Age-Related Aches and Pains

[MM]

But you WILL retire eventually and you'll need some hobbies! Else life WILL be very boring.

MM

[Bob Eager]

I aim for no more than 500, or less if I can. Breakfast is about 350. I save 20 kcal on every coffee by omitting the sugar.

Indeed. I quite like Ryvita (the dark rye one) and it's quite filling.

And they do fill you up too.

I have 837 left so can splurge a bit. I can even manage a bit of cake.

I certainly didn't till I started this. But I feel a lot better for it!

BTW, when I started this I concealed it from SWMBO (various workrounds enabled this). I'd lost 3 stone before she said something.

[Bob Eager]

I have all these things I don't have time for, so that won't be a problem. And there is a load of voluntary stuff (I'm chair of the local BCS branch).

[ARW]

So that I can hit his balls with a stick? Nice idea that.

[MM]

837 !! Jeesh! That's almost a fish supper down at the local chippy! (Why DO they serve such large portions, I wonder?)

Ooh, that's not nice. I'm single (always have been), but my relatives noticed the difference immediately. Acttually, that was probably because they hadn't seen me for three months...

Thing is, I have photos of me aged 23-ish and I am as slim as a ballet dancer (male ones, of course). I easily slid into 32" waist jeans. Now it's 38" and trying for 36". I was a tubby baby and always loved my food -- unlike my late sister to whom food was a necessary evil and she only ever ate because, as a trained nurse, she knew she had to. But I don't think she ever enjoyed food the way I do. She didn't have an ounce of fat on her. Downside: She felt the cold something awful.

MM

[tony sayer]

In article , MM scribeth thus

Well work and the hobby are one and much the same;)...

Not boring at all thanks!..

[Simon Brown]

That's the theory, anyway. In reality its nothing like that.

Very few can do anything like that. Few even understand that about themselves.

Very few have any real effect on anyone else like that.

Easier said than done.

Impossible when most don't even have any idea about that themselves.

In theory. In practice that is hardly ever possible.

That is just plain wrong. That unexpected resignation may well have been because a better job has come up somewhere else and the individual who decided to change jobs may well have not even been aware that that was going to happen, so there is no way that their manager is ever going to know that no matter how good the manager is. In spades with an important change in the individual's personal circumstances like say a spouse has just be diagnosed with a potentially fatal medical problem and that individual has decided to resign for that reason, so they can assist the spouse when they need that assistance, while they are still around.

Real life isn't that predictable, shit happens.

That assumes that training is needed. It isn't for most of us.

In practice not all that much of that happens in the real world.

Only in the worst of the bullshit brigade operations.

Yes, but again it's a lot easier said than done to avoid that happening.

[Another John]

[I haven't been following this thread but keep dropping in for a skim through (since the thread is persisting so vigorously!)]

Your statement above caught my eye like a shooting star Simon: one of the reasons that made life so utterly shit for me and my colleagues (before I scuttled out to retirement when it dawned on me that I could), was that the "new breed of management", imposed on us by an institutional reorganisation, forced training on all and sundry, whether they liked it or not, and whether they needed it or not.

The training schemes were (and still are) there not so much for the staff as for the utterly ignorant management, so that they could tick big fat boxes on their monthly Management Reports, and thus "prove" to

*their* management (who are even more remote form the actual work in hand) that they were "doing their job".

And the job of management (in fatally crippled businesses like the one that I was in) is nothing to do with the work in hand but simply to "manage". One of them even had the gall to say that, with a grin, in the interminable meetings we were called to: "oh sorry - I know nothing about that [the actual work that our department did] -- I'm just here to manage, ha ha".

It made our blood boil: "to manage" had meant a whole new raft of buffoons, totally ignorant of the work we did, coming in, at higher salaries than any of us, bossing us around, and "reorganising" us ad infinitum, and taking away our working hours with meetings, time-consuming reports, and ... training.

But let me not get started.... :-D

John

[Chris J Dixon]

I've long had concerns about what makes a good manager, having experienced quite a lot of managers during my engineering career.

I've never worked with anybody who began straight off having trained as a "manager", indeed can't quite see how anybody could do this.

However, the other end of the scale, where promotion is based only on engineering ability, is not without snags. There was a time when my chief engineer and engineering manager, whilst both excellent engineers, had no management skills. This was such a shame, as their real talents were wasted, and their ineptitude diminished the work of those in their charge.

Chris

[MM]

No, no! A hobby doesn't HAVE to be completed on time, work does. With work, you are obligated to your employer to turn up, do the job on time, do a proper job and so on. It's totally different from doing something on a hobby basis.

MM

[stuart noble]

I've often wondered how it is that the staff at Aldi seem so cheerful, efficient, and happy with their lot. Even the security guard knows where everything is in the store. There is a manager but he is either on the till or stacking shelves. Go figure, Tesco.

[charles]

If your hobby involves nobody else, that's probably true. If you are involved with others in can be just like work - but you don't get paid. For instance, I'm in a music group; we need to turn up to rehearsals and performances.

[spuorgelgoog]

Aldi pay store assistants £8.15 to £9.75 per hour. Even Apprentices sta rt on £5.30.

Owain

[Bob Eager]

And that applies when choosing a degree, as I say in my school talks time and again.

They still get it wrong, the best on being the one who eventually transferred to Computer Science from "Classical Civilisation and Archaeology". We get a lot of transfers from Physics too (c.f. Tim Watts!)

[Bob Eager]

SWMBO is in charge of computing for an FE college.

She still has to go on 'IT training' despite teaching exactly the same stuff at a much more advanced level. The box must be ticked.

[Andrew Gabriel]

One of my managers early in my career had been a captain or some rank in the army where he was leading a bunch of soldiers. His ability to motivate us was incredible - he had us slogging our guts out, and enjoying every moment of it. He didn't have a clue about what we did technically - he trusted us when we provided him info on progress, etc, and we trusted him to look after us, which he did superbly. I learned a lot from him, and put it into use when I was managing a team.

This was in stark contrast to the manager I had beforehand, who was an engineer (but not up-to-date with current technology) who had been promoted to a manager, but had no skills in that direction at all. It was very useful to be able to contrast their two behaviours in similar situations.

Yes, this is common - people keep getting promoted until they reach a level at which they are not compitent, and then stay there. It's not helped by most companies having a structure where you can only be promoted a little before becoming a manager. I was lucky to work at Sun Microsystems, where there were equivalent management and engineering roles at every level up the hierarchy, which is how you retain the world's best engineers without forcing them to do something else they are often no good at, or losing them.

There are some engineers who also make good managers - I know a few, but it is rather more the exception than the norm.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Wow - have you never worked for a good manager?

[Simon Brown]

I have actually. He was notorious for saying 'what ho' as he passed you in the corridor and we were very amused when he asked someone who one of the more unusual unkempt bears of a person was. He'd been working there for years when he asked.

Left the ones who replaced him when he retired for dead as far as it being a very decent place to work for.

One of his replacements managed to produce a full scale mutiny with the organisation having to send in some fool when we were talking about a bus trip to head office to get something done about him.

He did get the bums rush.

[Simon Brown]

That would never have worked in the operation I worked for for 25 years.

He didn't have a clue about what we did

Yeah, the best one I ever saw was an engineer.

- I know a few,

That is true of all the best managers.

[Nick Odell]

We had an ex-army bloke (I think he had been a WO or somesuch) as manager at one of the music businesses I worked for in the early days. It didn't work out so well for us, I'm afraid. He "managed" to get everybody against him. His one weakness was his refusal to use the works canteen and to bring in his own, personal supply of coffee and dried milk. One of the engineers (not me!) spiked his dried milk with Sennakot.

He started getting the runs and becoming dehydrated so he drank more coffee...

After a week or so, someone took pity on him and swapped in a new suppy of dried milk.

He left soon after that but unfortunately I wasn't there to see him go.

Nick