The online racing simulator
Really Bad Day
(56 posts, started )
Quote from bunder9999 :if it's a private company, they can fire and hire whoever they want, for whatever reason... if they found out someone was looking for another job, that's certainly grounds to can their ass...

what a complete load of utter nonsense.
Quote from dawguk :If they go all the way with this, then I would expect you would get substantial damages, as this is without a doubt totally illegal.

I'd rather have the good refference then try my luck at proving a grey area. The fact is multiple people have been laid off, so whatever their motivations for picking me (the missed deadline or the fact I was - as far as they are concerned - looking elsewhere already) is a bit irrellevent.

In reflection the job had become quite sour, and whilst I love the work the environment has been far from satisfactory for some time. A senior manager from a different branch of the company spoke to me recently about the squeezes going on and demonstrated his disdain for the management, he also commented that he didnt think I had been given very fair treatment of late and offered me a transfer. It's too late to take that transfer now, and I rejected it half knowing this was probably going to happen sooner or later (I really wanted to last the full 2 years before I did anything about it though).

So really i've lost nothing in terms of my career by putting that job behind me. It was a stepping stone into the industry, I was paid less than half of my counterparts, my sub-ordinates where better paid than me, and being the only fluent English speaker below my boss I was shouted at for every failure no matter who's fault it was, I really was not happy.

It is time to move on, just wouldn't have minded getting to that 2 year milestone first, but I think a week or two short wont matter for C.V. purposes so it's only redundancy payout that it effects.
Further to my claims, this is good reading:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Em ... ob/Redundancy/DG_10029835

I read a lot into this when my company was recently making redundancies, and I was check what I should expect, and what my rights were. There is a certain set of guidelines that your employer has to abide by before making you redundant. You looking for new work isn't grounds for redundancy. At the very least, they need to be able to prove that your job is no longer tenable.
Quote from dawguk :what a complete load of utter nonsense.

which is why i work in the public sector...
Quote :http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employme...cy/DG_10029835

Cheers Dawguk, technically yes I can see from reading that, armed with all the specifics and details that I havnt gone into monotonous detail about here, that I have been unfairly dismissed.

However, I dont see any good coming of trying anything on at least whilst i'm under my notice period (1 month). By then I hope to have another job, if I havn't then i'll consider this route although really I have very little faith in judicial proceedings.

I already have a court case dragging on with my old landlord for stealing my deposit and so far all I can see is that I still dont have my £1100 because he believes a kitchen cupboard wasnt wiped when I left

The judicial system really doesn't work, I know because I defied it enough times in my youth. I've no criminal record at all, and thanks to the statute of limitations I can say that really is an effective demonstration of just how abysmal the system is.
Quote from Becky Rose :I'd rather have the good refference then try my luck at proving a grey area. The fact is multiple people have been laid off, so whatever their motivations for picking me (the missed deadline or the fact I was - as far as they are concerned - looking elsewhere already) is a bit irrellevent.

I understand this, and this is exactly the same reason why people don't chase things up like this. However, you are protected (again, by law) should you want to challenge them, as your previous employer isn't allowed to give you a bad reference. They can, of course, give you no reference at all. But that's a risk that some people are willing to take, for the sake of justice.

Quote from Becky Rose :In reflection the job had become quite sour, and whilst I love the work the environment has been far from satisfactory for some time. A senior manager from a different branch of the company spoke to me recently about the squeezes going on and demonstrated his disdain for the management, he also commented that he didnt think I had been given very fair treatment of late and offered me a transfer. It's too late to take that transfer now, and I rejected it half knowing this was probably going to happen sooner or later (I really wanted to last the full 2 years before I did anything about it though).

Yeah, that sucks. But (as I'm unsure how long you've been working in this illustrious industry of ours) - it's much more acceptable these days for people to be a lot less permanent in their jobs. Once upon a time, companies used to put lots of value in how much time you spent in one place, but I've found that employers are a lot more interested in what you can do, and how you do it. I'm a "web based developer" too by trade, so I see what you'll see.

Quote from Becky Rose :So really i've lost nothing in terms of my career by putting that job behind me. It was a stepping stone into the industry, I was paid less than half of my counterparts, my sub-ordinates where better paid than me, and being the only fluent English speaker below my boss I was shouted at for every failure no matter who's fault it was, I really was not happy.

It's funny, whenever people ask me what I do, and I tell them, they always reply with "oh, well you must be on a good wage then!". How wrong they are.

It's sick to know that these days in web development, an employer might expect you to have the skillset of a demi-god, yet because they put the word "junior" before your job title, they can get away with paying you peanuts. Luckily, I rode that out, and I no longer have that hanging around my neck, but it took a while.

2 years then redundancy - that's two weeks wages, plus your last month's wages. If you can get another job within six weeks, you'll be laughing.

Good luck with that. I don't think that our industry has been as badly hit as others, as I ALWAYS get email spam telling me of more and more jobs available.
Bizarrely, 2 years is about the period employers want people to have in a role these days. I assume it's because it shows diversity and/or the desire to climb the ladder. I've done enough stupid courses to know these things.

So if any prospective employers ask, the best thing you can possibly tell them is that the company had "become sour" and that you felt it was time to move on. They'll respect that more than the stock responses of "I wanted a new challenge" or "I wanted something more suited to my skills", especially if the job you're going for is a similar role just in another company

I'd also call it 2 years, since a couple of weeks off that isn't going to matter a damn on a CV. The other useful resource is Citizen's Advice. Free and impartial. Used them a couple of times over the years.
Quote from Becky Rose :I am having a truly shit day, but you know what? It's the first time in two months I've not been shouted at, and I've actually finished work early for once! Thats some small mercy at least.

Life is a public shitter, and the best days are the ones when someone actually flushes... Im guessing it true for everyone in some ways
as some of you may know i'm semi retired these days, sold own business, paid off mortgage etc, working in supermarket just to pay day to day bills

things like this happening to becky make me so mad at some of the idiots i work with, they get away with being at times totally incompetent at their job but in 6 years the only redundencies i've seen have been due to theft or a store closing (and all of those from the store that closed got taken on by the new owners of the building) yet all they do is complain about the company and the management and how they have to work too hard. they really have no idea what it can be like these days.

anyway i'm sure becky that you'll soon find something else and just remember that if thats the way they work then you're better off without them and they're worse off without you

oh and here's the youtube video i turn to when i need cheering up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
Quote from Becky Rose :
So I left school with no qualifications, half an apprenticeship, and no ambition or personal motivation. After cleaning myself up and leaving my nefarious beginnings behind me, I found that on applying for jobs I had difficulty creating the impression that I wasnt above a mediochre job, and I had no qualifications or experience to get a job that I was allegedly qualified for, on top of that I had a patchy work history with very little stability. I was a bad employment prospect whatever I went for.

Story of my life. I always thought adding humour to a CV or application was a good stab in the dark. It wasn't, isn't and never will be a good idea! LOL
Quote from BlueFlame :Story of my life. I always thought adding humour to a CV or application was a good stab in the dark. It wasn't, isn't and never will be a good idea! LOL

I've always had a creative CV. I've had mixed sucess with different approaches over the years. My last job I got rejected for on first application with my CV, but on finding out who the company was I sent an email detailing the similiarities of their work with other personal projects I had done in the past. I got the job on the strength of a single email.

I remember my first non-standard one was designed like a flyer saying something like "CONGRATULATIONS" ... "You have won the opportunity to employ Becky Rose". I only used it for one job, and they did ask for a reference from my previous employer - who slated me (on the grounds he suspected I had stolen from him, although actually I had not).

I've done others too, I did a magazine style page showing screenshots from various games i'd written and showing off my artistic abilities and such. I didn't get a job with that one though.

I also was probably one of the first to try sending my CV as an interactive Windows application. It even printed out a paper based CV too, although I usually sent it with one anyway.

Later I applied for a job at Rock* where a friend of mine worked on his suggestion that I could do the job (I had not worked in the industry at the time, but had worked with the friend in question on a hobby project). I sent in a copy of one of my games written in a language similar to that which they used, only for that particular build of the programming language I was using to be incompatible with the boss' graphics card. It locked his computer, and I never got the job!

In my recent application for the job I applied for last week, I sent my covering letter with html tags

I've no idea why I take this creative approach to job hunting, I guess I just want to stand out from the crowd, or maybe it is just because when it comes down to it I really am an off the wall scatty creative.
I can't offer any job advice but I can totally relate to being shouted at for mistakes you didn't make. The problem is managers, some of them just want to rise up through the ranks and make a bit more money, they understand that they are not really better than the people they manage and are just as accountable for their mistakes, but managers like that are extremely rare. More often than not you end up with the egomaniacs, nothing is more important to them than bossing people about. Most of the time they know people really need their jobs, so they can get away with treating them like shit.

At my workplace you end up being shouted at by everyone, customers, managers, supervisors, other employees. I work in Customer Service, so despite the fact that we get blamed for everything we actually have the best trained staff, so we very rarely make mistakes. We do however have to be accountable for everyone elses mistakes, we also need to fill in paperwork for every single one of them. Often I get shouted at for taking too long getting customers orders sorted out, until I show the person shouting at me the 3 pages worth of mistakes their department has made in the last 2 hours, and point out that I spend more time making note of their errors than actually doing my job. My favourite management technique they use is to blame everyone in a department for an error. So you can have a situation where you only just arrive at work and you're already being shouted at for a mistake that happened 2 hours prior to you clocking in.

As for CV's I couldn't get a job with my old CV because I had a 3 year unexplained gap in employment. The moment I explained the gap I got a job, the reason I didn't explain it was because I stopped working to care full time for my sick mother, and didn't really want to explain why I suddenly wanted to start working again during any potential interview. Also in my experience employers don't like over the top CV's anymore, they just want a short nicely layed out CV with a brief paragraph about yourself and a passport photo. If I saw a CV that was over the top I would wonder what the person was compensating for, "please look at my pretty border and ignore the criminal record on the last page!".
Quote from Becky Rose :I sent in a copy of one of my games written in a language similar to that which they used, only for that particular build of the programming language I was using to be incompatible with the boss' graphics card. It locked his computer, and I never got the job!

i don't mean to laugh, but that's actually pretty funny.
That's nothing compared to what just happened, an event that really finished off my day.

To understand this you must first understand that I've not lived in a household with a man present for a few years now, and this has led to certain habbits. Earlier today my father visited and used the bathroom... Net result: I fell into the toilet! Why can't men put the seat back down when they've finished pissing on the carpet?! Grrrr
#41 - wien
Quote from Becky Rose :Why can't men put the seat back down when they've finished pissing on the carpet?! Grrrr

Why can't you put the seat back up after you're done so we can piss on the carpet(*) instead of the damn seat?

* Major ugh BTW. What's wrong with you people over there?
I always sit down

Years of living with Women has conditioned me this way!!!
In my case it was having to clean my own toilet which did the trick.

EDIT: Who knows where this thread will end up... LOL!
Quote from Becky Rose :Net result: I fell into the toilet!

i live alone and i've done that... how's that for a morning wake-up call?
Quote from Becky Rose :So now I've been added to the list of redundancies this month, seeing as I was apparently leaving anyway.

More or less the same thing happened to me back in January. My employer knew I wasn't happy with my current position. (I had informed if there were other, better-fitting positions inside the company; there weren't.) So when the stock exchanges plummeted, I was the No. 1 Candidate for Redundancy.

Shortly after I got the announcement from my manager, I found a new job that's much much better. (I like to think that the mental relief of being freed from my old, depressing job gave me the energy to write a good job application.)

Sometimes good things do happen.
Quote from danowat :I always sit down

Years of living with Women has conditioned me this way!!!

You do know that you now have to hand in yout "M.A.N" card and rule book for this admision of being whipped.
Quote from wsinda :So when the stock exchanges plummeted, I was the No. 1 Candidate for Redundancy.

You don't know much about what happened to the worlds economy do you?
Quote from Mackie The Staggie :You do know that you now have to hand in yout "M.A.N" card and rule book for this admision of being whipped.

Meh, my "M.A.N" card went years ago!!!!
Quote from danowat :Meh, my "M.A.N" card went years ago!!!!

You can always borrow my honourary one.
I'm still clutching the very edge of my MAN card. My mother conditioned me growing up, so not only do I pee accurately but I also put the seat down when I'm done. I still like explosions and violence and boobs though, so I'm not letting the card go

Really Bad Day
(56 posts, started )
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