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No news I can give you on the job front, things continue to grind on in a grindy sort of way.
I do, however, have a new cat.
It is thus: a friend of a friend was looking for someone to take on a cat of hers. She started the year with four cats. One, the eldest and grande dame of the household, Pippo, died. This left three cats, Pixel, Squeakerton and Polar, none of whom were happy without Pippo. Pixel was being bullied by Polar and Squeakerton was acting out (peeing where he shouldn’t and so on) so she decided to try to rehome Pixel, and Squeakerton if she could find anyone suitable.
I said I’d take Pixel. This was in June. The FOAF was going to South America in August, so said she would wait until she came back to pass Pixel over. August came and went, and I got in touch with her, and she said she’d got flu, so could I wait. I waited. September came and went, as did most of October.
Finally, she said she was ready to pass on Pixel and even then it took a little while to arrange a suitable weekend to bring her down from Norfolk to London.
Pixel spent the first two weeks here living at the back of my wardrobe and only coming out to eat, drink, pee and poop. In the last ten days or so, she’s come out into the bedroom and now sleeps either on my bed, on me or on the chair I’ve sprayed catnip all over. But she won’t come into the rest of the flat, and if Smokey goes into the bedroom, Pixel hisses and spits at her. Smokey just looks confused, but does do that fur-all-out thing that cats do – her tail looks like a bottle brush and she looks twice her normal size, and hisses, but doesn’t spit. Every other day they have a yowly disagreement, but separate without damage to either party.
Sometimes Pixel will growl at nothing – no sign of Smokey, but she sits under a chair and has a growl to herself.
I’m not sure what to do now – I’ve bought Feliway Friends and put it in Pixel’s room. Smokey has ordinary Feliway in the living room.
I want them to co-exist, if not peacefully, without fighting or growling. Any suggestions?
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I do, however, have a new cat.
It is thus: a friend of a friend was looking for someone to take on a cat of hers. She started the year with four cats. One, the eldest and grande dame of the household, Pippo, died. This left three cats, Pixel, Squeakerton and Polar, none of whom were happy without Pippo. Pixel was being bullied by Polar and Squeakerton was acting out (peeing where he shouldn’t and so on) so she decided to try to rehome Pixel, and Squeakerton if she could find anyone suitable.
I said I’d take Pixel. This was in June. The FOAF was going to South America in August, so said she would wait until she came back to pass Pixel over. August came and went, and I got in touch with her, and she said she’d got flu, so could I wait. I waited. September came and went, as did most of October.
Finally, she said she was ready to pass on Pixel and even then it took a little while to arrange a suitable weekend to bring her down from Norfolk to London.
Pixel spent the first two weeks here living at the back of my wardrobe and only coming out to eat, drink, pee and poop. In the last ten days or so, she’s come out into the bedroom and now sleeps either on my bed, on me or on the chair I’ve sprayed catnip all over. But she won’t come into the rest of the flat, and if Smokey goes into the bedroom, Pixel hisses and spits at her. Smokey just looks confused, but does do that fur-all-out thing that cats do – her tail looks like a bottle brush and she looks twice her normal size, and hisses, but doesn’t spit. Every other day they have a yowly disagreement, but separate without damage to either party.
Sometimes Pixel will growl at nothing – no sign of Smokey, but she sits under a chair and has a growl to herself.
I’m not sure what to do now – I’ve bought Feliway Friends and put it in Pixel’s room. Smokey has ordinary Feliway in the living room.
I want them to co-exist, if not peacefully, without fighting or growling. Any suggestions?
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I know you’re all still on the edge of your seats to hear how I’m doing with Smokey.
She had a good weekend, lots of cuddles and scritches, though she is definitely not as clingy as she was when she first came to me. Having a cat that won’t let you out of the room without following is sometimes quite fun, but I’m rejoicing at the fact that she’s growing more confident. She still doesn’t like the computer or the iPad, though. They take my attention away from cats, which is where it should be in her opinion.
She did really well with my gaming friends. I sorted out a place where she could go and hide, which had food, water, her favourite blanket and so on. In the end, though, she hardly used it.
She insisted on staying in the room with my friends, occasionally drawing attention to herself but generally happy to watch them and blink slowly in the way of cats and when she wanted support she came and sat on me. She did have a mad twenty minutes where she ran from the living room to the kitchen and back again repeatedly – I don’ t know what she was about there – but it was short lived.
Today, she meets the cleaner. That should be fun and games for all as it’ll be her first encounter with that creature of evil, the vacuum cleaner. Also the hissy thing that is the iron.
I changed the litter in her tray and gave the tray a wash; never a fun job but it has to be done. I have to say, modern cat litter is very much easier to cope with (if no lighter) than the stuff we used when I had cats before in the early 1980s to the early 1990s. There seems to have been a step change in cat litter technology in the intervening years.
Her appetite seems to have improved considerably – one thing that’s helped is that I tested a different brand of dry cat food on her, and she much prefers it. The down side is that it’s Iams (the only ‘serious’ cat food you can get in supermarkets) and one of my FB friends says that Iams test on animals.
I’m a bit torn over this news. I see any animal testing as a bad thing (though I accept that in science it’s sometimes unavoidable) but on the other hand at least someone has tested the food to check that cats like the stuff. It seems better than formulating and manufacturing a cat food just hoping cats like it (which the manufacturer seems to have done with Go-Cat judging by Smokey’s attitude towards it). However, I’ve ordered some small bags of alternatives from an online pet store to check against it to see if she’ll like those even better.
Then I won’t tell anyone what brand she went for, in case it has an even worse reputation. Frankly my definite preference is that my cat eats her food and fills out a bit – because at the moment she’s a bit of a thin thing and a thank-you. I don’t want her fat, but I want her flanks to fill out.
In other news
It seems there will be a voluntary retirement/redundancy scheme advertised today or tomorrow. I’m very tempted to get a quote just to see how much I’d get if I decided to go. You don’t have to accept the quote and anyway I’m a bit young to retire – but I hate working for this government so very much.
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She had a good weekend, lots of cuddles and scritches, though she is definitely not as clingy as she was when she first came to me. Having a cat that won’t let you out of the room without following is sometimes quite fun, but I’m rejoicing at the fact that she’s growing more confident. She still doesn’t like the computer or the iPad, though. They take my attention away from cats, which is where it should be in her opinion.
She did really well with my gaming friends. I sorted out a place where she could go and hide, which had food, water, her favourite blanket and so on. In the end, though, she hardly used it.
She insisted on staying in the room with my friends, occasionally drawing attention to herself but generally happy to watch them and blink slowly in the way of cats and when she wanted support she came and sat on me. She did have a mad twenty minutes where she ran from the living room to the kitchen and back again repeatedly – I don’ t know what she was about there – but it was short lived.
Today, she meets the cleaner. That should be fun and games for all as it’ll be her first encounter with that creature of evil, the vacuum cleaner. Also the hissy thing that is the iron.
I changed the litter in her tray and gave the tray a wash; never a fun job but it has to be done. I have to say, modern cat litter is very much easier to cope with (if no lighter) than the stuff we used when I had cats before in the early 1980s to the early 1990s. There seems to have been a step change in cat litter technology in the intervening years.
Her appetite seems to have improved considerably – one thing that’s helped is that I tested a different brand of dry cat food on her, and she much prefers it. The down side is that it’s Iams (the only ‘serious’ cat food you can get in supermarkets) and one of my FB friends says that Iams test on animals.
I’m a bit torn over this news. I see any animal testing as a bad thing (though I accept that in science it’s sometimes unavoidable) but on the other hand at least someone has tested the food to check that cats like the stuff. It seems better than formulating and manufacturing a cat food just hoping cats like it (which the manufacturer seems to have done with Go-Cat judging by Smokey’s attitude towards it). However, I’ve ordered some small bags of alternatives from an online pet store to check against it to see if she’ll like those even better.
Then I won’t tell anyone what brand she went for, in case it has an even worse reputation. Frankly my definite preference is that my cat eats her food and fills out a bit – because at the moment she’s a bit of a thin thing and a thank-you. I don’t want her fat, but I want her flanks to fill out.
In other news
It seems there will be a voluntary retirement/redundancy scheme advertised today or tomorrow. I’m very tempted to get a quote just to see how much I’d get if I decided to go. You don’t have to accept the quote and anyway I’m a bit young to retire – but I hate working for this government so very much.
This entry was originally posted at http://lexin.dreamwidth.org/572657.html. You can comment here or there, it's up to you.
I hate this government so very, very much. They would look good on a lamppost, like Mussolini.
The Spending Review. Yes, that’s what it’s about. For welfare claimants none of it is an improvement.
The key policy elements of the settlement include:
• 7 waiting days at the start of UC, ESA and JSA
• Increased requirements at start of claim, including an English language test for JSA, mandation* for CV and UJ (Universal Jobmatch) registration
• Increased signing, weekly for at least 50% of claimants
• UC claimants subject to full conditionality to verify claim every year
• Increased requirements for IS lone parents
• Looking at pilots for new ways of encouraging ESA(WRAG) to take steps to improve their health and significantly increasing requirements for claimants over 3.5 years on JSA
Seven waiting days at the start of a UC, ESA or JSA claim. Now, that’s seven days without money for the poorest people. My savings are such that I could last seven days without pay, but many people, including many poorly paid people, are skin-close to borrowing from loan sharks to keep the wolf from the door as it is.
Increased requirements for the start of claim…we may live in England, but nowhere is there a requirement to be able to speak English. Speak what you like has always been the rule.
Besides, I can think of at least one or two situations where the outcome of this would be very unfair indeed. Think of the situation of a woman who has come here as the wife of a Pakistani man. She speaks only Gujarati. He’s abusive and she leaves him, leaving the children behind her. She can’t go to family: they will shun her because she left her husband. She can only claim UC/JSA – but now she can’t because she doesn’t speak English. What does she do? Her only option is to return to her abuser, because she can’t live any other way.
It’s not that unusual a situation in the district where I live. One of my colleagues has a wife who manages a Jobcentre in central London. Where she works, about 65% of the clients don’t speak good English.
The mandatory registration on Universal Jobmatch means putting your details on a site known to be unsafe (see what Johnny Void has to say about it) and known to be glitchy, in a way which means the staff at your Jobcentre can see what you’ve applied for and harass you to apply for unsuitable jobs in places you can't travel to. It’s a rubbish idea and someone’s going to be killed, I swear it.
The rest of the ideas are appalling, too. It’s as if they think that there are jobs to be had easily which people are not applying for. If there were decent** jobs to be had, people would take them. That’s how it’s always worked in the past and it would work that way now, too.
* Is mandation even a word? I don’t think it is.
** Properly paid, not part time zero hours contracts, or weird jobs which don’t exist when you make further enquiries.
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The Spending Review. Yes, that’s what it’s about. For welfare claimants none of it is an improvement.
The key policy elements of the settlement include:
• 7 waiting days at the start of UC, ESA and JSA
• Increased requirements at start of claim, including an English language test for JSA, mandation* for CV and UJ (Universal Jobmatch) registration
• Increased signing, weekly for at least 50% of claimants
• UC claimants subject to full conditionality to verify claim every year
• Increased requirements for IS lone parents
• Looking at pilots for new ways of encouraging ESA(WRAG) to take steps to improve their health and significantly increasing requirements for claimants over 3.5 years on JSA
Seven waiting days at the start of a UC, ESA or JSA claim. Now, that’s seven days without money for the poorest people. My savings are such that I could last seven days without pay, but many people, including many poorly paid people, are skin-close to borrowing from loan sharks to keep the wolf from the door as it is.
Increased requirements for the start of claim…we may live in England, but nowhere is there a requirement to be able to speak English. Speak what you like has always been the rule.
Besides, I can think of at least one or two situations where the outcome of this would be very unfair indeed. Think of the situation of a woman who has come here as the wife of a Pakistani man. She speaks only Gujarati. He’s abusive and she leaves him, leaving the children behind her. She can’t go to family: they will shun her because she left her husband. She can only claim UC/JSA – but now she can’t because she doesn’t speak English. What does she do? Her only option is to return to her abuser, because she can’t live any other way.
It’s not that unusual a situation in the district where I live. One of my colleagues has a wife who manages a Jobcentre in central London. Where she works, about 65% of the clients don’t speak good English.
The mandatory registration on Universal Jobmatch means putting your details on a site known to be unsafe (see what Johnny Void has to say about it) and known to be glitchy, in a way which means the staff at your Jobcentre can see what you’ve applied for and harass you to apply for unsuitable jobs in places you can't travel to. It’s a rubbish idea and someone’s going to be killed, I swear it.
The rest of the ideas are appalling, too. It’s as if they think that there are jobs to be had easily which people are not applying for. If there were decent** jobs to be had, people would take them. That’s how it’s always worked in the past and it would work that way now, too.
* Is mandation even a word? I don’t think it is.
** Properly paid, not part time zero hours contracts, or weird jobs which don’t exist when you make further enquiries.
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London is a frustrating place to be right now. I met some friends for dinner and a catch-up yesterday and found that just getting from my workplace to the place we were meeting (three streets away) was an exercise in itself.
Firstly, all the buses running down Victoria Street and up Whitehall were delayed by who-knows-what event at Trafalgar Square, and then when I got off the bus in Whitehall I discovered that the reason the driver had let me off in the middle of the street rather than at a stop was because the bus stop I wanted was closed for the Olympics.
So was the crossing where I wanted to cross the road to the pub.* So I had to dodge between the traffic to get to the side of the road I needed, and if you know me, given my speed and level of surety of foot, 'dodging' isn't something I'm all that good at. Years ago, when I was a young, slimmer civil servant who didn't have knackered knees, I could dodge. Now, not so much.
Then when I came out of the pub later I noticed that sections of the road are blocked off so that people needing to use the bus have to walk out across the road to get on. Not what I'd prefer, frankly.
Luckily, I should be avoiding most of this, because I've arranged to work from home during much of the Olympics, only coming in to the office once a week. It does mean that any union related meetings will have to take place during the little time I'm physically in the Dull Grey Tower, but I hope that should be enough time. The rest I'll have to do by phone.
I wish everybody taking part in the Olympics well, I hope it keeps fine for them and I hope everyone who finds that sort of thing enjoyable enjoys it. But I wish it was happening somewhere else.
* Or rather, newly gentrified gastro-pub. The food is very good, don't get me wrong, but the prices are twice what they used to be when it was a dark and poky hole.
ETA: Scotland has announced that they're bringing in gay marriage in the face of whipped up objections from the usual suspects. Well done, Scotland.
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Firstly, all the buses running down Victoria Street and up Whitehall were delayed by who-knows-what event at Trafalgar Square, and then when I got off the bus in Whitehall I discovered that the reason the driver had let me off in the middle of the street rather than at a stop was because the bus stop I wanted was closed for the Olympics.
So was the crossing where I wanted to cross the road to the pub.* So I had to dodge between the traffic to get to the side of the road I needed, and if you know me, given my speed and level of surety of foot, 'dodging' isn't something I'm all that good at. Years ago, when I was a young, slimmer civil servant who didn't have knackered knees, I could dodge. Now, not so much.
Then when I came out of the pub later I noticed that sections of the road are blocked off so that people needing to use the bus have to walk out across the road to get on. Not what I'd prefer, frankly.
Luckily, I should be avoiding most of this, because I've arranged to work from home during much of the Olympics, only coming in to the office once a week. It does mean that any union related meetings will have to take place during the little time I'm physically in the Dull Grey Tower, but I hope that should be enough time. The rest I'll have to do by phone.
I wish everybody taking part in the Olympics well, I hope it keeps fine for them and I hope everyone who finds that sort of thing enjoyable enjoys it. But I wish it was happening somewhere else.
* Or rather, newly gentrified gastro-pub. The food is very good, don't get me wrong, but the prices are twice what they used to be when it was a dark and poky hole.
ETA: Scotland has announced that they're bringing in gay marriage in the face of whipped up objections from the usual suspects. Well done, Scotland.
This entry was originally posted at http://lexin.dreamwidth.org/540767.html. You can comment here or there, it's up to you.
The 'have a nice day' fixed grin required of many hospitality and other service staff could be seriously bad for their health.
A study published in the Academy of Management Journal has discovered that fake smiles can actually depress mood and hurt health. The researchers examined a group of bus drivers who often have to display a positive, courteous demeanour as part of their job description.
Lead author Brent Scott, an assistant professor of management at Michigan State University, said the findings suggest customer service workers who fake smile throughout the day worsen their mood and withdraw from work, affecting productivity. 'Employers may think that simply getting their employees to smile is good for the organisation, but that's not necessarily the case,' he said. 'Smiling for the sake of smiling can lead to emotional exhaustion and withdrawal, and that's bad for the organisation.'
The study is one of the first of its kind to examine emotional displays over a period of time while also delving into gender differences, Scott said. The results were stronger for the women bus drivers. 'Women were harmed more by surface acting, meaning their mood worsened even more than the men and they withdrew more from work,' Scott said.
The fake smile is an employment pre-requisite for many in the service sector, particularly retail and hospitality staff. The practice is more widespread than you might think. Many call centres require a fixed smile when dealing with callers, despite the penned-in workforce being visible only to their supervisors.
(I always had a suspicion that the fixed grin of shop workers was bad for them as well as annoying for me.)
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A study published in the Academy of Management Journal has discovered that fake smiles can actually depress mood and hurt health. The researchers examined a group of bus drivers who often have to display a positive, courteous demeanour as part of their job description.
Lead author Brent Scott, an assistant professor of management at Michigan State University, said the findings suggest customer service workers who fake smile throughout the day worsen their mood and withdraw from work, affecting productivity. 'Employers may think that simply getting their employees to smile is good for the organisation, but that's not necessarily the case,' he said. 'Smiling for the sake of smiling can lead to emotional exhaustion and withdrawal, and that's bad for the organisation.'
The study is one of the first of its kind to examine emotional displays over a period of time while also delving into gender differences, Scott said. The results were stronger for the women bus drivers. 'Women were harmed more by surface acting, meaning their mood worsened even more than the men and they withdrew more from work,' Scott said.
The fake smile is an employment pre-requisite for many in the service sector, particularly retail and hospitality staff. The practice is more widespread than you might think. Many call centres require a fixed smile when dealing with callers, despite the penned-in workforce being visible only to their supervisors.
- Brent A Scott, Christopher M Barnes. A multilevel field investigation of emotional labor, affect, work withdrawal, and gender, Academy of Management Journal, volume 54, number 1, February 2011
(I always had a suspicion that the fixed grin of shop workers was bad for them as well as annoying for me.)
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It's amazing what you overhear in the Ministry of Magic's canteen – or rather, what becomes mangled between someone saying it and my ear. I was minding my own business trying to cope with spaghetti bolognese when I overheard two blokes at the next table, one of whom was saying to the other, "He was in a band call the Gelatinous Poodles."
A quick google search shows up that there is no known band of that name, so what on earth can he have actually said?
Somewhat similarly, I'm convinced that I once saw a band called "Careful with that axe, Eugene". It was in a pub, in a back street in Birmingham in the mid-to-late 1970s – the best I can say is that it was before I left school, but only just before. I know that there's a Pink Floyd song of that name, but as far as I'm aware there's no band.
Now, I could have misremembered or misunderstood - perhaps they did that track and I've remembered the track as the band name, or something like that. Or perhaps they did just one gig and never played again. I'll never know.
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A quick google search shows up that there is no known band of that name, so what on earth can he have actually said?
Somewhat similarly, I'm convinced that I once saw a band called "Careful with that axe, Eugene". It was in a pub, in a back street in Birmingham in the mid-to-late 1970s – the best I can say is that it was before I left school, but only just before. I know that there's a Pink Floyd song of that name, but as far as I'm aware there's no band.
Now, I could have misremembered or misunderstood - perhaps they did that track and I've remembered the track as the band name, or something like that. Or perhaps they did just one gig and never played again. I'll never know.
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The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)
"More than 77 percent of Americans support strong laws that give employees the freedom to make their own choice about whether to have a union in the workplace without corporate interference. Allowing working women and men to choose for themselves is the key step toward rebuilding America's middle class, allowing union membership that brings better wages and benefits and a voice on the job.
"However, the legislation has to pass through the House of Representatives and the Senate before he can sign it into law, and some employers are mounting a fierce campaign against it (one of them even said - honestly, he did - that EFCA was 'a firestorm bordering on Armageddon'[1]!) Most of these employers (except Wal-Mart) aren't coming out publicly, but using front organisations to oppose the Act."
I might have known Wal-Mart wouldn't like it - and remember they operate in the UK under the name Asda, having bought the Asda name.
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