Happy Christmas, and other seasonal tidings. December 23, 2009

I wish you all a relaxing and enjoyable Christmas, with a swanky and healthy New Year.

If you are of a different faith/full of seasonal cheer for an entirely different reason, then please substitute the name of your celebration where ‘Christmas’ should be.

To all of those who are jobless and applying, part timing, sort of working or are boldly going nowhere, I wish you all of the luck I can, in you finding employment/a new career path. If I could give everyone who needs it  a job and reasonable wage, I would. Please remember, you are not alone. I know I’m, not the best for vital information, but I do hope that this blog can at least provide the comfort that you are not alone in your struggles. The dole sucks (and sucks even more if you have the restrictions like the USA and UK  do), vacancies fill up and you always seem to be short of that one tiny bit of information that might actually help you, but please remember you are not crazy. If anything, store up the information so you can use it to guide others in future, if that is a comfort.

So, to provide some mindless chatter (while you wrestle that rotund present into the foil wrapping that doesn’t like the sticky tape), I provide some seasonal and some decent music. Some is U2 (but of course!), but others are just stuff I love to hear at the moment.

Alongside the U2 Version:

and this Coldplay one THAT FOR THE LIFE OF ME I CANNOT SEEM TO FIND ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET!

and, finally, because it would not be Christmas without at least one school choir. Personally, I cannot listen to this, without seeing in my head my Primary School Headteacher in front of me, reminding me the importance of saying all of the words cl-ear-ly.

This is not Christmas at all, but enjoy:

Right, I’m going to sleep, as I am working Christmas Eve! Wish me luck folks!

Sheep Behaviour December 20, 2009

So, Congrats with a big pile of Awesome Sauce to Rage Against the Machine for creating the song that was my shouty song of choice when I was 13, and also Congrats to Jon and Tracy Morter that started the whole shebang in the first place. I think it’s superb that the charts have suddenly become relevant again.

However, am I the only one who finds that a song calling for people to stand up to racial persecution after the LA race riots and to think for themselves… involves a lot of people bowing to pressure and buying it?

It was made very clear on facebook that if you did not do it, you were weird, wrong and suffering from a sense of humour bypass, when many did feel uncomfortable (including myself) about Cowell still benefitting in profits? After all, that’s what really stank for me about the Jeff Buckley quest for number 1 last year. Also, the argument that you are taking this too seriously is also rediculous. Telling people they are thinking too hard about the principles behind it does not a good argument make.

Anyway, as long as the promised money actually gets to the Charity Shelter, I don’t actually mind so much and am prepared to shut up on the subject. It’s just not as big a deal that people think it is-the charts have always been about popularity, not earth shattering political developments.

BTW, I do not watch Xfactor and hated Joe’s song. If anything, this AWESOME song below should have been number one!

Note to self December 19, 2009

In future, if anyone asks me about what my religious views are, I will point them to this link by Prachett. It’s like every thought I’ve had as an ‘undecided-atheistic-agnostic’ individual, discussed coherently.

BTW, I met Prachett recently. You know how many people say you should never meet your heroes, as otherwise you will be disappointed? Well, I met him and he was a Dude! I’m rather chuffed that I did so, and my copy of ‘Unseen Academicals’ is now in the ’stuff to rescue in the event of a fire’ pile, that I tell my folks I will clean someday…

Also, does anyone remember me possibly deciding to consider going to Australia for a while? Yeah, well, I’m now possibly considering it as a maybe… someday.

You know when you are working over Christmas when… December 15, 2009

Y'know, I look at these and think 'they would be great to wear to work' until I remember that it would be murder, sheer murder, to try and wear those hats while unpacking stock...

1. You can go to work, walk past a busy shop floor full of people whilst wearing your work top, and never get asked a question. However, the moment that one person queries you for something, you have 4 or 5 people try to interrupt you.
2. You develop a personal relationship with the till.In fact, you know the till better than some of your friends.
3. You know the till better than your last boyfriend/girlfriend (*insert your own ‘pushing the right buttons’ joke right here*).
4. Customers tend to ask you questions when you are serving someone else, putting something away on the shelf, or are generally handling something extremely heavy. For some reason, it is these opportunities that seem the most suitable.
5. You have a ready-made explanation of what a ‘3 for 2′ offer is, in order to stop customers thinking that it means anything else than getting the cheapest book for free.
6. There is a concern that you will ask ‘Do you need a bag?’ or ‘Do you have a loyalty card?’ when you hand over your christmas presents.
7. What you don’t know about using the internet to track down names of certain bits of stock is not worth knowing.
8. What you don’t know about vague descriptions of stock ain’t worth knowing. (“I’m looking for a fiction book with a picture of a King Charles Spaniel n the front”)
9. Just when you think that you have met your rudest customer, there is another one waiting in the wings. You try to not take it personally when they make out that the entire reason they are having a bad day is because of you, and even go to the lengths to create a back story of WHY the berk is angry at you, but sometimes it is just easier to think of them as annoying and that you were ultimately right.
10. You start dissecting the Christmas songs you hear over the sound system out of habit. For example, the Wombles Christmas song leads to many questions about if the Wombles are religious…
11. You can get through a shift of over 5 hours on your feet powered solely by tea and a leftover biscuit.
12. Your main memory of Christmas Eve last year is the silence in the staffroom, as 12 members of staff try not to fall asleep, or the realisation that someone forgot to buy a pet their Christmas Present. (“Shit! What about the Guinea Pig?!”)
13. Sitting down for too long during your break is largely fatal, as you may fall asleep or at least lose the ability to get downstairs.
14. Customers assume that if you work behind a till, you are deaf to them complaining about you RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM!
15. If in doubt, smile and keep your sense of humour. Sarcasm may be down there with brevity, but it can go a long way.
16. The customer may be always right, but they can also be unhelpful, rude and badly misinformed.

Alive! December 13, 2009

In case you have been racking your brains with worry, I am still not dead. I have just been working full time, and haven’t been able to update. I took on a few extra shifts to help out a few members of staff, and so haven’t been able to sit down and write as usual. In fact, I have been spending my time trying to stay awake on public transport and losing my phone in the back of a friend’s car. In fact, this was a revelatory moment-suddenly, it occurred to me that having the same number for almost a decade and then not writing any number down in an address book was probably not a smart idea…

There is also something possibly good that has happened. Maybe. Sort of. I don’t want to talk about it too much as everytime I have mentioned a potential good thing that has happened on this blog, I have failed/been rejected awfully. So, not mentioning this particular good thing is the way forward.

Because of full time work, I have not applied for anything over the past few weeks, so I cannot possibly comment on anything, except that I can’t remember telling Milkround that I need to be sent emails every five minutes.

100th Post! November 29, 2009

Huzzah! Against all of the odds (up to and including the fact that many of my long term projects are stalled by either cash flow problems or a limited attention span) I have reached 100 posts on my mighty little blog. I’m actually pretty damn chuffed with myself, thanks for asking.

 

 

This image is a bit funny but a bit 'meep' all at the same time...

 

What has changed since I have started?

1. For the first time in a while, I have a plan. After a loooong period of applying for jobs that I was not entirely suitable for (as one friend stated “I could never see you wearing a suit and working behind a desk without going more crazy”), I bit the bullet over the whole ‘you-enjoy-working-at-the-school’ thing and decided that maybe my friends were on to something. I have been reliably informed that the application is moving forward (the school has received a reference request). 

2. I now have a fulltime Christmas job, with the same place I worked last year. The hours being recently extended, I have now started to loathe the buses even more. Yesterday, I wanted to shin the man who told me that he had never had a problem with my bus service, after the bus was delayed by about 20 minutes. I still believe that my local bus service slogan should be ‘travel with us, and learn the meaning of disappointment’. If there is one good thing about the service, I am getting through podcasts like no tomorrow, and I can doze on the buses home. Working fulltime for the first time since January is uniquely tiring, but I’m still enjoying it.

 

What has stayed the same?

1. If you read anything about Graduate employment, it is likely that the words ‘high rates of unemployment’ or ‘huh! What are they good for? Absolutely Nothing!’ will be in there somewhere. I honestly can’t tell if there are more vacancies available this year (as last year I wasn’t really paying attention up to Christmas, and only noticed that there was nothing available when I went on Milkround and everything was on commission or non-paid internships). Lots of my good, able and hard working friends are still being fobbed off by the Dole Centre and have been very unlucky.

2. I still can’t drive, meaning my chances of travelling off and having wacky adventures have been severely curtailed.

3. I still can’t crochet.

Fourth time to prove successful? November 20, 2009

1st Test: 13 Minors, 2 Serious (Which stank, no matter what way you choose to look at it)

2nd Test: 6 Minors, 4 Serious (Which is better, but likely equals out the same in the scheme of things)

3rd Test: 11 minors, 1 Serious (Which just makes me ever-so-slightly annoyed)

 

 

What is getting me upset is that if I could drive, I could get my own way to work without relying on the notorious country bus. The price you pay for living in an area with low levels of light pollution, (alongside my well documented complaints about having few shops and slooooooow internet which means that listening to internet radio and downloading podcasts at the same time are impossible) is that my wee neck of the woods receives only one bus to the village everyday. This bus arrives at approximately 7.30 in the morning and takes in a wild, meandering view through the countryside. I get to listen to the old guy (who is always on there) say ‘aaarp’ as I enter, listen to people confuse Political Correctness and Health and Safety (“You can even go up ladders now, thanks to Political Correctness”) and cut it fine as I get caught in traffic. The only real advantage is that I get to see the countryside as it wakes up and gets light. When you travel down to one river valley at about 7.45, you can see masses of deer. During the day, that would not happen at all.

There is also the fact that if I had a car, I would actually feel independent at the moment. My parents aren’t the kind of people to ask what I am doing every minute of the day (which is largely because they can hear me bumping around the house, or they know I will be laughing at Twilight on the internet), but it would be nice to wake up, think ‘actually, I want to go to the coast’ and just drive myself there. It would also mean that I could get to work without panicking about the fact that no traffic is moving for miles. I could take a quicker, scenic route.

Apart from having to reschedule my plans, this week has been alright for me. Work now has extended my hours so I’m working longer shifts.  This I don’t actually mind, as I am quite happy to bounce along the shop floor. I’ve also finished reading a few books, which means I need to buy more… honestly…

Speaking as a bookseller… November 18, 2009

 

"Do you have a loyalty card?"

 

Okay, I may or may-not be a part-time bookseller for the company described in this article  by the Guardian (which should really know better, especially when it sells a lot of its books). I admit it. Therefore, this article explaining why my company is supposedly destroying an industry does not make much sense to me.

While I could actually go through every point and bore everyone around with a slightly-above-average knowledge of the publishing world (thanks to theBookseller website), I just have 4 points.

1. How difficult is it to explain to someone that a book only costs £8.99 if you have already spent £10 in store?

2. Why pick on Waterstones? Apart from it striking me that you could tweak this article to complain about Amazon (who, lets face it, is the biggest thing to happen to books in probably twenty years), Borders, Barnes and Noble or dear old W. H Smith, I can’t help but wonder if it is because they happen to be the most recognisable bookstore after the loss of Ottakers.

Is it just because…

3. You, Sir, are a ‘potential customer’ (that being an euphemism for the words I won’t use) who is just narked that he could not go into a bookstore and read something without buying it. How dare a bookshop not sell Tacitus, and instead have shelf space for other books that people may want to read? Okay, so selling Dan Brown or even Katie Price may somehow be like a comedown for you (as though I should criticise someone for something they willingly want to read and instead tell them to read Dickens), but the fact is that if you only had a bookshop that sold Ancient Greek History and was ‘like an Edwardian Library’, you would go out of business. Everyone has the write to read what they want, and does not deserve to be intimidated by an environment just because you want to buy Frankie Boyle’s new biography. I would rather work in a large, friendly environment that had a good variety of books, than an environment that alienated people.

4. Why didn’t you ask a member of staff to find it for you? Had it occurred to you that it might have already been sold (because you hadn’t read it beforehand)? Or was under a display table? Or was being ordered? Don’t you also realise that shops around the country may sell slightly different books to relate to local interests? Next time, I suggest you have a quick chat, and I’m sure we could find something for you.

However, I do agree-it would be nice to have lots more chairs.

Questions November 13, 2009

If you fill out an application form in regards to a job, but then Safari crashes, does it count as a productive afternoon?

My Mum assures me that it does, as I was looking for people to interview for my radio show too, but it does still feel like a waste of a headache.

 

For NaNoWriMo, does writing approximately 50k of characters, instead of actual novel actually count?

My problem is that my mind is willing, the ideas are there, but I’m not actually getting anything typed as I’m either on the bus, applying for stuff, serving customers, knitting Christmas presents or asleep. While I can hardly complain (on my self imposed scale of someone with a hard life, I have hardly anything to whine about and there am -1000 on the ’stop whining you daft berk’ scale). I think that I have enough planned, and will count it as a good start. Maybe I will cheat and get it properly started on another month.

 

Is it better to watch Tru Blood or read the books?

I have no idea. I’ve only started watching it. All I can say us that I find it intriguing and that I am so glad that I didn’t watch it with my folks. There’s an awful lot of rude bits, and while I’m hardly a prude, I just don’t like watching sex scenes with my folks. We’re the kind of family where if we get embarrassed by nude bits, someone gets up and makes a cup of tea.

 

Is it hypocrisy to accidently take home from the school the paperclips you confiscated from a kid this morning?

I hope not. In any way, I hope I can return them before someone notices that they are no longer in the teacher’s desk pot.

 

 

Morality Tale November 11, 2009

Once upon a time, there were a young lady called Graduatecalling, a girl who has decided not to understand the word ’subtlety’ (and who thought that a Darren Shan book was a good choice for a lad who had been confirmed), but is one of those who could get a degree in enthusiasm.

 

 

Last year, when Graduatecalling had just come back from hersummer job, she decided to apply for the Civil Service. To do this as a graduate (which she is-can’t you see from her name?), she decided to apply to the Civil Service Fast Stream. There was only one problem-Graduatecalling had to do selection tests. Because it may just be the ‘eff up’ fairy, or through her own inability to do maths tests, she knew that her and selection tests may involve a struggle.

After panic buying some psychometric tests guides, Graduatecalling practised for hours, days and weeks to get up to something beyond below average. She practised on holiday and after work, in an attempt to pass.

She failed.

Graduatecalling, our proud, undignified and possibly naive hero, decided to apply next year. And that is what she did, taking her time to fill in all of the information and study just that little bit harder. Then, when the time came to take the test, a good relative of Graduatecalling offered to coach her with maths skills. Her and her partner were pretty hot on the maths front, and so were able to give her advice as to what to do when you have to work out averages over a period of time. Graduatecalling was intensively coached, and the maths test was completed yet again.

Graduatecalling still failed.

The moral of this fairytale?: Sometimes it doesn’t matter, even if you actually do quite well and then parade your CV in on the back of cycling dalmatians. If they don’t want you, there is nothing that you can do.