If I ever get to ditch the nine to five, I think I would still need a bit of freelance work to keep my hand in. Just for pocket money though. I’d feel bad about blowing her income on sports cars without at least contributing to the occasional meal out.

I can't bring myself to do overtime. I don't want to be there for normal time.

I remember my first proper job, because they paid us through a special account that took time to set up, for the first 10 weeks or so we got paid weekly, in cash. We had to go up to a special wee counter on a Friday and the woman gave us an envelope with cash inside. That was fucking glorious. Straight down the pub after of course.

Money in the bank is fine and all but cash in hand feels so good.

I used to do a fair bit of overtime when I was younger. I remember doing several months in which I did 6 day weeks and a quite a lot 7 dayers - had to develop a lot of code for a system we were rewriting to a fairly strict deadline.

Nothing worse than coming into work on a Monday when you have worked both Sat and Sun.

I had free reign to do as much as I wanted but over a long haul I learned to pace myself. I adjusted to doing Saturday mornings and 6 or 7 hours on a Sunday if I worked both days on a weekend. Sat was *1.5 while Sun was *2.....

Oh my god. I think this is the most precious part:

- Two Animal Lovers (this used to say "dog lovers" but we were receiving accusations of being preferential to dogs)

Able to protect a dog from being attacked by another dog

Is this dog being bullied?

Boom.

Got myself two interviews lined up with decent agencies after my emails this morning. One who are desperate for a Senior Designer and having trouble finding the right fit, and one who have a similar role opening up in a couple of months’ time.

I’m not messing around now, want to get myself out of the current job ASAP.

Nicely done pop, good luck with them.

Redundancy process continues at my work. They've agreed the salary bands, I won't move up or down, as i guessed. My boss agreed that I'd achieved my pip, so I won't lose any points at interview because of it. Interviews Tuesday, anyone here have experience with balanced scorecards? Apparently that'll be one part of the interview, rest will be competency and behaviour based questions.

The original pass mark was 67%, that's been reduced to 57%, so blessing and a curse for me. I scored in the high 80s when i went for this job as sn external candidate, i should romp it after being in the job a couple years. But, it means there's gonna be more folk hitting the pass mark, so more arses but still less seats.

I managed a small team for years and knew exactly who was working well or not at all times.
It's part of being a manager, surely?

Yeah there is a hell of a lot of procedure involved with redundancies. The scorecards make things transparent and avoids favouritism.

It is so easy to file a constructive dismissal complaint if redundancy procedure isn't followed.

Balanced Scorecards so 90s.

We're sticking with the balanced scorecard for us back of house managers, apparently they want the supervisors to become team leaders and run front of house, following the Disney 'magical experience' ethos. It's a pile of shite, my job isn't changing at all.

Balanced scorecard is just a set of performance measures and their results, allowing you to run the business. There should be mix of customer based, operational and financial.

For extra points I would as well as assessing the results given to you, consider whether the performance criteria you have been provided with are actually the ones that allow you to run the cinema effectively or are there any others you would like to see.

Yeah totally agree, I have put my points across to the project manager, can't do much more than that.
The problem is they have been shown a hand sketch early on as part of a handful of concepts then fallen in love with it.

As for details.
It is a retail gondola for a spirits company.
They want the gondola split so one face promotes product A and the other promotes product B.

This was designed for them but they wanted something more radical but with each side unique to each other in form. The issue there of course is that it is very difficult to have radical design form without the other side interfering.
The solution seems to be bury head in sand and just design each side in isolation.

At hand drawn stage that is fine but when you bring that into 3D shockingly it doesn't work anymore. So that is issue 1.

Issue 2. They have seen this concept where it looks like liquid pouring over the unit. Great, they like it fantastic. Get it to 3D and again problems.
The liquid doesn't look like their product, it looks like wax or cupcake frosting. So they want it "more liquidy".
I make it more splashy as to the images in their guidelines.
Not premium enough, of course it isnt, it is fucking splashy orange liquid!

Back to waxy liquid and they show me a bar that was designed in that way. Great but a bar and a gondola are two very different things. They want it looking like it is dripping off shelves and fairly loose and open, yet somehow I have to mask the rear side while at the same time ensure the ends of the gondola are part of the fluid look.

Personally I think they need to ditch it as a concept, it won't get made anyway, the production costs will be astronomical.