19/08/2026
⭐Happy Small Business Week!⭐
This is a longer post so if you don't like that or don't like what you're reading you are welcome to scroll on and have a great night/day. 🌞
This is my 'corporate office' and the ducks are my 'board executives'. 🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆
If you squint you will spot there's no marble office. No Department. No army of lawyers. Just a computer, a phone and the apparently dangerous ability to follow up again. and again. and again.
Regarding the Wood Guy brand I do have some good news and bad news.
The bad news is they f'd our brand and the product is removed permanently. 👻
The good news is you CAN bleed a stone.
Good game, well played SA Government.
I rate DCS at least 1/5 stars. ⭐.
and 5/5 red flags. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩.
0% chance of doing business with Department for Correctional Services again until there's some serious administration changes.
For the record everyone… after 540 days
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ they paid us. 🫰💰
and gaslit me into thinking I can't tell anyone.
and I just can't remember the terms all the time so I can't be expected to follow them all the time but it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. 🫶❤️🔥
I can't even remember how much money I did not receive or when it was or wasn't. Much less WHAT it was for. * WINK * 😉
Just because it's not the 1,125,895,000.00 Japanese Yen that I asked for doesn't mean it isn't a big win. 💱 Not everything is about money.
Turns out we’re thankfully not living in the bad timeline where some sneaky garbage-person/trash-man (as I would describe them) can cold-call a small family business into a failed SA Government Prison Industries program, create an absolute circus, have us fix it, then say they’ll pay NOTHING, and simply wander off into the sunset.
Not my clowns, not my circus but somehow I have to round them up? 🤡
THEY called us.
THEY brought us in.
The STATE eventually paid us. 💯
My personal favourite was being told they’d need a MAGIC WAND 🌟 to fix the issues.
Abracadabra, motherf**kers. 🪄💫🔥💥🌪️☄️🌿
Funny how quickly the “impossible” can become possible when they're faced with the alternative of potentially committing thousands of hours to an impossible case that somehow doesn't support concerns about years of unaddressed Government oversight and contract-management issues, putting it all in writing, under oath, simply to put down a small business who wont take any more s**t after years of taking s**t within the program.
Especially when all roads lead towards a hell of a lot more light being shone on a Department that 'may' prefer to avoid the spotlight. 🔦
Maybe 540 days of relentless phone calls, emails, complaints, meetings and refusing to disappear helped too, but I don't know.
Raw-dogged it with no lawyer, by the way. 🍆
Not a flex. Just saying. Still got paid. 🫰
For anyone wondering what it takes to make a Government Department; after spending an extraordinary amount of time and taxpayer money defending one position — suddenly discover the flexibility to adopt another:
1. Make sure when they come back from a meeting about you, there are already missed calls and emails about you. ✅
2. Have them emailing you while they’re supposed to be on holiday. ✅
3. Have them calling you outside business hours. ✅
4. Consume dozens upon dozens of hours from senior staff who may later develop a fascinating case of "Bill Jackson? Never heard of him." ✅
5. Work your way through enough Departments, executives, oversight bodies, electorate offices and Ministers that eventually a Minister is calling you. ✅
6. Become such a persistent administrative inconvenience that somewhere in Government, somebody sees your name appear on their screen and quietly whispers:
“For f**k’s sake.” ✅
7. Record basically everything. 💯
I’d also like to thank everyone who effectively taught me that persistence is free, Government salaries aren’t. 🫶
I’m not particularly frightened about publicly discussing what I believe was serious impropriety within the Department for Correctional Services.
If a Government Department couldn’t adequately control the conduct and actions of its own staff, I’m certainly not going to accept being lectured about mine because I refused to shut up about it. They would need to effectively control their predatory low-quality zero-accountability staff before they try to come after me.
🌈 That's the bare minimum 🌈
I’m not keeping secrets to protect people whose conduct harmed our business for the sake of OPTICS for a department which didn't exactly jump to help us out when they should have.
For the record, the "outrageous contract term" that I asked for was asking for a provision for small businesses to be given sums of money when things go wrong, to be balanced at a later date against the actual losses once they've been calculated. Up to an amount which is less than what I've calculated we lost.
Because they kept getting things wrong including things like honesty/dishonesty. Constantly. and that is very expensive to small family businesses. (and taxpayers).
The only thing that is outrageous is thinking that is outrageous or in any way unfair after a long history of ripping off small businesses and hiding the evidence behind
🌸✨expensive legal threats. ✨🌸
& making people feel like they are beating their head against a wall just to get what looks like something that kind of resembles a fair result.
I’m still devastated about what happened to our Wood Guy brand, but I appreciate the payments, big dogs. 🫶⚔
I would have preferred to keep selling bagged kindling but I suddenly don't even really feel like it anymore. 🤷♂️
Good riddance. Prison Industries is bleeding money and staff members. I saw it for nearly 10 years and I wont be self inflicting another 10 years and I'd recommend everyone to look further than DCS for anything no matter how good and easy they make it sound.
I feel a hell of a lot better knowing I stood my ground the best I could against those bullies than I ever would have if I’d bent over backwards for them.
Give me a little while to rest, then it’s back to;
- winning jobs, ✅
- making money, ✅
- building things. ✅
Happy Small Business Week.
If you’re one person or a small business looking at something much bigger than you and wondering whether you can take it on:
or more accurately:
"How the f**k am I going to take this on?"
DO. NOT. DOUBT.
YES. YOU. CAN. 💯
DON’T DELAY YOUR PAY DAY. 🫰💰
Imagine how many people gave up on similar issues and got nothing because they gave up too early. It's disappointing to think about how the State tries to hide these numbers and silence these people.
The SA Government needs to do MUCH better.
& don't bully and underestimate or belittle small family businesses because some of them have been around for a long time and have seen and have kept records of a thing or two. An expensive lesson that I will teach again if needed. 🫰
Sincerely,
Bill Jackson
Office admin
Jacksons Supplies / Wood Guy Brand
