You can have a casual relationship with the photocopier – press green and it goes, select paper size, how to enlarge and how to do more than one copy – but anything else, you want to do slowly and manually. Don’t attempt to photocopy a million pages on double-sided, do it one at a time and feed it through. If they need a million done double-sided surely you can be utilised more effectively? Give this to someone else to do for you, unless you want a nice little errand outside to get some fresh air.
Another worthwhile fact to absorb is that tights, fabrics and non-paper objects melt and burn if fed through the photocopier. Only experiment to see what works and what does not when your boss is not about, or more to the point when no one will see it’s you who’s jammed the machine again.
Changing cartridges on printers (and worse still, opening the photocopier) should be avoided at all costs; you could not only break the machine, but have inks explode all over your smart office look. Try to do something else to keep you busy and avoid being the one to have to change the cartridge. You can always be the one to volunteer to call IT and then swiftly get on with something else.
Send a fax
Now there is email, this is a fairly outmoded form of communication, but you just never know. It is still favoured when signatures are needed to be sent through in a hurry, or you want to decorate your note with hand-illustrated hearts and kisses. Get the number and correct dialling code, write a cover note with clear name and number of pages they should expect. The trick here is to put the headed paper face down in the machine. Dial the number and press Send. Wait for it to chug out the other end, print a confirmation and all is done and dusted.
The joys of headed paper
When you are printing letters that you need to coordinate landing on your headed paper, make sure that all the room knows this and no one else selfishly hits Print when you are about to go, or they will end up with your headed paper and you will have done a misfire.
If you are in a rush and are not sure which way up paper should go, put the paper in face down logo at the top, underneath face down logo at bottom, underneath face up logo at top, underneath face up logo at bottom, and hit Print four times. One is bound to work. But just try to work out what the correct way is when in less of a hurry as it causes masses of recycling.
As for typing on envelopes, this is fine if you have a typewriter – but using a computer and printer requires extraordinary levels of brilliance. Instead why not use envelopes with windows and line up the letter so that you print the address on the letter? Or you can opt to print addresses on sticky labels and attach while you make a few calls. But never forget that a hand-written envelope still has a lot of charm and character.
How to meet a deadline
When you are asked to do something, write a brief, do a job, always ask when the deadline is. Forward Planning. You have to know what the date is that you are working to. Do you have ages, or do you have a day? And if you have ages, does this mean you are expected to do lots of research? Do not leave things till the last minute; the only one who will suffer will be you.
Draw up lists and timetables and, just like when you were doing exam revision, set yourself realistic goals of when you can get things done by. If you need to interview people or go places allow extra time. Don’t talk about how much work you have to do, get on and organised about it. Get yourself a year planner and stick it above your desk: that should scare you into reality and action if nothing else. Do not arrange to go out the night before something is due, as inevitably you will have had a week of constant interruptions and you will need every remaining minute you can get your hands on.
How to get a pay rise without sleeping with the boss
If you feel that you are working far too hard, and they are getting more from you than you are from them, assess how realistic it would be to get a pay rise.
First, consider your boss. Are they friendly or psychotic? Are they always in a good mood, or do they sit with a black thundercloud above their head? Do they have any weaknesses? If they have always had a soft spot for you, now would be the time to be teacher’s pet. But if they hate every pore in your body, and are jealous of your youth, beauty and talent, then you don’t need a rise, you need a new job.
Prepare your argument. Assess your position and contribution to the company. Are you being challenged or has your degree only got you as far as the kettle? Be assertive. Know your worth. Ask to speak to them, alone. Do it either first thing or at the end of the day, but choose a moment when you are not all frantically busy. Present your case in such a way that they cannot say no. If they do say no and they plan to continue exploiting you then you are labouring under false pretences. You should realise that you will never get promoted or treated well here. It is time to start looking elsewhere and preparing your letter of resignation.
How to resign
Ideally, resign with another job already lined up; this way you can be smug, vitriolic and free all at the same time. If, however, life has become too unbearable, leap out of the frying pan anyway; there is always something better around the corner. Think long term, and about yourself and your career rather than staying loyal to something that is stifling your talent. Get a new job and let the past become a distant memory. When you break free you will wish you had done it months ago. What are you gaining from the torture? After moments of agony it will be over, and once again the world will be your oyster.
Remind yourself a job is not for life, it is for money, to live life, to learn and be challenged. Once your quality of life has degenerated to you being a gibbering wreck, curled up in bed all weekend dreading Monday, it is time to consider your options. Check how many days’ notice your contract requires you to serve, if you have one, or can you take any owing holiday?
A letter of resignation can be in many formats. Check out
www.google.com
and ask them for some harsh resignation letters, if you lack inspiration. But the best kind is the short, polite, to the point version and it is probably best just to think of writing these, rather than sending total fireballs. After all, you may still need the company to provide a reference.
How to fire someone
If you find yourself in a position where work is unbearable but you cannot leave – it’s your company/department – you have to locate the source of the pain. Sadly, if there is a bad apple, you’ve got to get rid of it before it rots the others and causes mutiny in the ranks. Take the troublesome person aside in your office or, better still, out for coffee on neutral territory. Discuss the matter privately with them. Tell them how unhappy you are with them, reason with them, talk about their work/their attitude and see whether they think they are working well, and try to work out
what
is the cause of the problem. Go with examples of their horrible behaviour, and a few past events. Then if they have run out of chances, give them a month’s notice, or pause and give them the opportunity to beg or resign themselves. Go on, be nice, let them save face slightly.
But if they have committed a crime, theft or a serious offence, then you do not need to do them any favours. Get them out. Sack them immediately.
Note: never mix business with pleasure as it fuzzes the lines and could turn them into a stalker if you fire them when the relationship comes to an end.
How to Juggle Gadgets and Gizmos
‘Never send a human to do a machine’s job’
Agent Smith
, (
Hugo Weaving
) in
The Matrix
How to get cellophane off CD covers
It is a fact not mentioned when you are trying to become a music aficionado that you need a degree in plastic wrappers to be able to get the top cover itself off. Why they do not go into business with Weight Watchers and start putting their suction-packed cellophane on chocolate boxes is a mystery.
You need to take a sharp object – such as a knitting needle, nail file, key or biro – and stab the plastic at one corner of the CD. You want to be careful not to scratch the cover or break the CD inside.
Score around the edge and hopefully the plastic should start to peel off. Do not be tricked into thinking that your fingernails are strong enough to take this task on. They are not. You want to get under the first layer of plastic and then tear around the cover. If any alarms or plastic security tags have been left on you may want to go back to the store because these are hard to remove and will raise the probability of you completely destroying the CD that nestles underneath.
How to burn a CD
This is how those in the know refer to making a copy of a CD. No matches are involved. When you create a CD you etch a pattern onto the Perspex platter of the CD, which is then read by laser beam. This etching is called burning.
Most modern computers have readers and recorders, so they can play as well as make copies. When you record a CD it allows you to create your own unique compilation, just as one used to do in the olden days on cassette tapes. Or you can simply copy your favourite CD for your friends, but this is considered piracy – so caution, shipmates, punishment can be more costly than walking the plank.
To burn a CD you need to have the relevant application. Windows Media Player is a good package to choose as it is Microsoft and will therefore be compatible with your other computer software. Apple offer you the snappily titled package, Toast, as in burnt bread – get it? The icon for you to click on to burn your music is the appropriately named apparatus, or a slice of bread.
Then you have to decide whether you are making an audio or a data CD. (A data CD can be seen as a large-capacity floppy disk and is not just used for music.)
If you want to make your own CD copies you will need to get Windows Media Player and then follow these easy steps.
1
Open Windows Media Player on your computer.
2
Click the Open option for the music on the CD that you have inserted in the CD drive.
3
On the vertical toolbar, on the left-hand side, click on Copy From CD button.
4
If connected to the internet, track title, artist/composer name and album name will all be included. If you are not online it will have less info, so you will get ‘track 1’ and so on.
5
Having chosen which songs you want recorded click on the Copy Music button, which you will find in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
6
This process will then save all these particular songs to your personal ‘Media Library’ which is part of Windows Media Player.
7
Select Copy To CD or Device from the vertical toolbar. You can now look through your media library and select all the songs you want burnt onto the CD.
8
Having selected the songs click on Copy. The selected songs will be burnt to the blank CD in the CD drive.
9
Pour yourself a gin and tonic. By jingo, you’ve done it.
Note: for copying onto CDs, you need to copy to a
CDR
or a
CDRW
. This is good lingo to learn, so listen up. CDR means CD recordable and may only be copied onto once. This CD cannot be erased and no further music can be added. CDRW can be erased and revised as many times as desired, as this is called CD rewriteable. How straightforward is that!
Once you have mastered the art of burning data you can move onto burning images, creating a disc-worth of pictures (jpegs) and producing a slide show. You can also download and burn copies of DVDs, but for this you need to have a special DVD recorder.
How to find music on the internet
First there was the LP then there was the cassette, which in turn was replaced with the CD. LPs will remain ‘cool’ thanks to DJs and limited-edition vinyls, but you are going to be
so
behind the times if you don’t know how to download from the internet.
The key thing to find out when looking for music on the internet is whether the music is downloadable or live-streaming audio. Most artists’ and radio websites have live-streaming audio, which means you can listen to the music, but you can’t save it or make a copy of it for your hard drive.
Quite often, recording only works with broadband rather than the standard dial-up connection services because listening to, and downloading, music requires a hefty connection and that tends to be beyond the humble dial-up. There are, of course, ways to record live-streams but this requires two PCs, a lot of extra wires and a lot of patience.
Now where you find the music all depends on your taste, one man’s meat being another man’s poison, so to speak. Good ‘general’ places to log on are:
www.napster.co.uk
www.emusic.com
www.iclassics.com
and of course
www.apple.com/itunes
Possibly the best is the number-one download site by Apple, iTunes. You have to download the software first of all, but this is free, then you can download and burn all in one session. They have more tunes than many other sites, and are amateur user-friendly. It has the largest download catalogue on the web and can automatically sync it up with your iPod. As the market gets ever more competitive, it is continually updating itself. Models (and we’re not talking waify runway girls here) are going past their sell-by date as fast as milk. And yes, before you worry – although iTunes is Apple it works just as well on Windows PC as on Mac.
Download the tracks from your favourite artists, or compile your own selection. Listen to radio stations online and see what is new; go to online stores and get the CDs sent to you directly. Alternatively go to a search engine, such as
www.google.com
, type in the name of your favourite group or genre of music and see what they throw up. There is no limit to how much you download, though different iPods have different capacities. Keep in mind that you can listen live for free, but downloading has a cost. It’s usually under a pound per track but it adds up, so keep an eye on your enthusiasm.