» Sacked

Sacks of Cash
#2: Have to be a little more vague about this one as there are some elements which the law may er, frown upon. If you get my drift occifer ;) say no more, nudge, nudge, wink, wink ;) Eh? EH?

Ahem.

Late 90s, big global financial company. Foreign exchange department. My job: bundle up foreign notes as per orders. This half of the UK operations was new and hadn't really much security to speak of. So... You can see what's coming can't you? There were about 14 of us working there and only Dan and I had IQs in triple figures (admittedly only about 102 given the amount of dope we smoked but that's by-the-by.) I noticed the pattern of mistakes that people would make: they would put either 1 note too much or too little or 10 notes too much or too little in the orders. We each had a regular range of currencies but often had to change for the day. So when I was on the 'tasty' currencies, these are the ones were you could live on a single high-denomination note for a week, I'd make a 'mistake' to the tune of 10 high value notes. They did have a camera pointing down the row of booths but if you leant into you booth you could easily slip a bundle into your sleeve. One trip to the bogs later and you'd have a £1,000 pair of shoes (what?). He means he put the dosh into his sock.

Doing this several times in the few weeks I worked there resulted in me being able to quadruple my basic wage income. Tee-hee. After I er, left/was asked to leave, the security did get tighter than a nat's arsehole I understand. So I was in the right place at the right time it seems. Oh I didn't actually get asked to leave because of this, oh no no. I doubt they ever noticed - I'm sure I wasn't alone in my mistake making. No, I had a disagreement with a jumped-up little twunt who thought that because he used to be the deputy manager of the local Co-op, he was entitled to order everyone around, regardless of the fact that he was just a grunt like us. Oh and there was this other 'bloke' a gay Australian (yes there are some) who, not because of his sexuality but because I had to listen to his brainless opinions for 7 1/2 hours a day, I almost killed, on an hourly basis. Yeah, looking back I guess I didn't fit in - thank fcuk.

Oh and I've just remembered: Dan used to pull these 'funny little plastic strips' off the side the Portugese Escudos. Of course, being Portugese, these were their security strips, like the silver ones in British notes. In a few weeks, he'd devalued the Portugese economy by about 5% by my reckoning... Great times!

It's not big and it's not clever, and. Oh what the hell yes it is - I was loving it!
(Wed 1st Mar 2006, 12:00, More)

» Sacked

Pop Goes My (Cherry/Weasel/Soda/Stack) Delete as applicable
I've been the 'victim' of more sackings than most of you have had hot dinners. Well OK, than *I've* had hot dinners. OK maybe not. Anyway.

#1: A couple of Mondays ago I'm at work (let's call them SI, for that is their initials)- admittedly it is a temp position but a switch to permanent had been promised and was *way* overdue. It was a cushty job - 4 hours vague officey type stuff and 4 hours browsing the undernet. But I did do the job well. But Godawful pay. The only benefit really was my other half sat at the next desk, so we did have a laugh most of the time. I'd applied for another job sometime during my January depression and lo and behold was asked for an interview. Quite a bit more money was promised but I'd probably have to actually do some work *and* commute into central London rather than just nip down the road on the bus as were my current travel arrangements.

Cue a lot of mmming and ahhing as I weighed up the work/life balance, so on the Monday (the day before the interview for the new job) I decide to confront Mark, my boss (hello Mark R you twunt if you're reading this!) The ultimatum would be more money and permanance or I go to the interview tomorrow. I psyched myself up and went into his office. The skiving bastard hadn't been in all the previous week, something to do with a broken neck or something, tch, so this was actually my first and last opportunity to have this conversation before the interview.

Bear in mind the working day at SI finishes at 1630 - it is now 1625. There's someone else in Mark's office and they won't bloody leave. Eventually Mark says he wants to see me in his office. "Oh" I think. So I enter and sit down. "There's no easy way of telling you this..." he says. The immortal phrase... "blah blah blah...and we're having to review all temporary positions. Yours is one of those we have to let go."

Shock. It wasn't supposed to be like this! I wanted to kick *them* out of my life not vice versa.
There was more. "I was supposed to tell you on Friday and let you go that day but of course I wasn't here. So it's with effect today."
Great, 2 minute warning.

"Ah well that makes my decision easier then." I said to him but didn't elaborate, slinking back to my desk.

Why do shit companies always do this? I worked there for 6 months - it would have been nice to have had half an hour to say goodbye to the people I'd befriended during that time but no - I'm just a temp - I have no human rights. Cnuts. Well sod them, it seems that in my haste to leave some erm, important files got inadvertently deleted from my PC. This coupled with the fact that the company's IT dept (a drunk called Keith) NEVER did backups meant the twunt manager Mark had to sit in front of my painfully slow PC for hours watching it undelete every single file until he got them back. Of course I didn't do it on purpose. If I'd have done that I'd have deleted the files and then wiped the free space - I'm not stupid ;)

So anyway now it's 3 weeks later and my other half has just quit SI too - she's found a job with less stress and £6k a year more pay. And untold benefits, none of which she got at SI. The department's in a right mess I can tell you. Ho-hum.

I gather it's customary to apologise for the length of one's emissions when relevant. Sorry!
(Tue 28th Feb 2006, 21:28, More)