The Official Nonsense Thread

[Caspin]

Mmmmm, I'm glad I don't need Origin. I feel bad suggesting it to people at Answer HQ when their discs stop working, but because it's an EA site you can't tell them about No CD mods etc. Mind you, they could find out about that themselves by doing research, so perhaps Origin is the penalty for not reading around.

Today's word of the day shall certainly be flapdoodle

Moving on. And how are things at the Games? Is everyone filled with excitement and anticipation? Or are they all just flopping about in the humidity.

Oh yeah: soon it is time to wish Happy Birthday to Ollie!

[Minty]

Yeah, happy birthday Ollie, or are we a day ahead? I know its the same day as Wills & Kate's sproglet, but I can't remember in this heat whether that makes him 24 hours ahead or behind us in Australia.

OK, no more computer for the rest of the day, the fan is going crazy & I'm worried it's about to explode from the heat.

[Caspin]

Ollie is in our future, so his birthday is well under way. I always remember that Australians are in the future because they set off their fireworks first at New Year! Apparently he is sweet 16 today. I shall celebrate on his behalf by spending the rest of day feeling supremely old.

[Caspin]

And yet another roasting hot day here but at least this one is a Friday! I wonder if Minty's computer exploded yet (hope not) and whether Ollie had a fantabulous birthday (hope so). I cannot believe that Ollie is 16. How fortunate for him to know me so that he can benefit from my extra DECADES of life experience.

I don't normally like to go out on Fridays but I'm making an exception tonight as I have tickets for "Medea" at the NT. You can watch a trailer of it here if interested. "Terrible things breed in broken hearts". Ain't that the truth. If there's one thing I like more than polenta, it's revenge. Anyway, I think it's going to be amazing - it has music by Goldfrapp for a start.



I might not be around so much this weekend (actually this is probably an empty threat, isn't it) as my friend from Australia will be here! She is flying into London before heading up the country to visit family, so there is a rare and precious window of opportunity to meet while in the same hemisphere. She's going to the NT as well, tomorrow, to see "Great Britain" with another of our friends, but seeing as I watched that last week I'll just pick them up afterwards for cocktails and dinner and cocktails.

This is how I feel about that situation:

[Minty]

I keep forgetting to tell you about the drunk manager at the interview. To cut a long story short, I'd been for the first part of an interview, & although a bit of a struggle I appeared to have won them over. They said they wanted their office manager to speak with me next & left me in the office alone for fifteen minutes until he arrived.

It didn't take me long to realise the idiot had either heatstroke or had enjoyed a rather generous liquid lunch. The trouble is you can never tell whether this is them trying to psych you out. All it takes is some "crazy interview technique" to do the rounds on Twitter for some bored manager to decide to do it midweek.

He kept saying "I want you to look me in the eye & tell me why you deserve this job, no really tell me, coz I'll know if you're telling me the truth, I know these things, that's why I'm manager". I got half an hour of his stupid questions, sometimes repeated. At the end of it he started asking me how I felt the interview had went! Bloody headbanger.

There was another I was at two days later. The place had enough noise to wake the dead. The sales department downstairs had music blaring all the time to keep them "motivated", & whenever all the members of a particular team had made a sale that day, they blared out "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang (I later discovered they all had to get up & dance when this happened!). They admitted to me due to all the noise they had a high turn over of staff as it drove many to distraction. I asked them in which case why didn't they turn it down or even off. Their HR manager's answer "Because this is how we roll". I suspect the real reason was to encourage a high staff turn over in order to minimise annual pay rises.

The world has gone completely mad.

[Caspin]

Oh dear! You have been put through some horrifying ordeals haven't you. Going to visit some of these places must surely leave you feeling like the worst possible outcome would be to get the job and have to return there everyday!

The one with the compulsory dancing reminds me of place that my friend worked, a recruitment agency of some sort, at which whenever a client was placed, the successful agent had to ring a massive bell in the middle of the office. She found it so demeaning. I think you have to be a certain type of person to thrive in those sorts of environments.

Since you showed me yours, I'd better show you mine. The weirdest interview I ever attended was about ten years ago. I thought at that time that I was going to leave London about a year later (yeah, that didn't quite work out!) but I needed to stay for a little while to write my thesis. So I was looking for a temporary job to get me through that year. A friend was working at some office in the city and her boss wanted someone else to do the same, so she suggested me. It sounded ideal and it would have been fun to go work there with her so we could go for lunch together etc. I went along at the appointed time and was sent through to her boss's office. When I walked in the guy was naked.

Yeah, that was a little more informal than I had expected. I'm no prude, but I do expect a minimum number of clothing items to be donned in the workplace. I think I said "no, please don't get up!" or something. He seemed alarmed that I was acting normally in the situation and he kept wanting to explain his nakedness, but I just kept cutting him off asking random questions about the business and the job. At the end of a fairly brief interview, I left the room at top speed and did not offer to shake hands.

Anyway, it turned out that the poor guy had got caught out in massive rain at lunchtime, very shortly before I arrived to be interviewed. He had a towel and shorts with him at work, as he liked to play tennis or something at lunch. He had been in the process of getting dried off and changed in his office when I arrived. Apparently he was in fact wearing his towel still, under the desk, so he wasn't entirely naked after all. It was a funny day, that.

Back in the present, the temperature is ten degrees lower today and there is a cloud! Happy happy day! It would be nice to have a day or two of not feeling like I'm in an oven. I am not a soufflé. It was good having dry weather yesterday - my friends and I hung out on the South Bank and had a great time eating Mexican snacks and drinking mezcal cocktails. I had hoped it would be a bit cooler than it was, being by the river, but not to worry.

[Minty]

Maybe he was trying to wrong foot you if you tried that old interview technique in order to prevent nerves of imagining the interviewer naked.

I've had to change when I got soaked (a common hazard of living up here), but I went into a toilet cubicle like any sane man would.

Been there with the environment where it's like being back at primary school. They are demeaning, & what makes it worse is that any such request for a more adult approach results in you being accused of not being a team player. It's an excuse for office Peter Pans to stay in the same mindset they had in school, fatal in any workplace that wants to get anywhere. It also drives out older members of staff, which I think is deliberate.

Two days of torrential rain are over, & it's back to the big bake tomorrow in time for my next interview. I am still trying to care about the Commonwealth games, but failing. Very glad England adopted "England's Green & Pleasant Land (Jerusalem)" for their anthem, although "Land Of Hope & Glory" would also have been as good. Never understand why English teams go out to boring "God Save The Queen", especially since we stole it off Liechtenstein (or however it's spelt!). Send them out like the French to something stirring & reap the rewards.

[Caspin]

You're right. Whenever we have to do any kind of staff development thing, the younger members of staff seem quite happy about it and enjoy themselves, whereas I find it something to be endured rather than enjoyed and generally avoided wherever possible. Anything involving roleplay or a quiz will generally set me to eye-rolling. I try not to be too grumpy about it though. All ordeals eventually end, so it's best to just wait them out.

I dislike the national anthem and I really don't like "Jerusalem" either. It sounds like a song more fitting for a funeral than a sporting event. I don't know what I'd pick instead.

Minty - do you know that you sent out a blank email yesterday? Hmmm?

Right, must crack on.

[Minty]

(29-07-2014 09:30 AM)Caspin Wrote:  Minty - do you know that you sent out a blank email yesterday? Hmmm?

Yes, sorry about that! The mass mailer has two options & I forgot to switch it to Text only. Have sent out again. I should have sent this a lot earlier to be fair.

[Caspin]

D'you mean the mailing system has two options: one to include the text and one to exclude the text? Well, that's a quality piece of mailing technology isn't it. Like giving people the chance to either send a letter or just the empty envelope. I am most amused!

Edit: no, wait, I have just realised you meant plain text versus HTML, didn't you. Oh my poor brain is not working! I will be in the kitchen.