept voluntary redundancy, allegedly (but not really) on favourable terms, otherwise the process for dismissal would start. Aditi’s line manager was not happy about this at all. 
Aditi assembled a riposte, questioning the legality of the process, pointing out they knew about her asthma and needed to make reasonable consideration, that they were not using the same criteria for younger people amongst other things. She also said she was quite angry about the whole tone of the communication. They wrote back saying she had no reason to be angry and all the procedures were based on standard good practice. Aditi said that HR  had no right to police her anger.  Also where was their “Good Practice” from. Aditi was in one of the smaller college unions but the big union was interested and joined in with one of their “learned friends”. Aditi’s manager who Aditi had BCC’d into every email had thought about intervening but told Aditi she was doing fine on her own. I suspect that the HR dept had been bounced into trying to reduce staff numbers as cheaply as possible and hadn’t really thought it out. I found out that no one in the HR department actually had any recognised HR qualifications either. 
She didn’t get made redundant or take early retirement,  well not until it suited her. 

Edited August 26, 2023 by Tony_S

[Tony_S]

38 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

Turned a floor lamp on so that I could see what I was doing. 

Pushed stuff in front of it

Now I can't reach to turn it off.

You need Wi-Fi connected bulbs! Perhaps Amazon will suggest them to you instead of musical instruments. 

[grandadbob]

Our BBQ birthday bash is due to start in  half an hour so we now have torrential rain, hailstones, thunder and lightning. 
Couldn’t have asked for more…. except snow possibly?  😂

Edited August 26, 2023 by grandadbob