What are you lot like to work with?

[23 Daves]

The pay is reasonable if you're manager of one of the bigger chain bookstores, but what the job actually involves these days is fending off idiotic promotion ideas from Head Office and trying to work out which fifty percent of your staff are stealing things today. Also seeing the twenty reps a day that wander in an try and get you to buy their list of Mind Body and Spirit books or historical crime serieseses.

On the plus side, the chances are your staff are as bright and socially maladjusted as yourself, and oddly enough, most customers look up to bookshop staff, at least in comparison to other retail staff. Of course, if you're the manager you'll have to deal with the stroppier ones, but these are easily fobbed off if you're louche and charming and chuck them a free book voucher.

Oh, and you will get fifty CV's a day from public school kids who want a nice dossy summer job. You will be tempted to sleep with the A-level ones, and fuck it, go for it frankly.

Hope that helps.

Doesn't sound all that bad put like that, does it?  How do I get the job?

[Circusfire]

The thing about PMT is that you are completely unaware at the time that your rage has no rational cause.  You just think that everyone is being wilfully stupid and obstructive.   If you suspect that a workmate has PMT, never suggest that to them while they actually have it, as this is extremely dangerous.

God yes! I go barking mad with PMT but never actually realise that it is PMT (perhaps all the hormones kill the logical side of the brain?) . Then when I find blood in my pants I realise that all the feeling like shit, tears shed over yoghurt ads and screaming were in fact caused by my hormones.

Perhaps we need a thread on womanly issues like this.

Back on topic, most of the time in work I spend listening to music so my colleagues probably think I'm an ignorant bitch. I'm polite and will chat for a few minutes but wouldn't ever share my personal business or go for a drink with people I work with. They're not my fucking friends.

[Glebe]

I'm unemployed, and I'm great fun to work with. ;)

[butnut]

Perhaps we need a thread on womanly issues like this.

NOT EVERYONE CARES ABOUT YOUR FUCKING WOMANLY ISSUES

[Jack Shaftoe]

23 Daves said:

Doesn't sound all that bad put like that, does it?  How do I get the job?

Basically, get a job in a bookshop, stick out the incredibly low pay for about five years, don't set fire to anything or get caught nicking owt, and the job will be yours as all about you succumb to the voices in their heads/avarice/better-paid jobs or, in one memorable afternoon, exposed as a kiddy-fiddler in the Sunday Sport. Try not to be on duty that day, as the phone calls start coming in.

Bookshops are brilliant to work in. Occasionally however, someone will poo in the lift, and it's your job to deal with it. It only went up one floor as well, imagine the discipline and forward planning that must have taken.

[Hugo Rune]

The pay is reasonable if you're manager of one of the bigger chain bookstores, but what the job actually involves these days is fending off idiotic promotion ideas from Head Office and trying to work out which fifty percent of your staff are stealing things today. Also seeing the twenty reps a day that wander in an try and get you to buy their list of Mind Body and Spirit books or historical crime serieseses.

On the plus side, the chances are your staff are as bright and socially maladjusted as yourself, and oddly enough, most customers look up to bookshop staff, at least in comparison to other retail staff. Of course, if you're the manager you'll have to deal with the stroppier ones, but these are easily fobbed off if you're louche and charming and chuck them a free book voucher.

Oh, and you will get fifty CV's a day from public school kids who want a nice dossy summer job. You will be tempted to sleep with the A-level ones, and fuck it, go for it frankly.

Hope that helps.

Basically, get a job in a bookshop, stick out the incredibly low pay for about five years, don't set fire to anything or get caught nicking owt, and the job will be yours as all about you succumb to the voices in their heads/avarice/better-paid jobs or, in one memorable afternoon, exposed as a kiddy-fiddler in the Sunday Sport. Try not to be on duty that day, as the phone calls start coming in.

Bookshops are brilliant to work in. Occasionally however, someone will poo in the lift, and it's your job to deal with it. It only went up one floor as well, imagine the discipline and forward planning that must have taken.

Haha spot on!

The only things I'd add would be that a starter bookseller's pay is only just above minimum wage, the difference between pay grades can be as little as a hundred quid a year and some people have been slogging away for years earning little more than they did when they started; some book retailers give their store managers autonomy, letting them pick their own stock and tailor it to their local market whereas other retailers dictate the stock from head office; and most of the CVs I get nowadays tend to be from Eastern Europeans with degrees in the most unbelievably specific subjects ("poetry read by my neighbour between 1943 and 1945") looking for temporary work.

The CVs from behind the former Iron Curtain always have a photo of the candidate attached, and the candidate is always looking to one side in the photo at something in the middle-distance. They never look straight at the camera.

Why?

I've asked around for an answer, Googled it, emailed the candidates back. Nothing. No-one knows. Big mystery.

But it bugs me.

I can only speculate that when the Iron Curtain was in place, portrait photography consisted largely of official photos - ID cards, arrest reports, court documents, secret police records - taken by authoritarian types. In which case the subject of the photo probably felt uncomfortable looking straight into the camera.

Likewise, the photographer probably felt uncomfortable looking into the eyes of someone about to be shot with something other than a camera.

Or similar.

[Boing]

I'm OK to work with,but I'd never take a management job.No matter HOW much you paid me.Two conditions:
One-I hate responsibility,I don't like telling people what to do,and,
Two-I'd be a right fucking TWAT if condition One didn't apply.

[Mister Cairo]

I like the juxtaposition between a really serious post that made me pause for thought (some of the content of Stasiland is coming back to me now) and Boing's latest ejaculate.

One-I hate responsibility,I don't like telling people what to do

I've seen differently.

[High Roller]

In the past, I've been grumpy and cynical because I hated my colleagues and they more than reciprocated,

Fair enough but I work to my own values and not other peoples. I have my own self-respect and will always treat people with curtosy even when they are far from it.

I don't mean that as a slight but I refuse to sink to others levels and be like they are because they can't be better.

In addition to that I get on with most people but tend to drag the office down to purile jokes and toilet humour. If they don't like it then I wouldn't.

[Transient Lobster]

I'm awful i talk all the way through jeremy kyle and i'm surly to one and all and i'm always pissed.

[MissInformed]

I'm awful i talk all the way through jeremy kyle and i'm surly to one and all and i'm always pissed.

Welcome aboard - you're going to fit right in. We're all a load of miserable cunts here.

[thomasina]

The PMT pnly comes every few months.

That's not normal.

I've learned to live with it.

Perhaps we need a thread on womanly issues like this.

NOT EVERYONE CARES ABOUT YOUR FUCKING WOMANLY ISSUES

Don't  traumatise the boys, Circusfire.  Next thing, you'll be posting about your feelings or something and there's no telling where it wil end.

[kenneth trousers]

For the last couple of weeks all I have been wearing beneath my overalls is a T-shirt and boxer shorts.
Last Tuesday through a mixture of determination and boredom I managed to pull my testicles out of the side pocket of my overalls to scare my colleagues.

So to answer the question posed in the thread title - unprofessional.

[butnut]

What is it with you and showing your balls Mr. Trousers?

NSFW!!

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Well the left one is hanging lower than the right so thank heavens he's not some gigantic freak eh!

[kenneth trousers]

I have an extremely immature sense of humour; however I can assure everyone in the CaB community that I am seeking help in addressing this problem.

I'm sorry.

[Charles Charlie Charles]

Last Tuesday through a mixture of determination and boredom I managed to pull my testicles out of the side pocket of my overalls to scare my colleagues.

Every time on here one of you cunts make me laugh. Today was no exception. Earlier when I was teaching my Year 7 class I got my penis out and scared the kids. I'm now being investigated by the police who, surprisingly, didn't accept that I did it through a mixture of determination and boredom.

They accepted boredom, but not determination. It's one law for kenneth trousers, another law for us!

[Sheriff John Indolent]

In my old job I had an inaccurate reputation as being some kind of "young Blakey" miseryguts, due to me being saddled with a default facial expression that could politely described as "neutral" and impolitley described as "fucking miserable". I'm not though. I'm a sun-packed fun-packed whimsical jamboree on the inside. As Ringo said "it's just me face".

I'd say I'm fairly well regarded at the place I'm at now. It helps hugely that there's a great set of funny, personable people there with only a few exceptions, and even then I'm mature enough now to know that when people act the arse because of some marginal slip-up they perceive you've made it's not some kind of personal attack. In other jobs I've worked under people who could accurately be described as sociopaths, but where I'm at now, for an industry commonly steeped in prissy misgained arrogance (TV post production), everyone's by and large cool.

And doing an incredibly shite David Bowie impersonation on your first day seems to do wonders for breaking the ice.

[wasp_f15ting]

I think my work colleagues would say I am very relaxed and calm even under stress. Which I am in the situations which arise at work, since they really dont cause me much tension.

As for my personality one side would say I am rather disturbed and sick, the other would say I am shy and introverted (working shifts means you dont work with the same people again and again). I am more comfortable with one group, so we pretty much lose ourselves in dodgy conversations.

However I have been accused of being sad by both sides because of what I read and do in there. I usually read books which are yet to be finished in my long que of stuff to read. This means unfortunately I am reading stuff about people in US foreign offices and realist theories of war, rather than Heat or Zoo.

I am also very much against Big Brother and celebrity culture, so I am excluded from those kind of conversations. I am not a huge fan of work, so 90% of the time I am in there with the attitude of "this is paying my bills" With my last job before this one I was in the "perfect" work environment I loved the people I worked with. Often work was a way of releasing tensions from uni or work. Shame good things never last.

[Still Not George]

Now I have a job (huzzah!) I can actually answer this thread.

I'd say I'm predominantly quiet and perhaps a little intense. The latter is sort of necessary for a coder - the kind of things I'll be thinking about and working on will take up a lot of my mental space at any given time, right up until I drop the algorithms and visualisations at the end of the working day. If you can get me out of my intellectual shell, I'm typically either a little shy or extremely hyper due to the extraordinary quantity of caffeine I get through in a typical day.

I've also been described as "horrifically polite", whatever that means. I prefer to be nice to my co-workers and I don't start arguments if I can possibly avoid it, since I usually have much better things to be doing. I also don't tend to socialise with my co-workers a lot, partly since I have my own circle of friends and partly because most of the other people at my workplace are not the kind of people I like to be friends with.

Someone pointed out earlier this week that I seem to go to the toilet an awful lot, but that's mainly because of the amount of caffeine I get through.

[slim]

Congratulations. Did you manage to get one inside Wales or do you have to commute back to England, you horrible English bastard, every day?

[Still Not George]

In Wales - here in Aberystwyth, no less. A friend managed to fix me a coding job with Broadsword Interactive.

(and no, I'm not working on a dance game...)

[Sherringford Hovis]

I can guarantee that I am the worst person you'll ever meet in a work situation - mostly because I'm the bastard child of Colin Hunt and David Brent, with an extra side-helping of Fawlty-flavour coleslaw. My crowning achievement is my inconsistent nature - I'll unnerve subordinates and superiors alike be being alternately over-familiar or cold and unapproachable, but generally try to be obsequious to my bosses and unpleasant to underlings. I steal things from the workplace, either because I need them in my house - like chairs, shelves and computers; or simply because I can get away with it, for instance, a loo seat, 754 metres of bubblewrap, a potted plant. I have a pre-formulated excuse for my every shortcoming or failure, and can usually find a scapegoat for my laziness and lack of productivity that not only catches the shit for me, but makes me look good while they're doing it. I shirk all responsibility, but ruthlessly gather authority like some PCP-crazed Napoleon. I don't conform to the dress code; I arrive late, leave early and take long lunch breaks - often in the pub, then I sleep off the booze in the disabled toilet so that I'm fresh for hometime. I regale everyone with tales about how great my life is outside of work, but show no interest at all in anyone else's personal life, unless it's to file away something I can use in future to my own advantage. I leer at and flirt inappropriately with female colleagues while simultaneously repulsing them with my total lack of personal hygiene. I gossip behind people's backs and instigate all sorts of petty office politics that leave careers and people's sanity in tatters. I spend all day on the internet looking at sites like b3ta, eBum, this blue place and American survivalist bomb-making workshops; while emailing my mates with annoying unfunny circulars whenever I'm not using the company phones to make personal calls. If I absolutely can't avoid a meeting by never answering my phone to internal calls or responding to any work-related email, I'll derail it with some completely inconsequential point that brings everything grinding to a halt. I insist on performing the minutiae of every task completely by the book, and create a blizzard of paperwork for every minor request that anyone might ask of me. Worst of all, if I see anyone displaying the above qualities or behaving in the same manner as me, rather than identify them as a fellow traveller, I'll rat them out to anyone who will listen.


With every fibre of my being I just resent the fact that the majority of people on the planet have to spend most of their lives working in a situation over which they have very little control in order to eat, and while doing so they're generally making some other bastard much richer than they'll ever be, but since they're too craven to do anything about the situation, so I figure I may as well add to their misery to reward them for being such cunts. If it weren't for our cow-orkers, we'd have perfect lives with liberty, justice and free creamcakes for all.

You'll be pleased to know that I'm currently unemployed.

[Ambient Sheep]

In Wales - here in Aberystwyth, no less. A friend managed to fix me a coding job with Broadsword Interactive.

Wow, congratulations!  Are they the people that I threw an ad for at you a year or two back, and they weren't doing your sort of thing then?

Perhaps we'll see you at some meets now then...if we ever HAVE any more...

Stuff.

What you, the lovely chap that you are?  Don't believe a word of it.  Oh, except perhaps for the nicking stuff.  ;-)

By the way, I'm still looking for a job...Swansea, Herts/Essex/Cambs borders, Shropshire, all considered.  Technical Author or Embedded Software Engineer.  Ta.

[Almost Yearly]

Come at me with anything, anything at all, after three on a Friday and I'll stove your fucking face in. We have irreconcilable ideological differences.

[Oscar]

What if I come at you with a large ice cream and a bottle of vodka?

[Almost Yearly]

Only a whisky ripple and a pint of Guinness will stave off a stoving.

[terminallyrelaxed]

Fairly monosyllabic in the early mornings, but mostly I vary with the environment. You're always going to get on differently with different people. My last company was a glorified advertising company masquerading as a publishing company, which means the by-definition ignorant and barely-competent salespeople held sway. Subsequently I was told by the MD (on the occasion when a salesman lost a major account and tried to make it my fault by saying his computer wasn't working and that I had refused to fix it) that "no-one here has a good word to say about you" which was a little odd considering all the people who've instigated social occasions with me since I left there. I also got another job and perfectly correctly did the whole notice thing, but being in IT they said I couldn't work my notice (forcing me to go through the ordeal of three weeks paid holiday), however they told everyone I used to work with that I had been sacked. I spent a lot of time paranoid at that job, becuase I am a fairly deadpan guy, and due to the mental limitations of your average salesman this was taken to mean I was really miserable there. Of course that gave me pause for thought but I really was fine, and its been confirmed to me now as since I've left there I've had no problems - and I don't deal with salesmen.
I think I'm fairly outspoken with the risky humour etc so probably annoy some people* but generally try and be approachable and flexible about things. My job is to be helpful and Johnny-on-the-spot anyway, I only have to watch out for getting frustrated - its hard enough doing UNIX at 7am on a sunday without trying to remember which servers have which of the six usernames and which of the 12 admin passwords, so there was a certain amount of desk-thumping this morning, but there wasn't really anyone else around (sometimes I go in the server room and have a good shout).
*I hot-desk at this job so sat down at the desk that has five books about the Pope and a statue of the Virgin Mary, and just turned to the person next to me and said "so who's the reilgious nutjob then?" luckily it wasn't him, but was the person who came in and had a precious little fit because he couldn't find his chair (we don't have our own chairs) and I haven't had one of those.
I don't get much feedback in this job, I think they'll just not renew the contract if they are ever unhapy with me, but they've said they like my attitude and I tryy and be very can-do and flexible about shifts and stuff.
This job is a bit weird because of the shifts, you can work with someone and then just not have coinciding shifts with them for two or three weeks so it takes longer to get on anyone's tits, but then it can also take longer to make up for having a bad day...

[swarfmonkey]

For the last couple of weeks all I have been wearing beneath my overalls is a T-shirt and boxer shorts.
Last Tuesday through a mixture of determination and boredom I managed to pull my testicles out of the side pocket of my overalls to scare my colleagues.

So to answer the question posed in the thread title - unprofessional.

I have to disagree!

What is really unprofessional is to misuse ionising radiation when you're supposed to be working and then mong the outcome onto a picture of an ex-colleague.....


...while you should be working.