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• #27
Do they accept kids? I've got a couple of 6 year old twins I wouldn't mind getting rid of during the day.
The shop gets some extra hands, your kids get valuable work experience and guaranteed playtime if by playtime we mean washing bike components like Victorian leather makers, and you get free babysitting. Don’t be surprised if they take you up on it.
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• #28
And theres a chance they get a free meal
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• #29
Looks like they've owned up to the mistake and taken the ad down now. Fair play to everyone on here, I'm sure we played a role <3 you all, this community is the best!
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• #30
They keep saying “we” but only one Company Director and only one person with significant control , surely should be I might buy lunch
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• #31
What a joke.
Tbh I never got good vibes from this place, always unfriendly whenever I went in there. I know that's totally anecdotal and a shop doesn't have to be super friendly to do a good job and be a good part of the community but ye, I'm not surprised.
You kind of hope small independent bike shops might have a slightly better ethos than the rest of the capitalist world we live in.
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• #32
Just looked at their prices - what a pisstake.
£2,500 for a used Hetchins frame?
You can get one made to order for about £1,200.
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• #33
exactly, what sort of a place do you have to come from to think that doing this is okay? "they" only retracted because they were caught out.
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• #34
Bloke is a dick
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• #35
.
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• #36
yeah I am with you :)
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• #37
I don't like to talk much on the internet but the comments section is really pissing me off.
Think I'm getting old :-(
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• #38
Has Charlie Roberts even be paid for the joblot when he shut up shop?
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• #39
For context I picked some work from someone on here, cleaning vintage components, photographing and uploading to Ebay, and was paid well for it.
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• #40
We (...) wanted to share some of the wealth of experience...
This annoys me because it’s more bs.
They wanted someone’s time and labour in exchange for vague empty promises, and they are only sorry they were dumb enough to word it so poorly that it backfired.If they had asked for a volunteer because they were struggling to keep the doors open, then they might have found a sympathetic ear. I’m glad they showed their true colours though.
-sincerely, guy who helped run a shop once and didn’t prey on students for free labour.
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• #41
Maybe this company should close if it can't afford to pay the london living wage.
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• #42
Depressingly sympathetic comments section on their apology post. Even in said apology they still can't quite seem to get past thinking of 'sharing their wealth of experience with a broader audience' as a charitable act...this excuse barely washes anymore with big companies and their entry level hiring practices, let alone small businesses ffs
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• #43
Yeah saw the comments on there, unsurprisingly the gammon army comes out in full force whenever something like this happens. Was tempted to wade in myself but really don't feel like I've got the time or energy to go up against professional landlords with nothing better to do than skull cans of Lo-carb Monster Energy and spend the day on social media larping as anointed guardians of societal morality. Like I guess they do it as some kind of weird bargaining ritual with their subconscious telling them that the world is changing but whatever. The people who did comment seemed to have a pretty good handle on it and I think just liking those responses does enough to send the message whilst depriving people who think 'not paying people for work is good actually' of the oxygen.
Also agree that the apology from HP was quite mealy mouthed. I guess they'd already undermined the notion that they really wanted to learn anything by deleting all the critical comments until it became too big for them to continue doing that. At the end of the day all of these statements are just canned woke corporatism (literally every single one of them is horny for their 'community', even companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon talk about 'community' these days!). Talk is cheap so I don't put much store by them in any case. At the end of the day though I don't really care much about their apology because it doesn't affect anyone other than themselves, but glad that the pressure managed to get the ad down. We won that battle and that's all that matters.
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• #44
Sold by HP; kind of want because of the dropouts; kind of don't want because clearly not a Ridley and thinly veiled child slave labour rarely ok
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• #45
the gammon army
Defending cyclists? Huge if true :)
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• #46
hah covering their bases with that "it may not be the original paint" line in the description
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• #47
I agree and you have said exactly what I wanted to say.
Rep for using the term skull.
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• #48
There are cycling gammon.
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• #49
I don't really care much about their apology because it doesn't affect anyone other than themselves, but glad that the pressure managed to get the ad down. We won that battle and that's all that matters.
No! It's not all that matters! What matters is having a huge internet pile-on of self-righteous indignation that anyone could have done something ill-judged. What matters is that no apology is ever sufficient even if it uses the words "we fucked up". What matters is communicating how you always knew they were a wrong-un from some interaction you had a while ago or from some old instagram post!
(totally agree with @lynx though, if you can't pay a living wage, then your business model has no place in the modern world)
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• #50
Look, all I'm saying is that yeah it's cool they apologised and all but I guess they've got a bit more to do before they win back people's trust. Think that's not totally unfair given the fact that the apology still tried to rationalise what they were doing, and given that a day beforehand they were deleting comments on the original post pretty much making the same complaint as us in the hope that nobody would kick off about it. Am I saying that they are therefore unforgivable or fundamentally bad? No, of course not, give them the chance to make it up. But also saying 'we fucked up' is kinda the bare minimum. Like reputation is more of a track record thing than it is admitting what you did was bad when enough people call it out. Other people seem to have good examples on this thread suggesting that it's part of a pattern rather than an isolated mistake. That information seems relevant. I genuinely do hope that they turn it around and make the effort to be a good business/employer and not just do the bare minimum they can get away with. But then again that's their business and not mine...
wat? I don't understand?
fu hp = fuck you, help please?