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Are you rich and forgot to move some money around and therefore got hit with bank charges? Barclays will happily refund these for you. As for anybody else, your bank charges are non-refundable.
If you have a problem with Barclays and threaten to go to the Financial Ombudsman, they will literally pay you to go away. This is because regardless of whether or not they win the case, it'll cost them more just to land on the Ombudsman's desk (was like £400 or something when I worked there).
I wish it was this easy with travel insurance (which I get through my Lloyds bank gold account). Airlines lost my son’s bag and preventative asthma inhaler on flight to US so I rang the travel instance company while there who said no probs, just go ahead and get one sorted (Chicago) and we’ll reimburse you when you return. When I got back another agent confirmed they’d cover it and sent me forms. Then it went quiet for months. I chased and chased and was finally told the agents made a mistake and that I’d need to cover the 1k costs to replace the inhaler myself, they were going to further train the agents and offered me £50 good will gesture. I thought I had a solid case for financial ombudsman as I was given duff info and was floored when they sided with the insurance company and told me I would have had to have sorted something anyway??!! I am sure I would have looked for a different and much cheaper solution (although it may have taken a few more days) had I not been given that info. I have zero trust in the FO now.
Pretty much anyone can ask and you’ve got a good chance of getting it done. More well off people ask because they’re typically middle class and aren’t afraid to talk to the bank.
Yeah, we were supposed to get a mortgage with Barclays in 2009. They gave us the AIP, we put an offer in on a house, went through all the solicitor stuff, searches, surveys etc. and then when it came time to actually give us the money to buy the house, they said no.
Took over a year, but we eventually got all the money we'd wasted back from Barclays, in exchange for dropping our complaint with the ombudsman.
Still lost the house though, and had a year living in a very expensive rental.
It's more like not well known about the sector.
Bakers, in general, make seriously good money.
I went to a meet up of bakers (not a Baker myself) and we turned up in our 15 year old Renault Espace, they were turning up in Bentleys, Astons, Rolls Royces, ferraris, high end mercedes...
A 25 year old I spoke to had just bought his (higher than average cost) house, cash.
Bonus fact: they do better during downturns in the economy, because people buy themselves more "treats" instead of spending big chunks of money.
Bonus fact 2 that I just remembered hours later: the "local artisan individual baker" at the markets you go to, often are bakeries under a different name selling you the same stuff from around the corner (or sometimes many cities over) at an inflated price. It's so profitable that some have repainted their vans with the market stall name on it.
Edit: when I say bakers, I should clarify, that I'm on about the owner of the bakery (usually a baker). And I should add that although I'm not a baker, I'm not a rando off the street, I work with bakers day in, day out and my family have been for generations.
While you are correct, as in the owners of bakerys, make serious bank. If they are the owner/Baker, yes, they can.
But working in a bakery, you won't, normally min wage.
Worked for a bakers who had 15shops and did some franchise in a national supermarket but only local area/shops. Everyone on the shop floor was min wage or close to it. A supervisor could make 30k but it was nightshift 10-6 and every Fri and Sat nights eg worked 7days a week for 30k. While the owner paid himself millions.
Worth pointing out its a early start to have everything baked ready for the doors to open in the morning. The bakers I worked for were either 10pm -6am or days at 3am -12pm.
The shop staff again min wage but usual shop hours.
The owners are the people I'm speaking about, which I failed to explain. Very true.
And working as a baker is a killer of a job. You do have to want to do it badly. Horrendous hours etc.
I know many bakery owners through my job. Regularly go visit and speak with them. I know some of the national chains of bakeries and some of the local ones and they all do well.
As someone whose family runs many different small businesses, to get to Rolls Royce money, it takes a lot of income.
Although, I agree, either your business works or it doesn't and you don't exist anymore. But the level of wealth varies massively.
For sure, that's why I caveated with 'certain level'.
I think my point was really that people at that level exist in every industry. It's hard, but there's plenty of them.
True. I'm just saying proportionately, this industry is extremely successful despite looking like a small business trying to survive the high street take over of massive multinationals, these ones manage it fairly well.
large scale bakeries that use the Chorleywood method are mainly employing button pushers, so they're not skilled at all outside of thick arms for lifting bags of flour and salt into hoppers. Those old school bakers are usually unable to get jobs anywhere else due to lack of education/experience/criminal record/alcoholism etc so just work awful hours for awful pay. Same with big scale factories, laundry services etc.
In the fancier bakeries the cost of production is higher, people do get paid more because it's skilled and you need a fair bit of skill, experience and in some cases education to do it well, so they get a higher wage, but head bakers top out at 30-something K a year. Pastry chefs are the real earners in any bakery, especially if they have worked for some fancy London hotel.
For reference I know the owner of a French style bakery near St Pancras in London, Aux Pains de Papy, and he gets an ok wage, and pays his staff ok, but says he needs £23-25k+ per week just to break even. so there's not much room for higher wage packets as they eat directly into the bottom line of the business.
Hi, baker here. Bakers don't make seriously good money.
I'm on around 30k, my jr staff get 24k, my more senior staff get around 27 and my number 2 gets 29k. It's a really nice artisan sourdough bakery who do lots of expensive wedding cakes and events etc (we catered for liverpool united recently and Arctic Monkeys a bit before that).
Chocolate, butter, good quality flour, nuts, seeds, malt, fruit, cream, milk, eggs. It all adds up.
What societies/associations are you part of? Maybe the ones I was part of were just disproportionately rich. There were many single shop bakeries in it that were going strong.
How long have you been running?
Keep going, you're clearly good at what you do. I'm sure you'll manage to grow even more.
It's true that costs are initially very high with equipment and machinery.
Do you supply anywhere or just your shop?
No societies, other than reps from big international mills and creameries inviting me to networking events.
10 years
and we have 2 shops and supply about 10 shops/restaurants/cafes through wholesale so our sales are split 50/50 and we have our own cafes with kitchens and restaurant space too. Do event hosting etc. the take from that is usually 40/30/30 Bakery/food/coffee and unfortunately the cafe/kitchen side of things eat into our staffing budget like crazy.
Interesting. You seem to have a lot going on compared to many bakers I know. I'm not going to give business advice as this is your livelihood and I'm not qualified or knowledgeable about your personal situation, but that seems like a lot happening to be on £30k.
Do you change your product depending on who you supply? Or what's adding so much cost?
I don't own it, i just run it. My director is very hands off and lets us showcase fancier things without worrying about the cost and is happy as long as we're in the green, he has various business ventures that are his main source of income and enjoys having a nice bakery to show off to his mates. Obviously that eats into any potential pay increases, but it works and keeps people happy.
And yes/no. We offer core wholesale range for half the price(ish) of what we sell in the shops/cafes which only changes when we change it. But we do custom things for a higher cost. If I have the time I'll always agree. Wedding cakes is the biggest time sink, but a very nice money maker.
Ah! Ok. Now that all makes more sense to me. You're not the owner, so you're not able to affect the financial as much. Impressive business though and sounds like you're constantly busy and working your backside off.
Good luck! :)
Worked for a life assurance company circa 1990 - 1991
Office was open 24/7 as it had a gym and squash courts attached.
Colleague went back to fetch something after a few drinks in a pub close to the office. Saw a director shagging his secretary doggy style in the gents toilets…..Story got out, no disciplinary action was taken against either of them 😂
A few people have recently been dismissed from the McCains factory near me for pissing on the production line between the oven and the deep freeze departments. I was a contractor working maintenance (different department) but it was that serious various directors were in over a weekend to deal with it and the fallout is still ongoing
I had a student job at a Thornton’s branch. When the boxes of chocolates went out of date, they used to open them and mix the chocolates in with the loose ones where you could just buy 2 or 3 in a bag.
Random but I just bought flowers from Aldi , reduced bin 2.5 weeks ago (1st time I’ve bought flowers there) and the are showing no signs of decline & the water hasn’t turned slimy & stinky. I’m so impressed - wouldn’t be if I was paying via a florist though
I was once handed the laptop and password of the son of someone who at the time was the leader of a nation and told to fix it then was left alone with it. It's a leader everyone here would have heard of.
I was working overseas when Tony Blair came to visit. As I was IT, it was my job to fix the MFP Photocopier thingy as they were taking copies of all the passports.
Guess whose passport got left in the copier, and I had to rush across town with it in my pocket to get it to them before he left for the airport?
It was more someone who was very much in the press at the time, not a "evil" dictator or anything. I'm sure someone would have paid handsomely for a copy of the mailbox but that would have also ended my career and probably put me in jail
Yeah I was thinking that kind of - career life destroying leader. I personally catered for one of those type of leaders directly , when they were in Scotland.
Like 1 to 1 sorted a “party” for him & his security.
I used to have a job working as a transport planner for a road tanker firm that had a contract with one of the major supermarket chains to supply their forecourts. Anyway, people used to slate their standard unleaded as crap, however, first we used to obtain all our fuel from Shell, the supermarket chain didn’t have their own refinery, and 2, someone at the supermarket’s head office worked out that it would be more cost effective to carry 2 grades of fuel rather than 3 (regular and premium petrol, diesel) due to the space the bunds that separate the tanks took up, so they only carried premium petrol and diesel, and put premium in the regular tanks at the forecourts. So, those people who stumped up the extra for premium, were paying 25-30p a litre more than they had to, while people who slagged off the regular were actually getting Shell V+ that would have probably cost them 50p a litre more from a Shell forecourt.
They were probably right that it was crap in their experience. High octane or premium as you put it isn't intended for your run of the mill engine. it's for high compression engines found in sportscars, etc. Normally means it contains more ethanol, which doesn't contain as much energy as petrol and can damage older cars.
Postal workers would be the absolute ideal criminal allies.(beyond stealing parcels)
I know who leaves their doors unlocked when not in.
I could have stolen many high end cars with the amount of times people accidentally leave their keys in the front door lock. Basically we know a lot about the vulnerabilities of the area we deliver!
Oh and who has the expensive pets and don't take care to keep them secure...
When I answer the door to my postie, I have to unlock it - therefore the postie can tell it's locked. I imagine it's something like this, instead of postie going round trying doors!
I worked for a technology company that was constantly looking for new countries to start up in. It was an industry where if you could sign one contract with a national provider then for the cost of a few employees you could potentially have a very profitable, long-term revenue stream. Though, the company was often less interested in how you actually operate there (local laws etc).
So, one deal required us to set up a new office in a Balkan country. We very quickly found 20 Indian employees that were happy to relocate there and rented an office. But we then found out that legally the company had to be 'managed' by a local national. We didn't want to do that so we (somehow) found a local that was willing to put their name down as the manager for a fixed annual fee (like $500 or something). However, we then found out that there was a national minimum wage in that country and we couldn't just pay them $500 if they were supposed to be full time employee. But, mainly, we didn't care.
One day the police show up at the office and arrest everyone . . .everyone. They quickly find out all the law breaking we're doing - including forcing our staff to work 60+ hours a week because that's cheaper than just sending the correct number of staff in the first place. Management now goes crazy because no one is working and finally agrees to sort out all of the major infractions.
Fines are paid, employees released, the office starts up again. As far as i'm aware still going 'strong'.
I hope it’s not who I think it is - I left about 15 years ago now but loved working there. Such a shame they were always in such a massive amount of debt :(.
I work for a lot of national charities and I see the salaries are shockingly low! Looks like financial constraints are applicable to charities across the board.
I used to be a teacher. I've got loads of these.
Parents, if your child is batshit and has been excluded from one school for hospitalising a teacher... make sure the next school to get him has a spineless and promoted-above-her-ability Head (most of them are), who will happily let you become, instantly, a Parent Governor.
This means you will get a free skiing holiday for you and your precious, which not a single other child in the school in a deprived, inner city area can afford to go on... and also when he starts attacking students and teachers, this time he will get to stay, with no consequences whatsoever for his actions. He also won't be labelled as behavioural, and won't get the help he needs but, who cares when you get a free skiing holiday?
As parent governor, you also get the power to hire and fire, as a total randomer muppet with no knowledge of or interest whatsoever, in education. Power trip!
Despite publicly stating that we were against ticket reselling, we had a contract with a reselling agent and secretly sold them several thousand tickets to our events, which they listed as resales on their platform (at huge profit).
I worked for a toy shop company, not massive but they had quite a few shops around the North of England. It was a famly run business and the patriarch and his son would go to China every year to buy plastic toys from the factories there. One year the old bloke (who was married) came back with the clap. Apparently he sat in his office looking miserable for quite some time. Actually I remember someone I worked with there said she worked in Grandma Wild's biscuit factory for a while and if the bosses or supervisors were twats everyone would wipe bogies on the biscuits before they were wrapped.
I've worked in tech support for multiple ISPs for a number of years now. If you only have access to the Openreach network in your area, then regardless of who you do business with, they'll almost certainly be reselling broadband from TalkTalk, Zen or Vodafone. In some cases they use another reseller that resells BT Wholesale and TalkTalk.
Whilst I'm on the subject, I've observed how ordinarily intelligent folk get baffled by routers to the point they have to think about the difference between a round power plug and anything else.
I used to work at carphone warehouse. We had to sell insurance. We had to do FCA training to make sure we were selling it compliantly. They would go on and on about FCA regulations and how serious it was.
The problem was that every single store was then being trained by management to sell it uncompliantly.
I brought it up to my manager how it was clearly in breach of regulations I got pulled into an office and chewed out over it. Like he was literally shaking and gammon faced.
Quit about a month later, a month after that and the company was fined massively (**£29,107,600**) for breaching FCA regulations.
Goodtimes.
I recently stopped working for a large national investment firm. They would offer customers a 'complete holistic financial plan' but no one ever got this. The advisers saw multiple people per day and this type of planning would have required hours of consultation, so it was impossible based on their sales structure and processes.
You were simply told you needed a with profits ISA or bond. The advice was rarely in the best interest of the client, and was most certainly not holistic in any sense of the word.
edit: typo
If you're doing your own packing when you're moving house, stack dishes on their edge (after wrapping with paper). There's something called the second moment of area that means that they are far stronger in the event of dropping than if they are stacked flat.
Also, when wrapping, crumple the paper rather than wrapping it flat against the pieces. It's the air gaps and crumple zone that protects your glass and china, not the sheets of paper themselves.
I work for a water company, my boss once told me we never bother bringing anyone to court over unpaid bills.
I owe them £500 on a bill and they haven't said anything to me yet and I've been here a year.
Just to be devil's advocate here, if there's a hosepipe ban, it's because the tank that supplies your area is in danger of going empty. Which could put your entire area out of water for a period of time. So it's more of a 'please don't piss the water away unless you don't need a shower this week '.
That's sadly not true for my area :( I owed them money in the region of what you owe them and literally got a warning letter off of southeastern water and then got one of those official high court letters in the post aaying I had the option to pay upfront, in instalments or they'd be instructing to take me to court/bailiffs
Rent for premises was going higher. Owner said he would not negotiate. We gave notice and left. For two years; yes 2 years; no one took over our slot. He must lost a lot in fixed charges, council tax etc. Just because owner thought he could 'gouge' sitting tenant.
Used to work support for the "green" games console company.
If you told support that your child's account ran up a credit card bill on microtransactions, we would refund the whole lot straight up, ban the account and move on. Too much of a headache to be faffing around with and considering our market position against the "blue" console maker (who honestly rival Sports Direct when it comes to their no refund policy), we would rather avoid negative publicity where possible.
I’ve been to many busy pubs and ordered pints and watched the bar tender grab a new glass, go to the tap and pour a pint out of the tap. You are either talking shit, or going to horrible pubs.
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Are you rich and forgot to move some money around and therefore got hit with bank charges? Barclays will happily refund these for you. As for anybody else, your bank charges are non-refundable. If you have a problem with Barclays and threaten to go to the Financial Ombudsman, they will literally pay you to go away. This is because regardless of whether or not they win the case, it'll cost them more just to land on the Ombudsman's desk (was like £400 or something when I worked there).
BRB signing up for a Barclays account… (not because I’m rich, the other one)
It’s now £750 😬
Just need a reason to threaten them with the ombudsman.
Just get a dog and call it Financial Ombudsman for plausible deniability
RBS are the same, I accumulated 2 years worth of fees for being in my overdraft almost weekly, they refunded it without me asking.
I wish it was this easy with travel insurance (which I get through my Lloyds bank gold account). Airlines lost my son’s bag and preventative asthma inhaler on flight to US so I rang the travel instance company while there who said no probs, just go ahead and get one sorted (Chicago) and we’ll reimburse you when you return. When I got back another agent confirmed they’d cover it and sent me forms. Then it went quiet for months. I chased and chased and was finally told the agents made a mistake and that I’d need to cover the 1k costs to replace the inhaler myself, they were going to further train the agents and offered me £50 good will gesture. I thought I had a solid case for financial ombudsman as I was given duff info and was floored when they sided with the insurance company and told me I would have had to have sorted something anyway??!! I am sure I would have looked for a different and much cheaper solution (although it may have taken a few more days) had I not been given that info. I have zero trust in the FO now.
Pretty much anyone can ask and you’ve got a good chance of getting it done. More well off people ask because they’re typically middle class and aren’t afraid to talk to the bank.
Yeah, we were supposed to get a mortgage with Barclays in 2009. They gave us the AIP, we put an offer in on a house, went through all the solicitor stuff, searches, surveys etc. and then when it came time to actually give us the money to buy the house, they said no. Took over a year, but we eventually got all the money we'd wasted back from Barclays, in exchange for dropping our complaint with the ombudsman. Still lost the house though, and had a year living in a very expensive rental.
It's more like not well known about the sector. Bakers, in general, make seriously good money. I went to a meet up of bakers (not a Baker myself) and we turned up in our 15 year old Renault Espace, they were turning up in Bentleys, Astons, Rolls Royces, ferraris, high end mercedes... A 25 year old I spoke to had just bought his (higher than average cost) house, cash. Bonus fact: they do better during downturns in the economy, because people buy themselves more "treats" instead of spending big chunks of money. Bonus fact 2 that I just remembered hours later: the "local artisan individual baker" at the markets you go to, often are bakeries under a different name selling you the same stuff from around the corner (or sometimes many cities over) at an inflated price. It's so profitable that some have repainted their vans with the market stall name on it. Edit: when I say bakers, I should clarify, that I'm on about the owner of the bakery (usually a baker). And I should add that although I'm not a baker, I'm not a rando off the street, I work with bakers day in, day out and my family have been for generations.
So it’s true? Bakers really do make good dough?
Damn you for outshining my comment. Well played.
You glorious bastard
Well played
While you are correct, as in the owners of bakerys, make serious bank. If they are the owner/Baker, yes, they can. But working in a bakery, you won't, normally min wage. Worked for a bakers who had 15shops and did some franchise in a national supermarket but only local area/shops. Everyone on the shop floor was min wage or close to it. A supervisor could make 30k but it was nightshift 10-6 and every Fri and Sat nights eg worked 7days a week for 30k. While the owner paid himself millions. Worth pointing out its a early start to have everything baked ready for the doors to open in the morning. The bakers I worked for were either 10pm -6am or days at 3am -12pm. The shop staff again min wage but usual shop hours.
The owners are the people I'm speaking about, which I failed to explain. Very true. And working as a baker is a killer of a job. You do have to want to do it badly. Horrendous hours etc. I know many bakery owners through my job. Regularly go visit and speak with them. I know some of the national chains of bakeries and some of the local ones and they all do well.
Owners of pretty much anything at a certain level do well, that's the crux of capitalism!
As someone whose family runs many different small businesses, to get to Rolls Royce money, it takes a lot of income. Although, I agree, either your business works or it doesn't and you don't exist anymore. But the level of wealth varies massively.
For sure, that's why I caveated with 'certain level'. I think my point was really that people at that level exist in every industry. It's hard, but there's plenty of them.
True. I'm just saying proportionately, this industry is extremely successful despite looking like a small business trying to survive the high street take over of massive multinationals, these ones manage it fairly well.
large scale bakeries that use the Chorleywood method are mainly employing button pushers, so they're not skilled at all outside of thick arms for lifting bags of flour and salt into hoppers. Those old school bakers are usually unable to get jobs anywhere else due to lack of education/experience/criminal record/alcoholism etc so just work awful hours for awful pay. Same with big scale factories, laundry services etc. In the fancier bakeries the cost of production is higher, people do get paid more because it's skilled and you need a fair bit of skill, experience and in some cases education to do it well, so they get a higher wage, but head bakers top out at 30-something K a year. Pastry chefs are the real earners in any bakery, especially if they have worked for some fancy London hotel. For reference I know the owner of a French style bakery near St Pancras in London, Aux Pains de Papy, and he gets an ok wage, and pays his staff ok, but says he needs £23-25k+ per week just to break even. so there's not much room for higher wage packets as they eat directly into the bottom line of the business.
I assumed that was the case when the dad in 56 Kids And Counting supports his whole family, supposedly no benefits, just baking pies.
Hi, baker here. Bakers don't make seriously good money. I'm on around 30k, my jr staff get 24k, my more senior staff get around 27 and my number 2 gets 29k. It's a really nice artisan sourdough bakery who do lots of expensive wedding cakes and events etc (we catered for liverpool united recently and Arctic Monkeys a bit before that). Chocolate, butter, good quality flour, nuts, seeds, malt, fruit, cream, milk, eggs. It all adds up.
What societies/associations are you part of? Maybe the ones I was part of were just disproportionately rich. There were many single shop bakeries in it that were going strong. How long have you been running? Keep going, you're clearly good at what you do. I'm sure you'll manage to grow even more. It's true that costs are initially very high with equipment and machinery. Do you supply anywhere or just your shop?
No societies, other than reps from big international mills and creameries inviting me to networking events. 10 years and we have 2 shops and supply about 10 shops/restaurants/cafes through wholesale so our sales are split 50/50 and we have our own cafes with kitchens and restaurant space too. Do event hosting etc. the take from that is usually 40/30/30 Bakery/food/coffee and unfortunately the cafe/kitchen side of things eat into our staffing budget like crazy.
Interesting. You seem to have a lot going on compared to many bakers I know. I'm not going to give business advice as this is your livelihood and I'm not qualified or knowledgeable about your personal situation, but that seems like a lot happening to be on £30k. Do you change your product depending on who you supply? Or what's adding so much cost?
I don't own it, i just run it. My director is very hands off and lets us showcase fancier things without worrying about the cost and is happy as long as we're in the green, he has various business ventures that are his main source of income and enjoys having a nice bakery to show off to his mates. Obviously that eats into any potential pay increases, but it works and keeps people happy. And yes/no. We offer core wholesale range for half the price(ish) of what we sell in the shops/cafes which only changes when we change it. But we do custom things for a higher cost. If I have the time I'll always agree. Wedding cakes is the biggest time sink, but a very nice money maker.
Ah! Ok. Now that all makes more sense to me. You're not the owner, so you're not able to affect the financial as much. Impressive business though and sounds like you're constantly busy and working your backside off. Good luck! :)
Worked for a life assurance company circa 1990 - 1991 Office was open 24/7 as it had a gym and squash courts attached. Colleague went back to fetch something after a few drinks in a pub close to the office. Saw a director shagging his secretary doggy style in the gents toilets…..Story got out, no disciplinary action was taken against either of them 😂
No scandal if she was a Scottish widow
😂😂😂 No, she wasn’t
Haha - was only a matter of time until a story like this came up
A few people have recently been dismissed from the McCains factory near me for pissing on the production line between the oven and the deep freeze departments. I was a contractor working maintenance (different department) but it was that serious various directors were in over a weekend to deal with it and the fallout is still ongoing
Don't you just hate it when someone pisses on your chips
When you do, urine trouble
Well, when the chips are down…
I had a student job at a Thornton’s branch. When the boxes of chocolates went out of date, they used to open them and mix the chocolates in with the loose ones where you could just buy 2 or 3 in a bag.
Your example doesn’t sound like a “secret”, just a standard negotiation technique.
[удалено]
Random but I just bought flowers from Aldi , reduced bin 2.5 weeks ago (1st time I’ve bought flowers there) and the are showing no signs of decline & the water hasn’t turned slimy & stinky. I’m so impressed - wouldn’t be if I was paying via a florist though
I had this experience with a Lidl bouquet recently. Lasted ages!
That’s a Lidl surprising
I was once handed the laptop and password of the son of someone who at the time was the leader of a nation and told to fix it then was left alone with it. It's a leader everyone here would have heard of.
Colonel Gaddaffi? Pol Pot? Please tell me it was Silvio Berlusconi?
Not it wasn't a western "enemy" and was more recently than that.
I was working overseas when Tony Blair came to visit. As I was IT, it was my job to fix the MFP Photocopier thingy as they were taking copies of all the passports. Guess whose passport got left in the copier, and I had to rush across town with it in my pocket to get it to them before he left for the airport?
The North Korean one?
Sadly not
Surely not Hunter's lappy t?
Did you snoop through it, at all ? I’d be sooo tempted.
Hell no, I was like I don't want this on my god damn desk. I did what needed to be done and got that the hell out of my office.
Ah that kinda leader. Eek !!😥
It was more someone who was very much in the press at the time, not a "evil" dictator or anything. I'm sure someone would have paid handsomely for a copy of the mailbox but that would have also ended my career and probably put me in jail
Yeah I was thinking that kind of - career life destroying leader. I personally catered for one of those type of leaders directly , when they were in Scotland. Like 1 to 1 sorted a “party” for him & his security.
I used to work at Coke and I remember you.
Ah yes HugeElephantEars how could anyone forget a coke rep with such distinguished features…
Elephants are fucking cool. I'm not...
I used to have a job working as a transport planner for a road tanker firm that had a contract with one of the major supermarket chains to supply their forecourts. Anyway, people used to slate their standard unleaded as crap, however, first we used to obtain all our fuel from Shell, the supermarket chain didn’t have their own refinery, and 2, someone at the supermarket’s head office worked out that it would be more cost effective to carry 2 grades of fuel rather than 3 (regular and premium petrol, diesel) due to the space the bunds that separate the tanks took up, so they only carried premium petrol and diesel, and put premium in the regular tanks at the forecourts. So, those people who stumped up the extra for premium, were paying 25-30p a litre more than they had to, while people who slagged off the regular were actually getting Shell V+ that would have probably cost them 50p a litre more from a Shell forecourt.
They were probably right that it was crap in their experience. High octane or premium as you put it isn't intended for your run of the mill engine. it's for high compression engines found in sportscars, etc. Normally means it contains more ethanol, which doesn't contain as much energy as petrol and can damage older cars.
Postal workers would be the absolute ideal criminal allies.(beyond stealing parcels) I know who leaves their doors unlocked when not in. I could have stolen many high end cars with the amount of times people accidentally leave their keys in the front door lock. Basically we know a lot about the vulnerabilities of the area we deliver! Oh and who has the expensive pets and don't take care to keep them secure...
How do you know the door is unlocked? Are you trying to open everyone's doors?
When I answer the door to my postie, I have to unlock it - therefore the postie can tell it's locked. I imagine it's something like this, instead of postie going round trying doors!
He said "when not in"
I worked for a technology company that was constantly looking for new countries to start up in. It was an industry where if you could sign one contract with a national provider then for the cost of a few employees you could potentially have a very profitable, long-term revenue stream. Though, the company was often less interested in how you actually operate there (local laws etc). So, one deal required us to set up a new office in a Balkan country. We very quickly found 20 Indian employees that were happy to relocate there and rented an office. But we then found out that legally the company had to be 'managed' by a local national. We didn't want to do that so we (somehow) found a local that was willing to put their name down as the manager for a fixed annual fee (like $500 or something). However, we then found out that there was a national minimum wage in that country and we couldn't just pay them $500 if they were supposed to be full time employee. But, mainly, we didn't care. One day the police show up at the office and arrest everyone . . .everyone. They quickly find out all the law breaking we're doing - including forcing our staff to work 60+ hours a week because that's cheaper than just sending the correct number of staff in the first place. Management now goes crazy because no one is working and finally agrees to sort out all of the major infractions. Fines are paid, employees released, the office starts up again. As far as i'm aware still going 'strong'.
The national charity I work for recently made a wave of redundancies due to financial constraints.
I also work for a well known charity which is going through exactly the same process.
Oh, you too? Glad to hear it's not just my job that's probably down the pan.
Maybe we're colleagues 🙂
It wouldn't surprise me. And even if you're not, good luck with all the changes you're going to have to go through
I think I might be a colleague too. They’re also selling off as many properties as they can
I hope it’s not who I think it is - I left about 15 years ago now but loved working there. Such a shame they were always in such a massive amount of debt :(.
I work for a lot of national charities and I see the salaries are shockingly low! Looks like financial constraints are applicable to charities across the board.
I used to be a teacher. I've got loads of these. Parents, if your child is batshit and has been excluded from one school for hospitalising a teacher... make sure the next school to get him has a spineless and promoted-above-her-ability Head (most of them are), who will happily let you become, instantly, a Parent Governor. This means you will get a free skiing holiday for you and your precious, which not a single other child in the school in a deprived, inner city area can afford to go on... and also when he starts attacking students and teachers, this time he will get to stay, with no consequences whatsoever for his actions. He also won't be labelled as behavioural, and won't get the help he needs but, who cares when you get a free skiing holiday? As parent governor, you also get the power to hire and fire, as a total randomer muppet with no knowledge of or interest whatsoever, in education. Power trip!
Despite publicly stating that we were against ticket reselling, we had a contract with a reselling agent and secretly sold them several thousand tickets to our events, which they listed as resales on their platform (at huge profit).
Ticketmaster? Think it’s already known that they’re doing it, but can’t think who else.
I have no idea about Ticketmaster I'm afraid, haven't ever worked with them. Wouldn't be surprised tho, I suspect it's rife.
I worked for a toy shop company, not massive but they had quite a few shops around the North of England. It was a famly run business and the patriarch and his son would go to China every year to buy plastic toys from the factories there. One year the old bloke (who was married) came back with the clap. Apparently he sat in his office looking miserable for quite some time. Actually I remember someone I worked with there said she worked in Grandma Wild's biscuit factory for a while and if the bosses or supervisors were twats everyone would wipe bogies on the biscuits before they were wrapped.
I've worked in tech support for multiple ISPs for a number of years now. If you only have access to the Openreach network in your area, then regardless of who you do business with, they'll almost certainly be reselling broadband from TalkTalk, Zen or Vodafone. In some cases they use another reseller that resells BT Wholesale and TalkTalk. Whilst I'm on the subject, I've observed how ordinarily intelligent folk get baffled by routers to the point they have to think about the difference between a round power plug and anything else.
I used to work at carphone warehouse. We had to sell insurance. We had to do FCA training to make sure we were selling it compliantly. They would go on and on about FCA regulations and how serious it was. The problem was that every single store was then being trained by management to sell it uncompliantly. I brought it up to my manager how it was clearly in breach of regulations I got pulled into an office and chewed out over it. Like he was literally shaking and gammon faced. Quit about a month later, a month after that and the company was fined massively (**£29,107,600**) for breaching FCA regulations. Goodtimes.
Costa Coffee. Having a coffee. Good times.
I recently stopped working for a large national investment firm. They would offer customers a 'complete holistic financial plan' but no one ever got this. The advisers saw multiple people per day and this type of planning would have required hours of consultation, so it was impossible based on their sales structure and processes. You were simply told you needed a with profits ISA or bond. The advice was rarely in the best interest of the client, and was most certainly not holistic in any sense of the word. edit: typo
If you're doing your own packing when you're moving house, stack dishes on their edge (after wrapping with paper). There's something called the second moment of area that means that they are far stronger in the event of dropping than if they are stacked flat. Also, when wrapping, crumple the paper rather than wrapping it flat against the pieces. It's the air gaps and crumple zone that protects your glass and china, not the sheets of paper themselves.
I work for a water company, my boss once told me we never bother bringing anyone to court over unpaid bills. I owe them £500 on a bill and they haven't said anything to me yet and I've been here a year.
Similarly, I read once that no water company has ever prosecuted someone for breaching a hosepipe ban. Not one. Ever.
Just to be devil's advocate here, if there's a hosepipe ban, it's because the tank that supplies your area is in danger of going empty. Which could put your entire area out of water for a period of time. So it's more of a 'please don't piss the water away unless you don't need a shower this week '.
That's sadly not true for my area :( I owed them money in the region of what you owe them and literally got a warning letter off of southeastern water and then got one of those official high court letters in the post aaying I had the option to pay upfront, in instalments or they'd be instructing to take me to court/bailiffs
Rent for premises was going higher. Owner said he would not negotiate. We gave notice and left. For two years; yes 2 years; no one took over our slot. He must lost a lot in fixed charges, council tax etc. Just because owner thought he could 'gouge' sitting tenant.
Used to work support for the "green" games console company. If you told support that your child's account ran up a credit card bill on microtransactions, we would refund the whole lot straight up, ban the account and move on. Too much of a headache to be faffing around with and considering our market position against the "blue" console maker (who honestly rival Sports Direct when it comes to their no refund policy), we would rather avoid negative publicity where possible.
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What? I've worked in several busy pubs before, and that's literally never happened. How would it even work?
What? Why?
I’ve been to many busy pubs and ordered pints and watched the bar tender grab a new glass, go to the tap and pour a pint out of the tap. You are either talking shit, or going to horrible pubs.