Ama-chewer night

Back in the day, “professional” meant you did it full time as a job, and “amateur” meant you did it part time for fun, it did not *necessarily* mean that the pro was better than the amateur.

Sure, there were other connotations that went along with it, the pro was expected to “behave professionally” and so on, so footballers biting each other on the pitch was not the mark of the pro, google Stanley Matthews if you want the definition of a pro, even though the remuneration back then meant it was more in line with being 3 or 4 times the average working man’s weekly wage, not the stellar amounts paid now.

That was the flip-side, as an amateur there were loads of things and standards and approaches that you could get away with, any of which, as a pro, would see you instantly fired..

As a young boy I got a job “pumping gas” at the local petrol station, three days later I was fired for stealing £3, turns out they were having quite the run on thieving new part time employees stealing between £3 and £5 by taking the money for the fuel and not putting it in the till, about two months after I was sacked for stealing they discovered it was the full timer, he was nicking the money and blaming the new kid every time, he didn’t want any part timers, he wanted all the tips.

The owner was what we called “unprofessional” for his behaviour, he just took what he was told by his full time staff member and ran with it, in effect, he was not aware and in control and managing his business.

I spent three hours yesterday, on the company clock, shooting the shit with a fellow employee, easy to do when your entire days work gets aborted the instant you turn up on each site because head office has neglected to get all the required ducks in a row.

We were discussing lack of professionalism, do this shit ONCE and back in the day you got sacked, and these cunts are doing it almost. every. single. fucking. job. I. turn. up. to….. fucking unbelievable.

The guy is more or less a man after my own heart, but younger, less experienced, it took him longer to peer through the corporate bullshit, he like everyone else is swayed by the corporate bullshit, swanky head offices, glitzy PR crap and we wanna be like google and apple and everyone else with our flashy plate glass offices.

I asked him if he knew what our annual turnover was this year past, he did.

I asked him if he knew what one retail site alone of one of our corporate clients turned over a week, he did… I looked at him… penny dropped, he did the math, pretty fucking similar numbers.

Yeah, and StarMart has a pretty similar employee headcount, and it has to be said pretty similar wages, except the staff at StarMart don’t all get leased BMW’s to drive around in and burn a tank of diesel a day in, and the shit StarMart sells gives them a greater profit margin than us.

Suddenly he sees that our company is all smoke and mirrors, financially speaking they aren’t that healthy, they CANNOT be, the numbers just aren’t there (and as field guys we do see the spreadsheets and numbers) and the only thing we don’t know are the banking details, if we are operating on rolling bank finances, likely since we are in a round of corporate acquisitions, then we are keenly dependent both on on-going revenue and day to day interest rates.

Piss poor management trying to outgrow its troubles to the point where they can issue an IPO, get bought out, and retire.

Good luck with that in mid to late 2014….

Cunt has been with the company several years, compared to my less than two, he is on the same pay grade as me, but a thousand a year less munnay…. go fucking figure.

Pennies are dropping all over the place.

Then he drops a good one, he has known it for over a year since he overheard it, it just didn’t click, one of the guys on a much higher pay grade at corporate circle jerk central, who, frankly, ain’t that fucking good, ya dig, but he is on three times the money we are, saying that guys at our level out in the field were basically the shit that worked in the sewers, fuck em.

Only thing is, *we* are the only ones in the entire corporate structure whose jobs *cannot* be outsourced and off-shored, it takes a warm body on site to physically do certain tasks, no amount of virtualisation or remote working can bridge that hardware gap.

We both agree, we don’t do corporate bollocks overtime because basically it don’t pay enough to be worthwhile, and then my phone goes, my line manager, Tom, Dick and Harry are off sick, any chance I can cover on call for a day or two, I know you don’t like overtime because it don’t pay enough, says my line manager, ok, no quids, so I’ll take a quid pro quo, time off in lieu… he grumbles but agrees.

We part ways and one more staff member has decided to add themselves to our already rather shocking staff turnover statistics, via six months off for stress while looking for something else, I didn’t push the guy, I just talked straight shit, told it like it was, told him what he already knew, the five that could cover my region in addition to me, at a push, are now down to four….. you think it’s hot in this kitchen, I like it real fine, it’s a nice dry heat….lol

Search this blog for stories about the sound guy and the camera guy filming lions… oh yeah…

My two days on call, well, fuck all ever happens midweek, behind every hardware failure there is always a human being somewhere, and human beings work on calendar cycles, yeah, we’ll tidy up the comms cabs and re-arrange some of the desktop this friday afternoon so it won’t affect the working week, so shit gets broken for the weekend, and instead of being on call, Tom Dick and Harry just swapped…. hey, how the hell do you think this guy ended up driving 4+ hours each way to do a 1 hour job in my region in a site that is only 90 minutes away for me…

I’m just an ex professional doing amateur porn, cos I like it like that…lol