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Topic: Commute Times (UK)

Posts 41 to 60 of 156

NedStarksGhost

@render Can't let our lives be dictated by a Green/Yellow/Red Circle/Tick thing!

Edited on by NedStarksGhost

NedStarksGhost

NedStarksGhost

@Keith_Zissou Thanks for the input, that's really interesting. I guess there has to be elements to job satisfaction as well. Perhaps mentally you'd think you don't really mind or even notice longer hours if the place you're going to is somewhere you want to be!

NedStarksGhost

render

@Keith_Zissou @NedStarksGhost Job satisfaction is a must. The only thing you spend more time doing than work is sleep so you need to enjoy what you do. There's so many people trapped in jobs that they don't enjoy for various reasons and not everyone is lucky enough to be able to choose, but certainly if you can you should.

Another important thing is not only liking the job but also the people you work for / with. If you don't get on with them then that can definitely add to the dissatisfaction.

render

ralphdibny

@NedStarksGhost sounds like you are speaking the story of my life too 😅. No pay rise for 13 years, less work in general, work spread thin amongst inexperienced people with the old guard expected to pick up the slack on individual shifts.

I find it really difficult to not listen to the horror stories. It's really hard as it puts me off taking so many shifts at certain places. I don't have the same perspective as other people and some people's horror stories might turn out to be not so bad for me. It's difficult though, when I am deciding whether I want to give up my time for a shift that could make me so depressed or angry that i will carry that feeling home with me. And every day leading up to that shift is an anxiety ridden nightmare. I do try to not listen to the devil in my ear but sometimes I've just got to go with the flow and see if any of the shifts are right for me.

I think the overtime thing will ultimately depend on the company. I wouldn't mind doing a bit of it if they didn't take the Mick and it was reasonable and the salary was high enough. But over the last 13 years my current job has dropped from double time, to time and a half, to pro rata to finally having to do a load of extra work to justify getting an hourly rate so it's just become a pointless time expense.

Also with regards to yours and @render 's mouse wigglers:

Untitled

Hopefully you don't cause a nuclear meltdown! 😂

See ya!

R1spam

@render I work some condensee hours and do one half day a week working from home. It's a godsend for work life balance! Blended working patterns seem to be the obvious way forward and hope your work continue to let you work mostly from home!

PSN: Tiger-tiger_82
XBOX: Placebo G

PSN: Tiger-tiger_82

RogerRoger

NedStarksGhost wrote:

I'll be sure to come back to this thread on Friday evening and we can see what we both thought of the finale!

@NedStarksGhost Alas, right after I've watched it tomorrow morning, I'm gonna be AFK for a couple of days, but I'll look forward to reading your thoughts upon my return!

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

NedStarksGhost

@render True words, for sure. I used to enjoy this job, which is the sad thing. But there's been a lot of chnages and some things I don't agree with. One exame is a huge emphasis and focus on month to month income from year long projects, when these can be very dynamic to do so. Puts added pressure on our managers and therefore workflow is just caotic. I've had to jump from task to task when we do is development and it's far more efficient to have an engineer focus on the one area of the project.

@ralphdibny yeah that doesn't sound good! On Overtime it's frustrating, because there's times where I have to be stuck on site working over because there's literally no choice. Even that doesn't get paid. It's supposed to be Time Off In Lieu but haha good luck with that... I don't get why companies don't just implement overtime and have it a requirement to be approved if they're worried of it being abused.

Work is just a nightmare sometimes! I do like your solution over the mouse jiggler. I would love to leave that on a Microsoft Teams chat so the person on the other end is just dreading awaiting a long message about something, just for you to delete it and sign off!

Edited on by NedStarksGhost

NedStarksGhost

ralphdibny

@NedStarksGhost haha yeah or then uncover the webcam and reveal the truth of who has really been typing all that time! 😂

One of the companies that I work at is like an international news corporation (can't say who). They are generally pretty hot on making sure people do the time of in lieue, their system allows you to book a variety of days off and bank any over time or weekends. Unfortunately I'm a contractor there so I receive none of those benefits! But yeah, the internal staff were telling me that in their New York office, nobody works any overtime whatsoever because the company would have to pay it. Not sure if it's a difference in the contracts or if it's a difference in UK/US law. So they force people out of the workplace and make sure everyone leaves on time. It's so weird! Especially that they would be such "company people" that they'd actually want to stick around and do more hours.

But yeah OT sucks for us really. We have the approval thing but it's basically useless because nobody is around to approve it at the weekends when most of our work takes place. My simple solution would be to have someone from the office who isn't a wet fish be on call at the weekends to make such authorisations. Alas they don't, and if you do get through to somebody then they will probably give you the run around until you spell out to them that the job won't get finished unless the workers get paid to finish it. I've even had verbal approval that's been reneged because it wasn't in writing. I've even had texts reneged because they weren't in an email 😅. My company will do anything to save a few quid sometimes!

Edited on by ralphdibny

See ya!

NedStarksGhost

@ralphdibny that's crazy about the office in the USA. I'd love it if we got pushed out over here! Sadly not, our work culture is like you must make it part of your livelihood and stuff.

Grim reading about the overtime, I'd be so annoyed. It's crazy the idea that you should just be cool with working extra hours and not getting compensated for it properly.

I love those who seem to think that if you spend your time away from work not out in the pub, then your available to chat or help out as "you're not busy". I'm afraid to say that, if I choose to spend my spare time staring at the wall, that still doesn't mean I'm available!

NedStarksGhost

NedStarksGhost

@RogerRoger just watched it. I enjoyed it! Sets up the next season well. As far as finales go a little underwhelming I think, I expected something bigger at the end. However brilliant first season overall, can't wait to see where it goes next!

NedStarksGhost

NedStarksGhost

@ralphdibny hey, just thought I'd come back to this thread as I recently almost got a new job. I was due to have the second interview soon, which was more a formality than anything else after the first interview remotely. But cancelled it as the travel time would have been 1 hour and 15 minutes.

They tried to convince me to just trial the drive but I stuck to the point that to me it's just travel time, good drive or bad.

Even though they said working from home 1 day a week would be a thing, there's no guarantee it would stay. Plus there would be periods of work where I'd have to come in everyday, potentially for weeks.

It's made me realise though after coming that close that I really don't want a long commute time at all, 30 minutes maximum. I was just thinking of those weeks where I'm having to smash overtime for projects, in the office, and then leaving late, getting home with barely enough time to eat. Then sleeping and getting up early to travel again!

It was a bad sign that I already didn't want to go to the interview because of the drive. And whilst it was for a slight pay rise, it probably wouldn't have worked out as much extra money due to the journey distance.

Thought it'd be cool to share my thoughts after having some experience recently with nearly going for a job with a long commute!

NedStarksGhost

ralphdibny

@NedStarksGhost well done on getting so far in the interview process and thanks for letting us know! It is what it is really, probably a good thing that you realised how you felt about it now to be honest. Hopefully you can find something closer to you.

I'm actually kind of on the verge of starting a new project that's going to be 9 hour days but only 3 days a week. I've asked for a 30% pay rise to do it though 😂 because I just can't face the idea of doing 9 hour days + travel. I think I could just about stomach it if that's all the work I had to do on a week though and I had the other 4 days off which I could probably afford to do with that extra money. We'll see what they come back to me with lol 😅, they'll probably get someone to do it who costs half as much which always seems to be the way these days!

See ya!

JohnnyShoulder

@NedStarksGhost Well done on the new job!

I'm back in the office from Monday and I won't be moving into my new house until the 27th September, so will have 3 more weeks on getting the bus. Something I certainly won't miss.

Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

PSN: JohnnyShoulder

NedStarksGhost

@ralphdibny Thank you, it was a shame in some ways as I liked the sound of the work, but I had nightmare visions of having to go into the office daily for weeks on end and it would really get to me. Hope you get the money for it, that's a big commitment over those days, I think they should accept that. After all, travel is just unpaid work time!

@JohnnyShoulder Thanks! It sounded good but the travel time was a killer for me, plus they talked about lots of Overtime which is good in a way but not if you then have rough a 1.5h commute on those days.

Shame you're back in the office before moving! Our work is planning a phased return which is frustrating as there has been no negatives to working from home, so not best pleased about it to be honest.

NedStarksGhost

render

@NedStarksGhost Like others have said, nice work on getting the interview. It's all good experience and must give you some confidence that there are people out there that see you've got what they need.

I can see how it's a tough call but I think for me it would have been the same decision, and that I couldn't stomach the travel time. Hopefully you will find something that has a good balance though, even if it is for a little less money. It will make all the difference to your happiness.

@ralphdibny Good luck on getting the pay rise and hopefully the job won't be too bad if you are only having to do 3 day weeks. A lot of people would sign up for that I think as having 4 days off is a real luxury and gives you some time to recover.

@JohnnyShoulder Bad luck on having to deal with the extra travel before you move. Hopefully the 3 weeks go quickly enough and you'll have moved in no time!

render

NedStarksGhost

@render thanks Render, it sure is a confidence boost. Agree with you, shorter commute for less money is much more valuable overall!

NedStarksGhost

JohnnyShoulder

@NedStarksGhost @render In some ways it works out quite well, as it means I can pop over to the house if needed to sort anything out either on my lunch break or after work.

Even if I wanted to stay working from home, which I don't, I would struggle to pass the Health and Safety requirements going forward for a proper home office set up as I lack the space, even in the new place.

Edited on by JohnnyShoulder

Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

PSN: JohnnyShoulder

ralphdibny

@NedStarksGhost cheers, hopefully yeah! I think it's more like my bosses need to secure the contract. I won't be annoyed if they don't manage to but I would be annoyed if they did and gave it to one of my colleagues for half price without consulting me. I guess we will see!

Ahh yeah, I'm glad you've mentioned that they spoke about overtime right off the bat. I think that makes your decision even more understandable. If it's not feasible for you on normal hours then somehow I doubt it will be with the addition of OT.

@render cheers! I think what I've asked for is relatively low for the industry standard of what this new project will be but we've not had a pay rise in like 13 years for the normal work we do so Im not hopeful to get the money 😅. At the end of the day, there will be bods who will do my job for less than minimum wage but the suits in the office won't care about the quality of the work, just that they get their cut of it!

See ya!

ralphdibny

I'm starting a new project next week. 130/day for 8 hours, commute is going to be like 1hr20 each way including the walk to the station so an almost 11 hour day all in. What do people think? I guess I'll find out once I start it but I am worried I'm going to get burned out doing that sort of thing. This is in London btw, travels going to cost 19/day currently and 28/day once I've moved in with my partner in the next few months (same journey time)

Edited on by ralphdibny

See ya!

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