GAAAAAHHHHHH Mk.VI: The Return of the Son of the 50ft GAAAH that struck back!

[Caledonian]

why do employers want you to be under the age of 21 with 15 years of experience?

Because they want to pay you peanuts yet want you to be an expert in your field.

No, in fact it is because the job ads are written by incompetents.

Or maybe because these days we are supposed to treat the recruitment process like seduction and dating and to job ads are like the lonely hearts section of the small ads in a local paper, or like hookup websites.

Yeah, that's it!!

A job ad asking for somebody "21 with 15 years of experience" is like posting on a hookup site "seeking virgin who makes porn stars blush".

they didn't actually put that down, but I applied to this job, I'm 20, and they wanted someone younger than 21 so that was okay. I have a good 5 years of experience in retail as my mother owns a shop and I usually get around helping.
....
.......
I was denied because I had too little experience.

The mere fact they are discriminating people based on age in a retail position is troublesome.  It may be legal in some countries, but it might be misconstrued as age discrimination.  Was the position open only to females? (I'm guessing here).

No, it wasn't.
And the age thing was because the position was made free because we have a lot of youth unable to get work, so there are made jobs especially for youths.

[J. Wilhelm]

why do employers want you to be under the age of 21 with 15 years of experience?

Because they want to pay you peanuts yet want you to be an expert in your field.

No, in fact it is because the job ads are written by incompetents.

Or maybe because these days we are supposed to treat the recruitment process like seduction and dating and to job ads are like the lonely hearts section of the small ads in a local paper, or like hookup websites.

Yeah, that's it!!

A job ad asking for somebody "21 with 15 years of experience" is like posting on a hookup site "seeking virgin who makes porn stars blush".

they didn't actually put that down, but I applied to this job, I'm 20, and they wanted someone younger than 21 so that was okay. I have a good 5 years of experience in retail as my mother owns a shop and I usually get around helping.
....
.......
I was denied because I had too little experience.

The mere fact they are discriminating people based on age in a retail position is troublesome.  It may be legal in some countries, but it might be misconstrued as age discrimination.  Was the position open only to females? (I'm guessing here).

No, it wasn't.
And the age thing was because the position was made free because we have a lot of youth unable to get work, so there are made jobs especially for youths.

Then, in the absence of any nefarious motivation, all that is left is plain incompetence on the part of the human resources personnel. It's simply not reasonable to ask for long experience in that age group. Or perhaps they are just obligated to advertise the job, but they already have someone they intend to hire, so they have to "pretend" to be interviewing people. Once I had an application rejected with 45 minutes of submitting it online.  My job qualifications were a perfect match for the job, so it makes me wonder if they even read my resume (curriculum vitae) of if they just hit the delete button.

It was SpaceX.  Yes that SpaceX that everyone is clamoring about. In a previous year, for a different job application in the same company they had sent me a very polite letter stating they were very impressed with my credentials (two MsC degrees) but they were not hiring anyone without experience at the moment. That second application, years later, took only 45 minutes to be rejected. Were they even trying to hire somebody? Or am I just feeding the ego of some know-nothing human resources person?

[Cora Courcelle]

And the age thing was because the position was made free because we have a lot of youth unable to get work, so there are made jobs especially for youths.

So whoever wrote the job description thought that a position opened up especially for unemployed young people would get applicants with lots of experience ... hmmm!

[Caledonian]

And the age thing was because the position was made free because we have a lot of youth unable to get work, so there are made jobs especially for youths.

So whoever wrote the job description thought that a position opened up especially for unemployed young people would get applicants with lots of experience ... hmmm!

Exactly.

why do employers want you to be under the age of 21 with 15 years of experience?

Because they want to pay you peanuts yet want you to be an expert in your field.

No, in fact it is because the job ads are written by incompetents.

Or maybe because these days we are supposed to treat the recruitment process like seduction and dating and to job ads are like the lonely hearts section of the small ads in a local paper, or like hookup websites.

Yeah, that's it!!

A job ad asking for somebody "21 with 15 years of experience" is like posting on a hookup site "seeking virgin who makes porn stars blush".

they didn't actually put that down, but I applied to this job, I'm 20, and they wanted someone younger than 21 so that was okay. I have a good 5 years of experience in retail as my mother owns a shop and I usually get around helping.
....
.......
I was denied because I had too little experience.

The mere fact they are discriminating people based on age in a retail position is troublesome.  It may be legal in some countries, but it might be misconstrued as age discrimination.  Was the position open only to females? (I'm guessing here).

No, it wasn't.
And the age thing was because the position was made free because we have a lot of youth unable to get work, so there are made jobs especially for youths.

Then, in the absence of any nefarious motivation, all that is left is plain incompetence on the part of the human resources personnel. It's simply not reasonable to ask for long experience in that age group. Or perhaps they are just obligated to advertise the job, but they already have someone they intend to hire, so they have to "pretend" to be interviewing people. Once I had an application rejected with 45 minutes of submitting it online.  My job qualifications were a perfect match for the job, so it makes me wonder if they even read my resume (curriculum vitae) of if they just hit the delete button.

Must be something silimilar...

[Mercury Wells]

Good Bye Windy Miller et al.

Trumpton creator Gordon Murray dies aged 95

[SeVeNeVeS]

why do employers want you to be under the age of 21 with 15 years of experience?

You just wait until you are the wrong side of 50 and fancy a change. Loads of practical hands on experience with knowledge.......... Nope, you are too old. Its all a bit f$%#&d up to be honest.

There ya go.......

[Caledonian]

why do employers want you to be under the age of 21 with 15 years of experience?

You just wait until you are the wrong side of 50 and fancy a change. Loads of practical hands on experience with knowledge.......... Nope, you are too old. Its all a bit f$%#&d up to be honest.

There ya go.......

Age discrimination is a problem for everyone (that's not between 26 and 35)

[von Corax]

It was SpaceX.  Yes that SpaceX that everyone is clamoring about. In a previous year, for a different job application in the same company they had sent me a very polite letter stating they were very impressed with my credentials (two MsC degrees) but they were not hiring anyone without experience at the moment. That second application, years later, took only 45 minutes to be rejected. Were they even trying to hire somebody? Or am I just feeding the ego of some know-nothing human resources person?

For what it's worth, I expect a sexy company like SpaceX would get far more applications than a human could possibly deal with; they're almost certainly robo-filtering, which means you must rewrite your resume (Gah!) for every single application (Gah!) to be buzzword-compatible with the posting. (GAH!)

The flip-side of this is that I once submitted an application online on which I gave my land-line as the contact method. Literally within 60 seconds they called my cell (which number was on my resume, but not on the application) to offer me an interview for a different opening. (I didn't get the position, but at least I know one human in the world has read my resume.)

[rovingjack]

Went to my family for my birthday. They had a meal I can't eat followed by a cake I couldn't eat and gave me gift cards for me to get my own gifts. My sister spent the whole afternoon looking at sites for her family and my mum to go vacationing together on a trip I am invited to come along on, but between health and costs I likely cannot participate in. and while they wandered off at every opportunity to look at and discuss those things, the rest of the family would pull out their tablets and smart phones.

I literally felt like I was sitting in an airport terminal coffee shop for all the interaction. I had brought snack for others to try (which they did eventually) and board games to play, including one I designed and created myself (but nobody played any). at the end of the day some went home, and my mum (being older) was ready for bed.

I loaded up my things and figuring I have nowhere to be and nothing outside my own appartment this week I would get the chance to eat some things I know I won't digest well but might be worth trying. So I took some of the cake with me.

Before I could eat or try anything, I found two new leakes in my cars weather sealing, and spent one day in broiling heat inside a car in the sun searching for the leaks and cleaning it out. Then the old housemate is dragging his feet getting ack here to clean out his space and return his keys, so I went to get a key made for the new person. Got back and I'm the only one who can get the key to work and even then only about 30% of the time. So I gave the new person my good key and I'm using the hit or miss key. Went into the room to a smell of rotting moldy something that took a while to find, and there are dried bits of what looks like ground meat and fried rice in the carpet.

Spent the other day doing some cleaning, then shot some videos for my youtube channels... and by that point my nose was running like a faucet. I wondered if it was allergies or a cold. by nights end my sense of taste was gone. And today it's more like a full blow cold. Nausea, headache, running swollen sinus' achey and tired... and unable to taste anything.

So my plans for my eat things I'd otherwise regret if I had things to do and places to. Have been postponed for almost a week, and will be cutting it dangerously close to getting in the way of a week of much activity and places I need to be.

and I'm just whiny because I'm feeling cruddy

[Mercury Wells]

Happy birthday though, even if you have a cold.

[rovingjack]

Happy birthday though, even if you have a cold.

thank you kindly.

I'm not done with the ever running nose, but I don't feel as bad as I did, and I can taste again so I had a piece of my cake. It was an experiment by my mum. Something similar to a light lemon (zest?) cake but given the Ketucky butter cake treatment (poked with a skewer enough so that when the mixture of butter and sugar with a hint of vanilla melted into a sauce is poured over it it soaks down into it). A kentucky butter cake is usually a pound cake and it's rich and tasty. This is lighter, and the citrus gives it a character that is well suited by the lighter fluffier cake on a summer day.

[Inflatable Friend]

Video interviews. Not the live ones, but the ones where you get one shot at recording answers to text questions.

"Trainers are very important for the company's commercial sex"

Ah, crap..

[Siliconous Skumins]

Cat has caught fleas from one of the cats in the neighbourhood. No biggie, I'll just take him to the vets and get him treated (those flea treatments you can buy in the shops just don't work).

Took him to the vets, all well and good - was given a worming tablet, a tablet to kill the existing fleas within 30 minutes and a squirt of flea treatment on the neck to kill any fleas hatching out during the next month.

I was happy, the cat was happy, everything was good.



One hour later and the cat began to act a bit odd, started crying out for no reason, and began to run wildly around the house. after 10 minutes he began to freak out and climbing all over furniture and knocking things over. His eyes were wide open and his pupils were fully dilated like dinner plates. Then he began to pant like a dog and began sweating, he was very hot and sweaty. Tried to calm him down while I called the vet, but he took off running around like something was chasing him.

The vet seemed very uninterested in this development, and began to suggest the I had mistreated him with the flea drops and that the cat had been licking them - pointed out that it was one of the VETS who had given the treatment, at which point they went quiet.  They suggested that he was panting and hot because he was running - yes, maybe, but that doesn't explain the fact he is freaked out like something is chasing him and his eyes are wide with a look of terror! Vet then suggested I "keep an eye on him and call [her] back in about 20 minutes", and then pretty much hung up the phone.... Thanks for nothing!


The cat pretty much looked like he was about to keel over and die at this point. I managed to get him to calm down by sitting in a darkened room with him and cooling him with a desk fan and two ice packs from the freezer wrapped in a tea towel. after 15 minutes of me holding, stroking and cooling him, he began to calm down and his breathing slowed down to a more normal level, and his heart rate dropped to something less scary. After a full two hours of him freaking out, he was now exhausted and while his ears were still red hot, he was no longer sweating - sweating is not a good sign in cats!

At this point I left him alone as he was now just irritated by my presence, and I had a stiff drink and contemplated lobbing a brick through the vet's window. I read on the internet that LOTS of cats were reported to have had similar reactions and even deaths due to a flea tablet with a different name, checked the ingredients and sure enough it was the same for the brand of tablet my cat had been given... To top it all, this is something that has been reported since at least 2011 - so the vet MUST have known what was happening! 


The cat is now much better, is calm and more like himself, but seems to be tired and worn out. Seems to over the worst, but will keep a close watch overnight.

I'm not pleased, and I'm not using that vet again!

[Cora Courcelle]

Hope your cat is OK today.

[Banfili]

Siliconous, is your cat better now?

[Siliconous Skumins]

Don't worry, he's OK now.

He still has a mental issue to work out (refuses to go outside now) - he's already got a few "issues" due to being accidentally locked up in a dark garage for weeks on end, that being how he came to live with me in the first place - so apart from his usual traits of needing a night light left on for him as he's afraid of the dark, and he is slightly claustrophobic, he is now afraid to go outside of the house. I think this is because he was outside *just before* he took ill off the medication - So I think he must have felt odd / sickly outside, came back into the house to escape it and then freaked out when it didn't go away in what he regards as a safe place. So now he associates 'outside' with 'makes me ill'.

He is also seemingly depressed or something, as he wants to be near me constantly and is sleeping all the time. He was like this when I first got him, took a few weeks for him to settle, and something similar happened last year when somebody set off a large firework in the lane outside my rear yard, while he was in the yard - It was over two months before I could get that cat outside again! He was terrified. 

It'll take some time to get him back to normal, but at least he is now safe and back to health. And his fleas are gone, so that's a bonus... 



Still never going to use that vet again though...

[J. Wilhelm]

Two gahs today.

1. My supermarket, where I usually have lunch, at the Deli, is now blocking certain domains on their WiFi. bbc.com is one of them 

So if I want to read the news I have to go to cnn.com instead.

2. I'm having to finish fabrication on a new pair of boots I bought for the Luftschiffengel outfit. The "floor" of the insole is giving way under my weight (I only weigh 160 lbs folks,  I'm not a heavy man), causing the heel to dig into the cell walls of the rubber sole. I noticed the  interior space of the shoe was too "tall. " I think they're missing a thicker insole,  probably leather or fibre. Now I need to buy a sheet of stiff tooling leather and make two new insoles to glue between the padded foam insole and the composite floor of the shoe. It has now become a habit for most brand new shoes from China to come in various states of incompletion, as if trained monkeys had assembled them.

[Inflatable Friend]

The GAAAAH!! of the day: mosquitoes again, a disgusting day biter (I suspect an Asian Tiger, killed quite a few of them in the house today) managed to bite my in the arch of my foot. Hobbling around the house like an idiot as a result, stupid body and it's stupid reaction to mosquito bites.

Mind you, I'm not sure what's worse, this foot bite, or the one bit me in the palm of my hand a couple of weeks ago.

[J. Wilhelm]

The GAAAAH!! of the day: mosquitoes again, a disgusting day biter (I suspect an Asian Tiger, killed quite a few of them in the house today) managed to bite my in the arch of my foot. Hobbling around the house like an idiot as a result, stupid body and it's stupid reaction to mosquito bites.

Mind you, I'm not sure what's worse, this foot bite, or the one bit me in the palm of my hand a couple of weeks ago.

That's what you get for going about barefoot. 

At my job,  mosquitoes like to mock us by landing on the insect repellant can.  I am seriously afraid of Zika in this 38 C weather.

[rovingjack]

bounced posting sorry.

[rovingjack]

The GAAAAH!! of the day: mosquitoes again, a disgusting day biter (I suspect an Asian Tiger, killed quite a few of them in the house today) managed to bite my in the arch of my foot. Hobbling around the house like an idiot as a result, stupid body and it's stupid reaction to mosquito bites.

Mind you, I'm not sure what's worse, this foot bite, or the one bit me in the palm of my hand a couple of weeks ago.

That's what you get for going about barefoot. 

At my job,  mosquitoes like to mock us by landing on the insect repellant can.  I am seriously afraid of Zika in this 38 C weather.

get a big box fan an put a fine mesh screen over the back of it and set it up blowing away from you on high. mosquitos will be pulled in to the screen and stuck against it. then just spray them down with rubbing alcohol to kill them.

it's sort of like a mosquito vacuum cleaner for the whole room. if you use another fan in another area blowing inward you can get great cooling airflow too.

[Banfili]

Siliconous, It took me 6 months of gentle work to be able to approach my ginger cat with an outstretched hand - I think the male half of the people I stole rescued him from (with the ranger's consent, I may add) as as a kitten he had been left on his own locked outside and without adequate food and/or water for two weeks - was prone to violence. He is still a little bit wary of men after 7 years!

I am off on holidays tomorrow for three weeks and he will be spending that time indoors.

[Banfili]

Speaking of off on holidays - I am flying out to Ireland tomorrow afternoon. Earlier in the week developed a viral eye infection (fortunately no longer contagious), something I can well do without! At least my glasses hide most of it!!

[Aubreay Fallowfield]

Bloody royal bloody mail!!!!

I have lived in my flat now for 6 years. In that time I kept getting post office accounts statements etc for the previous tenant. I would write on them "no longer at this address" and even, after about four years of it, broke into Anglo Saxon on the envelope. They sent a new bank card and I returned physically to a post office and told them. Then joy of joys a letter last year saying they would not send any more letters as there had been no activity on the account for more than five years. (I open all mail as its only me in the flat, the two cats don't get letters) peace at last I thought.

No. Another letter so I wrote on it 'stop harassing me or I will report you under the 1997 harassment act and the data protection act'. I posted it unopened and two days later the letter, minus the envelope, was posted through my door with an apology saying that the envelope was damaged in transit.

Today another letter.

I phoned them - nothing they could do as I'm not the account holder
I tweeted them - nothing they can do mark it return to sender
I emaild their customer care and got this gem

"Thank you for your email. Unfortunately the Post Office Money bracket covers many different departments and since we are unaware as to which department is sending the letters to you, we cannot inform them to stop. The best way to stop these letters from coming through to yourself is post the letter into a post box with "incorrect address" written on the envelope as stated by the Citizens Advice Bureau.

I am sorry that I can be of no further assistance regarding this matter."

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not so much a Gaaaaahhhhh but more a HA IN YOUR FACE!
I wrote to my local MP who has forwarded my complaint to the Executive Director of the Post Office and asked them to deal with it rather than their idiot, incompetent underlings.

Ha, I know people who know people so don't peas me off!

[The Bullet]

Ha, I know people who know people so don't peas me off!

I have got low friends in high places.......