Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

Mostly, everybody on a shortlist's last names will start with the letters A-H.

not us, but the employer would fit with that....so starting with a list of firms they'd probaby get to dh swiftly on that basis. It also seems a very crowded market: lots of the just ring around agencies just ringing around.

what dh is finding is that while starting at a really good place is brilliant, it does make the next move harder, a there is a limited pool of employers its worthwhile to move too....its not a case of the only way is up.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

I locked myself out this morning. Grrr. Thankfully its warmer than it was yesterday and I found a pair of scissors which facilatated my reentry and the only thing damaged were the scissors.

Key in a plastic bag, tied up with string, dig a hole somewhere away from the door/house that you can easily find in the pitch dark/rain .... bury the bag 4" down with 1/2" of string sticking up above the ground and a flowerpot over that, or superglue the end of the string to the underside of a large pebble.

chewmylegoff

PasturesNew wrote: »

In about 1995 I had a little side job working for a headhunter - and I saw their methods. She employed a local mum, in a deepest rural village, to come round and literally phone through a big book.

e.g. the recruiting was for "Partner of Big Law Firm in Leeds", with salaries of £250k. All the local mum had to do was open the big industry book at the front and skim through to find which legal firms dealt with that area of the law, look up the name of their current senior staff, then cold call them and ask "would you be interested in a partnership in a big town up north?" If they said yes she asked them to send in their CV. Once she had "enough" yes' it was job done unless those who sent in a CV weren't up to being short-listed.

The headhunter was getting paid 1/3rd of fees up front, full expenses (she'd interview in the Savoy with canapes/champagne bills run up), then 1/3rd of fee at short-list stage and 1/3rd of fees at appointment.

Mostly, everybody on a shortlist's last names will start with the letters A-H.

that sounds about right. these days they just look you up on linkedin and ring you through the switchboard. got one the other day who offered me an excellent opportunity earning exactly half what i am on now. thankfully, i don't get a lot of these calls.

PasturesNew

Malcolm. wrote: »

Take every question they ask to mean sell yourself to me. i.e. tell them what you can offer them - rather than literally answer the question or overly analyse why they're asking it.

So something like, "I like to foster a good team spirit, I also giving people the space and responsibilities to develop. I'm happy to speak to people if needs arise".

I wouldn't go into specifics unless they ask for examples.

Except, I am not a sales person....

Even if I remembered your answer, I'd come unstuck if they were quick off the mark and asked "how would you foster a good team spirit?" I'd probably shoot from the hip and say "bake them cakes" or "go down the pub".

I can't answer questions that I don't know are coming (it's hard enough if I know the questions as I still don't know the answers). Let's face it - I am simply not cut out for modern days' bizarre employers and the hoops to jump through are strange shapes.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

Key in a plastic bag, tied up with string, dig a hole somewhere away from the door/house that you can easily find in the pitch dark/rain .... bury the bag 4" down with 1/2" of string sticking up above the ground and a flowerpot over that, or superglue the end of the string to the underside of a large pebble.

it was my own fault. I didn't go through ''the back door'' but the french windows...with the faulty handle, and hadn't unlocked the back door. I'm no making sure I unlock the back door. In time the doors and locks are all changing anyway.

PasturesNew

chewmylegoff wrote: »

that sounds about right. these days they just look you up on linkedin and ring you through the switchboard. got one the other day who offered me an excellent opportunity earning exactly half what i am on now. thankfully, i don't get a lot of these calls.

I am on Linkedin, but not active .... I dislike the openness of such sites. I don't want to share everything in that way with god knows who etc. People that are recruiting from there will be recruiting pushy people... I'm a conscientious worker who gives attention to detail and wants to keep their name and face out of the public eye.

Social networking simply doesn't suit me. I am a worker, not a networker.

SingleSue

LydiaJ wrote: »

In the Telegraph:



This caught my eye because I've always wondered how Sue's ex gets away with paying her so little, since he seems reasonably well off from what she says about him. Any chance it might result in more money for you, Sue? Here's hoping, anyway.

We have a private agreement rather than it being through the CSA, whilst we may get a lesser amount, it does also mean that the lines of communication are open.... and we actually get something, ex is the sort of person who would give up his job if the CSA got involved. So, for us, it is the lesser of two evils and at least we are getting something (it took a year for him to start paying anything)

To be honest, I have no idea what he earns...it was minimum wage a couple of years ago but not a scoobie now although his new family income is increased as his wife receives a very decent maintenance amount per week, they both work and they rent their property from her mother for a less than market value rent.

zagubov

lostinrates wrote: »

My littlest neice used to slip her seatbelt all the time. I went bit too far when I told her the police (innocently driving along three cars behind us) were coming for me.
.

Saw a car hit a woman crossing the high street. She landed on her rear end yelling her head off and gave the impression of being more upset than physically hurt.

Just in front of me on the pavement a woman turned to her little girl and said loudly “Did you see what that stupid woman did? That’s what happens if you cross the road without looking!”

Didn’t know whether to be repelled by the cold-bloodedness of using the poor person’s accident as a example or admiring the initiative of the mother teaching her child an important life lesson!

lostinrates

zagubov wrote: »

:j
Saw a car hit a woman crossing the high street. She landed on her rear end yelling her head off and gave the impression of being more upset than physically hurt.

Just in front of me on the pavement a woman turned to her little girl and said loudly “Did you see what that stupid woman did? That’s what happens if you cross the road without looking!”

Didn’t know whether to be repelled by the cold-bloodedness of using the poor person’s accident as a example or admiring the initiative of the mother teaching her child an important life lesson!

the latter IMO.

But my niece did cry a lot when she thought I was going to prison. I think my decription of a stone dungeon complete with rats, the stench of pee and noone at home bothering to fee the pets was overkill and probably idn't do more good than harm in retrospect.:o

SingleSue

LydiaJ wrote: »

I have pointed it out, several times. She just carries on talking. :rotfl:

She was a terror for slipping her seatbelt when she was little. She learnt how to wriggle out of a 5 point child seat harness one night when I was driving from Gloucester to Cambridge with both kids and no other adult in the car. I think she was about 18-20 months old. She did it, and I put her back in. Half an hour later she did it again and I put her back in again. Then 10 minutes later, 5 minutes, 1 minute, then every 30 seconds, over and over. In the end I tied the two chest straps together with the lace out of one of my trainers, and that foiled her. When we arrived in Cambridge, I told my friend all about it, and the following day she helped me make an extra strap with a clickable fastening, to connect the two chest straps easily. DD hated it. Within a week all I had to do was threaten to do up "the special strap" and she'd stay put.

They're great about seatbelts now, of course. It's only recently that I've persuaded them that they don't need to tell me off if I don't put mine on until after I've finished reversing out of the parking space! It's just as well they're good about them, because they'd be dead otherwise.

I had a very odd conversation with a policeman just after "the accident" in which he thanked me (and me on behalf of LNE) for bringing them up to wear their seatbelts. I thought it was rather strange of him. It turned out another kid involved in one of the connected accidents had just died of injuries received when being thrown from the car. Traffic police feel grateful to parents who make kids belt up, because it means they don't have to deal with child deaths, which they hate. When it was put to me like that, I could see why he was thanking me.



I have similarly been amazed at the hamster. She escaped AGAIN yesterday. I am going to have to reorganise my kitchen cupboards to keep cereal on the upper level, I think.

Middle son was the escaping one....in the end, we had three different restrainsts on his car seat (all at the same time!) including a specialist harness type one designed for autistic kids who like escaping, he still managed to beat them all and be out of his child seat within 2 minutes of being harnessed in.

Youngest son went through a phase of when freaked out about something (generally when we were on unfamiliar roads or routes), of trying to climb out of the window whilst the car was moving....or he would get in such a blind panic he couldn't move and would just throw up everywhere. Although not very MSE in the short term, a sat nav which he could hold solved the problem and in the long term, it saved me oodles of pennies in clean up costs and a whole load of stress! We (Ok, I..hubby just called him a wuss) had initially tried a road map and whilst that was ok for the longer journeys on big roads, when it came to travelling in the smaller towns, the scale was just not big enough and it was much too expensive to keep buying local maps.