Students

[Lane Ender]

Doing what?

All the building trades.
Motor trades
Specialist industries.
Or do you want them to spend the rest of their life looking at a fucking screen!

 

[Sean Thornton]

All the building trades.
Motor trades
Specialist industries.
Or do you want them to spend the rest of their life looking at a fucking screen!

Looking at a screen showing jobs at £40k pa even though all they've ever done is flour and season the chicken at KFC.

 

[Lane Ender]

Looking at a screen showing jobs at £40k pa even though all they've ever done is flour and season the chicken at KFC.

What a sad world we live in when looking a at a screen pays a living.

 

[Deleted member 875]

Looking at a screen showing jobs at £40k pa even though all they've ever done is flour and season the chicken at KFC.

What a sad world we live in when looking a at a screen pays a living.

It's an even sadder world because I get paid to look out of a window all day.......

 

[Lane Ender]

It's an even sadder world because I get paid to look out of a window all day.......

Lucky you

 

[sitwell]

It's an even sadder world because I get paid to look out of a window all day.......

Is that sadder than looking at a screen ?
Actually you don't get xhamster through a train window do you.

 

[Robby Blade]

thy or the vulgar form thi, I would have thought - didn't she read English?

It's an even sadder world because I get paid to look out of a window all day.......

That's unions for ya.

 

[Tynemouth Blade]

For any students or parents of students:

University students hit by wave of fake tax refund emails
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46234014

 

[Cerberus Blade]

When I left school in 1970 the only careers advice was "they want somebody in the steelworks take this card to Brown Bailey's" .................................... everyone at Hinde House school got that line, fook that. I had the choice of three jobs in the motor trade two of them apprenticeships and took the one which paid best and also allowed me to train to a higher standard of Motor Vehicle Technician as well as just Motor Mechanic.

Same era. I'd got a job before I left school. I wasn't starting till August though. So in the weeks leading up to that I had to sign on at the Job Centre and actively look for work. I can think of no place more depressing than an "employment exchange" as we used to call it. Fortunately I didn't have to visit many times, it was a period of maybe six weeks from leaving school to starting my job.

I do remember being told that I should take this card and go and see about a job at a steelworks in Sheffield. It wasn't a big steelworks though, in fact it was just a little factory on Scotland Street where they made things like tankards and trophies. The job, apparently, was polishing metal tankards. I turned up for the interview in a green SMC suit, with yellow shirt and tie, and two-tone brogue shoes. I went to the little hatch and rang a bell for attention. A bloke popped his head around the door. "Can I help yer?" he asked. I said, "I've come for an interview for a job". He looks me up and down like I've just landed from Mars. "You'll be popular!" He says. "It's lunchtime y'know?". It never occurred to me tbh. Anyhow, he fetches another bloke who comes in and looks me up and down like I've come from Mars as well. (I don't think they'd ever seen someone in a suit before?).

"Follow me" he said. And he took me down these stairs into the basement and we entered a little room that had no natural light. In the room there were two big lathes. They were switched off currently and two blokes in overalls were sat eating their sandwiches, both of them looked like they'd done a shift down a mine. Their hands and faces were grimy and blackened and yet they were chewing away on thin white bread sandwiches. There were iron filings piled up several inches high on many of the surfaces. "Your job will be to keep this place clean" the guy said to me. I could feel myself gulp! Clean? Bloody hell! That would take some doing! "It gets a lot dirtier and noisier darn here when t' machines are on" he said. I said to him, "I thought the job was polishing tankards?" And he said, "Av just teld thi what the job is!". Meanwhile the two blokes with black hands were chewing on their sandwiches and just staring at me, not in a friendly way. I said to the bloke, "I don't really think this is the job for me". And he said, "Fair enough lad", and that was that. I went back up them stairs as fast as I could and walked back out into the daylight, squinting like a pit-pony.

I remember it in graphic detail because it shocked me. It shocked me that people could do jobs like that for a living. What a life eh? It was no life. Working in a dungeon, full of dirt and noise, for several hours a day. It made me realise that for some folks work is purgatory. It is a hell on earth - an endurance. Although I'd just left school with little or no qualifications I did at least have a job to go to soon. A shop assistant. A job where I could work in pleasant surroundings and work sociable hours. And a job where I could go to work clean and come home clean and not risk my life or health in between.

The green SMC suit had to go though. They only allowed navy or grey.

 

[grafikhaus]

Same era. I'd got a job before I left school. I wasn't starting till August though. So in the weeks leading up to that I had to sign on at the Job Centre and actively look for work. I can think of no place more depressing than an "employment exchange" as we used to call it. Fortunately I didn't have to visit many times, it was a period of maybe six weeks from leaving school to starting my job.

Not much has changed. About eight years ago I was out of work and got dragged through the process - A4e and other fucking shysters. Re. the 'actively look for work', it's a joke. They give you a little 'diary' where you had to record everything you were doing to seek employment. I ignored this and did an Excel spreadsheet which baffled the ill-educated planks who work at West Street. Did I apply for all those jobs? Did I fuck. One day (at A4e) we were told to wander round town, look for cards in shop windows advertising jobs and apply for them. I palled up with a graduate and he got a bollocking because he didn't apply for a job he's seen on a card towards the bottom of The Moor. The job? 'Saturday Girl'. Try and watch 'I, Daniel Blake' for the true horror.

Just last week, I was having a haircut and this place has had a card in the window for 'Gentleman's Barber' for weeks. The girl who runs this business told me about the 'quality' of applicants - people who couldn't speak English, people who've never cut hair in their life and some foreign woman who couldn't read the ad. and applied to be a cleaner in the salon. An utter waste of everyone's time.

Anyway, back to students. Work looks imminent on 'Development Corner' at the Lane. It's a plot of land at the Shoreham Street/Cherry Street corner and hoardings have gone up with GMI Construction on them (they have done lots of work at the Lane over the years including the John Street re-development). Yet more student flats. I sense a bubble about to burst.

 

[Inter_blade83]

For any students or parents of students:

University students hit by wave of fake tax refund emails
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46234014

I had that in my UCL email account. Fortunately since I'm 35 I've had tonnes to my normal accounts over the years so I'm aware.

The problem these days is that most people use their phones to access email instead of their laptops, so you can't see where the link would take you before clicking it.

 

[Cerberus Blade]

Not much has changed. About eight years ago I was out of work and got dragged through the process - A4e and other fucking shysters. Re. the 'actively look for work', it's a joke. They give you a little 'diary' where you had to record everything you were doing to seek employment. I ignored this and did an Excel spreadsheet which baffled the ill-educated planks who work at West Street. Did I apply for all those jobs? Did I fuck. One day (at A4e) we were told to wander round town, look for cards in shop windows advertising jobs and apply for them. I palled up with a graduate and he got a bollocking because he didn't apply for a job he's seen on a card towards the bottom of The Moor. The job? 'Saturday Girl'. Try and watch 'I, Daniel Blake' for the true horror.

Just last week, I was having a haircut and this place has had a card in the window for 'Gentleman's Barber' for weeks. The girl who runs this business told me about the 'quality' of applicants - people who couldn't speak English, people who've never cut hair in their life and some foreign woman who couldn't read the ad. and applied to be a cleaner in the salon. An utter waste of everyone's time.

Anyway, back to students. Work looks imminent on 'Development Corner' at the Lane. It's a plot of land at the Shoreham Street/Cherry Street corner and hoardings have gone up with GMI Construction on them (they have done lots of work at the Lane over the years including the John Street re-development). Yet more student flats. I sense a bubble about to burst.

I honestly don't think I could do it. In fact, I wouldn't do it. I'd refuse. If that meant no benefits, then fine. I thank my lucky stars I've never needed to do it since.

I know a lass who's a hairdresser. She'd gone for a job at some place on Eccy Road and got it - just like that. She was telling me, they didn't even ask to see any evidence that she could cut hair or had any qualifications to cut hair. They just took her on face vale and she was in. When you think about how many hairdressers there are on Eccy Road it's perhaps not surprising!

I'm actually pro-students. I suppose it helps to be pro-students if you've got kids who are students. I've got 2 boys, one is a student at Uni (not in Sheffield) and the other soon will be. But family things aside, I agree totally with a previous poster who points out that if it wasn't for the ability of this city to attract students (and that's thanks to Sheffield's Universities) and the increasing Chinese investment this place would have sunk by now.

We should be very grateful that all these students come here, I really do think that. Will the bubble burst? Not whilever we've got good Universities to attract them. It would be handy to have other things to attract people and investment in Sheffield though.

 

[South Bucks]

We should give away a thousand free tickets to students the night before a match.

Some of the long standing blades I know don't come from S Yorks but saw united a few times when students and became fans when you didn't need to jump through so many daft hoops to get a ticket.

Club still thinks every fan lives in Sheffield, many don't.

 

[Eddiecolquhounsleg]

I do remember being told that I should take this card and go and see about a job at a steelworks in Sheffield. It wasn't a big steelworks though, in fact it was just a little factory on Scotland Street where they made things like tankards and trophies. The job, apparently, was polishing metal tankards. I turned up for the interview in a green SMC suit, with yellow shirt and tie, and two-tone brogue shoes. I went to the little hatch and rang a bell for attention. A bloke popped his head around the door. "Can I help yer?" he asked. I said, "I've come for an interview for a job". He looks me up and down like I've just landed from Mars. "You'll be popular!" He says. "It's lunchtime y'know?". It never occurred to me tbh. Anyhow, he fetches another bloke who comes in and looks me up and down like I've come from Mars as well. (I don't think they'd ever seen someone in a suit before?).

"Follow me" he said. And he took me down these stairs into the basement and we entered a little room that had no natural light. In the room there were two big lathes. They were switched off currently and two blokes in overalls were sat eating their sandwiches, both of them looked like they'd done a shift down a mine. Their hands and faces were grimy and blackened and yet they were chewing away on thin white bread sandwiches.

Maybe they thought the same when they saw the canary walk in.

 

[JimW1889]

Not much has changed. About eight years ago I was out of work and got dragged through the process - A4e and other fucking shysters. Re. the 'actively look for work', it's a joke. They give you a little 'diary' where you had to record everything you were doing to seek employment. I ignored this and did an Excel spreadsheet which baffled the ill-educated planks who work at West Street. Did I apply for all those jobs? Did I fuck. One day (at A4e) we were told to wander round town, look for cards in shop windows advertising jobs and apply for them. I palled up with a graduate and he got a bollocking because he didn't apply for a job he's seen on a card towards the bottom of The Moor. The job? 'Saturday Girl'. Try and watch 'I, Daniel Blake' for the true horror.

Just last week, I was having a haircut and this place has had a card in the window for 'Gentleman's Barber' for weeks. The girl who runs this business told me about the 'quality' of applicants - people who couldn't speak English, people who've never cut hair in their life and some foreign woman who couldn't read the ad. and applied to be a cleaner in the salon. An utter waste of everyone's time.

Anyway, back to students. Work looks imminent on 'Development Corner' at the Lane. It's a plot of land at the Shoreham Street/Cherry Street corner and hoardings have gone up with GMI Construction on them (they have done lots of work at the Lane over the years including the John Street re-development). Yet more student flats. I sense a bubble about to burst.

I was on the JSA for about two weeks, 6/7 years ago, and had to visit the job centre just once. Had the same booklet and though slightly fabricated in places, I filled it out meticulously. The man who I saw glanced at two pages for a grand total of 10 seconds and told me it was fine, could've written that I'd applied to be the queen for all he cared.

 

[grafikhaus]

I was on the JSA for about two weeks, 6/7 years ago, and had to visit the job centre just once. Had the same booklet and though slightly fabricated in places, I filled it out meticulously. The man who I saw glanced at two pages for a grand total of 10 seconds and told me it was fine, could've written that I'd applied to be the queen for all he cared.

Once I was signing on and was sat down waiting to see my interrogator. She had some unfortunate sat in front of her and was rifling through his 'diary'. ('Papiren, bitte.') He'd claimed to have applied for a job as an HGV driver. 'Have you got an HGV licence?' she asked. He replied 'I haven't got a driving license.' . You're right, some of the 'employees' were OK, some didn't give a fuck and some - particularly some women - had obviously been previously employed at Ravensbrück.

A4e was particularly bad. In those days The Job Centre had entered into a Faustian pact with con merchants called 'Workplace Providers' - Wise Ability, A4e etc. Obviously, the more people these organisations could get into work, the more they got paid. Therefore, if you were visibly a drunk, druggie or couldn't speak English, the JC left you well alone. However if you committed the sin of being well-presented, polite, educated etc., you'd be sent to the likes of A4e on the next shipment.

It was such a waste of taxpayer's money, I wrote to my local MP - Nick Clegg - asking if he was aware what was going on at places like A4e. At first, he was very interested, writing to me about five times on HoC headed paper. Then the trail went cold. I found out later that one of his equally-corrupt MPs ('The Right Honourable' David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education & Employment back then) was being paid £30k a year for 'advisory work'. By A4e.