How I changed jobs (Part 1)

I've been meaning to chronicle my career shift, if only for my own satisfaction and due to the fact that the way it occurred was so mind bogglingly infuriating that I cannot quite believe it to this day. So I figured I'd jot down what happened and leave people free to make up their own minds about what happened.

Bit of back story I suppose. My last role was that of an Appointee Officer for a company that shall remain nameless. What this means in real terms was that I was the second in command of a small team (varying from 5-7 people depending on people leaving etc) that was tasked with managing the personal finances of vulnerable clients. This meant we looked after money for elderly people with no relatives, people with physical injuries and those with learning difficulties. We would look after every aspect of their finances, from receiving their benefit payments, paying bills, providing money for shopping right the way through to booking them holidays and so on. A pretty in depth job but one that was also equal parts interesting and frustrating. You would not believe how many family members are prepared to rip off their own relatives - but I digress.

I'd been working at said place for six years and doing pretty well at it. My old manager had gone through a bit of a rough patch personally speaking and it was fair to say that I had taken on more and more responsibility, without anything in the way of reward. Eventually a new managing director was put in place and he seemed to take an instant dislike to our team and insisted on putting in place a series of regimented procedures that made our jobs that much harder. Which is not to say that some of them were not necessary as it makes sense for a company dealing with the finances of 400+ vulnerable people to have accountability, however, he basically implemented things in as roughshod a manner as he could while offering the team no chance for new personnel, training or even overtime to battle the workload.

After about a year of his constant questioning of how we did things my manager basically said enough was enough and resigned, without even having another job lined up which should tell you something. I was equal parts worried about the direction of the team and excited about the prospect of finally moving up the ranks (I'd been there four years at this point).

However, at the interviews it became rapidly apparent that I was going to be basically overlooked due to the fact I'd worked closely with the previous manager. How could I improve the team, they said, if I hadn't been able to do so under my old boss? Um, maybe because she was the person in charge and I couldn't force her to change the way the team was run? Anyway, cut a long story short, they hired someone external to the company that had zero experience in terms of being an appointee, interacting with social services, handling benefits etc. I found that especially interesting as part of the interview had been to do a presentation on the state of the appointee department and ways it could be improved - a presentation no one else could surely have delivered if they had no reasonable experience (bearing in mind that, from a legal standpoint, the interviewees should all be treated fairly and the same). She did have some management experience, but the overall message I got was that she was hired for basically NOT being me. Lucky for her.

So instead of being the manager I was now working for a manager who had no clue about anything we currently did or any of the procedures we had in place. The fact she had also been instructed to raise the teams profitability at any cost, seemingly, would come into play too. I can't say I was too upset about not getting the job, at least not at first, more with the way the interviews had been carried out in a completely biased way. Cest la vie!

Our new manager was, at least, the sociable type and made every effort to get on with the team and try to pick up what it was exactly that we did. Due to senior management allowing the former manager a handover period of exactly one day (I kid you not) she basically had no chance of passing everything to the new boss, so it was only a matter of time before things went to pot.

Over the course of the next year or so things gradually began to disintegrate. Tasks that used to be standard fare for the team gradually became more and more overlooked. Filing was not getting done, bank statements were not being checked, bills were going unpaid or being paid from the wrong clients account entirely. The reasons for this were many and various. A team member left to go to a new good and was not adequately replaced, another had a serious long term illness and was absent for a prolonged period and no one who subsequently joined the team was adequately trained.

The main problem was one of the staff, a girl that had become good friends with the new manager. She would constantly make basic errors on a variety of tasks. Including paying cheques from the wrong persons account, not logging payments at all so the company was liable, or agreeing to phone requests for money and purchase etc but then not noting them down anywhere leading to a number of complaints. It didn't help that she would lie about completing work only for unfinished documents to turn up on her desk after we had received a phone call complaining about us not doing this or that. Not only that but she was constantly late to work - arriving late on over 30+ separate occasions in one four month period. Any one of the countless errors she made should have been grounds for some kind of disciplinary procedure. Instead, because of her friendship with the team manager, the issues were overlooked time and time again. I made at least four separate formal complaints about her in the last year of my employment there, and all of them were ignored. It got to the point where other members of the team would not pass her work because they feared it would simply not get done.

Finally, at the start of this year I had simply had enough. I sent a lengthy email, detailing all of the issues caused by this particular colleague, to the current managing director (a different fellow to the one that had done the appointee management interviews - who had himself been made redundant on a technicality). He invited me to a meeting to discuss the problem and go over possible solutions. I discussed the possibility of her being retrained, though raised the issue that such action had been tried before and she refused to change her attitude, he suggested replacing her entirely and I said that may well be the only option. He said he would have to discuss the problem with my manager, as she would have to have a say, and then we could proceed.

Three weeks later, and having heard nothing from the director in the interim, my manager summoned me to the boardroom downstairs (along with another colleague) and promptly said I was suspended.

Then things got really interesting........

Lies, damn lies and statistics

RETAIL - 33 games

Assassins Creed: BH – 270/1000
Battlefield 2: MC - 500/1000
Beatles Rock Band – 130/1000
Bladestorm - 150/1000
Call of Duty: B. Ops - 1200/1700
Call of Duty: WaW - 1000/1500
Catherine - 35/1000
Disney Sing It HSM3 - 330/1000
Fairytale Fights - 380/1000
Fallout New Vegas - 155/1655
FIFA 12 - 1000/1250
Gears of War 3 - 1765/2000
Ghost Recon FS - 1000/1170
GRAW - 752/1000
GRAW 2 - 1000/1250
Guitar Hero 2 - 320/1000
Halo ODST – 900/1000
Kinect Adventures - 85/1000
Lego Harry Potter 2 - 200/1000
Lego Star Wars TCS - 260/1000
Perfect Dark Zero - 150/1000
Risen - 70/1000
Spiderman 3 - 910/1000
Splinter Cell: DA - 670/1000
Star Wars: Republic Heroes - 365/1000
Supreme Commander - 110/1000
Table Tennis - 630/1000
The Sims 3 – 150/1000
Tomb Raider: Legend - 1065/1250
Tropico 4 - 1040/1250
Vampire Rain - 650/1000
WSC 2007 - 550/1000
You’re in the Movies - 140/1000

TOTAL - 17932/37025

ARCADE - 8 games

A World of Keflings - 200/250
Boogie Bunnies - 115/200
Eets: Chowdown - 40/200
Geometry Wars - 40/200
Ilomilo - 100/250
Texas Hold ‘Em - 105/200
Wallace and Gromit - 115/200
Where's Wally - 40/200

TOTAL - 755/1700

Overall - 18687/38725


Here are all the games on my current to do list, which is actually in a bit better shape than the last time I tried this exercise (well over a year ago).

I'm actually hoping I can chalk off a few games in relatively short order as I only need to polish off DLC on games like Tomb Raider, Tropico 4, FIFA 12 and two of the Ghost Recon games. Not to mention a couple of the Arcade titles should be fairly simple too. We shall see. There are also at least three/four retail titles on there that could be sorted in relatively short order if I can get my other half to sit down and play some Lego games with me. Would be nice to just get a few more games out of the way so I can concentrate solely on newer titles and games I've been putting off for too long now.

At the moment my main goal is just to polish off as many games as I can, as well as hopefully starting a few of the easier titles that have been sat on my shelves for years. The next generation is probably right around the corner so it really does make sense for me to try and get rid of as many old games as I can while they are still worth something.

With 20,038 points sat on my tag from games I've already started then I really want to try and get that figure down to about 10k if I can. I also have a few other games sat around that I'll never finish (due to closed servers, glitched achievements etc) so this is my target area for now. Hopefully I can get focused on these badboys and blitz through a few things. Good intentions and all that. Though I expect that with Xmas and, more importantly, review season coming up my card may well just get swamped. We shall see.

Been a while

A lot has happened since my last full blog, mainly including me moving jobs which can partially be blamed on my blog itself (though not really) but I shall explain all of that at a later date. Seriously there is nothing better than getting screwed over to freshen the mind and recharge the batteries.

I've also moved house and been fairly busy personally speaking, so the first thing to go by the wayside was my unfortunate blog. Still I should have a bit more time now and hope to get back into the swing of things fairly quickly.

One thing I have started doing, which will hopefully give me plenty of writing fodder, is collecting classic SNES games. As well as trying to put together a collection of every PAL/NTSC game ever released (only one of each mind you) I'm going to be replaying them along the way and seeing if they stand up to modern comparisons. Should be interesting. A chronicle of my collecting and playing. I'd actually considered starting a brand new blog just for that purpose, and still might, but we shall see how we go.

I'll also start rambling on about my achievement progress and general Xbox 360 gaming once again, as I'm still trying to break through to that elusive 95% completion barrier (just shy of 93% at the moment). Though with so many games on my card it makes going up even one percent a mjor crawl. I think I need roughly 100+ achievements to go up one percent though it may well be more.

So expect to hear a little more from me in future. Fingers crossed.

I'm not dead

It's funny that pretty much every post I've made for the last few months has started in the same way: with me apologising for not posting more and generally promising to buck up my ideas. I'm not going to bother making that same promise this time around as I will inevitably break it and then come back to renew the vicious circle once again.

I will try harder though - honest.

Since I last put up a post I've been pretty busy......so busy in fact that I started writing this particular update on the 2nd November and I've only just got back to it, ha ha!

As ever I'm full of good intentions, and I had planned to do a regular blog to detail my progress through the murky world of Dark Souls. Considering I've had the full 1k for nearly two months now that would seem a bit redundant but I may do a retrospective on it at the end of the year (so not too long to wait). Suffice it to say that the game blew me away - so much so that it is probably my own personal Game of the Year.

However, that is a bit of an unfair label at the moment as there are so many top drawer games that, in typical fashion, I simply haven't had the time to get around to. The problem is that I tend to complete (as in, get all the achievements) every game I play on my tag. So all the terrible games I've been reviewing this year have somehow taken priority over a bunch of amazing releases that have sat gathering dust.

Batman Arkham City, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Dodonpachi Resurrection, Shadows of the Damned, El Shaddai - the list could go on and on. Hopefully I'll find some time over the festive period to sit down and sink my teeth into at least one or two of these bad boys, though as ever I'm still playing catch up to finish off a few outstanding bits and pieces. Namely the latest COD (spec ops stuff) plus a few bits and pieces on Gears 3 (not Seriously though, screw that) and Eternal Sonata.

Whether or not I really get anything done will depend on the other halfs tolerance for my gaming shenanigans, plus the fact it's Christmas and the fact we may be moving in the New Year so the dread prospect of boxing stuff up may rear its ugly head. Yay?

In a week or so I will do a bumper breakdown of how this year has panned out, especially as it's been a very hectic one both professionally and personally. Certainly I've done more gaming related writing this year than ever before, but hopefully I'll be able to transfer a bit of that time and effort back to some personal musings all well. You never know.

Been a while........

Suffice it to say that my recent blogging activity has barely registered as a blip on the heart monitor of life, but hopefully I'll be able to turn things around and become a tad more proactive in future.

Obviously August was a bit of a write off, as I was whisked away to Gamescom by x360a. It was probably the best year yet in terms of the social side of things, as I met up with Mr Webb and Alex once again, plus had the pleasure of meeting Mr Richard Walker as well (the man tasked with doing all of the news and writing on the site on a daily basis - pity and fear him).

Pretty much every night saw us going out to meet up with a variety of other games writers and PR staff, and it was nice to put some faces to names and meet so many awesome people. Enough brown nosing though, as I also had plenty of games to see and previews to write which is why I was a little snowed under upon my return.

Even after shifting the backlog I then had a bunch of reviews to get to grips with, such as the latest incarnation of Madden and NHL, not to mention Dead Island. In fact the scenic zombie slaying title led to a veritable barrage of messages, friend requests and hate mail on live. I've never played a game like it, with so many people wondering how I'd gotten a copy early and saying that I was a hacker and/or retarded. I kid you not. Obviously I invited such naysayers to read my pending review the following Monday when the embargo was up, but this being the internet it was obvious that some people were being dicks just for the sake of it.

I actually enjoyed the game to be honest, and the vast range of review scores does puzzle me somewhat. I can certainly appreciate that the game does have its faults, but when someone scores it a three out of ten then I have to question their sincerity. Reviews are opinions at the end of the day, but surely each writer will have to endure the same strengths and weaknesses of a particular title and draw fairly similar conclusions? Obviously personal preference and some bias may well creep in along the way but, personally I try and play each game on its own merits and discount whether or not I like zombies, or racing games, or banana peeling simulators. My job is to review the game based on its own merits, rather than perceiving slights based on other titles or my own personal feelings at the time. It seems that some reviewers do tend to forget that fact and people are left confused when a game can divide opinion so widely.

Anyway, in between smacking zombies around I've also had time to go back and polish off a few other titles that have been cluttering up the old gamertag. First onto the chopping block was Need for Speed Shift, well the DLC to be more apt. To be honest it took me a few hours to get everything done so it certainly offered value for money, though I would have to say that whoever decided on the lap time targets you need for some of the challenge stars could do with a swift kick to the nether regions. The amount of time and frustration that it took me to beat some of the times, even after recording flawless laps, is exactly why I tend to avoid racing games in the first place.

I also went back and knocked off the zero point achievements I needed for NBA Ballers and Battle for the Pacific, meaning they are now 'officially' complete in the eyes of both my peers and Jesus himself. I also found out there was a Ticker only style Horde event running on Gears 2 to celebrate the impending launch of the trilogy concluding finale. So naturally I suited up and went to town battling wave after wave of exploding manaces (though mildly irritating nuisances may be a better description). I roped in a few chums to help me get through the longer waves, and I also found a way to do some of the maps in autopilot (assuming they had a boomshield), though there were a few that required me to beat up my foes solo for 10, 20 or 30 waves which soon got old. Still I've now done all of the Horde achievements and managed to knock out 1999 rounds to boot - leaving me with just Seriously 2.0 to grind through before I can move onto playing Gears 3.

I'm a a bit of a lull at the moment, just finishing up some older games and playing whatever I choose, but the review season is well and truly upon us and that will mean a bevy of new titles to sift through and write about. Bring on the pain.