Rambolic

I promised I’d post about stuff but it’s kind of old news now.  That and I can’t actually remember half of it.

Anyway, last week at work I was talking to a guy called Davy Jones and I made some crack about Pirates of the Caribbean, and proceeded with some nervous laughter, and he was just silent.  Turns out he’s never heard that one (I couldn’t work out if he was serious) but let me know he’s normally confused with the drummer in The Monkees.  From here I decided to stay off the puns for a while.

Last week I had a customer called John Kettley.  For those of you under 25 here’s an explanation… and for those of you over 25 it’ll be a flashback to 1988:

To cut a long story short we messed up and he ended up driving 100 miles to us to get it sorted.  I happened to be in the shop so I actually spoke to him.  As it turns out it was ‘the’ John Kettley.  Good job I didn’t make any weather puns really!

I’m seriously considering making more posts about ridiculous calls I get at work.

Me: Good morning! Customer services – Alan speaking.  How can I help?
Cust: Hi. You sent me the wrong item!
Me: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that – can I take your order number?
Cust: It’s 1148262. I emailed you last week but you never replied. I’m pissed off to be honest.
Me: Apologies – your email must have been missed. I’ll sort this for you now. What have you received?
Cust: I ordered a black laptop and you sent me a white one!!
Me: According to our records we sent you a black one. I’ve had no other complaints from the same batch.
Cust: Well you’ve sent ME a white one!! It’s even white on the picture on the box!!
Me: Yes, that’s just a stock image. And the unit inside is white?
Cust: I haven’t opened it! The picture shows a white one and it even says EBONY on the side of the box!! What are you going to do for me?!
Me: *sigh* Ebony is another word for black, sir.
Cust: No, ebony’s white!!

I’m losing the will…

About a year ago I took on the responsibility of opening up at work and became a key-holder. Not long after this my hours changed from 8:30am-17:00pm to 8:45am-17:15pm. I found out about my change of hours when I got a letter with my payslip – nobody actually informed be prior or asked if it was convenient. To be honest, the change of hours doesn’t really bother me, but the fact that I wasn’t consulted does. On principle I started turning up at 8:45am.

Now, I’ll be honest… I’m not reknowned for my timekeeping! Since I started opening up I’ve been punctual, but my colleagues still take the piss out of me – force of habit!  But recently I have been arriving on or up to 8:45am.  When I open up I have to unlock the gate, unlock the bollards, put the bollards down (a mean feat!), open the gates, unlock and open the shutter protecting the fire exit, de-activate the alarm and camera monitor, turn on all the lights, open the staff entrance shutter and unlock and open the gates… by which time it’s maybe 8:55am… which is when I clock in.

Now, the powers that be don’t seem to like this 8:55am clocking in business, and my manager has, on occasion, emailed me if I have a problem arriving for 8:45am, and I’ve replied saying no, I haven’t.  Other people start at 8:45am, which my arrival time has a knock-on effect on.  If someone just asked me to turn up 15 minutes earlier all this probably wouldn’t have happened.  Anyway… I digress.

Anyway, one night I was round at my manager’s house and she forewarned me that I’d be getting a letter re: disciplinary about timekeeping.  Sure enough, the next day a letter was presented to me with the time and date of said disciplinary.  I turned up at the time mentioned to meet a manager (not mine) and one of the directors of the compay.  I was a bit peeved that it had got to this stage without anyone really discussing it in any detail with me to be honest.  I was asked what I had to say about the matter, and I told them that I don’t quite understand why I’m in a disciplinary for timekeeping when I’ve been turning up on time… and that opening up does take a few minutes, hence my clocking times.  This immediately got my director’s back up and she went on the attack saying that I should have the building open and be sat at my desk by 8:45am.  I added that opening up is part of my job, so that should be accounted for.  She told me that my manager had given me a formal chat about this and discussed it prior to the disciplinary, and waited for my confirmation.  I told her that I have had no formal chat, it had been mentioned in an email, and I’d been emailed a document to sign and hand back.  I was asked if this had happened any other time.  As it happens, the day before I’d received another email and document to sign about not checking voicemails one day (it was super busy and we were short-staffed – maybe I’ll explain our staff situation in more details another time!)  The director looked puzzled and asked if I’d signed them.  I hadn’t.  To be honest, the first I’d forgotten about due to how busy we are, and the second I’d just not got around to it at that time.  The meeting was adjourned.

At this stage my manager was called down to the meeting room.  Now, I can’t really comment on what was said as I wasn’t there, but I’d hazard a guess that she was being spoken to about not doing formal chats correctly.  I’ll point out here that I don’t really have a problem with these issues being emailed as I’m generally really busy and don’t really have the time in the day to be sat around in meetings.  I was then called back into the meeting room.

Faced by my manager and the director, my manager went on a rant about how gutted she was that I’d brought this issue up, that she’s not done anything wrong, that she’s lost my trust and possibly friendship, asking why I hadn’t come to her about it previously, yadda yadda.  I could have sat up and been on the defensive, but as I mentioned, I didn’t know what had been said to her and I didn’t want to dig any holes… or make the one I was in any deeper.  I basically just listened, and then the director took over.  She said that she thought I was deliberately being awkward, petty and big-headed.  She said she thought it was foolish of me to bring these issues of the formal chats.  I pointed out that I hadn’t actually brought this issue up, and that I’d merely answered questions that I had been asked.  I’m not going to lie about something if it didn’t happen.  This went on for a while, and my director was saying that I said that I start at 8:45am and finish at 5:15pm and that’s what time I will arrive and leave.  I defended myself and said that I actually said that I start at 8:45am, and I’ve been arriving at 8:45am.

This went on for quite some time, and I was told that there were three people, my manager, the other manager, and herself, that thought I had an attitude problem.  I was also told that the managing director also has issues about my attitude.  Truth be told this was a small misunderstanding that was resolved in about a minute, which my manager backed me up on.  Nevertheless I figured I’d better back down a bit and just tried to calm things down, despite how furious I was at being told I’d said things that I know I didn’t say.  We decided to adjourn for another week to cool the air.

To be honest I was quite upset by all this, and I know my manager was, so I asked her for a meeting directly afterwards.  Understandably she was quite confused, having been told one thing by my director, and then another by me.  The things that were said were practically the same, but it was the wording and delivery that was completely different, and she didn’t know who to believe.  Anyway, we chatted for over an hour and finally left feeling slightly better about things.  Not much, but enough to remain professional.

The week after my director called me into a meeting again to discuss where we go from here.  Quite honestly I think we were both too tired to argue, and I was asked if I have any issues, and I said I hadn’t, and that I’d been arriving earlier.  She said we should just put it down to poor communication by all parties and mis-understanding.  I agreed and we left the room.  Everything’s fine in that respect as my director and I, while we enjoy a joke, are not particularly close friends.  My manager and I, however, are… and this has obviously had an impact on that.  My manager came back from her holidays for a week, and I know she was still concerned about the whole ordeal.  I was the same, and we had another chat.  We talked about management and friendship, etc.  Difficult talk – nobody wants those, but it has to be done.  Anyway, I think we ironed out a few things, and while we’re not completely right I think we’re a big step in the right direction.  I think we need some beer to resolve this one.

That was a story and a half – congrats to anybody who got this far.  I know my shortfallings here, so it’s a lesson to be learned.  I’ve dropped a podium and I need to climb back up.  At least I do still have some mutual respect, which I thought I’d lost last week.  We live and learn!

I mentioned that I took this week off at the last minute to have a break while I could (since I don’t know when I’ll be able to leave the new guy on his own) but it’s like I’m still there.  Calls from work, voicemails, emails, texts, msn messages.  Can’t anybody show any initiative?  I’ve said it before, but common sense really doesn’t seem to be that common anymore.  Needless to say I’m not replying.

Went to Ikea today and bought a load of crap we don’t need and can’t afford.  I might build it tomorrow.  I need to call the insurer again since it’s almost a year since the accident and they still haven’t done fuck all.  I think the last word from them was that they were awaiting a response from the third party.  How long do they give them these days??  I still need to write to the independant financial ombudsman again.

On a plus note, I think my battles with 1&1 are finally over – my server package is now cancelled, and I even got a refund on the last quarter after I complained about their lack of response to my numerous emails.  That’s £100 back in my bank account, thank-you-very-much!

I’m sat listening to Tommy Emmanuel after being out with my parents to the local pub.  It’s completely not my kind of night out, but they keep asking me.  I saw an old friend, Allen, and spoke to him about our love for listening to and making music.  He’s 67 now, and is always singing.  He’s good at it too.  I also saw my old schoolfriend Nichola who I’ve seen just a couple of times since I left school.  That reminds me – via the gift of Facebook I’m back in touch with my old schoolfriend Antony so we need to get together, play Pro Evo and down some beers or something.

I had a text from Michelle earlier tonight telling me to get over to York and I wish I’d done that instead.  Sounds like she had a top night, and I could’ve been kipping in a two storey suite!  Damnit…  Hey well.  York’s one of my favourite places to be so maybe we’ll go some other time.

Friday night was spent at Ste’s playing Rock Band with Jodie and Gregs.  It’s about time it had a release here.  At least they gave us the full back catalogue to download.  Was an awesome night, mostly pissing ourselves at Gregs’ “singing!”  Ste lives in North Yorkshire though, so I lose half a tank of petrol if I go… the state of the price of oil now it’s an expensive do!

I’ve got the week off now.  Michelle quite rightly pointed out that it’s James’ last week and since the new guy’s not up to speed now’s the only time in the near future I’ll get time to take holidays.  It also buys me some time to finish the task I was given at work.  It seems I annoyed the directors at work with that.  I was told that I was arrogant and self-righteous, and to get my head out of my arse.  Sometimes it seems that my opinions aren’t valid.  No, actually… it seems that they aren’t even considered, which is strange because after said argument the itinery changed to the one I suggested.

Champions League Final was an awesome match, what I saw of it.  I was hoping for a blues win.  Both sides played well.  Things got a little out of hand in extra time, but I think everybody was tired and bitchy.  I’m too tired to go into details, but it was a good match.  It’s a shame it went to penalties as I don’t believe it’s a good way to determine the winner.

Well, it’s late so I’m offski.

Yeah, that was a Quo reference. So shoot me.

I don’t know if many people in the US read this (okay, I don’t know if many people read this, period) but if so I don’t know if you’ll have heard the name Shannon Matthews which may or may not have been kicking about on the journo grapevine. To cut a long story short Shannon Matthews went missing the other week, and as missing kids cases go, a huge search and appeal was launched to find her… as was the case when Madelaine McCann disappeared a few months ago (a case which has yet to be concluded.) Maybe it was harsh of me at the time, but I did say that I didn’t think it was particularly strange that she disappeared as apparently she’d mentioned to her friends that she wanted to run away, and in my best efforts to judge books by covers I decided that the parents didn’t look particularly bothered. Yeah, they looked upset, but I didn’t get that “I’ve just lost my kid” message. Turns out their daughter was found at a family member’s house after the police stormed the property. Facts are quite thinly laid here, but the mother and step-father have both been arrested, currently being held in custody, for perverting the course of justice. The step-father has also had charged brought against him for obtaining indecent images of children… Oh yeah, and he tried to kill himself a few days later. On top of this half of the family have been charged for benefit fraud.

Apparently, the other week an episode of Shameless was aired whereby the family decided to get some cash by pretending that their child had gone missing, and it’s alleged that this has been copied. I’ve also heard that they allegedly asked the McCann’s for money they had received from fundraising, etc. You may also have noticed my customer service head coming into play covering myself so I don’t get my ass sued off

I don’t like being all serious, but I find all this fucking apalling. The family live in a struggling area about 15 mins drive from here. Yeah, I appreciate that people can do desperate things for money, but wasting the time of hundreds of people who’re helping you out of good faith, spending tax-payers’ cash on searches that don’t need to be performed when the police could be put to better causes (I don’t think I need to elaborate there!) is just horrendous.

Another estate, this time in Bradford, was on the front page of the local rag yesterday down to an organised fist-fight appearing on Youtube. It turns out that the subject was a friend of a friend of a friend (or whatever) and while it seems like I’m being biased I don’t blame these guys. The estate they’re from doesn’t have any suitable sports facilities. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s idiocy, but give the kids something to do! At least here we have a sports centre run by the council and plenty of activities, but they have a (normally closed) recreation centre. What amuses me is that the MP for Bradford South is no other than Gerry Sutcliffe, Parliament’s Sports Minister. You’d think that if anything he’d start at home. And I deplore his ridiculous comments about meeting with Youtube to ensure that they do not promote such videos again. Erm… I think he’ll probably find that it was deleted pretty sharpish.

On a brighter note I’m interviewing tomorrow to replace my colleague who’s leaving shortly. I think I’m actually interviewing for Customer Service stroke Sales, since my manager said we’ll employ him as a salesperson if I don’t want to give him the position. I feel all managery. I’ve never interviewed before, and still need to write down the interview questions as I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to be asking. It’s all fun.

Well I’ve been knackered all week and I have no motivation to do anything productive. My Macbook Pro has been getting on my tits. The wireless has been as dodgy as a kid playing British bulldogs. It disconnects and the only way to fix the damn thing is to restart. I have Vista installed on here too, and streaming a movie the other night almost made me want to cave my head into a wall, given the number of times it decided to disconnect. It’s a good job Wordpress auto-saves your drafts. I’m wondering whether to send it back to Apple for repair or to get a replacement from work. I don’t think work would be too chuffed though, since the guy at the disty gave me a stupidly good price on it, and work would be losing out on a few hundred quid if they replaced it for me. We’ll see.

I saw Stewart Lee on Thursday – semi-famous comedian from Fist Of Fun, This Morning With Richard Not Judy, and a few other TV comedies from the mid-90s. We saw him a couple of years ago in some pub in Headingly. Apparently last year he was voted 41st Best Comedian Ever in one of those shitty 47hr long Top 100 shows. Apparently, as a comedian, you only visit Huddersfield twice in your career and one of those times is on your way up… and this is his second time. The show seemed to be a whinge about his declining popularity and failed ideas for TV. Quite amusing but I couldn’t help but think that there’s some truth in there!

I was at Carl’s last night and we watched a movie and a couple of episodes of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – awesome TV show!

In other news: my colleague announced he was leaving yesterday. I have two weeks to interview and train somebody. I don’t think there’s anybody internally who would be suitable, and I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to training somebody from scratch. I fear that’s the direction in which we’re moving though.

Okay, I set off a bit late to work this morning, still confident I could put metal to metal and make it to work on time, but for some reason (I haven’t found out why yet) the traffic was shocking and I ended up being ten minutes late, and making Rik even later probably.  I got to work just as my colleague was opening up since I didn’t arrive on time, and the alarm was going off.  I had to call the security company and let them know about the breach.  Well, they already knew – that’s what they’re paid for, so they said they’d send out an engineer.  Somehow this became my job (apparently I don’t have enough of these ‘responsibility’ things) and had to drop everything to check the security cams and try and figure out which sensors were which in the warehouse.  We have about 30 or 40 scattered around the place with ridiculous descriptions that make no sense.  I went for lunch and was pulled away again to try to find the main alarm control box, which nobody seemed to know the location of, and non-existent stepladders, which weren’t actually needed since the engineer neglected to inform me he’d already brought his own.  I then went back to ‘work’ and had to sign random documents from the security co. to acknowledge what work had been done whilst I was mid-call with a customer and not really concentrating on either.  I’ve probably signed away my pension.  Actually, I don’t have a pension.  That’s lucky.

Following last week’s escapade watching a friend’s band I decided to see the Four Fighters on Friday.  It was good to see Clare and some other friends again.  I was also challenged at Guitar Hero.  Oh, they’ll crash and burn, don’t worry (actually, I’m not sure since I hardly play these days!)  Anyway, for those who hadn’t guessed, the Four Fighters are a Foos tribute with quite a good name for themselves.  I think I’m supposed to be designing and maintaining their website, but it changed recently since I’ve been slack and I need to double check said arrangement.  Requests were being yelled by the crowd, and it seems my opinion is valued since their singer, Iain, decided to ask for Big Al’s opinion.  “Hey, Johnny Park” was played.  Oh yes – I had spoken.  Anyway, I stood in the least ear-friendly position in the house and came out profoundly deaf.

Saturday I remembered I was supposed to collect a PC for Ste from work the day previous, so at 4:50pm I broke the land speed record and saved the day.  Phew.  That night was spent being fed by Ste (again) and playing some Viking and GH2 and GH3 before heading home at 2am.  Since it’s about an hour away, and in another county, I got home around 3am.  I then remembered that the clocks went forward, and 3am became 4am.  It was even stupider o’clock than I’d thought.

Sunday we went to see Gogol Bordello, gypsy-punk beat combo extraordinaire.  I have to say that I think they’ve got to be one of the most entertaining, if not the most entertaining bands I’ve ever seen.  I severely exceeded my jumping quota.  Apparently Simon from work was there, but despite his efforts I didn’t see him.  Seriously though, if you ever get a chance to see this band, go.  So much energy.

In other news, I’ve been struggling at play catch-up at work after James had skivalitis on Thursday and Friday.  In his defense he processed some claims.  I spoke to a customer I was dealing with a few weeks ago who happens to be an old TV presenter from Magpie, the cool kids’ Blue Peter.  She’s sound enough.  I have many other customers to call back tomorrow.  The joys of pretending to be management – yay.

Okay, I guess it’s expected in my line of work that I’ll come across one or two disgruntled customers. Only this morning did I have my eardrums perforated by some fool who’d broken his own case. But every so often I get something that’s worth mentioning to people. Last week I received a voicemail from a customer whose hard drive had been returned by him as faulty, but we’d found no fault – it was working fine. Now, I really applaud this guy for being able to string together such a lengthy intelligible sentence made up of predominantly foul language. I’m tempted to post the call recording, but I’m unsure about the legalities.

Any chance of any of you lazy idle good-for-nothing bunches of fucking idle shit-for-brains cunts can do anything? Leeds Trading Standards will be paying you a visit, very shortly, and if you can’t produce my fucking hard drive, that only I know the markings on, because it’s been specifically marked to ensure that it is not replaced of bullshitted about by you bunch of lazy useless cunts, and I’m gonna make sure you pay, double, what anybody else on this planet would sue the arses off you for. You bunch of fucking cunts.

Absolutely brilliant. Oh, and he wants my directors to give me my P45.