u/a_young_gallant

So just going through a bad patch recently and have discussed things on ChatGPT inc. s-cidal thought.

Couple of days later my parents call, saying that the police had contacted them saying they'd received an anonymous report about concerns for my welfare. Have not discussed this with anyone, so can only presume Open AI alerted the police, who then got my parents address from the police national computer.

Bit unnerving tbh.

I have 3+ weeks of leave allowance to use or lose before the end of the year.

I earn enough money to go wherever I want.

And I have almost zero enthusiasm to go anywhere 😖

Context - I'm late 30s, have been to 50ish countries, still regularly do day-trips/weekends in my home country (UK), and watch/read a lot of travel content. It's just my enthusiasm for actually doing it has pretty much gone.

So I'm here scrolling across Google Maps wondering what to do with these 3 weeks (a position I'd have killed to be in in my early 20s), yet I just can't summon up enthusiasm for anywhere. The thought of sitting on a plane for 10+ hours to go somewhere 'exotic' and then dealing with the hassle of it when I arrive just fills me with dread and trepidation, and yet another trip to Europe to see more of the same just seems pointless. But then so does just sitting on my can at home for 3 weeks. America is my go-to standby as I don't have to deal with language/cultural barriers, but even then the thought of the long flight is putting me off (I hate flying and airports).

Anyone else been in this slump? And how did you get out of it?

Heya

I was wondering if there are any (predominantly) gay venues in Manchester outside of Canal Street? Anywhere in Greater Manchester or out a bit into Cheshire/Lancs.

In London there used to be quite a few gay bars scattered about in random suburbs like Ealing and Bromley though they've pretty much all gone now, am guessing it's the same here?

EDIT: Thanks for the replies everyone, some good suggestions here I'll have to check out

Currently working for an employer which exemplifies all the trends of modern UK employers (low pay, rubbish IT, no training/promotions, no meaningful raise etc.).

I have been there 5 years and been given one raise of £500 extra p/a in that time, despite always hitting and often exceeding my targets. The excuse always is - 'the wider section of 50+ people didn't hit their targets, so they 'can't justify a raise at this time' - i.e. my targets are entirely a negative incentive (hit them or get fired).

All that is bad enough, however our section head is one of these godawful workplace evangelist types, banging on about company values blah blah. Prob on at least double my salary if not more. The kicker is, in our last section meeting, she actually said "think about what motivates you at our company, what really motivates you to get out of bed in the morning, and about how you can go the extra mile. I'm not talking money - so you get a raise, it's just a bit of extra money in your account at the end of each month, you probably won't even notice".

Seriously just F these people.

Midway through my stay in a London Airbnb the actual landlord popped over - turns out that the host is illegally renting it out in without her knowledge.

Was a bit stressful as obviously my mind ran immediately to she'll kick me out etc, however she said that as I didn't know about it I can finish out my stay and she will take it from there (presume she has informed host, but haven't heard from her).

Is there scope to get any sort of partial refund on this? I realise that I will have completed my booked stay, however I have had to spend part of it dealing with an angry landlord due to the host's illegal activity which was not part of the deal.

So I have been in my current place 5 years. Job has run it's course so have started interviewing around.

I don't why but I kind of assumed that given all the massive changes in the workplace post-covid this might have been reflected in the interview process. And also in that time I've set up a side hustle, where the 'interview process' goes like this: semi-informal email/LinkedIn message→informal chat/video call→do a one-off test case→goes well, get more work→goes badly, never hear from them again. Simple

Instead in the corporate world they are STILL doing these idiotic hour long competency interviews, even for the technical roles I'm applying for, coming up with absurd hypotheticals:

. "a colleague keep making mistakes, how would you deal with it"

. "something urgent comes up at 4.45 Friday Afternoon, what do you do?"

. "tell me a time you initiated change that improve productivity"

All that happens is that people see these coming and prepare rote answers (true or not), or wing it and lie. Either they say nothing about the person other than about how good they are at BS-ing their way through a highly contrived interview process.

At this point, I'm convinced they're just used as a convenient excuse for rejection - rather than saying the real reason, this way they can default back to "you didn't answer that questions about how you handle change effectively".

Each day I work on my side hustle so that I can escape this idiotic hellscape forever.

I'm a middle aged guy, single, no kids (thank god), interested to see other's views/experiences/opinions.

Basically I have zero paternal instinct. Actually that's inaccurate - I have negative paternal instinct as I actively dislike children.

. Babies - I do not find them cute at all. They are ugly. Plus noisy, messy, selfish. I know humans are supposed to have a innate nurturing instinct when they see one, yet they just repulse me. Plus the entire pregnancy and birth process gross me out big time.

. Younger children - annoying AF. Loud, obnoxious, draining, infuriating. They are also unbelievably dumb, often in the most basic of ways (e.g. not running into a busy road).

. Older children - slightly more tolerable depending on how mature they are, but still annoying.

. Teenagers - ghastly. Hell to be around. Highly opinionated but dumb. Tolerable if they are very mature for their age, though this is rare esp the men.

Some of this I realise is because my own childhood with emotionally immature/neglectful parents was not great and has coloured my perceptions - yet even with therapy etc my views haven't changed. Quite the opposite - it's made me realise how incredibly easy it is to psychologically damage a child and screw up their life.

People also say that they feel closer to kids that are related to, but as my siblings have started breeding I feel the same about their kids to be brutally honest. #

I do like animals and find dogs to be fun and esp puppies to be very cute. I can only assume some sort of similar process occurs with most people and babies/children.

And, even though I dislike children, hearing tales of child abuse make me extremely angry/upset/disgusted, and I would gladly see the death penalty re-introduced for particularly severe instances, and castration/penectomy for pdf files.

so as per the Equality Act 2010 in the UK ASD is classified as a disability, meaning your employer is legally required to at least consider providing 'reasonable adjustments' if you request them e.g. flexible hours, special equipment etc.

I generally don't disclose my diagnosis upfront to avoid being discriminated against in the hiring process.

Now, my current job is fully WFH, which is great as no office politics stress, however the pay is not great. I'm interviewing for a new job with better pay, but it requires 1-2 days in the office. I've done office work before with mixed results (sometime great with nice people, other times a living hell).

Basically - my fear is what if I take this job and it turns out it's the latter.

I was thinking I could then play the autism card, and request to go fully WFH, or maybe 1 day in office per month or something like that.

Has anyone done this - in the UK, or in other countries with similar laws, and been successful?

So I am looking for a new job, and just re-read my contract and to my horror saw that I'm expected to give 3 months notice (!). Granted it is a law firm, however I am in a support role which is frankly not business critical, and can be fairly easily and rapidly replaced.

(In my head it was 2 months, and no I wasn't happy about that, but I'd been unemployed quite a while when I joined and they presented it in a take it or leave it fashion).

Obviously this will hinder my job hunting as new employers will likely balk at 3 months and go with someone available sooner.

In short, if needs be, how do I get out of it? I am hoping that when the time comes, I can negotiate something with my manager/HR, but what if they play hard-ball? The only thing I can think to do then would be to engineer getting fired somehow, which is pretty stupid and reckless if word ever got out.

Ok vent incoming. Currently trying to send a two sentence email via Outlook and it's throwing a hissy fit about it. Still not sent after 5+ minutes.

If it was a one-off I wouldn't mind so much but this is part of a pattern of Outlook (formerly Hotmail) being increasingly unusable and glitchy these days. In the past year:

. Have had several issues like this where it just glitches out leaving me having to double/triple check that emails have actually sent.

. Sending too many emails in one go has resulted in my my account being locked several times, including once for several days as there unlock captcha games weren't working properly. Obviously, their online help system was useless.

. Having to use workarounds like multiple browsers, iPhone, or VPNs to get around the above issues.

. Constantly saying my storage is getting low, to the point where I've had to pay for extra.

I have two accounts (personal and business - former for 15 years, latter for 6). I have thought seriously about cutting my losses and setting up new ones, however that is going to a major headache as I've now got years worth of logins and other accounts linked to these email addresses.

Anyone else having these issues?