Right, I feel really churlish and A Bad Person for being annoyed by this, but there you go...

My department at work is about 50 people, split in to teams of 6-8 people. We work on a site of about 2000 people.
In our department we have a 'team' which has a rep from each of the work-teams, who organise social things, charity things, etc. We have a pumpkin carving competition comingup and we have a couple of cake sales each year (most recently for the World's Biggest Coffee Morning).
Children in Need is coming up. Well, we only did a cake sale in September, so we can't do one in November. What shall we do in November then? asks the cheery-social-team. They decide to hold a raffle.

Initially, each team in our department was asked to supply a prize for the raffle. This evolved in to writing letters to local companies to get them to donate a prize for our raffle. This has now evolved in to the expectation that each person in the department will provide at least one prize for the raffle - either one they've begged from a local company or something they have bought to donate.

I'm not going to do it. I feel bad about it in a way, BUT I don't think it's right that my colleagues can force me to support a charity (either financially [by buying a prize] or with my 'copious' spare time [letter writing until some company gives in and gives me something]). The charities I support, I support in the time and manner of my choosing.
If they'd asked for donations for the raffle 'if you have anything to offer', that would be fine. But now it's a case of 'here's a copy of the form letter, change it to your name, send it off to eight million companies and see what you can blag'. It also seems to be turning in to a competition of who can get the best freebie prize. And we're not talking small things either - the two bottles of drink I could donate looks feeble in comparison to my desk-neighbour's donation of a patio heater!

Gah, I do feel like a meanie for not getting involved; but I don't agree with the fact that participation is now being forced upon everybody by a 'team' that is supposed to be there to improve our morale and make our department a Nice Place To Be.

Maizie - that is harsh! Asking, okay, but that sounds like its got way out of hand! If this is how they go about improving morale then perhaps they need a rethink..

Lucky - It wasn't fair. And it sounds like you were pretty restrained through most of it! Everyone loses thier temper sometimes.

I don't blame you for not wanting to be involved in this, Maizie - who is going to be actually buying tickets for this raffle? If it's just your workplace there are going to be an awful lot of prizes - and if it isn't, there will be pressure to sell lots of tickets to family and friends, which is again horrid if you don't personally want to do it.

It is demoralising when there is this kind of "competition to perform". My husband's choir used to do this over selling tickets for their concerts, which is fine if you move in the right circles; since our respective families live miles away, hubby travels to work, and most of our friends are not into classical music, it was often difficult for him to sell any tickets at all, and then you feel dreadful.

The key thing to remember is that there is "an expectation", not an obligation here. Just refuse to bow to the pressure and stay out of it. It's up to you which charities you want to support.

Thanks Rosemary... Maizie that's not fair - you're not obligated to do anything, and don't let them feel bad. I'm sure you do plenty for charity in your own.

ARRGH (again... I need to stop coming here and moaning about all my problems.)

Lucky, what else is the thread for!

Hope you are ok?

well everybody has to have a somewhere to bounce problems against, otherwise everybody would go mad...
and can i? it is the middle of our final, seven-week long exams and, as usual (and i'm sure all school-going people will agree), exams drive me mad. for some reason i am constantly in a state between terrible hyperactivity and collapsing into sleep - and you might think that those would balance out, but they don't. i can never sleep past 6am either, and usually can't sleep for ages when i try to. then, sleeping, i have awfully vivid (and not all pleasant) dreams that leave me feeling as though i haven't slept at all. i really enjoy dreaming, but that stops when i start dreaming that i'm getting sentenced to death and being hunted by hoardes of angry people (not sure why...). but generally, also, these days feel just so empty and i never know what to do. it is even impossible to make really silly little decisions, such as whether to lock the front door or let whoever is going out do it. i'm sure everybody knows that feeling, when your brain feels like it is being crushed by a giant garlic-crusher or something. whine over and out.

Oh yeah - that sort of surreal detached from real life feeling? I've never had such disturbing dreams though - except when I was much younger, around ten and I suffered with them horribly - it's probably related to the stress in your life.

As for exams - God knows I have no useful strategies for them. I stress and stress and stress and then their over. Seven weeks though?! Well actually, how long are GCSEs or A Levels? I can't remember.
Oh well, remember to take lots of breaks, and try to have some relaxation before you go to bed - read a book (not Gone With the Wind - see later for why) and have a nice cup of something warm (sans caffeine).
Hope you're ok.

I'm absolutely fine of course, just having a bit of, you know, one of those days when no matter what you do you think you're ugly.

I've dieted back down to a size 8, and have a flat stomach - from the side I look lovely, but from the front I look awful (I think, today at least.) My shoulders are too broad and I look very big, big framed etc. My hair won't go straight, and it's all flat against my head, and my face is too round. I'm too short, and I feel like I was once a tall, slender person, but someone grabbed hold of my shoulders and squashed me down!
It's one of those appearance days.

I reread Gone With the Wind today, (oh Scarlett O'Hara of the 17 inch waist), and I love the book so much - until the ending. I am always SO disappointed when Rhett goes away. How could he just leave her like that - I almost feel like it's happening to me... and how is "Tomorrow is another day" an uplifting ending?! Her best friend, the only one with faith in her is dead, her favourite daughter is dead, the man she loves has left her, and she's just realised the man she thought she loved isn't the man for her. Everyone in the whole town detests her, and even if she does go home to Tara, Suellen absolutely hates her for stealing Frank Kennedy. This book is the one which leaves me the most despondent in the world, and yet all is well because "tomorrow is another day"! Bah!

Umm ok, appearance issues, and the depressingness of a book... not as serious as most people's worries - so I am fine, really.

ah. one of those days... hopefully that feeling will pass.
i am in south africa so these exams are the equivalent of whatever you do in england for last school exams - are those a-levels or o-levels?
problems come when an entire day passes without me opening a book - except books that have absolutely nothing to do with school. i actually need to insert some study-sessions into my... ahem... break. usually i am pretty conscientious, but there is only so much hyperactive morbidity that a body can repress before it takes over.
and i wouldn't underestimate the power of a book to depress you. i remember feeling awful after reading "the children of men". fortunately, they also seem to have the opposite effect at times. pg wodehouse = happy-making author.

Sorry I need to scream!!!!

At the end of May the person I worked with retired. She is the Boss's wife and a director of the company.

She left without handing anything over and there were aspects of the accounts that I've never dealt with.

It was a very difficult time, we had no access to the Bank statements, there were no records of what had been paid to the Inland Revenue etc. Initially because of the situation I didn't know if she would come back, she wanted to, financially she was well rewarded and wanted to.

When we eventually unravelled all the basic stuff the company had been left in a financial hole. I've spent the last few months sorting things out. It's been one ###### of a learning curve. Desperate I looked for and found some really good training on Sage our accounts program.

The thing is everytime I feel I've got things under control another error she made rears it's ugly head. She didn't train me as it's now obvious that she never had a blind clue what she was doing. I've done loads of work sorting things out on Customer and Supplier accounts that were in a mess. some were so bad that my course Tutor had to sort them.

The sage package were a total mess none of the journals matched. She was posting everything from the Bank Statements so the holding accounts were all out. we owed the Inland Revenuse and had to pay as there wasn't a Record of what had been paid int he past. The errors were rolling on in the accounts year after year without anyone taking her to task or attempting to sort it out.

the accountant came in last week and I had a list of thengs for him to resolve, which I supervised him doing. I can post wages journals, know how to balance the bank, I can even use the system to work out the VAT. I found a really nice relaible person to work with and should be very happy.

You might think everything in the garden sounds rosie and be wondering why I want to scream. Ir's quite simple when the year end figures were put on the system Petty Cash is out. The system thinks there is over £400 in Pc, which there isn't anything like that. We've looked back at last year. No suprise hardly any of the drawn checks match with the amounts spent. There's money coming in and going out and coming back in again. Money has been spent against no cheque. Receipts have been posted against the Building Society, the receipts are there but the money isn't. It's one big mess! I just don't know how to resolve it.

Think I'll pack up and go home!

Oh dear!

I don't know much about finance, but £400 doesn't sound too horrendous in business terms. I was in a similar situation a few years back when I took over as PTA treasurer at a junior school. The Head and the previous treasurer had had a very relaxed attitude to petty cash, then sadly the Head had a heart attack and died not long before I took over.

My predecessor as treasurer, instead of trying to sort things out, just passed on to me accounts which basically didn't balance. Every time I contacted him with a query he would claim that the Head had been responsible for purchasing whatever it was, and obviously I couldn't go back to the Head! There was no question of anyone embezzling, both parties involved were totally trustworthy; it was just a mess.

In the end I just told the PTA committee and the auditor that the books didn't balance and we were £100 short. They agreed in the circumstances all that could be done was to draw a line under it and start afresh.

You are in a slightly better position than I was, as at least presumably you can still contact the Boss's wife and ask about things. It must be so frustrating for you at the moment, but at least you trust your accountant to help, and I'm sure between you you will sort things out. All you can do is your best!

Best of luck today - I'll be thinking of you.

Thanks for the support!!

The Boss'e wife would be about as much use as the old Head Teacher To be fair she never had any training, partly because she thought she knew what she was doing, I really don't think I'd get any answers off her that would help.

It's not the amount of money, I suppose it will just have to be written off, we have done so much work on PC already to make sure this financial year matches and it's just soooo frustrating. Everytime we think things a re straight another problem rears it's ugly head and we uncover more discrepancies. When something like this arises we tend to think well there must be a reason. There is a reason but everything is in such a mess that it'sa impossible to identify.

Oh well better just keep on plodding away at it.

The good side of the problem is that you will know far more about how the accounts work than you would if everything had been in apple pie order! There's nothing like having to sort out problems for really teaching you about something.

This should stand you in good stead over the coming years - just think how much simpler you will find things next year, having put in so much work over the last few months! I know you probably won't get much credit for it, as you can hardly criticise the boss's wife to his face, but at least you will have the satisfaction of knowing you've done a good job

Good luck with the plodding on - you're doing a great job!

Don't bet on it He knows what she's like and if he didn't there are things that he would have to be made aware of. There is a bigger picture that I can't go into here.

You're right though it's good experience.

Argh

Thats better.

AARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why not review the final draft of a document, which was emailed to you when you asked for it, specifically as you requested in order that you could review the final draft prior to it going for final review in front of the group? Why not do the stuff you said you do, which made me work to your deadline so you could get your review done?

No, actually, I've got a better idea.

Wait until the document has been reviewed by EVERYBODY. Wait until the document is considered in its final form. Insist (on Tuesday) that I present my final document to the global managers meeting on Thursday (resulting having to stay at work later than usual, so having to cancel a blood donation appointment and move a vet appointment, which were both already made).

Then on Thursday morning, come over to me and tell me it needs some further 'word-smithing' (I swear, if he uses that word in front of me again I will scream).

Just ARGH. Just don't make ME carry out the actions YOU have been given, and then wait until the last minute to criticise what I've done when (a) YOU'VE HAD LOADS OF CHANCES TO REVIEW and (b) EVERYBODY ELSE WHO HAS REVIEWED HAS THOUGHT IT WAS FINE AS IT IS.

:deepbreath: That's better.

Argh

what up?
###### %#$@*(! life. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. there are no smilies available for the sort of face i need to display right now. in the middle of our seven-week long final exams and we have just heard that the twenty-one thousand of us in our particular province have to rewrite the english literature exam on the last friday of exams, because at one school the idiots (idiots idiots idiots) in charge handed out this paper the day before it was supposed to be written. and there i was getting all stupidly happy that i'd never have to be that miserable again.

Oh no, that is so awful!

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!

Are you ok?

Want to talk about it?

It's nothing realy



My brother keeps having arguments about tiny little things with my mum and dad, whcih makes me stressed for no reason. WHY does he have to act as if he owns the world!

Ah that sucks... Is he a teenager? My brother always used to get angry with me when I argued with my parents when I was a bit younger...
It'll all resolve itself soon enough though.

Am just having a bad few months......!!! (Apart from having my gorgeous chickens and dog, that is!..... )

I really hope things start to improve for you soon noodle.

And to Liz and CD too.

OhEmmGee!!

Why can I not do this chemistry?!

I have two teachers, with one teacher I have learnt loads and remember everything and can do everything well...yet with this other teacher I haven't got a clue! It's a different topic so that might have something to do with it

I could do all of this stuff last year when my High school chemistry teacher did it with us unnescesarily but now it just goes over my head

Ben, what you struggling with??

Sounds like my current watch situation!!! I'm down to my concert watch... if that gets broken then'll I'll scream.



Could you not ask for help?? I'm sure Wobby and a few others do chemistry, or I could ask my chemist friend for you?


Personally, I've had the worst 3 days in a long time, I don't know how I'm going to cope with the next week... My best plan is to hide in the music block, except I can't do that because I've got to do a cake sale.

I'm struggling with the whole calculating part of it..calculating moles in a solution, reacting masses etc..

I'm ok when I know what the numbers are and which values goes where. I know what the formulas are, but when I get a question I just don't know where to take the values from

Hmm... The best help I can give you for that is that avrogrados constant is 6 x 10 to the 23... or 24.... Not much in other words. Sorry!

Same here! and..Who says you cant hide in the music block?

6.023 *10^23

Not to be a pedant though

As I've got to go and sell cakes to people - the music block is lovely precisely because there aren't many people in it! It'll do for the rest of the week/month/year/2years though.



Hey, I'm a physicist! I thought it was 23... *Makes mental note to learn all her equations and constants*

God knows what I am lol!!

If I had time I'd start doing physics in my own time, but I don't

Theres an interesting physics discussion going on in the 'what time is it' thread.

Not really an ARRGGHH situation, but we've just had a weird situation here.
To fill you in on the background, we found 3 feral 4 week old kittens in our garden in May and caught the last one when the other 2 died/disappeared and domesticated her. Also... my dad died in August.
Tonight a woman came to the door with our dead cat in her arms. It is bonfire night we should have locked her in. We live near a main road. We were stupid.
The whole household is then in tears. My 11 year old son is sobbing. When my Dad died, i heard whilst waiting for him to go off to camp. It was unexpected and it really was "I'm sorry Luke, Granddad has died. Have a good week at camp". Then he had another week at a different camp, with one of his cousins. Then it was the funeral. he had no time to grieve. I explained how we have to risk being hurt by loving people/cats etc, otherwise life really isn't worth living. I had why does God let it be our cat.
My husband was crying (he never cries). Eldest daughter, refusing to eat, in her room crying. Youngest upset.

I turned around 20 minutes later, to see our cat in our kitchen!!! It wasn't our cat!!! All that grief and it wasn't Covey (named after Shostachovich).
We have been around the neighbours and we think it is a feral cat. Maybe the mother of our cat (who is now locked in the house!!!!)

It was just weird to have all that much grief for a cat from our son (who never seems that attched to our animals) then to find out she's not dead!!!!

Thankfully.
I just feel sorry for that very nice woman who bothered to stop, who thinks she killed our family pet, when it was a feral animal. This poor lady saw our children!
I am just so glad it wasn't our lovely cat (I am sorry about the cat tat is dead) as I don't think I could have dealt with the cat's death just yet!!!!

Must have been a very touching moment though when your cat came home. Glad there is a happy ending to your story.

I got a message today from my collegue to say that when my former boss left Petty Cash all balanced. She's got to be joking!! She spent the same £90 twice, it came out of PC but nothing went in. Then she spent £15 a month and put no money in to cover. I'm wrong though and she's right!!

It's taken me 5 months to sort out a big mess that she left when she retired. It's taken the same amount of time to stave off the bank who were threatening to foreclose, thanks to all the money she syphoned out of the company. It's not been easy to turn things around and it could change so easily. One of the things that helped was making it so she couldn't take any money form the company.

Last week for the first time in ages we made it into the black. Two days later she's on the phone trying to worrm her way back in. She waited until she knew I was on holiday and then started demanding passwords for the accounts program. The woman is so thick skinned!

We've thwarted her again but have no idea how long we can continue giving her the run around. She's tried her Husband who owns the business, he doesn't want her to have access to the accounts. She's even been to the Accountant who doesn't want her to access either.

It's so frustrating!!

Oh dear! I seem to remember you posting about the accounts mess before. Thought you might have a problem with her being the boss's wife! At least her husband is on your side about not wanting her back.

Time to look for a new job?

!!!!

I lost my house keys, spent 2 hours lookng for them, got Dad to rush home and lock up, the locks were changed... And I've now found them under a pile of music!!!

oh dear...
c'est la vie

Oh, ClariNicki, what a weird and upsetting situation...

It was... and I think our cat (who is still quite young really) remained a little bemused as to why she received so much fuss yesterday evening, when all she had done was to come out from up the chimney (where she hides from things like vacuum cleaners... and obviously firewroks!!!!). The dog was a little bemused firstly. when children were crying etc amd then a little miffed as to why the cat was getting so much attention.

Well at least your cat was OK as are mine who are trying to tell me they're hungry and I'm terying to tell them they don't get dinner until 6pm

I think the last four weeks have been the Aaaaaaaaaaaaggghhh -scream weeks. I've had my life completely tuned upside down I've still got to have more tests and hubby threatened to take eldest son to grandparents yesterday to the the level he put him in the car in his pyjamas and drove off.

My old cat used to get dinner at 6pm - she'd start moaning for it at about 4pm, but on weekends if we were there it could start as early as 2pm.
The new cat, she seemed a lot more chilled about meal times. However, four weeks in, she has now got a complete grip on our routine - so she knows dinner is at 6pm and starts begging from as soon as I get home (4.30pm).
Just as bad in the mornings. Still, being woken up at 6.15am on a Saturday is really not a big deal, and certainly not worth me posting on the scream thread about.

So I'll go away now - but I am thinking of all of you who are having scream-inducing times...

argh... does anybody out there sometimes feel like they are completely messed up - argh again; "messed up" is such a teenager-ish expression - or as though there is something wrong with them that they don't know about? it is exams (still) and i keep getting these insane highs and lows. for a couple of days i slept for hours during the daytime (something i never do if i can help it), but in between my arms and legs feel as though they have an insane amount of energy inside and i need to hit something or jump around insanely or pull weird faces (believe me: weird, weird faces. until my neck is stiff the next day from doing this) or sprint until i just collapse. but at the same time i am really tired and/or miserable. then just now i went running, and the local walkers'/runners' group had set up base camp opposite our house. it seems very idiotic, but sometimes things like this just get to me and push me over into the "i could slam/hurl/crush/pulverize anything in my path" kind of mood. and when i run the worst thing is running past people. so i go on long detours to avoid any people coming up. is this weird?

"does anybody out there sometimes feel like they are completely messed up" Benson, in a word - yes.

You've completely described how I felt towards Christmas last year (no, not through excitement, trust me!). Umm...in brief, things were pretty hectic - we were rehearsing 6 times a week for the pantomime, sitting seemingly endless exams at school and pressure was being put on me from every possible angle. By the time it came to the week of the show I was so tired most of the time that I couldn't eat, and the only time I really woke up was when the adrenalin started to take effect on stage. It was fine until the 6th show when I found I had no control over how I felt - I was unable to stop laughing one minute and sobbing the next. I started the lines for the wrong scene, couldn't even get into my costume because my hands were shaking so much, cried when I saw one of my friends and generally felt terrible.

I don't think you're weird. I think you're under a lot of pressure at the moment with the exams and meeting your own (and other people's) expectations. I don't like running past other people - I'll go 5 miles in the other direction - so I go out first thing in the morning when it's quiet . Maybe try to make sure you have some time for yourself...if you're awake at an odd time, use it to do something you enjoy, reading, composing, whatever takes your fancy. And don't think of yourself as weird. Please.

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See http://forums.abrsm.org/index.php?showtopi...mp;#entry674467

Oh, have a hug *hug*. You're not useless at all, it's just sometime things just get too much for you. At these times you just have to try and chill, because, in the words of katyjay, stressing is a "waste of energy". PM me if you like x

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