How time flies. WordPress informs me that it has been eight years since we commenced this blog. We must be in a very deep rut as very little has changed or we are insane-doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
Eight?
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No good deed is left unpunished such is the consequences if you donate to charity. The next thing you know your letterbox becomes an environmentalist worse nightmare of paper heedlessly wasted begging for funds that you have never heard of.
The charities do get smart and quickly realise that if their brand is emblazoned upon the envelope that it will be quickly disregarded or boomeranged.
Then the plain envelope assault begins. So benign it appears to be a garden variety bill except you notice the CM (charity mail) number in the corner. So here goes folks if you spot the number this is who it is from:
CM16900163 Barnardos Australia GPO Box 996 Sydney NSW 2001
CM22600441 National Breast Cancer Foundation PO Box 765 Surry Hills NSW 2010
CM17100181 Salvation Army (?)PO Box 163 Surry Hills NSW 2010
CM21000378 St Vincent dePaul PO Box 19 Petersham NSW 2049
CM15050455 Beyond Blue PO Box 6100 Hawthorn Vic 3122
CM06600679 Starlight Foundation PO Box 3032 Parramatta NSW 1750
CM149000067 Berry Street PO Box 1081 Surry Hills NSW 2010
CM18600284 UNHCR PO Box Q428 Sydney NSW 1230
CM 16800142 MS PO Box 1114 Surry Hills NSW 2010
CM10031614 GI Cancer Institute Locked Bag M250 Missenden Road NSW 2050
CM21000383 Garvan Institute of Medical Research PO Box 6393 Wetherill Park BC NSW 2164
CM05900671 Canteen PO Box 1092 Surry Hills NSW 2010
CM14100029 Baker Heart & Diabetes PO Box 748 Craigieburn VIC 3064
CM16042930 Variety PO Box 2284 Mansfield BC QLD 4122
CM 19100304 Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia PO Box 6041 BLACKTOWN NSW 2148
CM16900159 UNICEF Australia PO Box 488 QUEEN VICTORIA BUILDING SYDNEY NSW 1230
CM14041505 Food Bank PO Box 241 PLUMPTON NSW 2761
CM 16900165 Catholic Mission PO Box 1668 NORTH SYDNEY NSW 2059
CM12051115 Children’s Hospital Foundation PO Box 8009 WOOLLOONGABBA QLD 4102
However worthy the charity, they have purchase details. Your data has value and the charities have no hesitation in spreading it.
Do you wish it was Sunday?
For those lucky enough, today was the first day back to work after the Christmas break. Not that it was a productive break with the sticky humidity that characterised the blur of days between Christmas and the New Year.
Like the last of the mince pies succumbing to mould (mold) we assume that many new year resolutions have perished in the heat of resistance. As a society we collectively promise that we will lose weight, get fit and travel the world (note the lack of specificity of each resolution) to collectively abandon each by the end of the first week of the new year. Guess we won’t be calling Jenny Craig at the behest of Scary Spice 🙂 .
If the nebulous personal resolution was not enough to fail, there seems to be a push to form a ‘work’ new year resolution. It seems that the number one resolution we should be making is to upskill.
‘Create opportunities to innovate’ was the phrase that provoked a smirk. Of course an organisation vending generic business skills is going to push this angle but isn’t this just another symptom of qualification inflation.
Let’s be brutal. A show of hands if you will. How many of you have a job where your degree is superfluous to it?
Perhaps the most outrageous example of qualification inflation we have witnessed was a course that a mere eighteen months ago was six months in its duration. Now for the same outcome it has been upgraded to a three year Masters degree. Who said universities weren’t cash cows.
Mmm, maybe that call to Scary Spice might be the better option.
‘The university wage advantage has deteriorated over the past decade…” so declares the Canberra Times this morning. Hardly a revelation in a country where education is so undervalued and universities are degree factories.
What is interesting about this graph is the stagnation of wages (and indeed the contraction of male bachelor wages).
Are humans by default optimists? Why else do we count out the old year and promise ourselves to be a better version of ourselves in the new. Though such resolutions are often short like tempers in a scorching January day.
Third week in of the new year and do you think that we have some new to complain of? Insert the mirthless laugh here. No, filing is still the bane of my existence.
It started last year when admin was asked to create a new file for a client. Easy right? The file was labeled but the clip and internal dividers were amiss. Pulling the file we took it to the PTB and informed them this was unacceptable. They reluctantly agreed and told me it would be ‘sorted’.
Fine, we will humour the PTB in their unrelenting confidence in admin’s ability as I had offered to fix it myself but PTB wanted to demonstrate to me that dumb admin could actually do something.
We picked the file up again. The complete clip had now been fully assembled (is that even the correct word when all three pieces are interlocked?) but of course the internal contents were still demonstrably absent.
Rinse and repeat the conversation with the PTB. We pulled the file again today (am I to award points for creativity??). Yes, there was the internal divider. Wrong colour and wrong content label replete with spelling mistakes. We were furious. How f**king hard is it to make a STANDARD client file up??
Emailed PTB. Of course it will be ignored and some pathetic excuse will be offered. No, my new year resolutions, such that they were, did not include to be charitable to the ‘beautiful little fool’.
As many before me, we studied The Great Gatsby in high school as was always horrified by Daisy’s wish for Pamela, “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
We couldn’t understand why anyone would wish that for their child. With each passing year, perhaps there was wisdom in Daisy’s hopes, the best thing you can be is ‘beautiful’ and a ‘fool’ for if you were ‘fumpy’ and a ‘fool’ we hardly think you would be indulged as admin is.
It was wet and raining and we had to negotiate a 40cm drop as we alighted the bus. Oops, we forgot to Tap Off.
In the past, when this has happened we submitted a query to Opal support with our card number in the body of the complaint. (Forget about the fact they ask that detail in the form, it needs to be in the body of the complaint). After the usual to-ing and fro-ing, it is eventually corrected but now in their arsenal is a new form letter. (Slightly better than the one where they accuse you of outright lying because their GPS is never wrong and your alleged trip defies all laws of time and space). The new one, where they won’t even consider your complaint as your card is unregistered.
“We are happy to look into your request. However, in order to ensure your privacy is protected we cannot access an Opal account without details being verified.
To do this, please log into your online Opal account at http://www.opal.com.au with your username and password, and select the Opal Account Enquiry tab from within the Opal account page.”
Bullshit! This is another flimsy excuse not to correct fares. Little wonder they are raking it in.
Word on the street is the ‘prestige’ firms have dropped the requirement to have a degree. Being the era of political correctness this has been characterised as a move to ensure ‘diversity and equality of access and opportunity’ not save employment costs.
According to the article, Ernst & Young got rid of all degree requirements in 2015, explaining that a candidate’s degree had no correlation to their future job performance.
What does this mean? Lacking any intellectual rigour, a degree is not worth the paper it is printed on and you really don’t need a degree to photocopy do you?
Read the article here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-18/why-top-companies-are-ditching-degree-requirements-for-some-jobs/8449236
Why do people think that their lives are so interesting that they need to narrate it minute by minute (oh, the irony of this post).
We don’t care that you just got a marketing cold call from India.
We don’t care that they asked for you by name on the “mistaken assumption” that you own the company after they harvested your name last time they called.
We don’t care that you get a number of these type of phone calls on your mobile phone.
We don’t care that you were extremely polite about it before disconnecting.
We don’t care about the technique employed in cold call canvassing.
Ring up. Ask for someone with a common name. If that doesn’t yield immediate results, hope that the person on the other end of the line volunteers a name that sounds similar.
Once you have your prey cornered, tell the victim that someone recommended them for the product.
We don’t care. Just shut up.
Our lips twisted into a sardonic smirk as we arched our eyebrow in disbelief. Was there no limit to the ridiculousness that the PTB would engage in to defend admin?
It started innocuously enough. With some spare time on our hands we were asked to do a particular task, one not relished by anyone in the office. Indeed, almost studious avoided. With the universal dread we accepted it and that is where the trouble began.
Like our colleagues, we noted the procedural flaws. It is something with a bit of time (and admittedly money) could be streamlined far more efficiently. There at heart of the current dispute laid the letter.
The letter, due to legislative reasons needs to conform to particular strictures, but we pointed out that a certain paragraph shouldn’t be formatted in that manner and another needed slight amendment. A two minute job. Yes? No.
“But that is how is it supposed to be. The paragraph is supposed to be like that.”
“No, it is not. We checked (insert relevant website) and it is not supposed to be like that.”
“But that is how is formatted.”
“No, it is not. You can check the (insert relevant website) and you can also check (collaborating source) .”
“It must have been like that. It wouldn’t be like that otherwise.”
“It has never been like that…(until your stupid admin started we added silently)”.
This continued for a while, as PTB drew upon every possible defence that it was not a problem within the remit of admin.
“Fine, we have a look at it.” PTB said exasperated and wanting me out of their office.
A week later, we asked if the template had been fixed. You guessed correctly, of course it hadn’t.
“Is it fixed yet?”
We were greeted with silence.
“Why don’t you tell me where the template it is and we will fixed it.”
Again silence. Otherwise, it would be interpreted as bullying the admin, if it was to be fixed.
“There is nothing wrong with it and that is how the template is (insert relevant website)”. We were amused but not surprised how quickly they were to defend admin vigorously and their *cough* infallibility.
“No, it is not.” At this point we thought, Why are we bothering?, if you want a letter to go out indicating a deficiency in education in the organisation, not my problem.
Reluctantly, PTB looked at the websites and conceded that the template may need to change.
So, a month later, the template has not been changed as to do so would be an admission that admin was wrong. We can’t have that as it is better to appear amateur hour than upset admin.
“You didn’t read my email, did you?” was my accusatory tone to PTB.
“We did read it!” was the defensive reply.
“Really and what? Didn’t comprehend it?”
We have always been a cynical and bitter person but with every passing year immersed in such unrelenting stupidity it is sometimes hard to bite one’s tongue.
Admittedly, emails can get overlooked in an inbox but when there is a pattern of emails being ignored and questioning emails demanding information that has been provided days, weeks beforehand is aggravating. Some days there is no point bothering.
dumbadmin 
