Monkee

The sound in Wembley for Linkin Park and Spiritbox last year was awful. I was standing and was close to the front and the side. But then I saw Oasis (Cast and Richard Ashcroft) a month later and the sound was incredible from the back of the standing section. I sometimes think it’s a band’s specific set-up rather than the venue. I’ve seen Slipknot a couple of times but I’m not a big enough fan to pay through the nose. I also wouldn’t buy a ticket to this tour because of Marilyn Manson. However, my friend’s already said she’ll put me on the guest list so I’ll see closer to the time. It’s peak gig/festival season so if something else comes up then I’ll decide then.

The Head of Comms where I work openly boasts about how much he uses AI and it’s embarrassingly obvious in everything he writes. It’s slop. He writes press releases and news articles that are awful. He also undermines the two people under him all the time by putting everything they do through ChatGPT to ‘check it over’ and it makes factual, grammatical and stylistic mistakes all the time so it’s clear what he’s doing. And management don’t give a toss. Edit: this is also someone I had to report to HR for making sexualised comments thinking he was being funny and made an inappropriate comment to me (in a group Teams chat that included several directors) about how ‘noble of me’ that I don’t read The Sun!

One thing to be mindful of if he’s that pedantic is if he does an FOI request he would get access to any Teams chats where he’s been named.

It didn’t cost me financially as I was still paid through my annual leave. I didn’t incur any other costs. If I didn’t have the leave so would have had to take unpaid leave then I would have to have weighed up whether it was worth me doing free work for two days or asking for some sort of compensation.

If a trial is genuinely a trial - e.g. a couple of hours to see if you have the necessary skills - then it’s OK that it’s unpaid. I would class that as being part of the normal hiring process so I wouldn’t expect any compensation. But anything outside of maybe 2hrs or where you incur unexpected (unusual) expenses then I think it’s fair to ask for some sort of payment or expenses to be covered. Years ago, I had an interview for Broadcast (the TV analysis company). I was then invited to do a 2-day trial with them which was basically sold to me as me having got the job and this was just to meet the team I’d be working with. At the time I didn’t really think too much about it, took 2 days of annual leave and agreed. I was basically sat at a desk on my own the entire time doing data entry. And then I didn’t get the job. It was annoying but I never said anything because I was quite angry but I didn’t really lose any money as I’d taken it as annual leave. It really wasn’t fair what they did and I felt very used.

God, I hate people like this - entitled, can’t follow simple process, blame others for their incompetency, go all Karen when the ball is actually in their court. I’d just keep doing a copy and paste of what he needs to do to get his money. I recently discovered the concept of “Don’t JADE” - justify, argue, defend, explain. The idea is that once you’ve given someone a reasonable answer or boundary, you don’t keep trying to convince them that you’re right. Every extra explanation gives them another detail to challenge and turns the interaction into a negotiation. This is how I’m trying to manage difficult people without getting myself worked up, stressed, apologising when I don’t need to or explaining the same thing over and over again. Because, at the end of the day, “life is too short”.

This is brilliant. I’d totally forgotten about this and can’t remember most of my answers but I do spit a few when there’s only 1 vote next to it. I do have a question though… Who met Cliff Richard?