The Mock Turtle

That is atrocious, Lily

On another literary bent, IWLTS 'You are lovely, and it was a great idea, but you need to take charge a bit more or this isn't going to work.'

To a poet friend, who is running a poetry appreciation Zoom thing. She is good, and the poems she chooses are excellent, and have introduced me to a lot of new poets. The people who go are interesting, and in theory the evenings are enjoyable. In practice, though, it's massively frustrating, as the format is that we are sent poems in advance then get divided into groups of 3-4 to discuss them one at a time before feeding back to the whole group. The small groups are randomised so we all get to 'meet' more people, but this means that the gobshites (entirely coincidentally three men and a transwoman ;) ) who like the sound of their own voices are spread out, and are impossible to avoid. They dominate the groups, select themselves to do the feedback and then feed back their own views, which are by no means necessarily those of the rest of the group. It has put off at least couple of women who used to go, and I am also losing patience with it, which is a shame. There is no private space in the group to feed this back or discuss it, and I'm not sure whether to email her with my thoughts, or whether that would be presumptuous. It's her baby, and she makes a living by running poetry/artistic events, so knows what she is doing, and the attendance is still pretty good, so maybe not everyone feels the same.

Heebie Jeebie wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 11:11 am IWLTS perhaps I am being too diplomatic. What I am trying to say is can you give us someone else please because this guy is shite.

Sorry Heebs, I thought at first that this comment was in connection with Lily's story competition winner

What is yours about?

I would feed it back to her by email, Morgs. Couched around with a lot of praise for the bits you enjoyed.

Lily, that’s not a winner in my book unless your entry got lost, all the others were “there was like this cat, right, and it did something funny, like, and then my dad said make me a cup of tea, and I was like no make your own, right”.

IWLTS : (To my boss) OK, I took your bollocking this afternoon without saying anything because I could hear the stress in your voice and understand the MEGA-HUGE professional problem we're facing here. BUT when you say you're pissed off because you reckon I didn't pull my weight last month, I would very much like to to remind you that my Dad died on May 8th, the funeral I couldn't go to was on May 18th and I have been dealing with a family civil war. All of which you know/knew as I did inform you at the time(s). I told you I wasn't 100%. You said you understood.

I'm beginning to regret I didn't get signed off work. The only day I took off work was to was to watch the funeral on a fucking webcam.

Eek. Can you say that, SM? Or something like it anyway.

Christ SM, that is callous. Do you think he /she forgot?

Ouch that's awful SunnyMum and you need to say something in response.

Oh, yes I will say something to that exact same effect the next time I get to see her face to face.
Partly because it's the sort of thing that she'd put in next year's appraisal if I didn't.

It's somewhat taken a wee bit of a toll on me this afternoon.
We usually have a good relationship, but she does tend towards the "excitable" when under duress and stress (which we most certainly are).

A (related)IWLTAS : it's not my effing fault the regional elections are looming and noone is making decisions.

IWLTS Telling us to turn off the NHS Tracing app while we're in the office 'to prevent false positives' is utterly well dodge.

Lily I entered a magazine short story competition last year and I didn't win and I know I'm not exactly Shakespeare but my story was so much better than the winner that it was ridiculous! I think they must pick a winner out of a hat.

Daire! Is this the same company that asked you to put false positive reviews on Glassdoor? I really feel that you should name and shame here.

Dáire wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 4:45 pm IWLTS Telling us to turn off the NHS Tracing app while we're in the office 'to prevent false positives' is utterly well dodge.

That’s official policy in the hospital.

I can't, I'm hoping to stick around and do well here. It's the atmosphere they create that's suffocating everything else. I work from home so I'm not around this stuff, but it still gives off that aura of negativity. Run by Tories, basically

It's only a small, dull office-admin app.

Pippedydeadeye wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 5:25 pm

Dáire wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 4:45 pm IWLTS Telling us to turn off the NHS Tracing app while we're in the office 'to prevent false positives' is utterly well dodge.

That’s official policy in the hospital.

I read the NHS had advised those who kept their phones in lockers to pause it, as they'd get false positives from being in close proximity to the other phones, which makes sense. Some warehouses had to do that too. But I had a browse around and if you're still walking around an office and stuff, advice seems to be to keep it on - proximity only flags after 15 minutes being close to someone. We've been told it "can detect between floors" which seems very unlikely.

That’s terrible, Daire.

Given I hadn’t turned mine off and spent a whole day in an office with a colleague whose phone was close to me than she was and I didn’t get pinged for her +ve result, I don’t have much faith in it full stop.

IWLTS: I'm looking forward to never having to have anything to do with either of you again.

This is Y6 party related - I'm honestly so scarred by the whole experience of dealing with bullying, bossy people who force their ideas to be done in their way at every stage that I'm never going to get involved in organising anything ever again. God, it's been awful.

IWLTS: it’s £6 ffs, you cheap bastards

Will you take £3.50?
No fuck off.
#vinted

That drives me nuts Luna.

S sold some stuff on eBay after we moved, with postage clearly listed for tracked international (not cheap). The winning bidder then told him the postage was too expensive and it was only €X to post it. Yeah, from his country to ours. Big difference. He gave him the option to cancel but he didn’t want to. So S got the postage costs down, refunded the guy almost all the difference and went on with his life.

The package arrived and the buyer got on to S to inform him the postage was less than he had charged, and he wanted a refund or he would report him to eBay for fraud. S replied saying he had sent the refund two weeks before, with the transaction ID, and if that hadn’t arrived to please let him know. Not a peep since.

Why bother bidding on something if the postage is too much?!

Coz people are cheap idiot bastards.

IWLTS: I am never writing copy for the founder of a start-up again. You are all, without exception, nightmares to work with.