I'm an idiot
I've only ever been on one blind date* and I've sworn to never do it again, this is why.

I got set up on a blind date by a friend with one of his work colleagues. He assured me she's about 5'3, cute, long brunette hair and great company. Had a very brief phone conversation with her beforehand and she tells me she'll be wearing a red coat.

I arrive and am relieved to see her walking in the opposite direction towards me as I reach the restaurant. I run up and say hi, give her a hug, she looks more nervous than I do. Excellent. Ask if she's hungry and ready to grab something to eat, she replies 'Ummm...sure', a lot more nervous, brilliant!

Small talk for a bit, ask her what she does etc. If she does this sort of thing often, tell her she sounds a bit different on the phone; she has no clue what I'm on about. About 10 mins in, my phone buzzes, I'd usually not answer it on a date, but it's the blind date calling? Huh?

Excuse myself and answer it, she's sorry, but she's going to be about an hour late because she got held up at work. So who the hell am I on a date with? Just some random that I met on the street, which explains why she was so nervous and bemused.

I had to rush through the meal with her in record time before the actual blind date arrived. Then I had to spin some bullshit upon meeting her and take her somewhere else because I'd already used up my reservation and the waiting staff would think I was nuts.

So I paid for two meals that day, and struggled through the second one while trying to act all normal (I barely touched the steak). I got the first girl's number at the end but never heard from her again, and the first meal was more expensive than the second one!

Not only that, but the second one told my friend that I was acting weird during the meal.

Top work Catherine in the red coat, wherever you may be, you played a blinder and got free food and drink that night!

*Technically, two.
( Regger, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:39, 6 replies)

an E reg, Fiat UNO 949 cc
Or... a hidden camera spypen for your girlfriend, she'll see it as totally pointless, despite the cost but at least it will give the guys she works with an excuse to:

a) talk to her
b) use it (probably to spy on her/other women in the office pissing)
c) belittle you

both of them a massive waste of £200
( lucosade is counting down the minutes until, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:33, Reply)

Nice suit
One year long ago, in the days before mortgage and children, I decided to blow my Christmas bonus and treat myself to a smart new suit, several cuts above the two - functional - M&S numbers what I had.
Lunchtime, I tried it on, it fit beautifully, hung well, silk lining, 'andsome... so I bought it.
That evening, on the train home, I threw the suit bag on to the luggage rack and dozed off.
Half an hour later, I stepped on to the platform and watched as the train left the station with my suit still on it.
Still, for the five minutes I wore it, it looked great and, hopefully someone, somewhere, the exact same measurements as me, is still looking sharp.
(Judgeysan Freakishly small hands, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:30, 4 replies)

A car
I live in Edinburgh, a city with public transport that's good enough and feet that can take me to where I want to go even if the busses aren't running. But after four years, I started thinking about buying a place.

"A car would be very useful for that," thought I. "I can use it to help us move, and then given that I work a fuck of a way out in the Lothians, commuting will become a lot easier. And though I'd love to get back on a motorbike, a car is more practical. I just need to make sure I end up with parking space." (I was, at the time, resident on the Royal Mile, in gobbing distance of the castle, and could no more park a car there than I could fly.)

Luckily, one of my dad's mates was selling a car. Not a Honda Accord (no supermodels for me), but a black Ford Focus diesel. Sensible and boring. The beige of the car world. I took it for a test drive, checked it out, and plonked down the requisite number of notes. My dad offered his garage until I found a place (my family are all from Hull). I scoured ebay for a few bits that needed replaced or that would look a bit better than the worn stock bollocks. That plus the insurance and tax ended up being another £490 on the car.

I then returned to Embra. After six months of life fucking me like I was in the middle of a record-breaking gangbang, buying a place looked off the cards. I asked my dad to put an ad in the paper and get the bloody thing sold, so I could pay off the loan I'd taken out to buy the bastard vehicle.

"Good news," quoth he a couple of weeks later. "You've turned a profit!" A car that had cost £1500 had sold for £2000. The shit from eBay had made me a grand total of a tenner over what I'd ended up paying out. Except the loan, over the course of it, had charged me £160 interest.

So I ended up paying £150 for the privilege of driving a car once. It wasn't worth it.

Now, of course, I'm back on the hunt for a motorbike...
(DigitalRaven will have to make do with gin, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:30, 3 replies)

A digree in Inglish

(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:27, 4 replies)

Impressive Money Waster
So far this year I've wasted my money on:-

- A visa for Australia that expired a few days ago.
- Electric Guitar
- 2 Gym Memberships
- Golf Clubs
- A sizeable amount of money "testing" ideas on Pay Per Click Advertisments that never come off (will never understand it)
- DVD's I've never watched
- Video Games i've never played
- Action figures (I'm 24)
- Wrestling gear that I've never worn

One thing I refuse to spend money on? Spelling & punctuation lessons. Apologies for any screwups above.
(rhyswynne - on every social network mullarkey known to man, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:27, 4 replies)

Ayrton Senna - The Will To Win DVD
"The complete story - Unauthorised" for very good reason. An expensive coaster.
(RTFM May your god go with you, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:18, 1 reply)

I once made a papier maché belt for Pavarotti, out of €50 notes.
That was my massive waist of money.



No. Fuck YOU.
( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:17, 6 replies)

No funnies. Sorry
In December 2004 I was made redundant - nothing too unusual, but for me it was the third time I'd been made redundant since losing a job I'd spent nearly 12 years doing in 2002. So my CV started to look like I was struggling to find any career direction after being kicked out of a large organisation - that I was damaged goods. I really struggled to get interviews for the IT Project jobs I wanted, even though this was still (supposedly) the boom years. More unskilled jobs didn't want to look at me either, because they said I was overqualified and would walk as soon as something better came up (and they were damned right, given that their wages wouldn't have come close to paying my mortgage).

After about 6 months of increasing desperation, I came across a firm called Temple Reid Ltd, who promised to put me in touch with the "unadvertised jobs market". All the jobs that get filled by someone internal before they get advertised outside, that kind of thing. They wanted to charge me about £3,500 up front for their services, but that bought me a year's support. I'd been living frugally, and (in a quirk) had got a decent payoff from my last employer so could just about afford it. Plus, I'd won £7,000 on You Say, We Pay on Richard and Judy (you heard). So I was getting by, just, though debts were mounting.

They showed me lots of testimonials from people who'd got excellent new jobs using their system. I was encouraged to contact them, and the first couple of people I spoke to sang Temple Reid's praises to the skies, so I didn't bother phoning any others. Of course, they didn't break down their client base to say what proportion of people did that well; I suspect, with hindsight, that it was small enough to mean their system worked no better than dumb luck, but at the time it was impressive. And I was desperate.

I convinced myself it'd be a good investment, since I'd get a new job within about a month of completing their initial six week consultancy, so I signed over the cash. To be fair, they did help me structure my thinking on what I wanted to do, and helped me to put together a pretty good CV - much better than the one I'd had before.

But the whole "unadvertised jobs market" thing? Their advice on that?
"Target firms you want to work for, and do research on them. Find out who the decision makers are."
Ok - so far, so sensible. Then what? What do I get for my £3,500?
"Then find a way to talk to them, and sell yourself to them in a presentation".
Oh. That sounds like a plausible idea, if only to expand my network of contacts, but really? That's it?? You don't do any of that work????

For £3,500, they do less work than a free-for-candidates high street job agency, which is little enough. All they basically do is tell you to pick up the phone, which I already knew how to do. Career advice books you can get in Waterstone's for a tenner will tell you as much; my £3,500 bought me the illusion of hope, a few meetings in some swanky offices just north of Bristol, a decent CV (though nothing any decent recruitment business wouldn't have been able to get me to for free) and an even higher credit card bill.

And, despite following their advice and badgering people to see me so I could outline how indispensible to their business I'd be, following every single piece of advice, despite my doubts, I got precisely nowhere. The next job I got (which I'm still doing four and a half years later) was for less money than my old one, but was the only offer available. And it was advertised through a bog standard recruitment agent.

I mention them by name now because they were dissolved in 2007. Some of the people involved may have gone on to form similar companies - so beware. Unless you have money to burn, don't use any "career consultancy" that promises great things for money you have to pay them up front. The chances are you'll be buying some slick sales techniques and common sense ideas that you could've got from the library, and you'll do all the hard work yourself anyway.

I've got an interview next week for another job, through old fashioned advertising and response, and if I get it, it'll be in spite of Temple Reid Ltd, not because of them.

Of course, one of the first things they told me was not to take any notice of any negative comments about tham that I might find on the internet - their system "only ever failed when people don't put the work in". Perfect. When you succeed with their system, it's because of their system. When it fails, it's not the system's fault, it's yours. Great for the already fragile self-esteem of many of their clients. I met quite a few at a seminar. All intelligent professionals between 30 and 50, who were considering a new career (either because of some mid-life rethink, or through enforced unemployment, but only about half of the 20 or so there were currently working). I wish I'd kept in touch with them - I suspect most would have similar stories to me.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:16, 2 replies)

I've got a really cool skateboard
I bought it 6 months ago.

I'm 34.

It lives in the cupboard under the stairs.
(Thebigfella, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:16, 14 replies)

Shares in Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

(Tiktock Beating off flamers with a shitty stick, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:47, 6 replies)

Houses
I bought my first house in 1991. I even got one of those snazzy endowment mortgages to pay for it. I moved in 1995 to a nicer, larger house in a pretty little village, and made exactly 0 on the sale of my first house. My new house had a crap boiler which I ended up spending loads of money on. I moved away but kept the house on for a while, renting it out, and losing any profit I made to the rental agency, since I wasn't in the country. I sold that house in about 1999, again making precisely 0 on the sale.

Everyone keeps telling me how their house is now worth 20 times more than they paid for it. Makes me sick.
(Smale is stuffed, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:39, 1 reply)

Smoking!
\sanctimonious teenagers
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:25, Reply)

My wedding
and the following five-year marriage with the now ex-mrs Hugo. I could just as well have bought a monkey to fling feces at me, as it would have given me just about the same emotional experience...

On the other hand, the administrative fee for our divorce was the best spent money of my life.
(Rebooted Frazer Smoothly scrolling since, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:25, Reply)

I spent £2 Grand on laser treatment to stop snoring
It was uncomfortable during the procedure, clouds of smoke like a burnt burger on a barbecue! I felt like Puff the Magic Dragon as my tonsils were vaporised!

There was an immediate reduction in snorage, but two years down the line and it is back with a vengeance (as are the Mrs' digs and pokes in the middle of the night!)
( Vambo, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:15, 10 replies)

Degree in English

(McChinaman banned, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:12, Reply)

Carpal tunnel
surgery ,that proved to be the wrong diagnosis and I still have hurty fingers.

damn quackery.
( bane, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:07, 1 reply)

This french painter...
Claude was his name. Appearently he liked drinking and people would often observe his drunken shenanigans and say "Now THAT's a wasted Monet"
(Rebooted Frazer Smoothly scrolling since, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:04, 2 replies)

I bought a Wii
Not just a waste of money, but a waste of plastic that could've been better used to make something useful like a toilet roll holder or something.
( Dave McF wrote some words on, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:01, 14 replies)

When I was a younger and a bit more naive
I tried to buy some weed of a rather unscrupulous drug dealer.

After following him for what seemed like an eternity down a maze of alleyways I handed over a crisp £10 and began the joyful walk home to inspect my goods. Turns out he just wrapped up some shitty herbs and palmed them off to me instead.

It was a massive waste of thyme and money
(NuffMuff fucks shrubbery, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:01, 8 replies)

My mother has a clay hedgehog I made when I was about 6, which she reckons cost her thousands
As it's the only productive thing to have come out of my education.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 13:00, 8 replies)

Women
..end of..

close this question now..

job done
( Signify, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:54, 9 replies)

I bought a nice shiny drum kit
it's not like it'll ever get used....
(Anne Frank started to build a loft conversion on, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:53, 3 replies)

Dating sites.
Actually that should have been in the last qotw.
( girlinthehole, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:53, Reply)

I moved to London
Bah...
(Miraclefish How appropriate, you fight like a cow, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:51, 3 replies)

Let's get this over with...
I used to be rather rich, but I spent most of my money on beer and prossies.


The rest I just wasted.
(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:50, Reply)

I bought vBulletin 4
in the presale.
(f_rev, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:50, Reply)

Third?

( girlinthehole, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:49, 12 replies)

Second the best

(Deskbound You insignificant speck of dust, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:48, Reply)

first?

(Deligrams, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 12:48, 5 replies)