Blue and Brown's Page of Rage

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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

E-mail three

I decided that I should start asking direct questions in the hope of a response.

ME:

I had two interviews in the middle of last week. As I currently work through an agency I am not entitled to time off work for interviews, so I had to take a day's holiday. This is fair enough, albeit a tad galling. However, I do hold the company responsible for taking up some of my time prior to the interviews.

Firstly, I had to have a shave. This is not something I would ordinarily do.

Secondly, due to the 'bolt from the blue' nature of my redundancy, I was not adequately prepared. I have recently moved house and my suit was at the back of a room that was floor to ceiling with furniture etc. It took me a full hour to recover it.

Can I invoice you for one hour's unexpected suit retrieval?


HE:

Unfortunately not.


ME:

How crushingly disappointing. It's just one thing after another with you.

How about you could pay me unofficially. Like you could turn a blind eye while I steal one-hour's-work's-worth of cardboard boxes or something. Maybe some batteries. No, not batteries. I don't want those. I don't know. You think of something.


HE:

Perhaps we should have a chat.

How does 09:30 sound tomorrow?


ME:

I thought it was only a legal requirement for members of staff to have the weekly 'chat' prior to redundancy? Ie, not agency staff.


HE:

Doesn't preclude us from having a chat.


[At this point I politely declined on the grounds that we had nothing to sort out.]

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

E-mail two - the day after

ME:

My mate suggested I come in this morning and say to you: "Actually, I'm going to make YOU redundant. How do you like them apples?"

Unfortunately, this is flawed on two counts.

1: I have never wielded sufficient power to decide on the fate of a worker. There was one time when I pointed out to a superior that a co-worker was 'maybe a bit racist', but this merely confirmed said employee's fate. The decision had effectively already been taken.

2: Even if we did follow some idealised, non-hierarchical, egalitarian business model, you still got in first. I was too slow off the mark.

The first point's the clincher, really.


HE:

Interesting comments. Is there something you would like to discuss?


ME:

I'm merely concerned that the aforementioned employee who was 'a bit racist' has a head start on me in the job market.

In a fairer world I'd be dicing swedes (lower-case 's' - I've nothing against Scandinavians) at Morrison's already and he'd be training his replacements.

I don't know why I described him as 'a bit racist' - he was advocating genocide one day.


HE:

[No response]

E-mail one - the day it happened

This was the first e-mail. You read from the top downwards. These will all be real by the way.

HE:

All,

Please find attached a Company announcement.


ME:

Lower-case 'c' for 'company'.

Any jobs for proofreaders going?

...No?


HE:

[No response]

The redundancy e-mails

I've been made redundant. I didn't like my job, but it's still not very pleasant. The worst part is that they rob you of the opportunity to say:

"Yeah, well you can take your job and stuff it right up your arse."

I worked for the company for five years, but never had any kind of contract (not through lack of trying). The upshot is that I don't get any form of pay-off. The axe-wielder is also hoping that I will be professional enough to do my job for the next four weeks and also train the company to whom my job is being 'outsourced'. Hilarious. Unlikely.

So what do you do? Well if you're me and you're petty-minded and also not that bothered about being branded 'immature', you write weird e-mails to the person who made you redundant and publish them on the internet.

E-mail one
E-mail two
E-mail three

Monday, July 03, 2006

Helpdesks

Any helpdesk. Any helpdesk at all. They’re all as equally shite as each other. Not helpdesks that have been moved abroad – if anything they’re better, because at least the staff aren’t complete morons. All helpdesks. Every last one.

You phone. You’re in a queue. Nothing’s getting done. You’re getting charged for the privilege. One day someone will answer. This helpdesk operator will be responsible for fielding such a wide range of queries that they aren’t even a Jack of all trades, they aspire to being a Jack of any trade whatsoever. They are an incompetent of all trades and they’re just about to prove it to you.

Any query remotely out of the helpdesk operator’s sphere of familiarity will be perplexing. They’ll put you through to someone totally inappropriate who, in turn, will put you back to the start of the helpdesk queue.

Every helpdesk operator has to put up with a million people as annoyed as you every single day. As a result, they’re sick of taking shit off people and are incredibly short-tempered and unhelpful. These are not the kind of staff that you would like on a helpdesk.

Finally, on about the second or third attempt, you will get through to a helpdesk operator who has withstood the pressures of the job for more than a month and they will solve your problem, reimbursing you the £5 that you are owed or whatever. It will have cost you £10 to get this done.

In future, you vow never to try and reclaim such sums of money as it ends up costing you. The business served by the helpdesk can therefore routinely overcharge you, safe in the knowledge that they’re immune to your complaints.

You could tell a newspaper how laughably shit the company are, but there’s so much competition in this field. Nope. There’s only one solution and it’s clearly a dirty protest round at head office. The dirty protest is much underutilised these days.

Buildings being described as ‘properties’

It’s a house. It’s a house. It’s a house. It’s a house.

Okay, so sometimes it’s not a house, maybe it’s a flat, or a villa or an apartment, or a condominium or a barn, or a shed, or a shack, or a mansion. But if you’re standing in it, you know what it is. Call it by its real name. Don’t call it a ‘property’.