previous employers

[Phil]

lets have the good and bad from previous employers. from the tw@ts to the stars

 

[Phil]

i`ll start it off with an employer a few years ago not long after my first one was born she was rushed into hospital, suspected meningitis. i had only been with him 2 weeks. he paid for my taxi to the hospital and told me to take as long as i wanted off full pay with a bit of over time he would have expected me to have earned. this was in the november and he gave me two weeks off fully paid at crimbo £50 for a turkey £200 quid bonus a pressie for the baby and a box of chocs and 4 bottles of rather expensive wine. top guy

 

[telectrix]

Menai Electrical ( Bangor) set me on permanent, then laid me off after 6 weeks when rush job was finished

 

[telectrix]

only "star" employer i have ever had was myself, only sacked myself 4 times in 20 years!

 

[Phil]

on the other scale to my first one, my other half ended up in hospital after i had resuscitated her at 3 in the morning. i had the foresight to ring work and let them know in the ambulance on the way to hospital so they could cover my shift. she was not going to be well for a week and the dr at hospital said i would need to be around for her for a week or so and seeing as we had a couple of kids at the time even more so as the youngest was 18 months. that tw@t i worked for when i dropped a sick note in my gp had written asked me what came first my job or the family i thought she was joking at first but the moment i realised she wasn`t i told her where she could stick her job and told her to forward my p45 in due course.

 

[telectrix]

moral of above... never work for a woman. they only understand family loyalty when they want a new frock or shoes

 

[Sintra]

I can't complain about my current employers. Pay rise every January (no reminders needed). Job completion bonuses, good bonus at Christmas and they even pay £96.00 per month for my sky tv package.

As for previous employers most of them were pratts.

 

[telectrix]

biggest pratt i remember was Initial Electronic Security. ( formerly Shorrocks) complete w***ers. manager insisted, on one CCTV job, ducting already installed for cables to posts, that the posts were installed with cameras attached before the cables were pulled through. then he blew his top when it was impossible to install the cables without hiring a crane to lift the posts out

 

[Sparky Ninja]

Jack employers...

Mr Electric - went on board as a qualified supervisor, ended up shuffling the whole franchise base up in the head office. The franchise I worked for (in the city) and the head office had no concept of part p, they assumed notification was automatic under scheme registration. Meetings I had up with the big cheese Clive all ended up in aggressive 'selling' strategies, with no concern on the direction of quality. I had an opportunity to travel to Texas as a rep to mingle with the yanks but I decided to leave instead.

The worst employer would have to be a insurance company called Topmarx, based in southampton, with another office in newbury. The work was based from home, receiving the jobs over the phone. The operation manager is a guy called Troy who is an absolute idiot. I was issued with two jobs a day, each one would 90% of the time be to take down a light and make safe, or put the light back up. The already posted QS had worked there for 8 years or so, and needless to say he was a little rough over the regs, I never had the opportunity to meet him mind, just phone calls.
So i was told to do the work then call in the office on completion for anything else. Everytime I called, I would leave a message, and would be called back to say there was nothing to do. I was called in the office on my third week and asked why I kept going home at around 2-3 o'clock. Having informed them of my shortage of work, I was told that the other two electricians seemed to cope just fine with 2 jobs a day
I agreed that I would go and stay at the newbury office from then on, till something came up. So i became the new tea boy.
I called for a meeting, and asked as to why I was taken on. Apparently they wanted to reduce their contractors work, and keep it in house. But for some reason I was only doing 5 minute jobs, whilst contractors were doing shop refits. A site agent then walked in complaining that the electrical contractors said they wouldn't be able to start a job till about 16 days and so I put my hand up. I visited the job, and said it would be doable within 2 weeks.
So, having been told to do the work I asked for the specs/drawings etc to be told there were none, and I was just supposed to install a blank canvas installation, that would be limited to 26 lights (that's what the insurance would cover for). So I went home at 3 o'clock to do all the cable calcs and go through the catalogues for the materials and then decide on a switching configuration and light layout, along with all the services, security, distribution and fire systems.
I picked up some materials on the way through the next morning (they only used CEF in my area, and CEF is 1.5 miles from my house). I installed some tray along the entire length of the shop, positioned the dado trunking in all positions, installed the gas bonding and positioned all the the conduits and plug in click roses. I knocked it all out and ran out of materials so went back to CEF (about 8 miles from the job), at 3.30 to order the fittings so I can get them all delivered to site.
The next day at 2.30, the site agent popped in and told me the operations supervisor (down in Southampton) had told him to come and let me go. He says that apparently I had gone home early the two days prior.
I was on probation so had no real leg to stand on, I didn't get paid for the last week either.
I wrote to the company directors and explained my side, and attached all of my email history, trying to get some work to do and explaining that an installation needs to be designed etc.
They wrote back to me saying they appreciate that their operations manager has not reviewed the evidence and has jumped to conclusions. I was re-offered the position, but I declined.

All because a guy would rather look at a tracker, and not emails. I 'enquired' for the tracker information, which confirmed that on the penultimate day I actually didn't get home till 5.30

 

[Sparky Ninja]

they even pay £96.00 per month for my sky tv package.

As for previous employers most of them were pratts.

2 questions...

1. How come?
2. What kinda package is that??

 

[telectrix]

widdler. that's what you get when bean counters and suit&ties think they know it all.

 

[Sintra]

It was part of a Christmas bonus a few years ago. They paid to get sky+ installed and a standard box in a bedroom. At the time they said they would pay all subscriptions for a year and set up a direct debit for payments. They have been paying ever since and now the package includes sky hd, sky+ and a standard box plus all channels. Boss said they would keep it ongoing.

 

[Phil]

top guy you work for mate. and after what he did for your daughters birthday for you gets my vote good on him. nice to see there are still some good ones left out there

 

[mogga]

I was thinkin the same Phill After what he did for the bairns birthday now your gettin sky full full over the top package are you sure its not your dad your workin for Or does mrs Sintra look like Demi Moore( or other woman of guys fantasies)??


Ps any jobs going??

 

[DurhamSparky]

MY WORST EMPLOYER WAS MR ELECTRIC!!!! what a con! what a load of Tosh!

the owner was a usless idiot! arse / elbow come to mind..! mpt fussed about safety or working conditions! as long as there was money to be earned via homeserve he wanted you in van for 24 hours a day 7 days a week!

BAH!

i wont go to into dept as it upsets the boat and i get threatened with court action for liable! lol

 

[telectrix]

if you say anything you can prove is true, it's not libel.

 

[Phil]

another gem i worked for, the guy who owned the company was spot on but the manager was a tw@t. i had the misfortune of working with the know it all on a partial re wire. i did the sockets and other bits whilst he sloped aoround doing nothing much apart from the lights (which he messed up) all the time we were there he was telling me how he was the best electrician in england and if he could not do something no one else in the uk could. he ball sed up the bathroom lights and the customer rang up at half 4 to ask for someone to come out as they were not working. anyway story goes that the next day in the office he had told the owner it was me who had done the lights and put me on the spot in front of the gaffer. no way i was admitting to something i had not done. end to the situation was he treat me like ****e for a few weeks until i either smacked him or found another job. well it does not go down to well on the CRB check for assault when your applying for jobs in colleges so i walked. must admit 10 years previous the nob would have got it big time not quite as patient when i was younger. turned out they had been throguh 7 electricians in so many weeks previous to me. so i guess i was not alone

 

[accordfire]

if you say anything you can prove is true, it's not libel.

Hmmm.

Calumny law in the UK is very hard to get your head around, and is fraught with danger on both sides.

There are exceptions to the defence of "good faith" which is what Telectrix is quoting above.

One of the best "simple" definitions of calumny, or defamation, law is here on Wikipaedia, but is by no means exhaustive.

Take advice from a specialist lawyer if you're going to name names, and bad mouth someone, even if you believe you can prove it.

Against that, the right of privilege *generally* applies if you say something potentially libelous in a closed forum.

The simple way around it usually is to state your claim without names, substituting "person X", or "Company Y" to illustrate the message - proof of what you claim is not as simple as it happened to you - you need to be able to document and verify it did (witnesses, documentary proof are good).

Ultimately, the primary thing most people rely on when making statements which might be defamatory are freedom of speech, and the side fact that bringing a libel or slander claim is frighteningly expensive.

 

[Phil]

that`s the reason when ever i make a post it`s without names and dates etc. one never knows who is lurking

 

[pennywise]

CEF's lawyers would have a field day on here