It’s week two of my job at Open Door Design and it’s coming along nicely. I’ve been working around with one of their previous big sites which I’ve really been able to get my teeth into and rip apart. It’s everything you expect when you get into the real world, I’ll leave you to fill in what that means :D.
So, I started work this week.
It’s not the best thing ever to be honest. I have to get up and dressed at like 8am. Not pm - am!
Still, the job itself is pretty good. While I’m currently in the getting myself up to speed stage I think once I get my teeth into some good projects it is going to be an excellent job. Plus the people are really nice and friendly and we’re just round the corner from Elland Road McDonald’s. What more could you ask for?
Yesterday saw my first job interview in a long time.
Despite my title, it was actually the most relaxed interview we’ve ever done. It felt more like a conversation than an interview. And while I really don’t know how to gauge how well it went, I’m told the fact that it lasted an hour and 15 minutes is a good sign. But I guess we will have to wait and see. The job looks really good at least.
I have another one tomorrow which should be interesting. If I can find it lol.
Christmas Day sucked. Having been up late and not getting to sleep until like 4ish because I had been at work the night before so didn’t have a 9-5 sleep pattern I got dragged out of bed at 9 and then proceeded to spend the day having my family attempt to engage me in mindless conversation. I really don’t care how many Christmas specials Strictly Come Dancing has - I have a life so no, I don’t watch it.
Today was a little better though. It got back to the true meaning of Chrismukkah - earning money. 13 hour shift at time and a half, that will do nicely.
Having got into work last weekend I was suprised to see that the posters for the Christmas party stated the venue was The Chemic Tavern. This was an odd choice of venue given it was literally miles away from our store but most conviently for myself only two streets away from where I live :D.
Despite a very, very modest turn-out it was good to see the people who turned up. Myself and Zoe spent ages catching up as we haven’t seen each other in ages which seems to be a recurrant theme - I hadn’t seen Hannah, Rich, Danny in ages either and the list could probably go on. Plus Kath spent the night handing our free drink tokens so I’m not complaining. Not quite up to last years standards but a good night none the less.
It’s been another fun weekend. Including some rumours which rather pleased me but I won’t be discussing on a public blog (don’t get excited, it isn’t juicy gossip). It has sparked an interesting series of thoughts though.
Turns out Eric Atwell really does live this side of Leeds. He came in tonight while I was working.
Speaking of which I Googled his name to check I had the spelling correct and thought “hmm, what if I had blog to the end of this search query.” It wasn’t long before I was fishing around to see what SoC staff had blogs. While my search was admittedly limited to a narrow selection of the staff, one man of course failed to disappoint.
The blog is called Pythoneer’s Journal, so I’ll leave you to guess which member of staff it is :D.
Which then leads me onto the question, is it a good thing if you know that people read your blog? (Or perhaps another way to phrase it, how bad it is if you know people read your blog?). Because if you know people do, how much do you start censoring it?
I mean, would I be so harsh on coursework specs if I knew the author of it read my blog? Would I be so harsh about my PD31 group if I knew they read it? I like to think so, particuarly because I knew several of my PD31 group did read my blog but it makes you wonder…
Well you can’t have any. Because yesterday Colton Mill ran out :D. And somebody had to go chasing all the way over to Oakwood to get some. Fun times.
Got two interesting pieces of news at work today.
First of all, my long, long awaited (and some would say long overdue :D) promotion to staff trainer is finally official. I scored a rather disappointing 42 out of 50 on my exam but given, a) you only need 40 to pass and b) I beat Neil by one mark, I guess that will suffice. So I should finally be on a half decent rate of pay which will be nice. Ha, I’ll need it with the amount of time I’ve booked off work over the next few months.
Secondly, today I had “the talk” from Kath. It was in the rumour mill that myself and Neil were going to be offered it which I’m quite glad about as it gave me a little time to think about what my response would be even if it was only for a hypothetical situation. Basically, I’ve been offered the job of shift running manager.
I told her I would need a week to think about it but to be honest, I think I have already made up my mind.
Do you know how much money I got in my last pay cheque? £370! 12 out of the 14 days of that pay period I worked and all I came away with was £370. I think I must have been raped by tax because I was on over £400 pre-tax before my last shift.
All in all I’m realising how much of a bad shape my overdraft is in. Once my credit cards are paid off it’s going to take 4 or 5 weeks to clear it on full time pay and I have about 3 weeks left. While I still have my student loan to come in, I have rent going out and I got hit by a massive phone bill from when I was sorting out our BT line and internet for the house.
Still hopefully I should be able to generate some kind of decent pay cheque next time. At the moment I need to pick up some more shifts to fill my days off but I made a good start today - I clocked into work at 05:45 in the morning and I’ve just got home now. Open closes for the win.
I clocked into work at 5:45am yesterday morning. And clocked out at 2:10am this morning.
Long day. You simply can’t beat a good open close. I did the whole thing on only 3-4 bottles of Kick as wel (I brought 12, just in case :D). Having done my open shift which finished at 3, I went home to grab an hour sleep before going back to do a 7-close. It’s the second open close I’ve done though this one was significantly longer than the last one though I worked straight through last time. I can honestly say I’m glad it’s over though.