Tag: jobs

Prompt Time: First Day

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.

I remember my first day at Amazon, my current job, like it was yesterday. It was in fact over 10 years ago. Which is crazy. I guess time flies when you are having fun.

I applied to Amazon because I needed to get a job before Christmas, I needed money. I had never worked in a warehouse before, my previous work experience was all customer service based. All I had to go off was the reputation the place had, which was not too good. But, I figured that the only way I’d know what things were like, was if I tried it for myself. I had decided before I had even set one foot in the building that I would try it till Christmas, and if I didn’t like it, I could look for something else after that.

The building itself was beyond anything I could have imagined. The warehouse was so big, and it was filled with so many thousands of items. Everything from kitchen sinks, to children’s story books were on the shelves. I remember thinking it was like a super sized supermarket. It was only too easy to go down the wrong set of stairs, and then take a right turn instead of a left, and you were in a completely different part of the warehouse. I stored things on the shelves, and there were so many rules. I remember being told them, and it was simple yet super confusing at the same time. So much information to remember. But, it ended up being easier than I thought. I started speaking to people in my start group, and it was crazy that people came from all over the world. I’d never worked in a place like that.

I started with an agency, the first time I’d ever done that, I was always hired directly by previous jobs. I never had any problems with them, in fact the only time I talked to them was when I needed a holiday. And then my ‘job till Christmas’ idea fell away when I was made permanent within 9 weeks.

My last job, I had began to hate 4 years into it, and by the 6th year, I was so miserable. But this time, 10 years in, I am relatively happy in my job. My managers are aware of my health issues and help me, whenever I need it. The hours are reliable, same days, same shift, same breaks every week. Means that I can plan my life around work easily. And if I want overtime, for bills or a holiday, I can get it easy. I have made friends from all over the world, and I actually am happy going to work. Which, after 10 years, is quite an achievement.

Productivity Eliminated!!

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am always complaining about how unproductive I am. People scoff, as if it is pure laziness causing the problem. But it really is an issue. I am not unproductive in the manner that I sit and do nothing. I am unproductive in the state that I do other things rather than what I am supposed to do. It is like my mind distracts me to do something other than what I have to do. This is a wee list of the stuff that are the main culprits of my distractions.

*Twitter/Tumblr/Youtube: I have lumped these three together because they are all similar as to how they soak up my time. I log on to the site in question, so see if I have any messages, or anything of interest pops up. Which is fine. Except that ‘one thing’ ends up with me checking something else, and then another. And before I know it, I have lost my whole evening. Because social networks are constantly updating, the new influx of information coming constantly, can make it difficult to tear yourself away from the site.

*Finding Things: Tidying up is the worst for me to get distracted from, and it happens all the time. Usually, it comes as I find a magazine, book or newspaper, and I decide to check through it to see if there is anything worth keeping in it. However, rather than skimming, I sit and read the whole thing. I lose my motivation, as I get myself comfortable, and read through everything I can find. And that seems to take priority in my mind, over the washing that is sitting in the piles on my floor. Yeah, not efficient at all.

*’Just One More’: Computer games, TV shows, chapters of a book, it is very easy to say, I’ll do it after this one. I do it, because I seem to think that it will give me motivation. That because I want to play the next fight on Street Fighter, that I’d give myself 10 minutes to clean a bit, play another fight, another 10 minutes. The problem here is one of two things. I either become too involved in what I am doing, that I ‘forget’ to stop. The other is that I am so shit at what I am doing, I don’t actually get to the checkpoint that I have in mind. So never actually clean up.

Reading this back, I think my main problem is making excuses. Ooops!

The Right To Protest

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Are things really that bad, that people are turning on protesters? People who are fighting against cuts, job losses and university fee hikes. Why are these people, who are standing up for what they believe in, and they get degraded by the rest of the working class. Is it because the non-strikers are jealous that these people have the bravery to go and try to make a statement. People are too scared to do something and take responsibility.

The think that annoys me, is that the average MP in the UK has 15 aides. That is 15 office staff and publicists. Why does a man who doesn’t even bother to go to parliament and fight for who he is representing, get the chance to staff a whole office? That is not required. You can fire teachers and nurses, but the people in charge of the country can employ as many people as they want. That is not equality, that is the upper classes getting everything again.

For years, we were told that we ‘needed an education’ to be successful, during which the countries industries all left to fairer climates, where the labour was cheaper. But that’s ok, we were told ‘everyone can go to University and we will still thrive’. Now, in the year 2010, 9/10 school leavers plan to go on to some kind of further education, whereas 30 years ago 3/10 school leavers went to study more. Whilst I am all for learning, and am someone who went to college, I am a person who is sitting after spending a life in education thinking ‘now what’. There is still no industry in this country, so you find that people get their qualifications, and then can’t get a job with them.

This has led to a generation of University graduates working at McDonald’s or getting benefits, with school kids being pushed to university. So you have a person early 20s, with sometimes NO work experience, trying to get a job with a piece of paper which has done nothing but get them in debt. Now they are trying to scale back on Universities and Colleges, but there is no alternative for kids who don’t go to college. Work in a shop or work in a call centre. That’s it, there are no more factories for people to work in, all the production for things have gone to countries like India. This has all been done in the last 20 years, and nothing was done. People sat back and watched as factories closed and people were made unemployed.

Sounds familiar? Yes because this is something that has intensified again over the last few years, with companies using ‘the recession’ as an excuse to axe whole workforces. But this time people are getting angry, and they should be. People should feel the need to support their striking brothers and sisters. If you don’t support the fellow working man, then what happens is the businesses and the government continue to run the country with your money.

And the funny thing? This whole job issue started with the Conservative party banning Trade Unions, destroying the working persons’ right to protest any change in the workplace. The Conservatives then blame Labour for the mess, and seem to forget that they set the ball rolling. Social housing is another big thing, as we have a shortage in the UK of affordable rental properties. Good ol’ Maggie Thatcher and her cronies allowed people to buy their Council Houses, a practice which was only stopped in the last year or so. This helped people get on the property ladder, and made it a necessity that everyone had to own their home. The catalyst for this was the money it would bring into the ecconomy. Now we have no Council houses as they are all owned by private tenants. And the people who struggle have to rent privately, which cost more.

It’s always the same people who seem to suffer, and to stop that, those who can, should protest.

FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS, BECAUSE NOONE ELSE WILL!!