I received an email from her once, with info about our work and a few things she was requesting from me.
I’m sitting there thinking who the fuck is “emily”, and why is she emailing me?
Where does she sit, why haven’t I met this person?
I look at her email signature and it says she works remotely from Singapore.
Ah, that’s why we haven’t met.
That is just a weasel way to get out of Right To Disconnect laws.
Well being the boss I’m in the office today, for two days then I’m pissing off for a couple of weeks, it’s like the Mary Celeste in here.
Maybe if you’re a Mon-Fri, 9-5 organisation but when you’re open 7 days a week and up to 12 hours a day then there’s going to be a lot of people on different schedules.
This same absolute spanner of a bloke has just applied for another job with us. 
7 months on it’s for a lesser role with lower salary.
For shits and giggles I compared his current CV with the one submitted last year (the employer portal on Seek handily records previous applications). In May last year he stated on both cover letter and resume he was currently employed at ‘Firm B’, but current version of resume states he was actually only at Firm B from August 2023 until October 2023. 
Seems old mate was actually attempting to play hardball and dicked himself out of a decent offer while he’d been unemployed for 6 months (we recall he was also difficult to pin down for an interview which ended up being done online). The role he’s ended up in since then is such a step down you’d need a firetruck ladder.
Absolutely amazing. We once interviewed someone who, halfway through the interview stopped it and said her husband might actually be a better match, and then offered to bring her husband into the interview. Was perplexing.
I’ve finally made the decision to leave and have been floating my resume to a few companies. Slim pickings at the moment which is frustrating. Almost looks like I may need to take a slight step down into a different role before I can make my way up. Hopefully can shift into a pharma role of which there’s a few floating around. A big portion of the promises made to me aren’t being fulfilled and i’m finding that i’m getting such mixed messaged from the MD on the way my business operates, that I can’t actually make any final plans etc.
One of the biggest frustrations is dealing with NATA as an organisation. I want to shift out from that purely because they’re honestly one of the most fucked up organisations that I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve had one staff member assessed 5 times in 3 years by different assessors for asbestos. All my Melbourne assessments found her to either excel or be fully competent. All the Sydney ones found her to be incompetent to the extent that she shouldn’t be doing the testing. We reported one technical assessor for his conduct, but they found him to be completely fine. Fast forward 2 years and he’s been stripped of his ability to be a technical assessor, based on the same complaints we had about him. Apparently it was a NATA person that raised it, so they suddenly took it seriously.
Same guy has assisted drafting new testing methods for asbestos in Australiat. They were drafted in such a way that would require his lab (one of two in the country) to be seconded by every lab in the country to meet the requirements. Further to that, in NSW, we’re required to report any asbestos detected, down to the smallest fibre. The standard he drafted doesn’t allow for this distinction. In a meeting with the EPA, NATA and a whole bunch of consultants, he suggested that a lab accredited to a specific standard be used instead. Surprise surprise, he’s one of 3 in the country. Means he’s funnelled millions of dollars worth of work his way. NATA didn’t even blink an eye.
It’s such a bureaucratic nightmare of an organisation that it’s a joke. Helped out by the fact that they have a MOU with the Australian government that prevents competitors from entering the market. It’s literally an open secret that if a competitor were to join the market, they’d crumble in minutes and most likely cease to exist.
So I’ve accepted a redundancy package - as mentioned at the back of last year, wasn’t happy and haven’t been for a while so this feels like a blessing.
Got a decent chunk of change so not desperate but will start the job hunt next week
Yeah, having been in a similar position a number of times, in my experience it’s good to start the job hunt early, way before you think you need it, especially if you haven’t been in the market for a while. The market is generally tight for experienced roles, and you just never know when a decent role may come up, and you need a bit of time to get your CV right and the whole application and interview process down pat. I’ve seen a heap of new job announcements on LinkedIn, so might mean there are a few resulting vacancies around now.
Initially you can start with the Goldilocks jobs… after a while you end up having to consider less than ideal jobs contracting, but each time just ended up getting a decent role before getting to panic stations.
Yeah - completely agree…. Spent some time rewriting the CV today, had a few conversations with some contacts in the industry in Sydney… will contact some recruiters on Monday and start firing off applications over the coming weeks.
Got a holiday with the family booked for the Australia Day weekend and then it’ll be full time job hunting
The thought of looking for a job fills me with existential dread. I’m on the home straight of two decades with my current mob. More money would be nice, but I might throw myself off a cliff if I had to deal with recruiters & HR types. I saw some lucrative short term contracts (nearly double the pay for the period) several years ago and it never got further than thinking “ah that’d be some nice scratch”.
Best of luck to you mate.