Unemployed Watercooler Fridge Buzz Commiseration, Alienation and Mental Anti-Stagnation Society (DNRIYHM)

In the future: just start lying, I guess.

'Dutch speaking? Yeah, no problem for De Groot you know...'

(orders language course..)

(true story. Interview not offered)

I am getting a home visit by a customer compliance officer from the DWP tomorrow. I am presuming this is because some civic minded member of hard workin' Britain from my fine little estate has reported me as a fraudster. I have nothing to hide and am not too worried but still hope whoever is responsible for this dies from the ebola, a couple of times at least.

Aw, geez, that sucks. I'm sorry, and hope it all goes OK. Let us know what happens (and who to give a kicking to.)

:( good luck

Thanks people. I don't it will be an ordeal, they are obliged to respond when somebody gets reported and like I said I have nothing to hide.

many years ago me and my then girlfriend had a visit from the dole because i was signing on and she was working. turned out he'd done an efficient job of tailing us and observing our more-than-friendly-flatmate-y behaviour. narcs.

Now it seems everyone wants to be a Narc. We were discussing a suspect list and couldn't even rule out members of my partners family. It isn't as terrifying as Stalin's great purge, but some comparisons can be made.

That is so paranoid-making. I cannot understand the mentality of anyone who would narc like that. It's just such a petty, vindictive thing to do.

countries full of people like that. It doesnt even have to be an anti-benefits tory it could be someone who got kicked off and thinks others should too in revenge, divide & conquer.

so yeah it could be anybody and that is pretty scary. if you even made enemies on a message board it could happen. a lot of people are vindictive.

a US ilxor lost his job recently due to posting song lyrics on his fb and someone reported it. What kind of world do we live in nevermind country.

Damn! Could you elucidate further on this ?

Damn! My suggestion for your compliance visit is try to have someone there with you to observe the DWP person? So many spurious sanction stories, I can't help but think it's better to have an extra pair of eyes on the situation.

Thanks people. I don't it will be an ordeal, they are obliged to respond when somebody gets reported and like I said I have nothing to hide.

― xelab, Monday, 28 April 2014 20:57 (1 hour ago)

don't let it be an ordeal, fraud as a proportion of welfare expenditure is very small and subtracting the cost of this sort of GDR level minatory 'enforcement' its net cost is probably almost nothing, the function is more to delegitimize the concept of social insurance and these 'visits' are 95% of the time essentially abusive, you shouldn't have anything to fear from them

xelab (do i know you under a dif nick?) It says more about his states laws more than anything. But im not sure i should really say anymore about someones private stuff. I prob overstepped the mark as it is.It wont affect you tho so dont worry.

Given what the US tends to get draconian about, I'm guessing it was some kind of lyrical drug reference?

Anyway, I need to find out if the Overground is running today.

Yes it is - TFL reports good service

Thanks! OK, I guess I need to get out of bed and go find some ancient woodlands.

*shakes fist at bluebells*

RIGHT! I have walked the entire length of the Great North Woods! Starting at the Honor Oak, through Horniman Park, Sydenham Woods, Dulwich Woods, Kingswood, Norwood, Gypsy Hill (had to skip Convent Wood for being "apparently inaccessible" though after talking to a local at length, she suggested where I could hop a fence and gain access), Biggin Wood, Norwood Grove, Streatham Wood, Unigate Wood and home. It only took me 7 hours, but then I did do a lot of stopping to sketch things.

The oldest tree I saw was reckoned to be about 400 years old. LOADS of bluebells. (Dulwich Wood, in particular, gets honours for bluebells.) All kinds of wildflowers that I have forgotten the names of and will have to look up. CHEQUER TREES. Hornbeams. (God, I love hornbeams.) A completely Cthuthonic tree right at the tippy top of London (reckon it might be a laurel? It's bloody huge and ancient whatever it is.)

And I now reckon that the best view of London to be had anywhere is actually from Norwood Park. (Though, granted, that bit of Norwood is so rough that even the logs on the nature trail are chained down to stop people from nicking them. Not even kidding.)

Such a great walk. Will totally do it again to hoover up the remainder of Great North Fragments that I didn't hit on this jaunt. (Mayow Park, Grangewood Park, Sydemham Wells, others)

Well that was very unexpectedly painless and brief. All I had to do was flash some i.d, dig out my tenancy agreement and sign a statement confirming I don't have greater than £6k in savings. The compliance officer couldn't get out fast enough saying he had another 6 to do. Phew!

Well, I'm glad that was painless, even if it was a hassle!

Happy Beltaine / May Day / whatever!

Phone ringing off the hook today. Approached by 3 different companies... for the same role. :-/

Guess that means I'm qualified, though, if I turn up trumps in everyone's search criteria for it.

The Great North Woods walk sounds brilliant - I'd like to do that myself! Maybe accompany you next time? I'm sure Mrs GG would like to as well.

Fingers crossed for this new role.

I didn't do May Day by the way - no jumping off Magdalen Bridge for me.

Take in Maryon Park for a quick Nick Drake tribute moment?

I have totally been inside Convent Woods! I am drenched to the bone, but I was in there. It's not completely abandoned, as someone has been in there since the bluebells bloomed, so, within the past month. But OH. MY. GOD. I have seen bluebells like you would not BELIEVE. It is old growth forest with just carpets of bluebells. And brambles, oh good lord I am cut to ribbons on brambles.

I don't know that I'm going to be able to get in there again, because I took advantage of some construction which will very soon be finished and the hole I slipped in through patched up. But my god I am glad that I got in there while I got the chance. There really is a feeling and a smell and that wonderful sense of deep cooling dampness that you get from really old forests, I think because of the amount of ground cover.

I am just a gibbering mess of bluebell appreciation right now.

:D :D :D :D That's wonderful! Also I saw this yesterday and I want to give it to you:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/heritage-apples-john-bunker-maine

"In the mid-1800s, there were thousands of unique varieties of apples in the United States, some of the most astounding diversity ever developed in a food crop. Then industrial agriculture crushed that world. The apple industry settled on a handful of varieties to promote worldwide, and the rest were forgotten. They became commercially extinct—but not quite biologically extinct."

Read it!!! Now I want heritage apple trees!

Phone ringing off the hook today. Approached by 3 different companies... for the same role. :-/

Guess that means I'm qualified, though, if I turn up trumps in everyone's search criteria for it.

― Branwell Bluebell (Branwell Bell), Thursday, May 1, 2014 9:02 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jeez louise, I've been out of work for a year and a half and not one recruiter or employer has searched me out for ANY job. Celebrate yourself for a sec that you're in professional demand! Even if you don't want them.

Oh, what a great article! Thank you! (Though I'm somewhat worried I might be an "Apple Hipster" as described in there. Oh dear.)

But yeah, a lot of that stuff is what we were taught on our apple warden course, about how apples don't breed true, and you have to graft a cutting onto rootstock in order to propagate any variety you like. (And that's what's so amazing, when you think about it. That they are basically grafts and clones of a single tree. One living organism, that in some cases, has been living through cuttings for hundreds of years - we have an apple variety that dates to the 1700s! That is a living being that is 300 years old, just growing there in our orchard!)

I can't imagine how amazing that man's job is, being an APPLE DETECTIVE and going around hunting down rare breeds.

(And the headhunter thing, I don't know if this is a peculiar quirk of UK culture, or if it's just specifically IT professionals that get headhunted like this, but it is just the nature of the beast, and not necessarily indicative of my desirability. And I kinda do want this role, it sounds like it might be interesting.)

Every time I see a job described as a 'role' (something that's come to fruition over the past decade, I guess) my internal monologue can't help but riff on I'D LIKE TO THANK THE ACADEMY...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oEOrZB_STPc/T6-JPw6N0uI/AAAAAAAAFz4/bKrbJubG-r4/s640/drakecolour.jpg

The late Nick Drake bluebell hunting in the Old Great North Wood in 1970

I just got a spam email with the title "CORNISH BLUEBELLS" and I'm just like... "stop, stop... this google bubble of the tailored internet has GONE TOO FAR this time!"

yeah it's a particularly egregious piece of management speak

xxp

You know, when I use the term "I prefer this role to the other" as opposed to "I prefer this job to the other" I am actually talking about a specific sense of the job, rather than just some meaningless "management speak" term.

This may be specific to IT recruitment, I don't know. Job titles and descriptions in IT are often either meaningless guff to satisfy HR ("Application Support Analyst" is a job title I've been hired to do) or else refer to a group of tasks which get bunched - something like "Data Analyst" or "MI Analyst" or "Data Manager" can all be referring to the same tasks and same technology - or they might not. One *job* can entail many roles. In jobs I've had in the past, I've spent part of my job in the Role of "Database Manager", adding new users and deleting locked threads, part of my job sitting in the Role of SQL programmer, in front of a compiler writing SQL queries, part of my job in the Role of Report Developer, writing a report in Crystal or just exporting chunks of data to Excel, part of my job talking to department managers and trying to tease out what report they *really* want, as opposed to what they keep telling me they want because they read a buzzword in the FT that morning and they now think they want some ~analytics~, part of my job sitting in a board meeting telling the CEO the percentage increase of new customers, and then part of my job sitting in the call centre working out why the data entry operators hate the new system so much and what can we do to the graphic user interface to make them stop making so many stupid mistakes that gum up the system and render our data meaningless.

So: one job, many roles. "Job" is the desk at which you sit. "Role" is the hat you are wearing at that moment of the day.

When I say "I would prefer Role 1 to Role 2" what I mean is that I am being recruited for two jobs, two positions which both have a job title of "MI Analyst" or whatever, but the *role* of one involves doing a wide variety of the things discussed above (which is challenging and therefore interesting) and the other *role* involves sitting in front of a SQL query writer for 8 hours a day, slinging data into spreadsheets and emailing them out (which is boring as fuck and please dear god kill me now).

Learning to discuss the *role* as opposed to the *job* is something I've had to learn how to do when dealing with IT headhunters. It's a specific sense for a specific thing, though I recognise it's not something you'd know if you weren't familiar with that world.

(Also, I'm not sure anyone has a right to complain about florid or meaningless prose stylings when dishing out phrases like "come to fruition" but that's just me!)

yeah the prevalence of "role" in the workplace is weird

*sigh*

I dunno, Suzy. We could zing one another some more because it's fun and that's how we show affection? Or we could discuss the changing meaning of words in modern contexts coz that's also kinda fun?

But I suspect you're surfing a deadline! And I'm fractious from dealing with idiots on the phone all day long. And also should really be working on something I don't even have a deadline for, but it's a new publisher (for me) so I don't want to take forever. But I'm procrasturbating because what if it's not perfect, and also, what if they don't like it and so on. Blah. I should get back to work.

I see "role" being used as synonymous with "job" all the time in vacancy announcements. "This is a varied role", "Please explain how you are suited to the role", etc

"in this role you will be require to act convincing as though you know what you're doing"

See, I don't believe I was zinging a friend here, or in any way being ~personal~, rather I was offering a general WTF at the rigama of 'role'. I'm pretty jaundiced when it comes to HR-speak but 'role' makes me tetchy in a lie-that-speaks-the-truth sorta way.

(Not deadline-surfing BTW, was on a tea break in the office where I'm doing a few weeks' copywriting)

You know what, I've explained why I used the term in the way I did; I'm not interested in scrapping with you, so I'm just going to discontinue this conversation now.

Right now, I'm more pissed off by the general prevalence of yet more all-male panels and all male events and all male speakers.

Got an email about something I might actually be really interested in:

Faber Social teams up with The Quietus in May to present a night of music, words and film exploring the British uncanny and modern occult in relation to our history, culture, landscape and society.

Then I flick my eyes down through the list of writers, speakers, poets, DJs. All blokes. Every single one. I categorically no longer go to all male events. I just don't have time for this. So it's disappointing when I see something I would otherwise be very interested in the topic of, but it's just a giant sausage party. Fuck that shit.

rigama of 'role'

otm

Imagine having a British occult spesh without, y'know, *witches*.

Faber are pretty notorious for making a weenie roast of Social events/panels and you can blame the relevant editor, L33 B1ack$t0n3, who has even alienated a close friend/male muse of one of his most successful authors on the basis that everything there is (direct quote) "hetty-Betty boy-bonding". I was 'girled' at one featuring another good friend and I'm not ever planning on going to another.

just realized A Field in England is all dudes but beyond that can't think of a single film/musical group in this genre without strong female input, really quite a weird reading

weird like they'd have to go out of their way to be so monogender

I don't know what to think. The main speaker also happens to be the BFF of a certain ex of mine - I've gone to some of his events before, which were fine; don't remember if they were sausage parties, suspect not, because he's good friends with several women from that kind of ~wyrdness~ scene.

There is a certain strand of that subculture which is very boys-only, but it did tend to be overtly homosexual rather than just homosocial. Said BFF used to regularly go along to "all man" weekends with well known musical artists (my ex was invited but didn't go because it made him uncomfortable that partners weren't allowed) and it was kind of occult gay wyrdness, which is like, OK, I could see in that situation, all male being a *thing*.

But this isn't at all like that, it's just yet another boring fucking all male panel and I'm just so done with that. It's 2014, I just don't do sausage parties.