Posts by Triggerfish

Re: Hired Guns

Union rep may not neccessarily be an employee, small companies do not tend to have that sort of thing or size of organisation. I have worked for a few companies of ten -twenty people, also other big companies sometimes for some strange reason..... do not unionise, or mention much about it, and so people just start working at them and don't think of joining or starting up a union. Can think of a few helldesk farms like that.

Re: Hmm... I am currently

Absolute classic is HR referring him to the company intranet for documentation about the disciplinary procedure, staff handbook etc after having immediately revoked his access to the company intranet as part of that very same disciplinary procedure. There should really be a kind of DMZ for that sort of thing.

I would check with ACAS about that, I am pretty sure it goes against their code of best practice. (i,e (and IANAL), not legally required, but frowned upon).

Re: what the material was

It could have just been naked girls innocently riding.... erm, wait that came out wrong.

True, but even so access to a union even if it's not recognised by a company means access to people who know employment law, access if you have a case to employment lawyers, and people on your side who are not going to be influenced by company politics.

Also in a disciplinary when you ask if you can bring a member in, even if they do not let you because a company can refuse people from outside the company (check your contract on this*), tactics wise it at least may serve to show you are more prepared.

By the way I feel guns blazing if you have genuinely cocked up and the company is generally alright with its staff I would not recommend your just gonna piss people off and make it worse usually. Guns blazing is the toxic companies and your back to the wall

Also personally I think if doing a big fuck you, be careful, think of your own professional ethics as well, sinking a company from pettiness could put undeserving people out of jobs, releasing data could hang over your career stuff like that.

*Dunno how this would count with a union rep being non recognised it's probably a arguable legal thing.

Re: Not a great surprise

Look after yourself mate, a bad company deserves no loyalty. A good company earns it by their actions.

Not making any judgement on veracity of the story.

But a good well run and consitent bullying campaign can negatively effective people mentally, and make them feel a bit hopeless and possibly worthless, this can lead to a demotivation that carries on into home life, or a lack of feeling of self worth meaning they do not feel like they will be able to move into a better job because they are worthless etc. People get trapped by their own mental state.

Also financially people can get trapped, job market can trap you, life can trap you if you have a family as well and you need to take into consideration the effects that may have.

There is a big difference in how big a problem can look, or seem to look depending on how effected your thinking is by a mental state, or your current situation in life.

Re: Not a great surprise

@ Doctor Syntax. I would disgree if only to say it gives you some protection while you get your FU money, especially if your employers are bad at the moment, however I would say FU money is probably a better idea in the long run.

@Matthew3, good tip I did not know that, thanks.

Re: Not a great surprise

Extra edit. I'll add saying I wouldn't know I am with Unite, was because I do not know how effective they would be if really needed, however they are one of the larger unions and that can give a bit of clout when games are played. I cannot fully recommend them because I have no real experience of seeing them fully in action to measure them qualitatively. But they may be worth a look at.

Re: Not a great surprise

I'd like to for your friend... add there are better jobs out there, I've worked for some excellent people, and frankly I have worked my arse off for them because they treated me well, and would not hesitate to work for people like that again. You would be amazed if you are in a shitty job, how much difference it can make to your whole life and wellbeing to work for a good employer.

Re: Not a great surprise

I wouldn't know I am with Unite, I haven't actually had to use them in anger as such. But I have been put in a position before where a railroad stopped quite quickly when it transpired that instead of the HR thinking it was them backed up with the might of their company to hire solicitors and such, vs an employee with whatever he could produced, changed to shall we all forget about it? And would you like a small payrise instead of a disciplnary.

If you end up working for companies with toxic work environments the sort of places that have managers who are allowed to get away with and basically get their daily kick from bullying that sort of thing, then they will generally back off from people who are less perceived as victims or weaker, like bullying everywhere really.

If your friend is in that sort of position, get a union to protect themselves whilst they go find a new job, because places like that are run by twats anyway so it will likely never get better, the best you can do is armour yourself whilst digging your escape tunnel.

Edit I'll add that a lot of companies with Toxic work environments rely on the fact that employees often do not know what their rights are fully and it's one of the ways a company can get power over someone, (especially if your are tied in financially and have no fuck you money see earlier post). A lot of these tactics can be often quite dodgy and illegal*, but rely on that lack of knowledge which is why having some union backing can often put this sort of twattishness off.

*I've worked for one company where even though staff did not have to work bank holidays by contract, the shift manager would take the younger members into his office and basically force them into it, whilst showing them a large pile of applications for their jobs.

Re: Not a great surprise

I can't agree more, some fuck you money in the pocket is essential (if you can afford to do it), there is a lot of people trapped in shitty job situations because they cannot afford to get out, in a way they effectively become indentured.

Also pay a few quid a month and join a decent sized Union, and don't tell your employer about it. You never know when you may have to face HR, but it is so much more fun when someone tries to railroad you thinking you do not have back up.

Re: Uhhhmmmmm

Sometimes taking people to things like ACAS are not as easy as you think. I was effectively set up by a company years ago funnily enough dissmal for gross misconduct couple of days before I was supposed to be collecting my redundancy, they lawyered up I had no money at all, and had to represent myself it didn't go well.

A friend of mine last year was talking about one of her colleuages who suffered harrasment at the place she worked at, took her a year to fight and win that case and the toll it took on her mentally and to some degree physically was massive, it also cost her financially in that year until the case was won.

Sometimes a big fuck you might just be easier and more satisfying.

Re: Pushing the envelope too hard

I'm remind of this basic tenet, you can have fast, good, or cheap. Pick two.

I've seen some manufacturing discussions between manufacturers and buyers where they want all three, it usually ends up with compromise in design, and discussions like yeah we can live with that being cut or that component being of lesser quality. Luckily it has been for things that don't tend to go bang.

Re: Was that vaper built by Samsung?

Oh the ones the people have at work look like decent made ones, with all the bells and whistles I'm not expecting them to go bang. But just in terms of sheer energy stored in those batteries there's a fair bit.

Just thinking of some of the chats they have about people on youtube showing their home made mods.

Re: Sounds like me to be a good reason....@Herby

When you remove your own dowel from your bum mate.

Re: Was that vaper built by Samsung?

Depends some don#t seem that small couple of guys at work have ones with massive battery packs, one takes 4 18650 batteries, the other guys pack is a fair bit larger, there must be a fair bit of energy stored in something like that fully charged.

Shit no you're Aryn Rand apologies to the earlier poster.

Hows this.

There were two countries and a man, in each country he made investments that returned lets say £500 pounds each, making a total of £1000.

But one country decided it would quite like some tax money back and so his return was reduced to £450, making a total of £950.

Being bit of a whining sort he threw his toys out of he pram expecting people to give a shit at his vastly (in his mind) reduced circumstances and refused to play with the country that wanted taxes. His income was now £500.

Meanwhile some one else came along and was quite happy to take over his investment and make £500 minus taxes in the country that had now been left with a big gaping whole in it's market. This guy was happy with £450 before that he had only been making £50.

You see you think we need someone like Amazon, no we don't Amazon, Starbucks etc etc need us. If Amazon withdrew its services from the UK who loses? Us? Maybe briefly while some people scramble for that market share, but in the long run we will get the service back. Amazon however loses a a 6 billion market, and for what? Because they wanted all 6 billion rather than say 5.2 billion? Fuck em, then.

There's all this talk about sovereignty in this country at the moment, and yet you seem to think our goverment should be going cap in hand to companies and saying please sir can you take some more.

Re: Hands up if you've got debts @ skippybing

I've got debts, and y'know what I am still probably richer than a large percentage of the bottom. Seriously the realy poor don't even have bank accounts, why would they when they do get money it goes on immediate priorities. I've been in shanty towns under flyovers in some parts of SEA, and they are still probably richer than say a lot living in slums in places like Delhi.

Some debts balanced off by a income coming in to pay them, and still keep me fed, warm, clothed, in a country that provides free healthcare and education. Does not by any means make me poor in global comparisons.

Re: Intentions over words

To be fair, considering the size of Oxfam, and the amount of work, what would a CEO in a company expect for the same?

Re: "They've got as much money as half the world, scolds charity"

Your names Aryn Rand and I claim my five pounds. :)

Re: Methinks MSFT (and some here) are taking this too seriously.

I often find the people who feel the need to make labels like the progressive left, and liberals, sheeple etc, are usually the ones others would label the rabid right, nazis, alt right etc ....funny really.

Wow the happy party people are in force today.

I know right I woke up this morning with the thought it was Friday, some people must be working this wekend. :D

Re: Linux Noob question

If your Wi-Fi sits on a mini-PCIe card, as is often the case, I'd rather replace it with something well supported under Linux, like the Intel ones. They go for about 10-20 quid on Amazon.

New laptop unfortunately so warranty issues.

Damn this is sounding terribly negative apologies, everything about Mint looks like it would be marvellous but this is a deal breaker.

@Codejunky, cheers for the offer but at work at moment.

Re: Linux Noob question

Tried something very similar to that link having had a read, no joy unfortunately but thanks.

Yeah searched forums for drivers, but from what I can see that chip set is not supported in Mint 18.

I have tried a couple of suggestions as work arounds but then end up in that Linux thing where someone giives you a bunch of command lines to enter but you haven't a clue what they do, or how they alter other things in your system which I don't like.

Don't get me wrong I don't fear the command line I'd just like to know what I am entering, or fiddling round a bit to get things working not a problem, but at the same time I am supposed to be doing other things and it feels like I shouldn't be spending this much time trying to get a fix. But I don't want to stay with Win 10 either.

TBH as well arsing round compiling things from source etc, contreversial as it may sound to a lot of techies here, is the reason why every time I install Linux I go back to windows. To much having to piss around to get a working tool I can use for what I want, when I could be doing other things. I never get to the point where I get to go hmmn Linux is sweet look what I can do, to much time going can you work in the basic way please? Twin monitors thats nice. etc (I had problems with them last time I tried Linux which was a while back).

I'm guessing bite the bullet and buy a USB stick with WiFI, cos Win 10 has issues.

Re: Linux Noob question

It's an Atheros chip in an Acer laptop, and at the moment is one of those things stopping me from moving across to Linux. Seems like the consesus I got looking around was it was not supported.

Re: poor widdle snowflakes... wait, what? @AC

We see violence and murder, extreme murder on a daily basis. (TV Film Books) Nobody has been traumatised.

You do realise that A; The stuff you see in the media is heavily heavily censored because they do not want to updet people. B. Trauma is subjective and your view on it is not the only experience people have had so is not a base line measurement.

Re: Author of their own misfortune.

As the above says the big buyers have a lot of power. For example I have seen dept stores in the UK change their payment terms from 30 dys to 120, starting from an abritary date that actually makes it closer to about 140, and expect the small business to absorb this.

The small business is meanwhile in a fix, because the store has sent people to it's factories to make sure the manufacturing was to certain standards they decided on (NB some of these standards are bullshit), so the small business has invested in certain kit or whatever, maybe taken on more staff, and now a year or so down the line they are stuck with accepting the change in terms keeping the business and somehow having to manage cash flow, or potential losing the business, paying off extra loans, making staff redundant, because the operating costs are now hgher. They get caught by the sunk cost fallacy.

Re: What's old is new again

TBH that happens in a lot of manufacturing, have seen plenty of companies take onerous terms with large companies like dept stores and supermarkets in desperation for the business, only to realise they had basically indentured themselves to the company in the long run.

Re: Or... no snooping at all

Thats more the way I was thinking of doing it, not being able to connect to the web on a work pc is to crippling for what I do so the non connected Windows option doesn't work. I'm just finding it a bugger to get Linux working properly first.

Re: Rule number 0

Hows that work in the real world though? Does this not mean you have to reboot into Linux everytime you want to check email, or grab something needed from the net, how do you look up infomration on something you are doing in windows?

Re: Hmm

Why not just a "Do you want to report this to MS for improving the service, click Y / N?" after a crash?

Re: Windows 10 Conveyor (belt) Edition

Only problem with that is occasionally I have to connect up with ethernet, and then it starts updating at a time I need it more. I prefer to update it when I know I have time to fix a fuck up. Actually I'd prefer having a choice on the updates but apparently thats just madness.