Dh's boss lost his temper.

[Abitskint]

Dh has been in his current job since December. I last used this name when he was job hunting last year.

Anyway, the job's ok-ish, he's not really happy, but was ready to stick it out until something else came up.
They have also warned him on th quiet that financially they have probs, and may need to let him go by June anyway.

Anyway yesterday his line manager came up to his desk and said "I need you to go to France tomorrow to sort out this problem". DH said "I'm sorry, I can't".
The boss immediately got on his high horse saying (in front of the 8 other people in the office) "Don't give me excuses, this is the first time we've asked you to go anywhere, I'm not interested in your social commitments, you WILL go, otherwise we may need to consider your position here "
DH let him rant, then quietly said "my passport expired in August last year, and I haven't renewed it yet, as I have no plans to go abroard".

The boss ranted on a bit more, saying he should have a passport. DH pointed out that was not mentioned as part of the pre-reqs of the job, and is not mentioned in his contract. He will get it renewed if the company would like him to, they can give him a day to go to Peterborough to deal with it if they consider it urgent.
Boss called dh a VERY unpleasant name, and stormed off.
Today, boss has gone to France to sort the problem, and my dh has been summoned to see the MD.
I guess he's out on his ear.
What do you think.

Onwards and upwards, Easy! That's the spirit. This lot of wank stains is just bringing him down. There are some things worse than having no job, and that's working w/a lot of tossers like this.

Hi, thanks each of you.

This morning dh was intending to speak to his manager, ask what this is all about, possibly resign on the spot.

Dh asked for time, manager said "Can it wait?" and walked away without waiting for an answer.
This afternoon manager mysteriously missing, all afternoon. as he was yesterday p.m.

So dh will try again tomorrow. If asked "will it wait?" he resolves to yell "no" at the retreating back.

The MD, one possible reasonable voice in all this, has gone to China on business for 2 weeks. As it's a small company, no HR to help sort it out.
I'm accepting that he's going to resign. At least that way he can say when he's available to start a contract. I just didn't want him to have to be away again, he worked in London (160 miles away) all last summer.

Easy - Sorry, I haven't much time but I wanted to do a quick post. I think it sound horrible there, but I would rather stick it out until something else comes along, than resign. Also, I'd perhaps read the contract until I knew it backwards (I expect he's done this already), so that I could have the details at the tip of my tongue if needed; read the staff handbook if there is one; contact the union if there is one; speak to someone at the CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau). The cup of tea thing isn't nice, nor is being ignored, etc but I've had worse and have made a complaint and followed it through that way. Is there a Welfare officer in the company? Doesn't sound like it, but if there was, they should help. Constructive dismissal sounds about right to me, but CAB would advise and I'd do this before taking a step such as resigning. Sorry, this is long but rushed. I hope it all works out for you both.

Can I ask if he happens to be a hardcore Linux guru programmer with additional experience of writing progs to run in EPROM on microprocessors ?

Hub2dee
Unfortunately not Linux Guru, mainly microsoft guru with Unix experience, VERY VERY experienced on C++ GUI development, some C# and .NET, lots of VB. Tons of Relational Database experience, SQL, some Oracle

Doesn't do web development due to colour blindness and poor taste.

Sorry, that doesn't sound tooo much like an advert for him, does it?

Hi Easy. It's a fine advert. It means he sticks to what he knows and (presumably) is good at.

I'm working to develop some stuff in the smarthome space: custom / embedded Linux apps driving building control (lighting / temp / music / security / plumbing etc.) through proprietary hardware, so my interest / requirement is rather narrow. Also still not yet 100% decided to launch business...

I think just by posting here people interested in his skill-set will notice.

Best of luck to both of you.

Hub2dee

Thats interesting. DH's 'hobby project' at the moment is developing a Gui interface to drive his audio entertainment.

Sounds like a similar strand to me...

He might want something like this:

Nicely developed tool

We're going for digital control (not IR), hard drive servers instead of 'trad' equipment, multi-room instead of single etc... the more you scale up, the more you run for Linux !!!

Thanx for that, it looks interesting. He certainly wants to get into Linux (started his career in UNIX 20 years ago) we have a copy kicking around somewhere, but what with working and spending time with ds, time is the problem.

I'll try to pass this info on, but can't show him this thread, seeing as I hung out HIS dirty laundry, and couldn't even maintain the alias I was using (too stupid to live some days).

I love the whole business of home automation. Did you see Grand Designs on TV last night?

Sadly missed it. Family dinner. Was there some element of home automation in the house they covered ?

So often, though, it is poorly designed: Awkward to use and inelegant. I'm working on using natural materials (stone, leather, wood, metal) for control / touch interfaces etc.

FYI: Mac OS X these days is based on a flavour on 'nix. BSD I think. He might find it is a nice way to combine an old interest in it with a funky up to date GUI OS.

Now we're getting boring.

Hmm, this is starting to sound like the conversations dh and I have over dinner (arrghhh and I'm discussing techie things with ANOTHER MAN, does that count as being unfaithful?)

Grand designs covered a beautiful 15th century house, which was really just a shell. The whole inside had to be stripped out (death watch beetle had wrecked it), and the whole project must have cost about 900 thou by the time they had finished.

Point was they installed huge amounts of CAT 5 cable etc as it was being re-done, and the interior was completely controllable (lights, temp, outside cctv cameras, etc. etc.) the bedroom had a concealed projector tv, with a drop-down screen on remote control).

Gavin thingy did a short feature on a house where all the doors were automatic, and even the bathroom/kitchen lights came on automatically when you entered. I would definately have appreciated that when I was wheelchair bound a couple of years ago.

Do you have any of your stuff working now then?

Hi Easy you unfaithful hussy,

Yeah, I've got a few bits working:

Call any track from hundreds upon hundreds of digitised CDs with selection / playlisting / control from a WiFi web tablet or via LCD and big silver knob. (Sadly one hard drive just died so we are without tunes).

Computer-controlled lighting throughout the house (script / switch driven at the mo, will get GUI for it).

And something vaguely secret on the plumbing side of things (might be going for a patent so shouldn't blab).

Trick will be to tie / coordinate all these subsystems, create elegant user intefaces on different equipment (mobile phone / Web browser / Web tablet / Palm type handheld device etc.) and also within the building in natural materials.

I've been side-tracked by other projects but hope to jump back on it soon. (Want to finish garden for example), but fixing up my trailing wires needs to happen before dd-to-be comes along (so I am reliably informed by She Who Must Be Obeyed).

The house on the telly sounded interesting. It's a pity these sorts of systems still seem to cost mega$.

PS - I am not a coder myself - more system architecture / product design side of things.

Now I'm in trouble for under-selling dh's skills.

Sent him a precis of our conversation, this is what I got back ....

"I dunno, I turn my back for five minutes, and you're talking HA to some
stranger...
Actually, I have more than a passing acquaintance with linux, since it's
similar enough to 'proper' UNIX, and I did work for a company that made it's
own systems and did it's own port of UNIX;
I have a smattering of embedded experience, but sadly my h/w skills (not my
developer ones) let me down.
Sounds like he needs to use something like communications modules (TCP/IP
for wired/wireless, bluetooth etc) and a GUI app that can do the same to
communicate with a controlling server.
I did wonder whether linux would be better for me to use, but it's a while
since I did GUI work on any kind of nx box. In terms of embedded, our
very own router (the linksys blue box) runs an embedded linux system, for
which I have full source, if I recall correctly... "

I can see if we ever met up somewhere, you and dh would get on like a house on fire.

that kind of workplace bullying is unacceptable, grown men behaving like that.
Disgusting.
Definitely follow it up even if your dh does resign, an employment lawyer (my cousin is one) are very hot on this these days.
Really diabolical - I thought my dh was unhappy but his is a walk in the park compared to your dh's place of employ.
Hub... mmmmm my dh might be up your street technically speaking, will check and return.

Easy, it would definitely be a 'do you mind if me and my mate talk about tractors ' type of conversation.

Just to keep up to date. Dh's line manager has not made the time to talk to him, dh is still 'sent to coventry', and has decided to keep stum, apply for anything going (wherever in the country that is), and simply resign when the time is right.

I have to say that I'm intruiged that 6 grown men can be soooooo intimidated by one cr*p manager that they all behave in this way, without anyone of them realising how childish (and downright ill-mannered) it is.

That should be "any one of them" !