Slapnut

I hate my job. Hate it. If it wasn’t for the good wage, there would be absolutely nothing keeping me there at all. My role is, for the most part, completely pointless, and it has turned into the most sickeningly corporate environment and just an all-round miserable place to work.

So fuck it, I’ve just accepted a huge pay cut to go and be a trainee TV edit assistant. Massive risk but I can’t put up with it any longer, and it already feels like a huge weight has been lifted. For the first time in my life, I genuinely feel like I’ve taken a job which will set me up for an exciting career rather than something to just pay the bills. I’m absolutely chuffed to bits.

Absolutely love that his final act in AEW was allegedly trying to knock out his boss. Bret Hart tribute until the very end.

Gutted to be honest, but probably the right call. His first run was brilliant.

26 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

So the Jack Perry glass story is actually weeks and weeks old, JP actually had permission from the top to use glass/car window but Punk pulled his owner of Collision card and told him fuck no. I can see why Jack would be pissed, another wrestler has just gone over even TK's head to tell him what to do.

At the risk of coming across as the resident CM Punk defender (I actually like all involved and think the entire situation is quite depressing), but the initial report said that a few staff, including Tony Schiavone, asked Punk to speak with Perry because he wasn’t taking no for an answer. If it is now being reported that Perry had permission from the top brass then it’s just another example of shite wrestling reporters not knowing their arse from their elbows and, let’s be honest, people are going to believe whichever story supports their “side” regardless.

This Miro thing is the same. One report says they almost had a scrap, the other report says they joked about having a scrap. One of them is wrong but I bet I know which one people will believe depending on their allegiance.

Irresponsible journalists (and I use the word journalists loosely) are absolutely butchering this. Reporting on every single piece of gossip they hear is helping nobody.

Mind you, I did have a good laugh at whoever earlier in this thread suggested Punk purposely toppled the monitors onto Tony Khan. I hope he shouted IT’S CLOBBERING TIME beforehand.

Absolutely loved this. I was first row in the top tier and I would absolutely go for similar seats again next year.

MJF is the guy, isn't he? He's been in sensational form recently, but he was on another level here. I'm another who's not a big Adam Cole fan but he's also been great in this entire story. I fully bought him whacking Max with the belt to win, and was surprised when it didn't happen. Can't wait to see what's next.

Eddie Kingston is the best.

The only real disappointment, and it's a very small complaint, is that my section was super quiet. Hardly anybody was getting involved in the chants, or even responding to anything that was happening, which was quite uncomfortable when my mate and I plus the handful of others who were making noise wanted to join in. 

Absolutely certain the fan @HarmonicGenerator referenced was a friend of mine who I wasn't sat with. I can hear some of the comments in his voice clear as day, particularly about hating the Young Bucks and how Eddie Kingston is fat and shit.

Shit myself when they announced next year's event though, I was certain it was about to clash with my wedding, fortunately it's the weekend before. My fiancee is a gem though, and her only concern was that I'd look at CM Punk the wrong way and I'd end up with a black eye in the wedding photos.

31 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Question, if you were given the book, what do you do with Mox next?

Real World’s Champion on Saturday nights, obviously.

3 minutes ago, Loki said:

And if you love Punk, it's always the other person's fault, right?  Just unfortunate it keeps happening to the same guy.

Not necessarily, no. I’m a Punk fan but I’m perfectly comfortable believing he was at fault for the Young Bucks fight.

Basically, if you already hate Punk, he’s at fault.

Just got on the coach at Cardiff, absolutely buzzing to get there and soak up the atmosphere.

Hope everyone has a fucking awesome time, and a huge pre-emptive “fuck Adam Cole” for when he inevitably breaks our hearts.

On the plus side, Christian is just absolutely fantastic and might be my AEW MVP at the moment. I’m hoping he’s at Wembley, would be a massive shame if not.

3 hours ago, Loki said:

Do you remember how much better AEW was back in (checks first post in thread) - fuck me, only March, before Punk came back and wasn't constantly derailing their promotion attempts?

Speak for yourself. My absolute favourite period of AEW was from Double or Nothing 2021 to roughly when the ROH stuff was all over TV. I’m not saying it was solely because of Punk’s involvement, but he was a big part of it.

The greatest night in the history of our car park.

American Alpha beating FTR for the tag team titles at NXT Takeover Dallas is my favourite live event memory. The place absolutely exploded. Complete strangers were high fiving, it was just pure joy for a popular team winning, everything good about wrestling.

I’m quite up for Jericho vs Ospreay 🤷‍♂️

56 minutes ago, King Coconut said:

Whereabouts in Cardiff, @Slapnut?

The Royal Oak in Witchurch. I think I was lulled into a false sense of security because Witchurch is typically a decent area.

3 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

Stick in there @Slapnut. I've been in a room where a comedian got a similar reaction once and it was very uncomfortable but it was more down to the pub not booking the right kind of entertainment, it also didn't help that the mic/PA was nowhere near loud enough for the size of the room. It was Boxing Day and everyone in the room just wanted to drink and talk amongst themselves, it was tosser central too. Comedian never stood a chance.

If you hadn’t said it was Boxing Day I’d have asked if it was last night, sounds almost identical!

2 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Should've replied "Mumbling? That's because she always had your neighbours cock in her mouth" and legged it 🤣

I like that the barmaid thought she was doing the right thing though. That's quite sweet in a way.

 

I had one of those utterly frustrating “this is what I should have said” moments almost immediately after finishing up, and that was indeed one of them! Glad I didn’t tbh because he looked quite hard.

It was definitely a nice gesture from the barmaid but killed me stone dead. There was absolutely no coming back from that. Like when your mother gives the bullies a bollocking which only makes things worse.

On 12/9/2022 at 10:58 PM, Slapnut said:

Over the last two months I’ve been doing a stand up course…

Following on from this, I’ve done about 15 or 16 gigs since the start of the year and they’ve all gone reasonably well. I’ve had some absolutely wonderful gigs and I’ve had some painfully average gigs in front of 4 people, but no absolute horror shows.

Until today.

I was booked for a gig this evening in a pub, and it was only this morning I realised it was part of an all-day festival. My arse completely went from under me when I walked into what I can only describe as Brexit in pub form.

One by one each of the other acts walked in and almost everyone’s first words were “fucking hell”.

Within a few minutes of the MC starting, a few of Cardiff’s finest walked out into the smoking area where all the acts were gathered and proclaimed they were going to “glass the cheeky cunt if he tells me to shut up one more time”.

One of the acts was about to do her very first gig until she saw the opening act get absolutely annihilated and instead just left. Poor lass.

Anyway, I was booked for 10 minutes and made it through 4 and a half before bailing. I think I would have been ok until a bloke in his 50s stood at the back threatened to beat me up because I was mumbling “like his ex wife”, and the barmaid stopped my set to shout at everybody for talking too much like they were in school.

Afterwards one of the nicer audience members told me it wouldn’t be this bad again next time I have a gig there. Bit fucking optimistic to think I’ll ever step foot in there again.

I’m already shitting myself about my next gig. I’d better fucking get on Live at the Apollo eventually.

46 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Is there a senior manager above you that you get on well enough with to have an informal chat about your worries?

Whatever happens, just make sure you shake everyone's hand at the end of each day.

Yes and no - yes, there is somebody I could talk to, but no I'm not particularly close to them. Either way, from experience I'd almost certainly get the exact same answer my manager has already given me.

I would shake their hands, but I almost exclusively work with balding Asian men so that's obviously an issue.

(I hope everybody has seen that thread or they'll think I'm insensitive racist)

15 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

Are you officially their line manager or more of what is refered to in my office as taskmaster. I don't think you should be managing someone at the same grade, if your senior enough to manage then be a manager.

Where I work you have people who have been here longer, probably earn more money giving stuff to newer staff to do and delegating but not official line managers.

In a previous job I had to lead people with the exact same title, go into meetings and explain what they were doing. I wasn't even called a leader but due to a restructure and moving the office from London to Berkshire I was one of few that went and in the new org one of few with any experience. It actually went okay as the people knew I was more experienced, I was training them so treated me as so. If the guy has just moved up I'm sure he will respect your experience.

I'm officially their line manager. I'm responsible for their performance, making sure their delivery of work is good enough, wellbeing, annual leave, and their appraisals at year end. I am their first port of call for virtually everything.

However, and this is where I really struggle with my job and where my department is utterly bizarre, I don't have the technical knowledge to do their job, nor am I expected to know how to do it. My team are basically project support for other areas of the firm, so all work requests are sent to us from elsewhere, and the majority of training and technical guidance is provided to them by the stakeholders. I have no real influence over this work, nor is it my job to contribute to it in any way - I have chipped in where necessary previously, but in most cases I would need to be doing the work full time for probably 6 months before I'm able to do it seamlessly. It's a really strange system and often leads to me feeling utterly useless in my role.

I have no experience with the work my new team member is doing, nor does anybody else in my department. He's been on secondment with the stakeholders he supports for the last 18 months, and rather than take him on permanently they just sent him back to us to do the same work, but it means they don't have to pay him as much as they would if they kept him and we pick up the bill. His work is far beyond anything I'm capable of supporting in, and I joke about it frequently but it genuinely seems like my only use is to approve his annual leave.

Bit of a weird work situation at the moment that I'm not sure how to handle.

I'm a team leader, and I've recently been given a team member to manage who is the same grade as me. This is uncommon within my department and only one other team leader does this with two of his team members, but he was managing them from entry level grades and they were promoted within his team so he's a lot more comfortable with it. The team member I've been given is newly promoted into this grade, and quite honestly I've been given absolutely no guidance whatsoever on how to manage him. Whenever I've brought this up with my manager, the answer has always been "you'll be fine, I have faith in you, and I'll support you". So far she hasn't supported me, and I'm not sure what guidance she's able to offer since she has no experience of managing somebody of her own grade previously.

Anyway, I've been told today that they are looking to reshuffle the teams and they are looking to put the two other people I previously mentioned into my team too, so I'll be managing 3 other people of my own grade, the only team leader in the department to be doing so.

Is this something you'd suggest I talk to HR about? Not only to question if this should be happening, but to also query if I should be on more money considering I look after people of higher grades than everybody else in my role. I'm not expecting HR to really give me any solid advice on this, they're notoriously rubbish at my place, but I'm a bit lost on what to do.

9 hours ago, Suplex Sinner said:

Unfortunately, Punk isn't a draw

What metric are you basing this on? A quick google search suggests that’s not even remotely true.

https://twitter.com/wrestlenomics/status/1584200975706890243?s=46&t=yE-tBZKwrPez822DXmyxbQ

Edit: not sure how to embed a tweet sorry

18 hours ago, CavemanLynn said:

I've not heard mention of him working with talent behind the scenes to coach, advise, or otherwise transfer knowledge.

From the top of my head, Jade Cargill, Powerhouse Hobbs, Max Caster and of course FTR have all publicly spoken about the help and advice he has given them.

1 hour ago, Jonny Vegas said:

Nope, what I said was;

"He is almost a total parody of himself where for someone who down to his own moniker is supposedly "punk" is nothing but a grumpy old moany bastard who throws out the threats of law suits or tries to cost the jobs of anyone who he doesn't like."

His entire act, persona, character, whatever you wanted to call it was that he is and was Punk, right down to the name he chose for himself.

For all the talk of worked shooty bollocks, you appear to be blurring the lines here as much as Punk is accused of doing. At what point has the TV character of CM Punk threatened to sue anyone or get somebody fired?

Not liking CM Punk the man is absolutely fine, not liking CM Punk the TV character is absolutely fine, but it’s a bit weird using his real life personality to point out how his TV character is a hypocrite, surely? It’s not far off from saying “well Undertaker doesn’t actually sleep in a coffin so he’s a hypocrite”.

Apologies if I'm completely misunderstanding your point but I don’t think Lion of the Midlands is far off with his “well he’s not an actual Rock” point.

@LaGoosh I mean, you’ve taken that a bit too literally there, I obviously didn’t mean offended in that sense, but you’re right bored is a better word.

Gay as FOOK has summarised my thoughts on what I consider to be shooty bollocks above though. I think the promo itself made total sense in a wrestling context and I don’t think there was anything that you needed to know the backstage stuff to understand.

5 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

He is almost a total parody of himself where for someone who down to his own moniker is supposedly "punk" is nothing but a grumpy old moany bastard who throws out the threats of law suits or tries to cost the jobs of anyone who he doesn't like.

Is there any evidence of this actually happening? Isn’t it fairly accepted that this didn’t happen with Colt Cabana based on everything we’ve since heard?

Anyway, I thought his promo was fine but I’m not as offended by “shooty bollocks” as some on here. I thought he looked like utter shit in the match itself though. Not necessarily his in-ring work, but everything else. The shaved head, the long trunks and the unimpressive physique, it’s all a far cry from the days of the MJF/Eddie Kingston feuds where he looked like a star.

The Bucks have updated their Twitter bio following the counterfeit bucks comment. I know I’m setting myself up for disappointment but I’ve still got a glimmer of hope they can all work together at some point.

3 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

I will watch the show, but if ‘Pipebomb’ is uttered even once I’m turning it off

Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think he’s used the word “pipebomb” since his WWE days, certainly not in AEW, and has even said in interviews that he hates that term nowadays. I think we’re safe.

I’m firmly in the can’t wait to see the miserable prick back camp. I enjoy him on telly and I don’t have to personally deal with the fallout if he throws another wobbly, win win really.