Month: November 2015

Thrice damned.

Buggery and tarnation. I’ve applied 3 times for jobs at Bookers without even getting an interview. I had some time off, thought I’d focus my chi for the big xmas madness. 12-15 hour shifts, 5 shifts/ 6 shifts all the way through until mid January. Nothing. Not an xmas sausage. I got 4 days last week, 39 hours. One of those shifts I did a drive to Blackpool then was sat around for 4 hours until nearly all of my 8 hours was up. They were expecting massive volumes and were going to start 20 temp to perms. They’ve lost a big contract, and the volume hasn’t been there. If it’s like this now, I fear for the Jan/ Feb/ March dearth. Long story slightly shorter, I’ve gone back to thrice damned Herpes. They have upped their game, I think. They’ve certainly upped the money. It’s now £13 p/h until 18.00, £14.50 after, £17.50 weekends. They want afternoon starts and nights (I’ll do afternoons) so even on 45 hour 5 day week, plus, say average 5 hours at weekend rate, that’s £500ish take home a week. This is what we need. More than the amount it’s the consistency of pay we need. Just this week I got bitchslapped off the tax man. My seat and tank have finally been made to order and shipped from Thailand. I got a letter off Parcelforce saying I owed £77 import tax. Grim, but not excessive. The next day I got another bill for the tank, £114, import tax! Two parcels. And, a year of so ago I killed my lovely Nexus 5 ‘phone that was on contract. Luke gave me his old Nexus 4, I swapped over the sim card and all was well. Last week, a month before my contract runs out, and it went on the fritz. Kept opening apps and jumping pages and allsorts. Basically unusable. I need my ‘phone. The previous day I’d been stuck in a poxy one horse town, my trucknav misleading me, blocked in by inaccessible side streets and 7.5 ton limits. I spent over 25 minutes trying to drive 1.8 miles. In the end I went over my legal driving hours looking for somewhere to park. The point is, I then had to use my ‘phone to google the address, then use google maps to work out a route I could use, and work ‘phoned me asking where I was, but that’s a little used function of smart ‘phones. So I had to get a replacement ‘phone ASAP. I looked at 3 mobile, (the only one to offer unlimited data) to upgrade my contract, and they’ve stopped doing Nexus. The other Android ones use the same basic Operating System but then add loads of their own brand stuff to make it crap. It was either get an iPhone on contract (£1,400 over 2 years) of buy a Nexus 6 outright and get a sim only contract (£17 p/m, with ‘phone £900 over 2 years.) I […]

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