The Work Thread

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Tafdolphin
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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Tafdolphin » Wed Feb 28, 2018 5:13 pm

Yeah, looking at well over €1000 now. Which is good! I think.

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Oblomov Boblomov
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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Oblomov Boblomov » Wed Feb 28, 2018 6:56 pm

Sweet Bradford factor :datass: must put it forward at work at some point.

I actually spend more time telling people to go home than I do dealing with excessive absence. We have a surprisingly good record.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Oblomov Boblomov » Thu Mar 01, 2018 6:07 pm

The Director called me and another manager in to a meeting today and asked us to provide any dirt we have on a new manager that she can add to the case she's built to justify sacking her. She's been here about 6 weeks :lol: :fp:.

Another one bites the dust.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by smurphy » Thu Mar 01, 2018 6:08 pm

Your place of work sounds like an absolute strawberry floating hell hole.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Oblomov Boblomov » Thu Mar 01, 2018 6:12 pm

Makes me wonder just how close I must have come to the chopping block in December 2016 when I was posting in here about how much I'd pissed her off.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Green Gecko » Thu Mar 01, 2018 6:33 pm

Tafdolphin wrote:For me I'm almost totally at sea when charging for a job. I did some quick research and came to the conclusion that charging per word is my best bet at the moment as I have no metrics to base a per hour charge off of. I'm going to set my prices around the average of the big proofreading houses (so around £0.01 per word below 30 000) which is, as far as I can see, still cheaper than your average freelancer proofreader, and we'll see where we go from there. I still have no idea how long the job is so I imagine they'll be some wiggle room too.

The danger with pricing in a quantitative measure like that, rather than a qualitative or value based price approach,is that it cannot possibly account for extended correspondence, that you should put down as your consultation component - the kind of valuable opinions that are often worth more in what they achieve enlightening the customer than the product itself. So think carefully about how perhaps you could use this as part of your price calculation, but not the basis of it. How can you add value on top of the raw material? What makes you better than someone else? Also consider this: the lowest paying customers are the most demanding. When you price low, or commoditise something into a very tiny brick-by-brick component with a low $ value, additional work seems insignificant, even if it isn't. So you get more demands on your time and more requests for small changes and the expected payment is say £1 for re-opening a project when your time could be better spent on the next one at 10x the earnings.

Tafdolphin wrote:I encouraged her to instead seek the whole amount as, strawberry float it, she wasn't doing this gooseberry fool for fun. She was a bit worried she might get a push-back as it was a large amount of money, but it was handed over without comment.

I'm so pleased to hear the simple advice "charge more" has helped someone. it is so often the case of "don't ask don't get". And with regards to reneging on payment terms or complaining about them and potentially not paying, this is very dangerous territory for businesspeople and you need to avoid it. This talk should help:



And I just got this from Brennan Dunn who is worth reading: https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/start ... -business/

Hime wrote:I have no idea about the industry you're in GG but I've always used people both privately and professionally based mainly on reputation. Having someone that you know will do the job you want done without hassle always works out cheaper.

Fabrication/Machining/Signage. I may be wrong but iirc you have been in a position with a good amount of resources, and absolutely yes, doing something expediently and with guaranteed quality is a value, not just a price component. I imagine therefore that you were a good client to work for, because there is low possibility of being paid less than you're worth, or being refused payments or not paid at all. Concerning reputation, I have never, ever heard of someone even saying yet alone winning a job because someone said, "That's great but I know someone who can do this cheaper." What is good about cheap? It is normally always worse. Triple constraints of project management / cost triangle etc. So I have converted leads into winning bids because I am known for quality, and not using the cheapest materials, or even for not being cheap. And it's on that same basis that referrals are made and reputation brings the supplier to someone like you. I really doubt that person had a reputation for being cheap, someone can be expensive and still be good value.

It's hard when faced with so much competition that the easiest solution to compete (but not a solution at all and a very good way to fail) seems to be to price as low as possible.

I actually think I picked this up from a business mentoring sign at Barclays of all places.

At the end of the day, nobody wants to buy a load of gooseberry fool. And quite often that is what you get for peanuts. Far more people understand than novice businesspeople realise that value is a basic tenet of expensive products, as well as cheap ones. The point is that value is not intrinsically equal to price, it's a personal assessment made by the customer based on the proposition. There are many other factors and it's important to target those to build a trusted brand and prevent your life from becoming far more difficult than it needs to be.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Rocsteady » Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:39 pm

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:The Director called me and another manager in to a meeting today and asked us to provide any dirt we have on a new manager that she can add to the case she's built to justify sacking her. She's been here about 6 weeks :lol: :fp:.

Another one bites the dust.

Surely that's the director strawberry floating up. Unless the new manager lied through her teeth during the interview process they should have known roughly what to expect.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Oblomov Boblomov » Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:48 pm

Rocsteady wrote:
Oblomov Boblomov wrote:The Director called me and another manager in to a meeting today and asked us to provide any dirt we have on a new manager that she can add to the case she's built to justify sacking her. She's been here about 6 weeks :lol: :fp:.

Another one bites the dust.

Surely that's the director strawberry floating up. Unless the new manager lied through her teeth during the interview process they should have known roughly what to expect.

It's actually someone who was on maternity leave. She held a managerial position in another department a year ago and was posted in my area on her return. The director threatened her resignation over it because her mates had told her she's useless, but obviously didn't follow through with it and is now just going to get the other one sacked instead.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Frank » Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:58 pm

Is all this not a string of unfair dismissal lawsuits waiting to happen? :dread:

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Oblomov Boblomov » Thu Mar 01, 2018 10:21 pm

It almost certainly should be... she seems somehow untouchable.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Green Gecko » Fri Mar 02, 2018 6:04 am

It's because of this sort of thing that I seek to be unfirable.

But instead I suffer stuff like tipping off a prospect about a problem and then seeing it magically fixed a week or month later by someone else :(

"It should be common sense to just accept the message Nintendo are sending out through their actions."
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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Qikz » Fri Mar 02, 2018 6:14 pm

I am at a complete and absolute loss. I don't understand what is going on anymore.

I've been acting like I always have, been doing more tickets than anyone again and working at a high standard and today I got pulled into my bosses office and given 1 step off of a disciplinary (a letter of concern) because I've been waiting for everyone to have lunch to go so we don't leave the desks unmanned and because I have an attitude problem.

Not one person has ever said I've had an attitude problem. I don't understand anything about this company. I'm just at a complete loss of words.

The Watching Artist wrote:I feel so inept next to Qikz...
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PostRe: The Work Thread
by 7256930752 » Fri Mar 02, 2018 6:26 pm

Qikz wrote:I am at a complete and absolute loss. I don't understand what is going on anymore.

I've been acting like I always have, been doing more tickets than anyone again and working at a high standard and today I got pulled into my bosses office and given 1 step off of a disciplinary (a letter of concern) because I've been waiting for everyone to have lunch to go so we don't leave the desks unmanned and because I have an attitude problem.

Not one person has ever said I've had an attitude problem. I don't understand anything about this company. I'm just at a complete loss of words.

Does the boss have a problem with you or are they close to someone who might have a problem with you. I've only ever known people to be told they have an attitide problem because one or two people have a problem with them.

Do they see you staying behind at lunch as being antisocial?

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Tafdolphin
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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Tafdolphin » Fri Mar 02, 2018 6:32 pm

Qikz wrote:I am at a complete and absolute loss. I don't understand what is going on anymore.

I've been acting like I always have, been doing more tickets than anyone again and working at a high standard and today I got pulled into my bosses office and given 1 step off of a disciplinary (a letter of concern) because I've been waiting for everyone to have lunch to go so we don't leave the desks unmanned and because I have an attitude problem.

Not one person has ever said I've had an attitude problem. I don't understand anything about this company. I'm just at a complete loss of words.


A letter of concern is super drastic, but is it a small office by any chance? It could be that by staying behind at lunch you aren't fitting with the demographic of staff they want. Like, I worked in a 5 person office once, and the new bloke who never socialised was eventually dismissed as an outsider as he never joined us for anything social (we'd pop down the pub most lunches).

It's not right, it's not right at all, but it can easily happen in close-knit working groups. But like I say, there's no way a letter of concern is appropriate. Did you ask him to go into more detail?

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Night Call: Out now!
Rip Them Off: Out now!
Chinatown Detective Agency: 2021!
EXOGATE Initiative: Early Access Summer 2021
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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Qikz » Fri Mar 02, 2018 6:34 pm

The rule is that we were meant to go to lunch between 12 and 2. Me and my friend always went at 2, but because 4-5 people always went at half 1 it meant we could never leave until half 2 and there was never a moment before then we could go. He sees this as disrespecting a managerial decision as I've done that for over a year and nobody has ever complained to me.

He was the person who got me into the company as he believed he could help me gain confidence and he's supported me 100% up until now. It's only recently when suddenly the person they spoke about firing 3 weeks ago in a management meeting suddenly was made SLA manager and she seems to have a problem with me that I suddenly lost my promotion and now this.

I've apologies to said person, because it's nothing to do with them and I have 0 problem with them at all, but now I feel completely helpless and I'm worried I'm on the verge of losing my job. He keeps repeating that even if I get a disciplinary I won't be fired and he doesn't want to lose me, but he wants me to go back to how I used to be and as someone who hasn't really changed I don't get what I need to do.

Whenever I get called to his office I get really nervous and just can't explain anything or ask him for anything, especially after last week I'm just terrified they're trying to find a reason to fire me. Despite the fact I perform better than anyone else (there's facts to back this up) and I know I'm paid less than people that just joined 6 months ago :|

The Watching Artist wrote:I feel so inept next to Qikz...
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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Green Gecko » Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:17 pm

Welcome to office politics.

It's extremely important you try to handle this tacitly and speak honestly about any reasons you could even imagine why you might look like you are anti-social. The response is, "sorry boss, it wont happen again".

It is strawberry floating bullshit and I got given an ear tugging within a week of an old call centre job because I was taking lunch too late despite having my manager's authorisation to do so, it was "either take lunch or don't take it at all". Yeah great, make me starve because I'm working hard. :roll:

In my experience two things can happen here: you well up and get confused as you should because you're a work oriented person and "attitude" is basically made up bullshit for people that don't like you even if you work well, or you stand your ground and speak openly about what is happening. Make whatever changes necessary and bear with going to lunch at the same time as everyone else, toe the line just a bit because otherwise the above outsider thing will probably happen. It's just part of office politics, bullshit made up rules.

Basically pretend you're autistic and have to solve everyone else's problem's by doing the normal thing because strawberry float figuring out why that is.

If you are pursued continually for bullshit reasons I would suggest finding another company so you can keep your reason for moving as a "change of pace" or "looking for a more challenging work environment" that doesn't include wah-wah that guy is different, wah why can't I be a maverick like him, look at that badass taking lunch after doing all his work.

strawberry floating cretins. I hope you make it through buddy.

I honestly think in 5-10 years on your trajectory you can consult and contract for crazy money and take lunch whenever the strawberry float you want so it won't be like this forever. Because you are self-motivated and goal-driven individual who is observant and knows what is important - solving the customer's problems.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by False » Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:26 pm

Is he seeing you as being bitter or withdrawn about the demotion? Are you sat there all day quiet and reserved? Clocking in and clocking out, just going by the book?

Before you got this job you seemed to be the above and beyond kind of person. Are you now just doing your job?

I think its understandable that your behaviour and mood may have changed, however subtly, and thats what he might be reading. Might be guilty about the demotion and you clearly being pissed off.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Oblomov Boblomov » Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:33 pm

I think you've had an extended honeymoon period and are now entering the world of office politics. It's a vicious beast and it shows no mercy.

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PostRe: The Work Thread
by Green Gecko » Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:47 pm

You're both right.

Unfortunately "just doing the job" isn't enough for a job these days, you have to be chipper, even if your job strawberry floating sucks.

I had an internship like that. "It is not enough to treat the internship* like a job at the local council office, for example, unfortunately. There are many talented people waiting for the privelege of the opportunity that has been extended to you blahblah I'm self-absorbed, emotionless banana split who chooses to illegally employ young people"

*1st job was unpaid internship in a grotty office in Soho working for a strawberry floating nutcase who didn't even follow company standards and sneered at me if I ate lunch and called me homophobic names in emails and told to "shut the strawberry float up" in discussions

I had no money, was commuting in the pissing rain in autumn through London 7am-8pm and receiving none of the promised training/mentoring support to actually be able to learn anything of value on the job, while putting work on 4OD

Sadly psychopaths tend to make it into management so you will experience it.

"It should be common sense to just accept the message Nintendo are sending out through their actions."
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PostRe: The Work Thread
by shadow202 » Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:03 pm

To add in two cents here do all you can to make sure it doesn't turn into a 'us' and 'them' thing or you'll be fighting a losing battle forever


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