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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nI have noted the, let’s say, passion of another showroom manager in the past. This guy has caused issues, and generated conflict, whilst at times alternating from this confrontational persona to a slightly more helpful one. The other week he came into the store to do a probation review of a new colleague, who had recently transferred from his store to mine. It made sense for him to do the review, on the grounds of having worked with the newcomer for a lot longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What did not make sense to me was how he treated the new guy. He was bullish and aggressive, at least in my opinion, and whilst he was not necessarily wrong in the points he raised (I haven’t worked with the newcomer long enough to form a professional opinion of their abilities), how<\/strong> you raise those points matters. This other manager’s showroom has had quite a bit of staff turnover. I suspect his attitude is a big part of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other issue is how he came along and effectively told the new starter about a bunch of changes he wanted to make to our<\/strong> showroom. This guy is not my manager, and he is no longer my new colleague’s manager either. We have a new manager, and whilst he is still learning the ropes, it will up to him how to run his store. The other guy can throw his weight around as much as he likes; what happens here is not up to him. His suggestions for the showroom are good ones, but the manner of his delivery and the assumptions he makes are off-putting, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It spins back, once again, to the importance of both what you say, and how you say it. I emphasised to the new guy that his old manager is exactly that: his old<\/strong> manager. This is a new start in a new environment, and whilst we have our problems in that place, I firmly believe we are good at handling people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would They? Could They?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n The World Cup is over as of publishing this post, but as I typed these words, England were battling – and it was a battle – with Argentina, for a place in the 2026 World Cup Final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To describe the first spell of the game as ‘combative’ would be an understatement. The Argentines were bullish and assertive in the tackle, though England were not shirking from the fight. However, despite taking the lead, England were unable to hold it, rather stupidly playing a very defensive game, and conceding chance after chance to Argentina. Eventually England got punished, and then Argentina found a late winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am of the opinion that it would best if England did not qualify for future tournaments. If we could somehow be rendered disqualified that would be even better. You cannot get your hopes up about a team that isn’t even there. Defeatist? Maybe, but I am well beyond the point of caring about the national side, who are nothing but failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bitty Days<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The morning after the football… well, I wasn’t in the best of moods. The presence of persistent irritants in the form of people did nothing for me. In particular, one customer came in who has repeatedly ordered a host of items online, only to wish to exchange them via the store, largely owing to errors she has made. Just order in the damn store and we will eliminate these issues!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The following day was even more painful. For much of it, despite being a day off work, I could not actually do anything I wanted<\/strong> to do. From around 9.30 am to 3.30 pm I was assembling a dressing table. It was aggravating, sweaty work, and I did not enjoy it. I know I know, that’s life, but it was my first day off for a while, and the whole purpose of a day off is to have a day… off! I need<\/strong> my time to decompress and unwind. It feels like I’ve sacrificed a lot days off to activities and chaos of late, and I really need the next few to be more on my terms, which would involve not going anywhere or doing anything, unless I<\/strong> want to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does that desire make me selfish? Well, perhaps. Then again, as I said, I’ve had a lot of recent time off work that’s been chaotic. Given that my time at work has also<\/strong> been pretty chaotic, is it too much to ask for a little bit of me time that is peaceful, and let’s me relax?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Agony Continues… Literally<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n One of the side effects of building the dresser is that a bookcase had to be moved from my daughter’s bedroom to the hallway. Last Saturday morning, as I got up to pee, I smashed my toe against it whilst half-asleep and bleary-eyed. If the whole dresser project had not existed, I would not be jabbing my toe against a bookcase on a Saturday morning. It is a further demonstration of how disruption to free time carries an impact, in this case quite literally. Ah well, let’s view my toe as a noble sacrifice for my daughter’s benefit!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Disruption to Work Time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Since my former manager left at the end of May, I have been dealing with some of their customers. One guy has been back and forth for nearly two months, requesting different designs with different tiles and products, but has yet to commit to ordering. I am rapidly growing bored of the constant requests for new designs, and I cannot help but believe he is getting me to do all the work and then purchasing elsewhere. I can’t prove this, but I have to wonder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a cheeky move, I’ve asked for a commitment from him. If he places a deposit – which is fully refundable – I will bump his request up the queue. As it stands, I have enough going on to sustain me, and I can’t commit to his stuff as well. I will not bite off more than I can chew, especially if they’re mucking me around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, I am chasing a three-room lead that looks positive, plus an install quote that will almost certainly become an order, and a regular fitter has put some work my way too. These are quotes that should become good orders, so they are my focus. I feel that’s fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also had a home measure to do, with someone who, via email at least, came across as curt. Their responses to queries about when to pop round were very brief, as though the questions were an irritant. What would they be like face-to-face?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Awkward Loiterer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On my way to and from work, I have lately had some awkward encounters with someone best described as a vagabond. They have hovered around an underpass that I usually use as part of my route, and on some of my encounters, they have offered me illegal drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Needless to say, I have said no on each occasion, but they have kept asking. I have to assume they are not entirely all there, since they don’t seem to show recognition of me from previous meetings. I also have to assume they have put these queries to others, and given they’re doing this in an underpass, it’s faintly unsettling. People have no choice but to use it and therefore walk by this guy. He hasn’t struck me as violent, but if he’s a drug user – which seems possible – there’s no telling how he will behave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With luck, he will move on sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dreams of the Past<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In one night, I managed to have two dreams that both related to past times. The first involved an old workplace and old colleagues, only they were jumbled up. In the course of office hijinks, I ended up with no clothes on. I know what you’re thinking, and no, it was not that sort of dream. I had to search for my clothes, and eventually found them, though my colleagues were unhelpful in that regard. I was having to crawl around among office desks and computer wires in order to find my trousers and preserve what little dignity I had left!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second dream took me even further back to the past. This time around, I was starting my final year of senior school, and thus preparing for my GCSEs. Oddly, I wasn’t anxious, but I was sort of glad to be meeting up with familiar faces, even if in the dream none of them were actually familiar. The biggest peculiarity of this dream was the presence of some sort of mini zoo, as a way of relaxing students back into the school year. It didn’t make sense in the dream, it doesn’t make sense now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New Tenants<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Britain has a new prime minister. Andy Burnham was the overwhelming choice of the ruling Labour party, and he has replaced Keir Starmer. The hope is that he will look to appeal more to Labour’s traditional base. Whether he actually introduces policies that you’d expect from Labour, or whether he continues Labour’s strange attempt to straddle the right and the left of UK politics, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Constant Pain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n I’ve spent the last few days – weeks really – in a state of increasing pain, which is centred mostly around my left shoulder. I know I know, I ought to see a doctor, but I’ve been doing the typical man thing of putting it off in the hopes I magically get better. I might have to bite the bullet and go anyway. Sleep is hard when you can’t settle thanks to unrelenting, steady pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rogue AI<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n This is fascinating stuff, if also a little disturbing, and I might have to develop this into a full-blown blog entry. Earlier this month, a tech start-up firm called Hugging Face was hacked, but not by a human being. An AI system developed by OpenAI went rogue, and got loose from a sandbox environment, then went after the start-up, and it did this entirely of its own will. It had been undergoing testing, and it had been designed to operate autonomously, when it got loose, so to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, we’re not looking at Skynet just yet, but it does raise questions. This is the first such incident that we know of. Has it happened before? Will it happen again, especially since AI models are becoming increasingly sophisticated? What might be the consequences if such a rogue AI hacked into more sensitive locations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s an uncomfortable instance of fact meeting fiction, and I for one would rather not play out the fiction angle too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Offer… That I Easily Refused<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Without naming names, I was contacted by a publisher! Great right? It would mean I can get my books back out via the traditional route.. or did it? The publisher in question did not offer a traditional form of publishing, but rather, operated with what’s known as the vanity model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With traditional publishing, you do not pay a penny toward the production and marketing of your book. The publisher makes a profit from the sales of your book, so in principle both parties have a vested interest in promotional and marketing activities, as well as ensuring your book is as polished as could be. With the vanity model, the publisher asks for a great deal of money upfront, placing your almost entirely at their mercy. Once they have your money, what guarantee is there of a return on your investment? This particular publisher wanted a minimum of \u00a33,100<\/strong>, which needless to say, they aren’t getting from me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n After all, once they have such a sum, they don’t have to particularly try on your behalf. What is their incentive? They’ve effectively been paid. Your account is looking empty, and you might still end up having to do a lot of the marketing and promo work yourself (which you ought to be doing anyway!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, I’d rather keep that desired, and risky, investment in my bank account, and self-publish, than seek out a vanity publisher!<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then there were Four<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For the first time in a long time, there is a team of four at work. From being just me for virtually all of June, to being joined at the start of July, to having a full team come the end of the month, is quite the turnaround! Whether the place winds up feeling crowded is up in the air, but it’s nice to have a full team, provided there is enough work to go around. If not, someone will feel pinched. I’d sooner that someone was not me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then again, when it comes to the systems and processes and product, I am by far the most experienced person in the showroom, by a factor of years<\/strong>. That should serve me in good stead, at least for a while. I don’t want to be relied upon to deal with every query, but I don’t mind in the short term. Let’s how how this plays out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My Number is in the Ether<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Every now and then, I’ll get WhatsApp messages from abroad. I’ve never been quite sure where these people get my number from, but not only did I have a message enquiring about my books from Nigeria, they tried to call<\/strong> me. They then left a voicemail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am wary enough of any random caller, regardless of where they are from, but these sorts of messages automatically make me think ‘scam’. I have had plenty of faux requests for info that rapidly evolve into efforts to sell me something. Finding my books is not hard, so requests to find them strike me as weird. I definitely need to find out how people are finding my number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dreams of Thieves<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In a night where sleep did not come easily (thanks to some very noisy foxes, at least one of which was in our front garden), the dream that did visit me was, as is now rather typical, most peculiar. My wife, daughter and I were on holiday somewhere, and that somewhere involved a sort of casino\/club, with a vault. At some stage during the night, the vault mysteriously opened, and in an act decidedly against my natural instinct, I started to take the unguarded money. My wife urged me to take more, but it was left entirely up to me to hide it on my person!<\/p>\n\n\n\n We fled amidst the chaos of panicked security and other guests, we made a hasty escape! Before long we had made our way to our hotel room, and we were preparing to leave. As we packed our things, police stopped my wife, and there was some discussion about her military(!) past. Then I woke up. For the record my wife has never been in the military!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking Ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n August will be an interesting month. Work will see a full team (albeit my new manager is off on holiday for half the month!). I will aim to republish the paperback editions of The Awakening<\/a><\/em> and The Schism<\/a><\/em>, with the possibility of springing The Forest<\/em> on an unsuspecting public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ll also be looking to continue writing, and building my own personal interconnected universe of stories. I’m getting there, even if writing has felt a bit like a chore of late. The setback with my previous publisher does hurt, but sometimes, pain is the crucible in which we are forged!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Onward and upward!<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20251022_221351-1002x1024.jpg\")
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