Apologetic

Posted: Fri 15 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, General, Travel | 1 Comment »

One thing that brightened my day this week – I got a full and unreserved apology from the council for the utter fuckup that was made of the recruitment process.

I sent off a letter last Friday to the chief executive of the council, and copied in the head of HR, and the guy I’d been dealing with at the agency. The reply came back within the week, and was exceptionally apologetic, explaining that the guy who had caused the problem has been off sick, and has been replaced by a new interim Head of IT, and that the entire process is now under investigation within the council.

So it sounds like Mr Sensitive is in for a major kicking at the hands of the HR department, and frankly it won’t be anything he doesn’t deserve. And because of the letter, the agency are now going to send an invoice to the council for their recruitment costs, as they got the right person, and got the job offered, but then everything at the council turned to ratshit. Which ain’t the agency’s problem, and as such they might as well see whether they can get anything out of it.

So, a bollocking, an apology, and an agency that’s very happy with me even though I’m not currently working for them. Can’t be bad!

Twunts

Posted: Thu 14 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

Bloody estate agents. I realise that they’ve been pretty good for us, what with selling the house in four days and so on but all the same, as a species they’re still utter twunts. Even the ones we sold the house with.

Despite saying we didn’t want a sign outside, and despite the place selling so fast that they didn’t even get a chance to put the place in the paper, we came home to find that they’d shoved up a “Sold” sign while we were at work. This wouldn’t have been so bad, except that not all the nearby neighbours knew we were selling the place, and so we’ve been deluged with questions about where we’re going, and what the new people will be like.

And then yesterday – bearing in mind there’s a bloody big bright yellow sign with the words “SOLD subject to contract” on it – I get home to find that another estate agents has dropped a card through the door, saying that they have buyers for this house. I’m sorry, but which part of “SOLD” did the fuckwit twunts not understand?

In fact, that latter bit would make sure that even if the house sale did fall through, I wouldn’t go to that particular estate agents…

e-Commerce

Posted: Thu 14 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

Over the last few days, the iTunes music store has been annoying me. OK, I know I’ve got some fairly obscure tastes on occasion, but even so, when looking for things like “Leonard Cohen” the list is missing some fairly relevant stuff. The last couple of albums, for instance. Let alone some of the older stuff – and finding the album I particularly wanted, which is a collection of cover versions of his stuff, well, that’s just never going to happen.

And I can’t find anything on iTunes for a bundle of other bands – OK, some of them are old now, but isn’t that what “The Long Tail” was always supposed to be about? But no, nothing on there for Timbuk3, The Pale, or a couple of others.

Anyway, back to Leonard Cohen, and in fact it’s easier to go back and find the exact album on Amazon, and add it to the basket.

However, Amazon’s not perfect either. I was also looking for an A-Z map of Cambridge, for obvious reasons. But hang on – a £1.50 sourcing fee? What the hell? And up to 14 days for delivery? Fuck off. In that case it’s far easier to go direct to the company and order it direct. No sourcing fee. No postage. A flat £3.50. And I’ll get it by Monday. Perfect.

Laptop

Posted: Wed 13 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised, Work-related | Leave a comment »

The new laptop? It’s a Dell Inspiron 640m. Nothing special, nothing cutting edge (well, except for the fact it’s got a Centrino Duo™ Dual Core processor, which is pretty new) but it’s fairly lightweight, has a decent 14″ screen, and what looks to be about 7 hours of battery life, which is what I wanted.

When all’s said and done, the laptop will be used primarily while I’m travelling and/or away from home, so the battery life was the driving factor more than anything. It’s definitely got the oomp and processing power too, along with a very nice 1Gb of RAM, so it should do for the next couple of years at least.

I’ve spent the last couple of days putting on all the stuff I need on it, and now I’m pretty much sorted. Good, innit?

Quittin’ Time

Posted: Wed 13 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Work-related | 2 Comments »

I’m “working” from home for the next couple of days, and Friday is my last ever day in the office. I can’t believe that it’s all gone as well as it has. Well, in a way I’m not at all surprised, because I still believe that a major part of the motivation for the office move was to get rid of all the people who were based around Bracknell – so in that way I guess they were probably quite pleased for the scheme to have worked.

Really though I’m just pleased it’s gone so smoothly. In honesty I didn’t really expect it to do so – I was expecting a fight, particularly on whether I’d have to work my month’s notice or not, but instead it’s all come through easily.

So now I’ve got one more day left in the office – and even that is more about meeting some of the people from work for a few drinks at lunchtime, then crawling my way home.

I’m just looking forward to finishing. And then moving on to the new job in Cambridge. One day left of dealing with Arsehole Boss, and I’m done. I’ll be counting the minutes…

Season Seven

Posted: Wed 13 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic | Leave a comment »

Well, the final box set of West Wing is now in my possession. Season Seven. I’m kind of looking forward to seeing it, although it’s tempered with the knowledge that after this, no more. *sob*

So far, I’ve ended up not seeing any of Season Seven. So it’s going to be a job of seeing them all fairly soon. I’m looking forward to it. In a bittersweet way…

Off, Off and Away

Posted: Tue 12 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Getting Organised, Work-related | 1 Comment »

So, amazingly it all went OK.

A simple – and non-sweary – explanation of why my position with the company was now untenable, making clear references to a lot of policies that amount to nothing less than constructive dismissal, and referring to legal advice I’d taken over the last week, and bang, I’m done.

I come back into the office on Friday to sort out some final things. I’ve also been asked to do a couple of small things for the company over the next couple of weeks (although they depend on Arsehole Boss not being an Arsehole, so it’s not certain I’ll even have to do them) which is fine – it means I get paid for the entire of September, and then also get a month’s pay in lieu of notice, and a month’s pay as a severance deal.

All told, I come out of the entire thing Golden, and smelling of Roses.

Can’t be bad.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →