[Interleaved quoting: please read to end for all comments]
Ambrose Nankivell wrote in uk.rec.cycling: about: Re: please support this new cycling website
> In
news:[email protected], Cadfael <
[email protected]> typed:
>> Just doing my bit for the world of cycling. I got this link from a small TV advert:
A TV advert? Interesting.. I had enough problems getting management to spend any money on *any*
promotional materials, hence putting a lot of work into the website, it was the only 'no-cost'
publicity outlet I had..
Obviously now that they actually have somebody with clue in a management position in the shape of
Ian Maxwell, perhaps they're able to organise themselves to do the job properly rather than flog
their staff to death and allow them no input into the direction of the organisation while ignoring
their concerns - or ideas.
>>
>>
http://www.scottishcycling.org/
>
> Isn't that David Marsh's (a uk.rec.cycling regular) organisation? (The one where he works,
> that is)
Once upon a time it was, yes. :-(
Trust me, if I was still working for them, you would have heard any news about the SCDP from me,
assuming I wasn't being worked into the ground so much as to not allow me time to fire out a news
release (and I certainly wouldn't have done anything as moronic as changing domain names (especially
for no good reason) after the work I put in building up inbound links to my original SCDP website:
cool URIs don't change)). Incidentally, most of the content on that website is either still a copy
of my original work, or heavily based on it (except my HTML/CSS was valid and my downloads not
Windoze-centric) which somebody else is obviously now getting the credit for.
They treated us like **** and both of us finally resigned last summer as the majority of our five
bosses found ways to constantly pick trivial holes in _everything_ we did (even/especially when we
were firefighting around their non-leadership (or sudden holiday trips without even telling us), as
we often had to), just kept throwing work at us regardless of resource availability (ie, nowt but
two people working independently with no backup in case of illness or holiday), rarely actually
liaised with staff or engaged in actual management and did not even remotely acknowledge or show any
gratitude for the incredible amount of unpaid/unTOILed overtime we were forced to put in order to
save the organisation from such, well, disorganisation. (It's all rather soured my opinion of
'voluntary sector' work, where you don't expect to be so abused by your bosses, and has used up
virtually all of my goodwill for mankind, sadly)
I finally had to quit after suffering near-total physical and mental exhaustion after having to
attend evening meetings until 11pm on a very frequent basis, often having to work partial weekends
with no time off ever offered and having no spare time/capacity to take any holiday in 6 months with
event dates looming and *nobody* to share the mounting workload with. And being made to feel
inadequate when 'daring' to ask for TOIL after working non-stop physically intense shifts 7am-7pm
Sundays for said events, Scotland's biggest cycling events, after sacrificing my whole weekend,
weeks of stress firefighting while having extra work continually dumped on me at fully-scheduled
times, despite my protests that this was not possible, didn't help my morale (or the scheduling of
the fundraising/logistics for these events) either.
[And I'm currently still unable to work as doctors now try to sort out what they regard as
extremely high blood pressure which they reckon has developed over the last 12 - 18 months, not
uncoincidental I'm sure]
If any of you went to Glasgow Cyclefest or Pedal for Scotland in previous years, I do hope you
enjoyed them. Glasgow Cyclefest is alleged to be happening again this year, but after managing to
progressively ******** every volunteer (and myself) previously involved in the event by throwing
obstacles in the way of managing an event of that magnitude (including extreme
laissez-faire/stealing time from event organisation followed by sticking-nose-in-at-last-minute by
which time it is too late to recover from such management-induced problems) it will be 'interesting'
to see if they can pull off an event even vaguely approaching that size (1000 participants, over 25
cycling events including cycle racing) effectively from scratch.. And there's been zero publicity
for it, either.
Funnily enough, nobody in the cycling community has heard a peep from the replacement staff members,
or the organisation as a whole, since then.. Goodness knows what they're up to now. At least I tried
to keep the public as informed as I could with the insane pressures on my time (when not fighting
CTC HQ to publicise our work, after my boss's broken promises to liaise with them: "Why didn't you
let me know the copy dates?" "We only promote CTC activities" "Yes, you part-fund us, we're your
'doing things' arm in Scotland" "But you're not CTC" <thud, thud, thud>)
Honestly, I thought Dilbert was a work of fiction until I went through that nightmare.
--
David Marsh, <reply-to-email is valid at time of writing> | Glasgow, Scotland. [en, fr, (de)] |
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