Backstabbing Bastards & Shit Plumbing

Stabbed, Wounded & Lying Bleeding On The Floor There was a big conference (which I mentioned yesterday) regarding transport in the North East. Our rivals leader, who I shall call JT made a complete and utter mockery of the whole thing. All community transports have an unspoken agreement that everything we do is "all for one nad one for all" and in theory we are supposed to show a united front when Nexus and the local councils start poking their beaks in. Try telling JT that.

Our rivals previous leader JF - god there are too many "J's" in all of this! - was a true gent & would pull out all the stops to help you out of a tight spot while JT is just a selfish horrid woman only looking out for herself. All she did at this conference was big herself up and brag about how much contract work she was doing - not her company mark you - but her personally. At least E gives us credit & praise for a job well done.

It turns out that 75% of all her work is contract based & not community based which is what they were originally set up to do. I can see the CTA & CC recieving an annoymous tip off into their business practices one of these days.

This morning a few influential people called E to say they thought JT was well out of order and they didn't like it at all. So watch this space, she may well be digging her own grave career wise. Good. It'll save us a jon. We're snowed under till after New Year as it is.

Barefaced Cheek Our office building officially needs condeming. Not only does it have zero heating or proper ventilation, it is falling apart. IE A foreign truck driver from Estonia backed his HGV into the corner of our building & part of it crumbled away. Now it looks as though the window in boss J's office could fall out at any moment should a sudden gust of wind hit us. As we are by the cold riverside, that could happpen at any moment.

It also has two rusted iron entrances/exits, One is a rickety ramp the other is wobbly stairs. I refuse to use the stairs as they really do sway & work themselves away from their fixings in the wall when you walk up / down them. The amount of times T had to hammer them back into place over the summer was unreal but now he is off work on long-term sick (if indeed he ever comes back at all) so they have just been neglected. One day either someone will be killed when they collapse or we'll all end up trapped in the shitty building. Rumour has it that our business park is set to be demolished & redeveloped in 2008. About time too we reckon & we're pushing for a nice purpose built office to base our company in. It won't happen of course but we can dream.

Anyhoo back to my original moan. The plumbing is crap. We can't get any hot water which I'm sure contravines Health & Safety nowadays but y'know. Then for the 2nd time in 6 weeks the plumbing has backed up we've had sewerage from the whole damn business park flooding through our toilents & ruining the place, not to mention the smell of course.

So I called the site manager to complain and the response was not quite what I expected. He blamed the girls in the building (Me & J) for flushing - men close your eyes & ears - "feminine hygiene products" as he called them, down the toilet. Now Im sorry but I've had more periods than he's had women and I know how to dispose of "feminine hygiene products" correctly thank you very much.

So he came to look at the problem. He moaned that it would cost £50 to get an engineer out. Not our problem we said as this is why we pay astronomical maintence charges every fucking month. He reluctantly called the site engineer who isn't available for THREE WEEKS as he has a much higher paying job to do first further down the site. Im sure thats got to be against some kind of law nowadays.

In the end our fearless comrade R calmly unblocked the pipes while the rest of us mopped up. Suppose we'll have to get used to this as it may happen a few times a week until the engineer graces us with his presence. For the record it was pink toilet paper that caused the blockage & we use white so it's definitely not our fault regardless what the site manager says. Out of touch twat.

TJ