Date   : Wed, 27 Jul 2011 02:12:11 +0200
From   : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: Risc PC (Was 'Minitel in France')

On 26/07/2011 16:23, J.G.Harston wrote:

> I've just been fired,

!!??


> In my employment termination interview, the reasons I was given were:

Back in the day, I'd have demanded this in writing, and then walked the 
lot to the CAB to see about unfair termination practice...


> * I had been observed eating my lunch in the dining room,

This is *not* a reason. If you were not expected to eat in the dining 
room, there wouldn't be a dining room.


> * It was believed that I did not have sufficient customer-facing
> skills

A possible reason, but:


> (that I had neither been trained in or tested in yet,

...arguable they they are not in a position to accurately judge such a 
thing. Given, of course, a lot of council work needs the ability to 
communicate with people, and besides, you're hardly an emo teen.


> * I had not asked for a KNOWHOW wristband

WTF does a wristband have to do with anything?


> it was there as a visible signal that you had the KNOWHOW attitude
> and knowledge

Holy shit. I'm sorry, excuse my language, but have we walked into an 
episode of Dilbert here? This is real life, right?


> Oh well.

Frankly, given the average level of tech support I've experienced in my 
life, I don't care how many billion centiseconds old you are, you more 
than likely knew WAY more than they did, and they were jealous. It was 
obvious you would never be a team player because, could you seriously 
hold up a cue-card and read to a customer that "rebooting it" is the 
cure for 'x', or the other sorts of rubbish prevalent in the PC world?


Do you remember the Win95 days when the standard response to anything 
going badly wrong was to "reformat your harddisc and reinstall Windows", 
neatly sidestepping the possibility for TOTAL loss of data if you didn't 
realise quite what reformatting actually meant, plus flippin' FOR-EVER 
reinstalling Windows, and then EVERYTHING ELSE.


Honestly, it sucks that those obvious <expetive censored>s didn't want 
you, but I think working there for a couple of months would have 
destroyed all that you like about computing, and possibly also ruined 
your faith in humanity. You're better off out.


> Popped into the Job Centre on the way home.

Heh, good luck there too. My memories of Job Centres (hello Aldershot!) 
is that people who couldn't find a job anywhere else ended up in the 
jobcentre as "advisors". Hell, I had one twit that didn't know the 
difference between a care assistant and a nurse!


Best wishes,

Rick.

-- 
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...