switchlogic:
Oh no, Chas will put you on the ‘Switchlogic Sock Puppets’ list he keeps, in his 1982 diary from his captain days
Diary? Not sure about that tbh. I always thought that space cadets kept a thing called a slog. You know, as in “Captain Slog stardate 27/93”
Own Account Driver:
I’ve read some ■■■■■■■■ on here but this really has to be in the top one.1000s of High St stores? - well when I was at Iceland back in the nineties they had something like bang on a 1000 branches and were just pipping Somerfield/Gateway to the top spot so have no idea what chain you think had thousands of High st branches plural.
DSG International PLC as was, now called Dixons Retail PLC, listed as DXNS on the LSE.
There used to be a Dixons or Currys store on every High St remember? You probably bought your telly there.
I joined in '93, a few weeks before the deal was done to purchase the original 4 PC World stores. Did you know that DSG was only a small shareholder in PC World? I was actually employed by the majority shareholder as a senior project manager.
Own Account Driver:
Doing a credit-check would leave a mark on the file that one had been done, and cost money, there would have been a huge outcry.
You think that large Co’s pay a few £quid every time they check a credit score?
The computer operator chap that wrote the program to run the list of names against the credit reference agencies database is still a mate, should I get him to post on here or shall I just create a sock puppet to reinforce my story?
Own Account Driver:
Experian didn’t exist in that name before the very late nineties, it was called CCN in those days. So, if we’re going to even pretend this isn’t all made up ■■■■■■■■, if the agency the checks were coming from was indeed Experian data protection would have been very much an issue. I doubt a retail chain would have a relationship with a credit reference agency directly they’re not a licenced credit operation and if they had storecards it would be done by an outside financial services company even Tescos/Sainsburys banks were run by a proper banks really behind the scenes.
Your bang on about Experian. I referred to them as Experian because most folk can instantly identify what they do by that name. Funnily enuff, when CCN purged itself of most of its key operational staff, I cherry picked the IT dept’ for a project that is now known as Freeserve.
What I did was not illegal, nor do I think it was morally wrong. Credit checks on the person are done all the time, not always with your permission or knowledge.
These were store managers employed by the company I worked for, I didn’t need their permission !
Juddian:
Chas, if you really did do the work of the corporate assassin on your former colleagues, and save the company umpteen thousands as a result, why are you not still there reaping the rewards.Genuine question by the way.
As for the mass shopping operation by delving into personal finances, well maybe thats how captains of industry behave, cutting colleagues careers off by plunging metaphorical knives into their backs is presumably how one gets on, sooner you than me…its hardly the behaviour of an honourable chap.
Genuine answer . . . several reasons which all boil down to something that most people can’t understand.
You mention “reaping the rewards”. What rewards?
How do you define success?
This side of a huge pay packet, do you define success as a huge pay packet?
I never worked for £money, the money was only ever incidental to me.
The first inkling I had that something was wrong (I didn’t realise it at the time) was when I was prescribed beta blockers to control my heart rate. I’ve always been fit & healthy & in my mid 20’s I was almost at an athletes fitness level. Being prescribed beta blockers in my early 30’s was a big shock, what was wrong with me?
Another big moment was when I phoned home looking for some comfort after spending yet another few days away from home, my daughter answered the phone & she was delighted that ‘daddy’ had phoned home for her 8th birthday. This one event nearly destroyed me, but I managed to convince myself that my family were better off for me working hard & keeping all that £money rolling in.
This one was the big one, the one that kick started the whole process of winding it all back in.
I’d called a meeting in Nottingham to start at 9.00am prompt & I was stuck in bloody traffic. I have never been late for a meeting in my life, I hate lateness. I was renowned for vigorously chewing the heads off anyone who dared to turn up late, especially for one of my MY meetings.
I was sat in my 3 weeks old S class Merc’ in lane 1 & drumming the wheel in frustration, just as I was contemplating forcing myself into the now moving lane 2, I caught a glimpse of an old bloke struggling to carry his dog over the grass verge.
So that’s why I’m now late for my bloody meeting is it, some old codger has gotten his dog run over so the whole ■■■■■■ world has to stop for awhile. For a split second I contemplated jumping out & giving him a hand. He really was a very old chap & the dog looked very badly injured. I thought for a split second about chucking them both in the back & whisking them off to the vets. Then I thought about being late for the meeting & dog snot & blood on the back seat of my lovely new Merc.
Nah! Stick it in drive, force your nose out into lane 2 & gun the motor you fool.
The reality of what I’d just done hit me half way through the meeting, it was a very bad meeting on the grand scale of things.
A few weeks later & I’m talking about this with my Dad on his bench back at the farm. I told him all that you’ve just read, only with a lot more clarity & detail. By this time I’m beginning to seriously question myself whether I was right or wrong in driving past that old bloke & his dog.
My Dad had always told me that he was proud of me & all that I had achieved. Without saying a word he tapped his stick on the ground, patted his dog awake & never even gave me as much as a backwards glance as he wandered off.
Unless you are me, you will never understand, never know how much that hurt me.
Cool story bro.
Ok, so it’s backpedalled substantially now from ‘captain of industry’ to middling manager post at Dixons.
I still call BS as I can’t imagine branch numbers were over 500 as they closed masses of Currys in the previous recession so no-one genuine would be using the term thousands. All the tell tales of BS are there with extraneous info like the credit agency name conveniently updated and your response is full of, again unnecessary, company division name dropping anyone who’d had a saturday job at Dixons would know. The main reason it’s BS is because you feel the need to establish credibility by telling everyone, apropos nothing, you were a ‘captain of industry’.
No-one who was really anyone would care whether anyone on an internet forum believed them or not. It’s the same with forum posts of advice where people start or finish by telling you they’re some scientist/engineer of blah-di-blah big number years experience. It’s a virtual guarantee they don’t really know what they’re on about.
You definitely would need their permission there was protection of personal information under human rights laws prior to the data protection act.
So in conclusion you were a store manager at Dixons and you had to agree to a personal credit check as part of their terms and conditions. I can imagine you must have been like Sir John Harvey Jones but with flecked trousers and more hair gel. 
Maybe Alan Sugar popped by the store driving a lorry to drop off a load of Hi-fis.
Own Account Driver:
Ok, so it’s backpedalled substantially now from ‘captain of industry’ to middling manager post at Dixons.
The main reason why I got the job, the driving force behind (now Lord) Sir Stanley Kalms giving me a break into ‘big’ business, was that I had a dream, a vision. I wanted to make my dream a reality, my vision involved putting a PC computer into every household in the UK. Then it moved on to connecting all those PC’s to the internet.
Tell me that we failed. Tell me how we didn’t succeed. In 1998 I banked a bonus check for £380,000. Tell me that is a sign of failure.
I was never a middling manager at Dixons.
Now, I drive a truck. I’m not the only one with my history, there’s quite a few of us you know.
Attn Chas.
Thanks for the answer, and yes i take your answer as truthful and straight…until proven otherwise or someone consistently posts like a ■■■ (like the poster recently warned and still gobbing off) i assume they are honest, as i hope evryone assumes i am, if they don’t think i am it doesn’t really matter in the rich tapestry of life.
From your frank disclosure of your state of mind at the time of the traffic jam its clear to see you were heading for problems, breakdown or whatever it was going that way…from experience (but not in your league of work position or responsibility) its the one its happening to who doesn’t realise till its too late.
I wonder how much of this was driven by the unreasonable, to me, undercover spying you carried out, apparently unbidden, on your former colleagues…i’m sorry but unless a colleague was genuinly suspected of fraud or dipping their fingers in the till or other crminal actions then their personal lives, including their finances, are as far as i’m concerned absolutely private and of their own affair and no one elses.**
I also wonder if some form of inner guilt at this affair was also eating away at you, aswell as the normal pressures of balancing work and life.
On the work/life balance i’m sure many of us, me included could have out time all over again and hopefully make a better job of being there for our families…yes we (i) provided well (for my social status if you like) but in retrospect there is so much that i would have done differently.
Things is we are dealt a set of cards at a fairly early age, and we have to play the best game we can with them, having to make career and life choices before we’re fully dry behind the ears.
Mistakes, i’ve made bloody thousands and will do again, we’re not robots with computers for brains.
I haven’t spoken of this before here, but towards the end of my days on the transporters i was probably heading to a breakdown myself, unless you’ve worked transporters for certain operators (or similar working loads) you have no idea just how hard we worked for our admittedly good money.
My wife, who is woman far too good for me, took me to one side one day and told me she didn’t want to be the richest widow in the town…within a week or so i’d jacked the job in, if i hadn’t i expect i’d have fallen seriously ill by now, didn’t realise it but i’d become part of the machine almost, just plugged infor a recharge at the weekends.
Luckily we hadn’t ■■■■■■ the good earning years up the wall and the house was paid for, and no debts, so i went on the agency for around 14 months, for the first 9 months i was lucky enough to go into a liocal RDC who for some reasonliked me and gave me a regular shift, only about 9 hours a day but steady, issued me a regular rental lorry and left me to it, didn’t earn much but didn’t need to, eventually that job ended but i can honestly say without trying to be melodramatic that i belive that 9 months or so saved me.
Had a very lucky break and got the job where i am now which is the dogs danglers and i wouldn’t give a toss how much anyone else offered me i’m here till they carry me out in a box.
**just a note here to qualify my thoughts.
I have an ethic i work to, i belive passionately that management should be on a need to know basis only and what they need to know is as little as possible.
If they want to know what goes on in a yard at 4 am or 11pm, or what joe bloggs gets up to when he has 40 winks just after he tips at somewhere, bloody well have a late night or an early morning and get your arse down there and look for yourselves, or get in your paid for and free fuelled comoany car and go look see.
Working blokes should not be grassing on each other, tittle tatling for a pat on the head and the promise of a new motor.
Thats it lads, sorry its been another long winded load of rubbish… 
Chas:
I had a dream, a vision. I wanted to make my dream a reality, my vision involved putting a PC computer into every household in the UK. Then it moved on to connecting all those PC’s to the internet.
Yeah Chas, we get it. You invented the internet but choose to deliver bricks on a lorry now. 
Let’s move on, this thread has gone off topic.
Contraflow:
Let’s move on, this thread has gone off topic.
You are in my killfile & you know this as fact. Yet still you reply to my posts.
Why is that?
You know that I have no time to speak to to you, you know that your opinion matters to me not one jot.
Yet you still wish to engage me in conversation.
Do you want an affair perhaps?
Are we mates?
Move on chap. Forget me, for I care not for thee.
lol
Chas:
Contraflow:
Let’s move on, this thread has gone off topic.You are in my killfile & you know this as fact. Yet still you reply to my posts.
Why is that?
You know that I have no time to speak to to you, you know that your opinion matters to me not one jot.
Yet you still wish to engage me in conversation.
Do you want an affair perhaps?
Are we mates?
Move on chap. Forget me, for I care not for thee.
Play nice, that’s Sir Richard Branson you’re talking to.
Chas:
Move on chap. Forget me, for I care not for thee.
I’m afraid I can’t. You’re just too funny. Everybody loves a clown.
Can I ask a serious question? ( apart from that one)
Luke, Contraflow, Rikki and anyone else I consider worth liatening to
WHY THE ■■■■ ARE YOU ENTERTAINING THESE IDIOTS?
Chas you were no more a captain of industry than I am Marilyn ■■■■■■■ Munroe.
4■■■■■■■■■ or what ever.
You are no more worth the time it takes me to read your posts than Bertie is Tony Blair
I know it’s not my place to give advice or issue bollockings but why does yet another decent topic fall into ■■■ for tat ■■■■ wittery?
It’s not a democracy it’s a service! One I personally value, can we leave the ■■■■■■■ contests to the ■■■■■■■ Americans?
As you were
Where’s the ‘Mind your own ■■■■■■■ business’ option?
I’ll tick that one.
Tipper Tom:
Can I ask a serious question? ( apart from that one)Luke, Contraflow, Rikki and anyone else I consider worth liatening to
WHY THE [zb] ARE YOU ENTERTAINING THESE IDIOTS?
Chas you were no more a captain of industry than I am Marilyn [zb] Munroe.
4■■■■■■■■■ or what ever.
You are no more worth the time it takes me to read your posts than Bertie is Tony BlairI know it’s not my place to give advice or issue bollockings but why does yet another decent topic fall into ■■■ for tat [zb] wittery?
It’s not a democracy it’s a service! One I personally value, can we leave the ■■■■■■■ contests to the [zb] Americans?
As you were
Point taken Tom, sorry i got involved.
Tipper Tom:
Chas you were no more a captain of industry than I am Marilyn [zb] Munroe.
I’m actually inclined to believe everything he’s said. I also think he has be waiting to unload that too. The only bit i’m struggling with is its direct relevance to lorry drivers. Lorry owners already have to have a financial check and standing, but drivers? Its not like they’re being asked to stand the fuel costs for a week or something. I sense Chas seen an opportunity to slip in his knowledge of things financial, no bad thing. 
Live at home with the rents, don’t pay board and take home between £400-500 a week depending on overtime worked.
Minted 
Are you in debt?
Right up to my hairy bits 
Not a cent 
Oh just to add, I dont regret a penny of it,