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This one is fresh.
Dear Colleagues, the school inset days scheduled next week have a new theme :
- The theme is PortaCabin induction day
- collect your hard hats and hi viz tabbards at reception
- Collect your assigned lorry/crane/PortaCabin clipboard from Mr Bean in the Science block(outside under gazebo)
- For those still waiting for flights home please schedule your Tutor groups on Teams.
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When I think about it, a great many of the requests/orders I received were bloody ridiculous.
Where would you like me to start? 😂
Boss: We've had intelligence to suggest there's a heavy machine gun in Al Hayyaniyah, we'd like you to patrol a repetitive route to try and draw fire from it, you'll have a US Apache on overwatch to prosecute if you are engaged. Any questions?
Me: Tasking name Boss? Op Certain Death?
Boss: Don't call it that.
Me: Op FUBAR?
Boss: Get out.
We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do everything with nothing in no time at all
Amazing!!!
I only know that from:
Excellent thread,much LOLZ .
Indeed, it's not often I read as much of an established thread.
Makes me glad I'm in teaching where you rarely get outrageous requests. Instead it's hundreds of minor ones, all of which are entirely reasonable individually but they add up to outrageous.
That said, a colleague has just been timetabled to have 51 kids in a classroon with 30 seats...
Of course, “engineer” is problematic in itself to those with actual engineering degrees. It should really be a protected term.
Actual engineering degress do not, in my experience of a half a lifetime in software, actually teach actual engineering...
Clients who keep issuing instructions for additional works despite the project getting critically close to the contract deadline. The same client is also threatening you that you need to meet the deadline or be in breach of contract.
Your contract needs fixing. Or rather, the spec that you're working from needs fixing, at an early stage. For any later alterations and additions, our rates begin at £200/hr...
A TV show wanted me to source two vintage bicycles so Len Goodman and an old game show host could cycle around Swanage where they went on holiday as children.
Budget was zero. I costed it up based on the Bikemonger workshop hourly rate, plus two modern fake vintage bikes. I explained that he was getting paid for his work, so I will need paying for my work. Gave the guy the price and expected to never hear from him again.
a few weeks later he phoned back asking how I was getting on with the bikes… “so you are ok with the price?” “We don’t have any budget”… “then I have no bikes”.
Many unreasonable requests in my previous role as Head of Faculty (which had had Design Tech, Food, Textiles, ICT, and Health & Social Care shoehorned in together).
I was also the only trained workshop teacher for all years (7 - 13).
- You will line manage 10 teachers and 5 technicians. Including all performance management and observations.
- Oh you don't have a 2nd in Dept. Why? We didn't want to pay the TLR.
- You will also be expected to teach DT to all year groups, including GCSE and A level (oh A level lessons will be on another site).
- There's no time in your timetable? Oh we'll just schedule some after school lessons for you then.
- Can you sort out the timetable for the faculty please, as the Deputy Head who normally dies it had gone off sick. Yes it is tricky due to multiple part-time staff.
- We'd love you to run a STEM Club, well it will be included in your PM targets, so better crack on.
- Can you take on extra break duties? Yes you will.
- Oh and budgets have been halved year on year for the last 4 years. So here's no money to buy resources. Well just see if you can speak to local businesses. Some of them might give you wood and other resources if you ask nicely
It's no wonder I left that school after 3 years 🤬
I am still laughing at Maccruiskeen's tide story 😆
I explained that he was getting paid for his work, so I will need paying for my work
This has been a fundamental principle of mine ever since I got duped into giving my time for nothing at an event others were getting paid for. It's taking the piss, pure and simple.
A couple of fine emails from me, summarised:
"We are a prestigious UK university (who take £9.5k income per student per year and are sat on £millions of endowment, investment and property). Our 100+ Initial Teacher Education Students all need to learn about your area of expertise. Please will you come down for three days and train them all in how to do this well? We would also like full follow up and resources and perhaps a follow up online workshop when they go on placement to support specific questions."
"That is fine, we can do that and have done before. Here is a proposal with a price on the bottom."
"We were not expecting to pay - you are a charity are you not? So why is it not free?"
*eyes roll*.
“We were not expecting to pay – you are a charity are you not? So why is it not free?”
The flip side of this is charities wanting businesses to do stuff for free because they're charities. We used to get a lot of requests like this when I worked at a climbing wall. 'Can you organise an abseil event for us please?'
'No problem, the cost is £xxxx.'
'Oh, we thought it would be free because we're a charity.'
'We're a business though.'
To be fair, the big charities never did this, it was just smaler ones.
The flip side of this is charities wanting businesses to do stuff for free because they’re charities.
Agreed.
The thing that annoyed me about it was not the cheeky request (no harm in asking!) but the utter indignation of some of the charity callers when told there would be a cost.
The serial job hopper that lasts a year at the most at any company, leaving a trail of unfinished projects all in a dire state, that others will need to sort out.
A lot of senior managers are like this. There's a little revolving door at the top of a lot of companies where the same few dozen people go in and out over the course of 18 months or so. There are a lot of flashy press announcements about how Mr / Mrs X is a manager with a great deal of distinction in [insert area/project] and will bring expertise and business acumen to the company.
Said person stays 18 months or so - just long enough to be able to claim a new brush/clean sweep/dramatic reorganisation/costs savings but not quite long enough for it all to fall down around their ears. Then they bugger off quick before they get found out (often with a lovely golden handshake for work well done) before reappearing a few months later at another company on another 6-figure salary with the same shiny press releases.
Last employer outsourced a load of software dev work to India... Obviously went to the cheapest tender as the code was junk and our company had to reverse engineer it and rebuild it...
I wasn't high enough up in the food chain to be privy, but it probably ended up costing twice as much as doing it in house in the first place.
Many examples of this...
The flip side of this is charities wanting businesses to do stuff for free because they’re charities. We used to get a lot of requests like this when I worked at a climbing wall.
Try being a doctor. Lots of people and organisations (charities, government agencies, hospitals) seem to think that because I’m a doctor and something benefits my patients then I should be expected to work for free.
I wasn’t high enough up in the food chain to be privy, but it probably ended up costing twice as much as doing it in house in the first place.
I would imagine "twice as much" is an optimistic estimate.
Outsourcing is a difficult thing to do right.
I'm not sure I've ever seen it done with a better result, or a cheaper result, or a quicker result.
Last employer outsourced a load of software dev work to India…
Many examples of this…
Indeed, this has been a standard feature of my career in IT for over 20 years now.
Current place have one team with no UK people at all. During Covid management panicked as they had a high rate of absence and somebody thought ‘what if they all die?’
This led to me being recruited as manger to a new UK team (whilst still doing my other job) We got as far as doing some interviews when the panic subsided and the plug was pulled on the recruitment budget.
I was told to carry on with the knowledge transfer to the new team - without any staff. Ok…
I would imagine “twice as much” is an optimistic estimate
Me too. Starting from scratch to replicate an existing code base with significant technical debt will take four or five times as long.
my previous role as Head of Faculty (which had had Design Tech, Food, Textiles, ICT, and Health & Social Care shoehorned in together).
Doesn't really fit the thread in terms of requests. But my dad started a new job with a Local Education Authority. He'd be in charge of Art and Design but between interview and starting the job lots of little extra responsibilities started to get pinned on. As time passed before he started it emerged that 'Design' included technology. Fine. Technology included Domestic Science. Fine. Oh, also Special Eduction. Really? Ok. And ....children excluded from school ...and so on
At every interaction is seemed like a brief had fallen off of someone else's desk in the department and landed on his new, but as yet unoccupied one.
His first day on the job coincided with a national education conference at which he was also a speaker. And he was introduced as Mr Macc snr. new advisor for Art, Design, Tech-Blah, Domestic-Blah, Special.... Excluded... and the intro finished with a new surprise role on the list. "... and he's also responsible for all the pregnant teenagers in Greater Manchester"
. “… and he’s also responsible for all the pregnant teenagers in Greater Manchester”
I think I read about him.
Gives a new definition to 'mission creep' doesnt it 🙂
I would imagine “twice as much” is an optimistic estimate
I'm sure that's true, I'm not a dev, I'm a service manager.
I'm sure it looked great on some transient PMs budget at the time, then it lands an the desk of muggins here to take a hail of bullets from the customer.
Then I get it in the neck for failing to manage the customers expectations.
So I should set the expectation we'll sell them a pup then?
That BS is above my pay grade, or at least not my department but apparently I'm the bad guy according to senior management.
Just to clarify these are software releases for improvements to existing customers products that we produced, not fresh products.
"tough luck, the project has been signed off, it's a service delivery issue now".
Kiss. My a$$.
Last employer outsourced a load of software dev work to India… Obviously went to the cheapest tender as the code was junk and our company had to reverse engineer it and rebuild it…
I worked at a games company that did that for all the 3D assets for the 3rd instalment in a series of games in the early 2000s, not only were the 3D models awful looking but they also used many times more polygons so were no good for use in game. They ended up using most of the original art team to make new models from scratch so money down the drain.
I have had to charge stupid tax to clients.
Me - Do not talk to the subcntractors, talk to me
Them Oh I just asked Dave to..................
Me - That'll be XXX.XX to fix that then
That "Not Always Right" page is worse than crack 😀
Managers who are only trained to manage but have never done the work themselves 😔
Equally, people who have been trained to do the work, and then due to either time served or ambition, have been promoted to management. Both are as bad as each other at times.
(And then there's people like me who aren't trained at either and have just picked both up as I go. I probably give everyone the heebie-jeebies... 😀 )
Wrong hemisphere.
Scale it up to about the length of Italy.
I'm going to go with Great Barrier Reef.
Someone has just asked me to do some actual work. At 15.00. On a Friday.
They've left it late for me as well today - just had the call...
"I'm doing a seminar tomorrow and need course notes printed - x20 copies, each a hundred pages, wire bound with plastic covers. Can I collect before you close?".
🙂
Can they?
Nope! 🙂
I should add for context - there's just me and the dog here - not a big team of creative professionals. And the dog is ruddy useless with the wire binder. Bloody great at shredding though! 🐶
I get lots of reasonable requests piled on to make it an unmanageable workload. & yes I work in education.
“I’m doing a seminar tomorrow
... and they discovered this just now? FFS, I'm cross on your behalf.
I had a sales guy ring me asking for a quote for his customer, needed it ASAP as it was for a presentation meeting he had just arrived at…
I’m going to go with Great Barrier Reef.
I’m going with Erinsborough.
When I was getting made redundant from the bank, my last day was christmas eve, I was the last person out of my team. I got an email at 10am telling me I was expected to stay til 5pm in case I was needed on-call 🙂 I'd been planning to hang around til about 12 eating mince pies and maybe occasionally pretending to work but I just emailed back "lol no", packed up and went home
I’m doing a seminar tomorrow
We used to have a customer like that, renowned for the 4pm Friday phone call. In the end we had the following conversation
‘I need a load of product sheets designing and printing for a seminar in Germany next Tuesday’
‘When did you book your flights Steve?’
‘2 months ago, why?’
‘Should have told me about them then, not now, shouldn’t you? Close the door on your way out, there’s a good lad…’
The railways love this.... Here's a fairly complicated bit of site investigation we need doing. That's all doable in one nightshift right? Given that all too often that shift which in theory is 8 hours is actually 3 hours of madness, 1 hour of them desperately trying to get you to pack up.
Last Friday I got a slightly shirty email about 40 trucks arriving this week requiring full livery making and fitting as soon as possible. Plus another 30 arriving soon after. And another 20 up north which we need to supply but not fit.
Lead time on a new truck is probably about 6 months minimum. Ample time you would have thought to get your ducks in a row.
It’s going to be a busy few weeks!
15:40, sales wants a part cnc plasma cut, fabricated, welded and on a pallet ready for collection at 16:30, eh no.......
Sat AM, customer wants a bike fully serviced for a race on Sun, eh no...
Unreasonable expectations?
At least with a bike, they can justify having sat on it for weeks...
ctk
I get lots of reasonable requests piled on to make it an unmanageable workload. & yes I work in education.
I fully endorse this opinion.
Rarely to I get asked/told to do anything that is individually unreasonable, but all too often in schools stuff just piles up and you regularly get a straw/camel's back interface because SLT haven't fully grasped the bigger picture of what any individual teacher has to do at any given point in the year (especially around exam or assessment periods).