The Work Thread

Has anyone else experienced work experience people quitting after the first day?

Seems like a pretty bad way to get work experience, unless you like farming around and wasting a whole load of people's time.

Literal days of preparation and expenses wasted mostly on health and safety

At my last job I'd say 75% of the work experience people we got either left immediately or at least before they were meant to. One guy never came back from his lunch break, another never showed up the next day. Some of them took sick days more and more often to the point they might as well have not been doing it. Others stayed but put in the minimum possible effort without getting told to go home. There were a couple who were really enthusiastic and worked hard, but they were rare.

Most of them were otherwise unemployed 18-20 year olds who didn't go to uni or college and were more or less forced to do it. I'm not sure if that's the case with you, if so I'd say it's to be expected. I wouldn't be discouraged though, what you do sounds like exactly the sort of thing that would be really enjoyable for someone who had a bit of passion.

It was a 21 year old furniture and product design student at a good university and I'd reviewed their portfolio and planned work them. Ages writing emails offering advice and support on how not to be taken advantage of. Even wrote them a contract outlining their rights and shared intellectual property rights on work. I'm just glad I didn't spend another £140 on a space to work.

Asked a few people and it's the same, I don't really get why you would repeatedly enquire for a work experience opportunity, say it's all very exciting, agree to a work plan and then quit after a single day.

It was only 3 days during holiday getting a short lift in from outside town so hardly asking for a massive commitment in return for my mentorship and blocking up half my week.

Oh well, 2 days of my life back I suppose.

And it was kind of obvious we weren't going to be making furniture by even a cursory glance at anything I've said or shown on my various online presence where she found me. We had meant to design and prototype a desk tidy for CNC fabrication that they literally do at university and most people don't have that facility. Not even serious woodcrafters.

It's almost as if she expected to just do stuff without any kind if input or oversight or teaching - what's the point of that? That isn't work it's just doing gooseberry fool with someone else's facilities. She wrote that she didn't feel she could contribute, which makes no sense as I had her doing actual making tasks for end customer. Isn't that what practical art students want?

Good luck getting an actual design job, I guess. I gave her the pretty solid heads up that after uni she'll spend 90% of her time doing things she doesn't necessarily find the most exciting thing.

Trained on a machine and process she'd never seen and would likely never learn otherwise. I'll probably be keeping my valuable experience closer to my chest.

She said thank you, but I still consider it a dick move. Kids these days eh.

Maybe she got a better offer elsewhere? A big company name would look better on her CV.

Nope, she'd already done 1 or 2 other work experience placements this summer and goes back to uni next week.

I honestly think she just couldn't be arsed and discredited herself to get out of it.

Still cheesed off and just received a medical kit I wasted money on in case she sliced her hands open on my router. And now I can't afford other gooseberry fool. I don't need two of every piece of protective gear either. Couldn't even be bothered to show up for the work that required that.

A learning experience to perhaps not automatically believe the best intentions, I can kind of understand how hard it is to get work experience in stuff you want to do now!

I guess in the future I need to properly figure out whether late teens/early 20s have the same degree of passion you have to do to survive in this line of work.. even if you're not totally in love with the tasks at hand, that's what the real world is like.

For instance I hate postage and dispatch, chasing clients, accounting is hardly fun but I still have to do it (and an entry level role in a design field will be mostly that boring stuff until you've proven you can be trusted on the work that really matters - the product! For example probably 80% of the job leads I received as an art graduate were "Creative Account Manager" i.e. a lot of emails.)

Reality will swing round eventually but at least you can try to give students a heads up before their head is buried in the sand.

Creative Account Manager
Hygiene Technician
Landscaping Designer

Really strawberry floated off about something. For the past year or so theyve offered an early shift and a late shift. So 8-430 early 9-530 normal and 930-6 late. Over the past two months of being stuck in our office ive been doing the early shift every day ive been in and ive been 100% happier. It meant you have an hour before where the phones are quiet so you can actually focus on all the work you have and get things done.

Theyre now in their infinite wisdom cutting it from two people to one on the early shift meaning my colleague gets to do it for the next month and I dont. Am I wrong for being pissed off? The early shift means I get half hour less sleep but in the end of it all get an hour extra in the evening which I enjoy. This strawberry floating sucks for me :/

Now not only am I doing two roles at once meaning I cant focus on either one, still not getting promoted, but I also have to work hours I dont want to :/

If only you hadn't made that mistake.

I'm just strawberry floated off with the fact that every brilliant idea they seem to have to make things better always seem to negatively affect me without making any positive difference at all.

I'd been taking lunch at 3PM for instance for a year and suddenly they decided they didn't want people to go at 3 as it was too late, but surprise surprise it wasn't any easier for everyone else by strawberry floating around with the lunchtimes, it's just made it harder. It's like they don't even pay attention to what is actually going on.

For instance, in my time in every morning I clear pretty much every alert ticket. That's usually between 20-40 tickets that won't be in the queue in time for everyone else to get in at 9, meaniing there's much less for everyone else to worrry about. No though, it's never busy between 8 and 9. strawberry float off.

<]:^D wrote:Creative Account Manager
Hygiene Technician
Landscaping Designer

Ive had at least 2 property manager job leads, lol

As for taking lunch at 3, I once had a tough talking to by not one but two managers for taking lunch because I hadn't yet, and with my line managers authorisation. They said either take lunch 1-2 or don't take it all. Well thanks.

yeah we have a sort of rule that they must all be done by 2 which I always thought as odd.

I tend to go whenever I feel like where I am, everyone else has a sort of rota but I kind of do my own thing.

Tend to do my own thing about working as well, there is a core of customers I work with and run their world in terms of endpoint management, collaboration and windows deployment but outside of that I am free to play with whatever I feel like without interruption, it works well as they get a stream of ideas and potential products or services and I get to do my thing at my own pace, while also spending a fair chunk on time on totally non work stuff, see GRView and the Quote chains thread for details.

First day back after four weeks on the sick and I feel like everyone's looking at me(they aren't, I'm being wildly irrational). Never doing that again.

Sad how it's even more awkward with mental health. "What the hell was wrong with you? You don't look like you're missing any parts."

Edit: Extremely irony in the assumption it was not , in either case I am glad you are fit for work again

Qikz wrote:Really strawberry floated off about something. For the past year or so theyve offered an early shift and a late shift. So 8-430 early 9-530 normal and 930-6 late. Over the past two months of being stuck in our office ive been doing the early shift every day ive been in and ive been 100% happier. It meant you have an hour before where the phones are quiet so you can actually focus on all the work you have and get things done.

Theyre now in their infinite wisdom cutting it from two people to one on the early shift meaning my colleague gets to do it for the next month and I dont. Am I wrong for being pissed off? The early shift means I get half hour less sleep but in the end of it all get an hour extra in the evening which I enjoy. This strawberry floating sucks for me :/

You’re not wrong, but people seem to have issues with people that work early. It’s almost like they think you are getting away with something if you leave at 4 or 4.30 rather than 5 or 5.30.

I remember a place I used to work asked us to do an hour a day overtime to catch up on backlogs. I was on an 8-4 shift and so started working 7-4 to pick up an extra hour a day. I was told that that was unacceptable as I would be claiming overtime while leaving at 4. I asked why that made any difference and was told that people working until 5 would assume I wasn’t working any extra. I pointed out that it worked the same the other way around, how would I know the late shift people would be there until 6. No real answer to that and so I never bothered doing any overtime for them ever again. In fact I remember it pissed me off so much that I literally wouldn’t start work until 8, took exactly one hour for lunch and left at the absolute second that the clock turned 4.

I hate small minded thinking like that. That's one good thing about my current department, they know I'm willing to stay late to get work done, and always do my hours, so don't say anything when I arrive 15 mins late in the morning. A bit of common sense.

Moggy wrote:

Qikz wrote:Really strawberry floated off about something. For the past year or so theyve offered an early shift and a late shift. So 8-430 early 9-530 normal and 930-6 late. Over the past two months of being stuck in our office ive been doing the early shift every day ive been in and ive been 100% happier. It meant you have an hour before where the phones are quiet so you can actually focus on all the work you have and get things done.

Theyre now in their infinite wisdom cutting it from two people to one on the early shift meaning my colleague gets to do it for the next month and I dont. Am I wrong for being pissed off? The early shift means I get half hour less sleep but in the end of it all get an hour extra in the evening which I enjoy. This strawberry floating sucks for me :/

You’re not wrong, but people seem to have issues with people that work early. It’s almost like they think you are getting away with something if you leave at 4 or 4.30 rather than 5 or 5.30.

I remember a place I used to work asked us to do an hour a day overtime to catch up on backlogs. I was on an 8-4 shift and so started working 7-4 to pick up an extra hour a day. I was told that that was unacceptable as I would be claiming overtime while leaving at 4. I asked why that made any difference and was told that people working until 5 would assume I wasn’t working any extra. I pointed out that it worked the same the other way around, how would I know the late shift people would be there until 6. No real answer to that and so I never bothered doing any overtime for them ever again. In fact I remember it pissed me off so much that I literally wouldn’t start work until 8, took exactly one hour for lunch and left at the absolute second that the clock turned 4.

Absolutely hate this, and know exactly what you mean. It always pisses me off when managers try and call you out for taking a few extra minutes on break but never say anything about you staying late.

I just think people should be treated like adults who can compensate in sensible ways.

I think some managers don't like compromise as they think it undermines their authority. Someone who I work with replaced all the paper in the printer with used paper for 'environmental reasons', even after I pointed out that it could lead to paper jams. After I spent 30 minutes trying to print eight pages at 3:30am because of strawberry floating paper jams, I pointed out that the best way to be environmentally friendly was to not print anything in the first place, to turn off computers when not in use and so on. Response from the manager was 'I do not want to discuss this'.

I just want to vent about one of my work colleagues. I started working at this place a couple of months ago and he started on the same day, but some of his opinions are driving me up the wall.

He's been going about how great his laptop is endlessly and how it's more powerful than most laptops built today. It's running a core2extreme and some old nvidia card.

He told me that he didn't believe in modern physics and that he had made up his own physics model. He reckons he finished top of his class at University in physics so he is qualified to speak authoritatively on the subject. Even though it was an undergraduate degree. He also said that assembly language is far easier to program than Java and that Visual Basic is a more advanced language than Java. Also he kept talking about how amazing all his previous jobs were even though he's taken a job as a junior developer.

He also has terrible breath that sinks out the office cubical every time he speaks.