Project Manager Humour
I was in need of some humerous stuff about Project Management the other month – and found very little. What this says about PM’s lacking a sense of humour I don’t know – however I did find this gem.
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts:
“Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man below says, “Yes, you are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees North latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees West longitude.”
“You must be a programmer,” says the balloonist.
“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost.”
The man below says, “You must be a project manager”
“I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” says the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault.”
Then theres this:
Are we a Menace to Society?
There are numerous exploitative activities that laws are there to protect us from. Because sometimes you just can’t patch stupid. Some laws result in a penalty of a slapped wrist and a pocket change fine. Others lead to years in jail.
The DIA (Dept of Internal Affairs) have recently scored a success against a major menace to society, “Herbal King”.
The people at Herbal King ran a large network marketing company, using internet and email as their main communications mechanism. Sales commission for the two New Zealanders at the top of the tree alone was $2m USD over a four month period. So that’s upwards of $12m NZD a year for sending a bunch of emails – nice work if you can get it.
Only this is spam – so it’s illegal.
Their punishment, a $100k fine ($200k being the max). Plus an enforcement order saying, “I’ve been a naughty boy and I promise not to do it again”.
Whoopy Do. 
If you were vaguely involved and didn’t help the officers holding a search warrant when they came knocking, you could have be fined $2,000 and gone to jail for 3 months. Not that you needed to have been earning any of the commission, just that you knew these people were doing something illegal and you didn’t help those investigating when they asked for your co-operation.
So how does this compare with giving free informal advice to someone who is thinking about emigration to NZ?
A $100k fine or up to seven years in jail.
For earning no money, only talking with one person and not involving anyone else in your “conspiracy”.
In true University style:
Discuss, compare and contrast what this teaches us when breaking the law in New Zealand and it’s various penalties. Make specific reference to picking something which impacts a huge number of people, you can make lots of money from, has a minimal civil or criminal penalty, and is really difficult to prove or enforce.
Also consider the economic impact of convincing someone to spend $100 dollars on your herbal product, compared with the economic impact ($100k on top of GDP) for convincing someone that moving to NZ is a really good idea.
For extra credit, consider how much money someone can make selling pills, with how much money someone makes when providing free advice. And discuss how much jail time is appropriate in either case.
For further extra credit discuss why Mr Cunliffe’s response (below) demonstrates the politicians don’t live on ‘palnet (sic) electorate’, and consider why MP’s should be exempt from this law if it is there to prevent so much damage or exploitation being done.
7 December 2005 Subject Social Issues
10978 (2005). Dr Pita Sharples to the Minister of Immigration (07 Dec 2005): What is the justification for the provision in the Immigration Advisors Licensing Bill to sentence non-licensed immigration advisors to seven years maximum imprisonment?
Hon David Cunliffe (Minister of Immigration) replied: The seven years maximum imprisonment is consistent with the Immigration Act 1987, which provides for terms of imprisonment of up to seven years for comparable offences. The penalty is in place to deter people from attempting to earn a potentially significant income by providing immigration advice without a licence, and recognises the potentially serious consequences for victims of incompetent or unethical immigration advice.
Why is customer service getting so bad in New Zealand?
Filed under: Cost of living, General Budgeting, Life in New Zealand, Retirement, Pensions and Kiwisaver
Just this last year – companies in New Zealand seen to have gone absolutely doolally with their customer service. As in there isn’t any. Its always been one of the things I really appreciated about life here – that customer service was generally top notch – so much so that it was really noticeable when you got some bad service.
This year – it seems to be a rare as hen’s teeth that companies won’t try and screw you over, and staff won’t lie through their teeth to cover up their mistakes.
I really don’t get why.
I guess this is probably happening the world over – but to be honest – I don’t see why people in New Zealand have to be arseholes just because the rest of the world is. Why can’t we maintain our “reputation” for being good at customer service in the face of a recession (which the people “in the know” say is over anyway)?
The latest stress-inducing idiocy comes from ING Life – with whom we have (or had) life cover and medical insurance, costing us nearly $300 a month in premiums. They slapped an unfair exclusion on both policies – excluding anything to do with our necks. This is because we (foolishly it seems) take a pro-active approach to our health and see an osteopath to reduce the number of headaches we get. Both of us react the same way to stress – our upper back and neck muscles turn to rods of iron, and compress the nerves – both of which cause excruciating headaches. There are a number of ways of treating this – but basically your choices are down bucket loads of strong painkillers, take preventive drugs which will mostly turn your brain to pudding, or go get an osteopath or chiropractor to release the muscles.
One of those options is sensible, effective and leaves your brain operating at 100% rather than being put to sleep by medication.
We have been trying for 5 months to talk to ING about this – and have met the most astounding belligerence and laziness I have yet seen in my time in New Zealand.
All ING have to do is pick up the phone and talk to either our Doctor or the Osteopath. Instead – they want us to waste the time of an Orthopaedic surgeon (who trust me – has better things to do that pander to the twats at ING – like dealing with people who have real injuries), and of course – we have to pay for that – $300 a month in premiums isn’t enough for them to get off their arses apparently.
This is of course for a substantial amount of life cover – we are not talking peanuts here.
Now – ING have resorted to bare faced lying to our broker about what is going on. Apparently – my visits to the osteopath are due to a recent neck injury that I know absolutely bugger all about. Hmmm. They also claim we did not fill out a form for this – only the lazy gits never sent us a form to fill out. Funny how they screwed this up and it’s magically all our fault.
Thing is – if this is how they behave when we are trying to pay them $300 a month – a not insignificant sum of money) – what the hell will they do when it comes time to make a claim???
So Action 1-
We cancelled the life policy and told them to get a grip or risk losing all the business.
Action 2 –
We are about to start the process of finding another home for Hubbys pension fund. Its only about $40,000 – but these bozos are not fit to look after our future money even it was only 5c.
Action 3 –
They have 1 week to fix this mess – or we cancel the medical cover as well. I refuse to give money to people this incompetent and this prepared to lie through their back teeth. It may be a “good policy” on paper – but in fact it isn’t if you have to be treated like shit when you are trying to do business with someone.
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Windy Wellington
Filed under: Hubby's Views, Life in New Zealand, Things to do
We spotted this at the St James’s theatre the other day;
Which of course should be compared with the wind during Toast Martinborough the other weekend, where honking big tractors were used as anchors for the marques;
The 2 year family sponsorship wait.
Finally – the fact that INZ are screwing thousands of people out of a $700 “application fee” and then sitting on their backsides for 2 years has made the news in New Zealand. The Herald’s Lincoln Tan has now written about this situation which is causing so much stress and grief for so many of us.
“Immigration New Zealand gets $700 for every application and 4000 applicants means it has received $2.8 million in advance payment for doing absolutely nothing and that’s a breach of trust,”
That’s a staggering amount of money sitting in INZ accounts when they are doing bugger all about it. I think this says it all really.
A family member of a 74-year-old applicant who has been told that she has to return to Fiji to wait for a case manager to be assigned, says it has resulted in “extreme stress” for the grandmother.
Whoever has “advised” this applicant I hope they have told her to apply for an exception to policy to be allowed to stay. There are thousands of people who get to stay in New Zealand on Visitor permits longer than 9 months – I don’t see why our families can’t be amongst them.
“Two years is a long time for a woman her age, and she is extremely worried about who is going to care for her during that time because she has no one to return to in Fiji,” said the woman, who did not want to be named for fear of jeopardising the woman’s application.
Yep – know that fear. It’s not a good time to be an immigrant here in New Zealand if you have to speak out about something. I’m terrified that my brother is going to be made to pay for the fact that I am trying to get the IALA changed. The immigartion minister shoudl really be ashamed that people feel this way about living here.
Lesley Haines, acting head of Immigration New Zealand says:
“Demand in the family-capped stream considerably exceeds annual supply of spaces, so applications are queued until places became available.”
This is total and utter bollocks. The queue is simply because the staff at INZ have been told to hold back applications until they get to the head of a “queue” in applications. It has absolutely nothing to do with the number of spaces available. The number of spaces is renewed each year. Are INZ suggesting that we should go an kill a couple of NZers to free us some space for our families.???
But a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman said the minister did not find the waiting time unreasonable.
Well of course he wouldn’t – he’s not the one having to leave his family behind. He’s an MP so he gets thousands of dollars off New Zealanders to make his family life more bearable.
“There is no point allocating an application until places become available,” she said.
“In Australia, waiting times are between 18 months and 10 years on parent application, and for Canada, the processing time is almost three years.”
But – numpty – we don’t live in Australia or Canada – we’re emigrating to NEW ZEALAND. This is truly pathetic and scary that the best excuse the Immigration Ministers office can come up with for the desperate incompetence at INZ is “But Australia does it” (I can here the whine from here.)
And if you really want to see just how much bollocks they are talking – take a look at this from the INZ website under the Fortnightly Selection PDF for the Skilled Migrant Category.
The “year” runs from July to June. One third of the way through the year they have only processed 1141 application (throughout the world) for family sponsorship, and so far 1816 people have been accepted. That leaves about 3200 spaces left. Now it’s fair to say that they are actually accepting most applications (895 accepted vs 246 declined) but call me thick – I’m failing to see where the lack of spaces comes from!
While it’s true that there are currently more applications on hand than there are spaces left – it hardly accounts for the supposed 2 year wait.
We have been told on more than one occasion that this always happens – and come the end of the year when INZ haven’t made their numbers then there is a rush to get the rest of the applications through. Suddenly they realise that in fact they miraculously have spaces left. Funny that.
Now – lets compare this years figures with last year:
So basically – this year at the same time – they actually have MORE spaces left than they did last year. And yet it is only this year that they are insisting on making applicants wait for the 2 years BEFORE they assign a case office. Bear in mind that nearly 2 years ago – they said the same thing to my parents – it would be a long wait before a case officer was assigned, and yet one was actually assigned in 2 months. 6 Months prior to that, another applicants parents got accepted inside of 3 months – having being told the exact same pack of lies.
Make no mistake about it – INZ lie through their teeth, and no one wants to take them to task for it. Yes – they now seem to be making Family Applicants wait – but for no sensible reason.
(The figures for previous years don’t help us see what happened because they grouped parent and adult sibling with Partnership and Dependent child application – which have no cap on the numbers)
You know – I get that family sponsorship is not a priority. But the thing is we have proved our worth to New Zealand – and we have earned the right to sponsor our families. It’s as simple as that. That’s why they make us work our arses off for 3 years before they even let us start this process. To then make us wait another two years (which will turn in to 4 years if like us you want to bring a sibling out as well) – its not on. Especially as the real reason is because of systemic mismanagement in INZ – and nothing to do with the number of spaces. Lying about it to cover up incompetence is reprehensible – although it’s a very Kiwi thing to do.
INZ are taking the piss, and the Immigration Minster is letting them get away with it rather than cleaning up their act. I am really disappointed in Mr Coleman’s’ “can’t be bothered” attitude to the problems at INZ.
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Silver Fern Visa – don’t hold your breath.
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, NZIS & Immigration issues
So the New Zealand government is bringing out a Silver Fern Visa.
Its actually not that exciting really – especially if you have been dealing with Emigrating to New Zealand as long as we have. (I’ve aged decades – but its only actually been seven years - and counting).
So whats the deal (“facts” copied from Stuff.co.nz so as to stay within the silly New Zealand law).
Basically – this is what was termed in old money (before the system was changed from the General Skills list to the Skilled Migrant Category) – A Job Search Visa. Under that system – if you were within 5 points of being able to apply for a residency visa – you could be offered a Job Search Visa, which allowed you to legally come to NZ for six months and look for work. (It should perhaps be remembered that it is technically illegal to search for work while on a visitor’s visa – not that Agents or NZIS or anyone will tell you that – because no one cares anymore).
The Silver fern visa:
…will be implemented next April, giving people the opportunity to look for long-term work for up to nine months.
Once they have a job, people could apply for a two-year working visa, which could possibly lead to residency under the Skilled Migrant Category.
So basically it’s a 9-month version of the old Job search visa – allowing you to find a job legally – which most people do anyway on a visitors visa. Having the Silver Fern Visa is not likely to make employers look at you any more favourably – but hey – you can try explaining it to them and see if they get it. They won’t.
And also – you aren’t apparently going to get Residency straight off – but a work to residency visa, –which as I’ve said before – is a bloody dangerous move right now. There are 300 places available and you need to be between 20 and 35 years old to qualify.
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Argghhh – Banks (again).
I dream of one day waking up and finding out that the people in charge of my banks in New Zealand actually look at their customers accounts and business before making blanket decisions.
It would be nice – just once – to be treated by a financial institution as if I was something more than the dirt beneath their feet.
Today’s frustrations comes from finding out that I have lost my Interest rate discount on my personal Revolving Credit mortgage. Of course – the bank didn’t bother to tell me this – that would be proactive and customer focused. Instead I found it out while doing my accounts and balancing my statements.
So I contacted my Personal Relationship Manager – who I have to say is exceedingly good, and I have absolutely no complaints about – to ask for it to be restored.
Except – as always – there’s some faceless ninny in a back office who says “no”. Faceless ninny of course doesn’t have to front up to pissed off customers – but hides in the back office and lets someone else take the heat for their stupidity.
So here’s the thing that makes said person in back office a complete moron.
I hardly ever pay interest on that account anyway. In fact last year –out of 12 months – I paid interest on only 3 months – most of the time the bank had to pay me because I was in credit. Things have been tight this year – so I have had to pay a little bit.
$429.60.
Since April.
My rate is 5.75, but with the discount would be 5.5%.
What this means is that over the same period – I would have paid $410.92. (Ha – see school maths and simultaneous equations really does come in handy every so often).
Now it would be worth the bank perhaps not giving a discount on a mortgage where someone pays a lot of interest – our original interest charges were nearly $1000 a month. But in this case – for the sake of $18.68 they have hacked me off, and I’ve written a blog about them.
And I’m about to pull my life and income protection business off them as a reward. That’s $220 a month in premiums down the toilet.
Never think you cant do something to get the banks back if they treat you like garbage. There are ways – and we can vote with our feet. It might be difficult with banks as they all seem hell-bent on trying the be as crap as each other – but hey – we can still try.
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Chainsaw chews internet cable :(
Which is about when you realise that you are no longer able to function in a meaningful way without access to the net.
I wish I could say I was doing something useful when it happened but I was actually waiting time playing Facebook games.
So the story is – we got the Lawnmower man in to chop down a hedge. The people who built this house helpfully put a nice windbreak hedge along the patio. Which is great except you cant see the rest of the garden fro the house – so sitting out in the sun gives you a view of – the hedge.
Now the hedge is no longer there – we can see the garden, and the hills in the background from our patio, and even our Living room and dining room. Its rather wonderful.
We just forgot that in typical kiwi “No.8 Wire she’ll be right” style – the cable for the Internet from the radio mast into the house ran right underneath that hedge. Which meant the Chainsaw munched straight through it like butter.
Thankfully the guys at WizWireless got the cable replaced yesterday – but that did leave us with a whole weekend of no Internet at the house.
Ahh – life in the countryside – your broadband goes kapput because of a chainsaw
.
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Argghhh – why all these “extra” charges???
My perennial favourite of course being the patently ridiculous “Automatic Payment Loading Fee” the bank charges me to do their job for them and set up a standing order – but just this week I have seen three almost as ridiculous examples of spurious rip offs.
First goes to Ticketec. Now they always add silly charges – mostly for posting your tickets to you. Extra if you live in the countryside of course. And they will charge you if you don’t want them to send it to you – you want to pick them up instead. But now they have gone one further and will charge you $5 if you want to print your ticket at home, on your own printer, using your own ink, and your own paper.
Second goes to Reading Cinema who again charges you $2 for the “privilege” of ordering your ticket over the internet and saving the staff 2 minutes work.
But taking the biscuit completely for a wacky and completely pointless charge goes to Aotea Pathology. I needed to go have a blood test on Saturday morning – which meant I had to get up at 7am (and on a Saturday dammit) and go into Welly because the local clinics don’t do tests on Saturday (sensible people).
So I go in, give my name, pay the bill and am asked to sit down and wait. It wasn’t until I came out of the labs that I happened to look at the bill. Alongside the two charges for the tests themselves is a third charge.
Encounter Fee – $12.57
WHAT?????
This it seems is the charge for the lady at reception to take my name and charge me the fee and ask me to sit down.
The mind boggles.
Bloody rip off merchants.
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Watch those Direct Debits in New Zealand.
I need to cancel a Direct Debit. No problem you would think? Hmmm, not so fast – this is the New Zealand Banking system, and so of course it just ain’t that simple.
In Avalon’s Guide, one of things I stress is:
And something which is vitally important: once you have closed down all your utilities in the UK, like gas, electricity, internet, and you have told them not to take any more money from you via Direct Debits – also tell your bank! You should always cancel your Direct Debits with the bank, and then if any company “forgets” that they shouldn’t be charging you anymore, they can’t get your money.
So I figured (I think rather sensibly) that I would do the same thing here. Cancel the Direct Debit at the bank just in case the company I’m dealing with (which so far has shown itself to be run by a bunch of bone idle morons) “forget” and try and take another premium.
But the bank wont do it.
Apparently, the only way to cancel the DD at the bank is to cancel my Credit Card and get a new one.
What????
Are these people for real?
This is despite a clause on the DD form that says:
2. The Customer may:
(a) At any time, terminate this Authority as to future payments
by giving written notice of termination to the Bank and to
the Initiator.
(b) Stop payment of any Direct Debit to be initiated under this
Authority by the Initiator by giving written notice to the
Bank prior to the Direct Debit being paid by the Bank.
Apparently, I cant.
So I contacted Direct Debit New Zealand, who were also as effective as a wet paper bag. Although they have said:
At directdebit.co.nz we are looking to increase the visibility of these
processes to ensure the “customer” controls the direct debit process more.
Which is nice.
So be warned. Here in New Zealand the Direct Debit system, which is supposed to offer us all sorts of protection, doesn’t.
The banks are ignoring their duty under the agreements we signed.
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