Back on the Chain Gang

I visited friends in Leeds over the weekend. It was great. We did shopping, goth/alt clubbing, duelling practice (swords), and even snuck in some Live Action roleplaying (Vampire the Masquerade). I also got to meet cool, sexy, interesting people, and get startled by a 1:1 scale dinosaur model (some sort of 5ft tall 'raptor wannabe).

And then I had to go back to work. With a computer system so bad there are official 'work-arounds', customers who only tell us stuff when we threaten legal action, and a management team that cares only about performance figures, not what they mean, or how they are achieved.
I was planning to go back in a few months time. Maybe I'll consider going back a bit sooner.

Suck-fest

So I'm barely a month out of training and we've had a re-shuffle at work. I'm boted off to another team who are understaffed. And guess what? Apart from our two consolidators, I'm the most experienced person on the team.
You were lisening when I said "barely a month out of training" right?
At least I'm still in the same wing of the building.

Tranny's night out

Birthdays of alternative-lifestyle friends are always a good time to tranny. Managed to sneak another outing last night, but toned it down a bit. Cute t-shirt, denim mini and opaque tights. My friend was impressed by my patent stilettoes. "They are gorgeous," she said. And the reputation built with another friend who told me that every other time she'd seen me was in drag.

Girl's got a reputation to maintain, no?

Do you know what you're applying for?

There's a job advert in my local paper today. It sounds really good -
challenging, dealing with people in difficult circumstances, gathering
information from a variety of sources, a good benefits package, and £13K a
year (not too bad for a basic office job in Norwich). The only catch is that
it's two late nights per week, and one Saturday in four.
In fact it sounds better than my job - working for a hated department in the
civil service (I'll give you a clue, until last week we were always scouring
our roof for men in batman costumes).
Until you realise it IS my job. Our department is so hated that we can't even
mention our name at the job advert stage for fear of scaring people off. And
if you've applied as a Jobseeker, you won't find out who you are applying for
until its too late to back out without losing your JSA!
So if you were tempted by the ad, ask for more information before you apply.
Who knows, I may even be wrong - but I doubt it. Caveat operae - Employee
beware!

Google Bomb!

I'm backing the campaign to get Transformation off the top spot for Google searches with the Anti-Transformation Google Bomb!

The idea is to "Google Bomb" the Wikipedia entry for transvestite with links labeled simply with the word "transvestite". Google should hopefully see all the links for that word pointing to Wikipedia and count it as a more authoritative source of information.

If you have a blog or a web site, and you support the campaign, please copy and paste the code in the box below into your blog. You'll be doing trannies of the UK and around the world a favour!

Click on the word to find out more about being a transvestite.

If you'd like to use this entire message in your own blog to help promote the Google-Bomb, you can download it at Becky's Web here.

To parents...

Please think before naming your children. Giving your children stupid names
should be classed as a minor form of child abuse.

1) If you give your child a 'classy' name like Chardonnay or Chantelle, please
check the spelling.

2) Do not give the child the same name as either parent. Junior is not a good
name for a child.

3) Do not give your child a similar sounding name to its siblings. Aqeeb and
Naqeeb are just too similar sounding.

4) Think about the initials. Don't saddle a kid with a name like B.J Giver, or
Philip Enus.

5) Think about the shortened forms (particularly Richard) Richard Head will
get called Dick. Victoria Vapours wil get called Vicks.

6) JUST THINK!

88.8% of statistics are made up on the spot

Or, why I hate my job some more

Governments are obsessed with statistics, quotas and league tables. Which is fine if you want to see who needs more funding to bring them up to speed; or if you want to close a centre, to find out who is underperforming.

Except not everything is measurable on a graph. Take customer service. OK so you can count official complaints. Or maybe average length of waiting time on the phone. But does this really provide an accurate ratio of disgruntled to gruntled customers? How do we measure customer happiness? If our customer is happy and everything is running smoothly, they do not call us. Should we presume no calls = good customer service?

I have to count the number of calls I experience everyday. I separate them into outgoing (successful), attempted and incoming. When they look at my performance in phone stats ten calls where the customer hung up within 10 seconds, count for more than a 1 hour conversations where we got enough information to complete the case. And why do I have a quoto for incoming calls? Surely this is dependant on people calling me - which if I have done my job right, they shouldn't.

Should I keep hanging up on a customer, and calling back? I'd have better performance stats. What comes first customer (officialy yes), or performance (unofficially yes).

If all centres are performing at peak, there will still be a bottom of the table. As us poor plebs see no bonus for hitting the top, why should we care. As long as we are doing our job to the best of our abilities, and we provide good customer service, stuff the stats.

Maybe that way our managers would do some work rather than compiling and interpreting tables.

... Anonymous

My name is Pandora, and I'm not a vampire.

I may wear black a lot, and watch Angel, and own some PVC, and a top hat, but I am not a vampire.

I don't worship Satan.

I think Marylin Manson is a brilliant showman, but don't really like his music, and don't feel the need to emulate him.

So call me a goth, or 'alternative', or Morticia; but dont call me a vampire wannabe, a satanist, or a Mansonite.