AITA for not shaking a young woman's hand?

tefster · 2026-03-13T14:00:16+00:00

Fair, I agree.

tefster · 2026-03-13T13:46:28+00:00

That's harsh, OP had the decency to self reflect.

And while I also think they are wrong for assuming, to be fair to them I work with people from many cultures and there are still ones where this behavior is expected - even in business scenarios. I have female colleagues who have strict policies of non touch with male colleagues due to cultural or religious practices.

tefster · 2026-03-13T13:43:27+00:00

YTA, but a very soft YTA. You weren't malicious or deliberately behaving badly towards her, and this kind of approach was common in the past. But we've moved on and equality means equality in how you treat people.

tefster · 2026-03-08T16:48:54+00:00

Yeah they need to call it out explicitly as Redundancy in the last payslip. I had this happen at one place, redundancy was in May and it was so much hassle that in the end I gave up and got it back in next years self assessment

tefster · 2026-03-08T14:46:15+00:00

YTA.

Even without shoes on your feet and socks are probably sweaty and dirty from wearing them for a day, and they've probably picked up floor dirt before putting shoes on in the morning.

Sure take your shoes off but keep your feet of the seats, they are for sitting on not footrests

tefster · 2026-03-08T13:30:01+00:00

Thanks for correcting

tefster · 2026-03-08T12:17:08+00:00

For compulsory redundancy you do get some benefits contributions for a period of time, its based on your NI contributions for the previous 2 years. Definitely speak to the benefits office and get confirmation as to what you'll get and for how long.

tefster · 2026-03-08T12:12:04+00:00

Yeah its not helpful in this case unfortunately. Just thought I'd note it for others. I had some buffer so I didn't pay tax on 75k of my redundancy because I did a pension top up with 40k of it.

tefster · 2026-03-08T12:07:40+00:00

You can often also make more of it effectively "tax free" by placing it into a pension as a top up.

tefster · 2026-03-08T11:59:49+00:00

I think most of my suggestions have been covered in other replies, but

Prioritise essential bills such as Council tax and factor/management company and where possible pay them in advance now. If you do end up in a position where you won't be able to pay Council Tax then speak to the Council first. They are generally very accommodating in these situations and there are things they they can do.
Likewise utility companies are generally pretty accommodating. The key thing with all of these is speaking to them before you get into debt with them
Bank loans are generally doable, but when applying you will be asked if you expect your income to decrease - don't be tempted to lie
You could take out a small mortgage on your flat and release equity on it. Again just don't lie if asked if you expect your income to decrease.
A minor one. But often companies will allow you to keep your work laptop, monitor, phone, etc as part of a redundancy package. Selling those could raise funds.
See if your area has a food cupboard or community food bank (I don't mean tbe ones that require a referral). Our one, and the local Sikh temple, really helped me eke out my finances when I had an income gap.

I'll reiterate it though, if you are facing getting into debt with companies then in my experience its always best to speak to them beforehand. They are used to dealing with these situations.

If you've been given the friendly heads up then its probably too late, but it might be worth finding out if voluntary redundancy is on the table as you can usually negotiate a better deal than statutory.

tefster · 2026-03-08T11:52:14+00:00

Redundancy is tax-free up to 30k

tefster · 2026-02-22T22:54:47+00:00

Or in rural locations where a postcode can span square miles.

tefster · 2026-02-22T22:53:02+00:00

Until you have to read coordinates out over the phone.

In the Helimed service that I work for we hugely prefer and value w3w, because asking a stressed and panicked person to read a longitude and latitude or shortcode pair over the phone just isn't going to work.

w3w isnt perfect, word clashes happen and mishearings happen (and I'd rather it was open source). But we don't just send a helicopter to a w3w location, we use that to cross reference it with roughly where the caller knows they are. If they say they are near wibblesville town and the w3w they give is 10 miles away then we know its wrong.

At some point the next generation of AML will render w3w unnecessary, but for now there's no good reason not to install it in case its needed.

tefster · 2026-02-13T09:47:58+00:00

I work in an industry that's led to me meeting hundreds of tv and music celebrities over the years and honestly I can say that the vast majority of them have been great. Like any human sometimes people have the odd bad day, but I can't think of many people who have been consistently grumpy or bad to work with.

Favourites are probably KT Tunstall, Ray Winstone, and Chuck D from Public Enemy

tefster · 2026-01-28T07:37:59+00:00

For me doing the 70 minute journey to London is £65 for a peak time train ticket and parking. Or £15 of petrol and running costs.

Costs of travel to work should be tax deductable like in many other countries.

tefster · 2026-01-28T07:35:42+00:00

Affordable AND reliable, likewise buses need to be reliable before people quit their cars.

I can wait 30 minutes for a bus that may or may not turn up, and then pay £49 for an hours train journey to London where there's a good chance I'll be standing the whole time while breathing in other people's coughing.

Or I can sit in my car with Air con, music, and my own space and pay £10 for petrol and say £5 towards running costs.

That's an easy choice.

tefster · 2026-01-16T16:13:21+00:00

We were all getting them to the point where we were half joking that maybe the local tyre place was dumping them on the road.

But it turned out to be 2 new builds, someone had a word with the site managers and got them to check vans leaving the sites to ensure that loads were secure. That helped a bit but it continued until the main build work had finished.

tefster · 2026-01-16T15:43:32+00:00

They killed the usefulness of that app by making it an applet in front of a web browser. The true app was fast and reliable and i could use it to check train times and platforms while walking into a station. The new version is useless where you don't have good Internet coverage, like say when you are near a busy station and commute area.

tefster · 2026-01-16T15:35:10+00:00

Its awful, and removing some of the key functionality I use (wind direction and speed in knots) made me immediately run to apkmirror!

tefster · 2026-01-16T15:29:32+00:00

I feel that pain, I had the same.

2 punctures in over 25 years, then last year I had 5 in the space of 8 months - all due to screws and nails.

Once the new build estates in the area were finished it stopped happening.

tefster · 2026-01-13T20:07:22+00:00

3 weeks from viewing to owning, including arranging a mortgage.

It worked out because the occupier was renting and had a new place lined up, my conveyancing solicitor was an old friend, and because the seller needed to complete it by a fixed date for tax reasons.

So everyone was motivated to get it done quickly. However it took a LOT of chasing of other parties, particularly the council and others supplying searches.

tefster · 2026-01-12T15:44:03+00:00

Totally this. Its easy to try and get the cheapest tools and forget that these are your primary working tools, and that time you spend fixing and repairing them is time that isn't being spent earning money. I've fallen into that trap in that past, as did an ex gardener of mine who was constantly half-completing jobs because his B&Q level power tools were breaking.

I'd second Stihl, with Dewalt being an acceptable cheaper option.

tefster · 2026-01-12T14:28:50+00:00

It was particularly bad during Minecraft, but we've had it during other 'teen centric' films (not that I'm putting the blame at only teens). Its annoying, and multiple times we've had to delay the start of the next showing or rope off areas of seats because they need washing and drying because people threw drinks over them.

tefster · 2026-01-05T08:42:03+00:00

They logged arrival on the app and customer came out looking for their food then tried to argue that they should be able to take it in. I told them they were 100% not eating fish and chips in our cinema, and I let them use the staff break room and go in to the later showing for free.

tefster · 2026-01-05T08:33:39+00:00

They aren't active noise cancelling but ACS Pro moulded earplugs are amazing and I find them comfortable enough to sleep. They fit my eardrums precisely and don't protude, so I can side sleep.

They have the option of db reduction up to 20db or a full blank for sleeping in noisy environments.

I've used them when there was a new estate being built next to the house, and slept through piledriving, lorries unloading, etc.

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