Archive for the 'work' Category

Looking for Morpheus

Grandad March 9th, 2010

I didn’t get much sleep on Sunday night.

I don’t know what the cause was.  It was just one of those things.  For hours, I lay in bed and stared at the darkness, but the brain just refused to sleep.

Eventually, I did nod off, and was woken by the dog a couple of hours later.  Once again, I was wide awake, so I decided to cut my losses and get up.

Yesterday was a shit day.  I like my sleep, and when I don’t get it, I’m like Mary Harney without the HRT.  All day, I wandered around in a bit of a haze, kicking the guinea pigs [they make quite good footballs, incidentally] and generally breaking things.

My one consolation was that I knew I would have a grand sleep last night, because I was knackered.  I didn’t get to bed too early because a certain dimwit had fucked up his site, and he came clamouring to me, late in the evening to fix it.  I told him to fuck off, but he said he’d pay me in pints at the Blog Awards.  That was enough for me, so I set about fixing it.

I quit after a couple of hours, and went to bed.

Do you think I could sleep?  Like fuck, I could.

I lay there for five hours or so staring at my old friend the darkness.  I tossed and turned but Morpheus had fucked off on his holidays.  No sleep.  Not a single fucking wink.

I got up as dawn broke, as I was sick of the tossing and turning.  I went back to Dimwit’s site and eventually fixed his problem.  Three hours in total, it took me.

I did some sums.

I think I am worth around €100 per hour as a consultant.  Three hours?  Three hundred smackers.  Converted to pints, that comes out at somewhere around eighty pints that Dimwit owes me.

Now, I should sleep after that…………

It is over

Grandad February 19th, 2010

Today is a Big Day.

In 1971, I first drove through the gates of Montrose on my Yamaha 80 to start work in RTE.

It was supposed to be a temporary position for a period of six months.  That six months never ended until I left in 2001.  Now, even though I left in 2001, I still actually stayed on the payroll, so technically I have been working there for the last nearly forty years.

Today, I retire.

I am officially a pensioner.

Of course, RTE are throwing a big party for me tonight.  All my old colleagues will be there, and the Director General will make a speech and a presentation.  This will be followed by an open bar and I will finally be poured into a taxi [at RTE’s expense] and brought home.

Like fuck!

I received a letter last week, informing me I was retiring and thanking me for all my years work.  It said that they would be in touch before The Big Day.

That is all I have heard.  They never got in touch.  Fucking bastards.  No party.  No presentation.  No speeches [be grateful for small mercies].  Not even a fucking handshake.  All those years, nay decades of blood sweat and tears and all I get is a fucking letter.  How quickly they forget.  Miserable, tight-fisted, amnesiac cunts.

I suppose I did get something out of all those years in RTE though.

At least I got to ‘know’ Sharon.

Heh!

The Office Party

Grandad December 15th, 2009

There are many things I love to miss about working in an office, and one of the big ones is the Christmas Party.

I fucking hated them.

There was a bimbo in our office who used to fire up her party enthusiasm around July.  The day would come in the middle of summer when she would pipe up that it really was about time we started thinking about booking a venue.  Most of us would still be looking forward to our summer holidays, so this wasn’t well received.  The air would be thick with flying staplers, ashtrays and other assorted heavy objects, but unfortunately Bimbo was quite good at ducking.  And being a Bimbo, she didn’t realise that the missiles aimed in her direction had anything to do with her mention of Christmas.

Over the following months, skirmishes would break out.  On one side there would be the crowd who just wanted a quick meal to line the stomach for a good piss-up.  On the other would be the ones who wanted a leisurely meal followed by a disco or something.  By the time they had sorted their differences, all the venues would be booked up anyway so the whole thing was a bit academic.

Usually we ended up either having the do in some grotty back street restaurant, that no self respecting office party would touch, or we would hold that greatest of nightmares – an office party in the office.

There is nothing worse than holding a party in an office where you spend most of your working day.  There is fuck all festive about a computer monitor with a bit of bedraggled tinsel draped across the top.  There is nothing Christmassy about a twelve inch high plastic tree decorated with floppy disks.

Worst of all was the boss, who for 364 days in the year is an utter bollix and who suddenly decides that for one day we all have to be best friends with him. 

Inevitably at the start of the ‘party’ someone would announce that “this is a party, and no one is to mention work”.  That would lead to dead silence, as we had fuck all in common apart from work.  So the trick then was to consume as much cheap plonk as quickly as possible so that we could get around to the groping stage without the agonies of forced conversation.

The one advantage of holding the ‘party’ in the office was that we had control over the drinks.  Lacing the Bimbo’s fizzy orange with vodka was no problem, and The Boss used to get his beer nicely topped up in the Gents.  With the piss he normally drank, he couldn’t tell the difference.

Of course the party always ended in chaos.  Bimbo would end up staggering all over the place making a holy show of herself and slurring that the orange was tasting funny, and the Boss would usually end up puking his ring up all over the main desk.

The Office Party was not a time for celebration or enjoyment.

Oh no.

It was a time for revenge.

In a black hole

Grandad October 15th, 2009

When I left college back in ‘67, I wrote at random to six companies looking for a job.

One replied immediately, and I started working there the following Monday.

The week after, I got the sack, but in the meantime another of the six had offered me a job so I walked straight into that.

I was with that company for two years and thoroughly enjoyed it.  However, I had applied for yet another job which I took.

I stuck with my third company for nearly 30 years, but all good things must come to an end, and in 2001, I “took the Package”.

This is where things got very fucking complicated.  You see, the Package meant that I was still paid a salary by the company, even though I no longer worked for them,  But seeing as I get a salary, then technically I do still work for them, even though I am now contractually forbidden from doing any actual work.  They are literally paying me a salary to stay away from the place.  That’s fine by me as I was kind of pissed off with them anyway.

So there I was – sitting on my hole at home, receiving a salary and with nothing to do.

So I started my own business.

The situation now, was that I was technically employed by my old company, but was running my own business as well.

In the course of my business, I landed a contract with yet another company, and for reasons best known to themselves, I had to register there as an employee, even though I only worked for them for a few months a year.  This meant that I now had three employers – my original crowd who were paying me not to work; my new employer who only wanted me for a few months a year and my own business which filled in the gaps.

That was the year my accountant had a nervous breakdown trying to do my tax returns.

I have quit all that now, and have shut down my own business.  I now have only one employer, who is still happily paying me not to work.

So I am now, for the first time in my life unencumbered with work.  My days are my own.  I can do what I like.

Next year, I retire officially.

Presumably, as I then go onto a pension, the clause that stated that I can’t work for them is no longer in force, and they will probably insist that I go back and earn all the money they have paid me since 2001.

The problem in the meantime is what I put down as my occupation.

I’m not retired, as that doesn’t happen until next year.

I’m not working as it is contractually forbidden.

They don’t have a box on the forms that suggests “employed not to work”.

Life is so fucking confusing at times.

Well, here I am

Grandad August 3rd, 2009

Well it looks like the dust is beginning to settle.

I started at eight, yesterday morning.

“No bother,” says I.  “I have all day to copy a couple of sites.  How hard can that be?”

I had not allowed for the extremely weird control panel I had been presented with, for a start.  Whoever designed that did so with a logic that defies gravity.  Nothing is where you would expect it to be.  There is a myriad of menus that all lead around in circles and they all look the same but aren’t.  Have you ever been in Hampton Court Maze?  That’s what it was like.

After an hour or two, I managed to set up a blank area to take this site.  Great!  Now my problem was how to copy the old site across.  You see, you can’t just copy the old site onto a PC and then copy them up to the new one – it just doesn’t work.  The new site will just start looking for bits on the old server or something and will start crying. I hate that.

I had to create a new site from scratch and then just copy the relevant bits across.  But what are the relevant bits?

Then there is the database.  Fuck me, but it’s big.  And when the new site has a file limit of 5 Megathingies, it is too big.  So I had to chop the database into little chunks and copy them all across in little bits, and I had to be very careful to keep them in the right order.  Otherwise you would find your comments coming out your ears.

I managed it in the end.

Even then I had complaints from a few people that they could only see things up to last June, but I could see everything so it that a case of tough shit!

I think it’s all working now.  I don’t think I lost anything and I think everything is in the right order.

It actually seems a bit faster now, but that will doubtless change.

I still have a couple of minor details to fix.

And of course I still have a load of other sites to copy.

Bollox. 

Next »