A note from Mark R, currently training in New Zealand to be a pilot: “Very amusingly one of the other flying schools here does the same sort of thing but for the Japanese. Hundreds of Japs flying around in Cessnas. It’s like Pearl Harbour.”
Around this time every year, a little employment rage hits your estimable wibbler.com host. Early Easter rush starts, reports BBC News. “People won’t be back at work until Tuesday morning!” they crow.
Allow me a moment to rant.
I work in IT for a company in the retail sector, an area which is admittedly very competitive. Shops barely shut on any day of the year, and this company’s ones are no exception. Last minute Easter trinkets to buy, presents to get, all opportunities that can’t be missed.
So they need all the help they can get, staff-wise, for minimal cost. And this is the meat of my gripe.
“Good Friday is a normal working day” they announce from deep in the bowels of Head Office. “What?”, we query – surely that fact it has a special name means it is anything but a normal day? “Nope”, they proffer, “Good Friday is a public holiday, not a bank holiday. No day off, no extra money. Like it or lump it”. And this, coming from the very same Head Office that is taking a day off on Good Friday.
I know of no other retail company that, if their staff have to work on Good Friday, doesn’t compensate them for doing so. What’s more, almost every other sector does have the day off – meaning anyone battling public transport to get to work is going to face an uphill struggle. Quite possibly literally.
Rant over. On the plus side, I only saw approximately 15 cars on the road this morning – my loathsome morning traffic jams were nonexistant…
Currently doing the rounds on email: The letters between the New Zealand Traffic Infringement department and a very witty young ‘offender’… (pdf)
NICE TITS – The Royal Tit-Watching (Ornithological) Society of Britain.
There are 600,426,974,379,824,381,952 ways to spell Viagra. Those poor spam blockers…
It seems we’re being taken for a ride! Clifford’s hand at work in Beckham saga, reports the Guardian. Max Clifford was secretly paid ?60000 for the News of the World story last Sunday, while pretending to not know a thing. He will pretend to take on Ms Loos as a client this week, followed by an “ad hoc” interview with her in Sunday’s newspapers.
The Beckhams, meanwhile, counter with their PR plan.
I say again, the Wag The Dog storyline comes ever closer to reality…
BuyMyFuture.org. I shall be watching his success with interest…
Timothy the tortoise dies, aged 160. A nation mourns.
I used to work for Sun Microsystems. Within a week of starting the job, with spectacular timing and support, my long-term girlfriend dumped me. I’m not bitter (well, not now at any rate). And so it was that that year at Sun, the fun and frolics and nights out and parties, was a pivotal time for me, a fresh start, and to this day I’m still friends with many of them, even the ones that called me “student” and “tea boy”. Hell, one of them, Alex, is getting married next month to my good friend Milly.
But, sad though I am to say it (and difficult as it is to say with tongue firmly in cheek), my leaving Sun was plainly a pivotal time for them, too. Just look at this graph (from the estimable Yahoo Finance). You see the peak in October 2000? That’s when i left. Since then, shares have tumbled. And if they call and beg me to come back? Well, I charge a mean price nowadays…
