Clearing the backlog, part one

First of all there's a post I wrote back at the end of August about one particularly charmless slacker currently employed by us and you can read that post here.

My perfectly clear understanding at the time was that this young minx had had her tea break privilege withdrawn for what wasn't actually desribed as 'taking the piss' but amounted to that nevertheless.

The requirement in law as that workers are not required to work longer than four hours without a break. Here we interpret that more generously than necessary to mean that anyone working a four hour shift is entitled to a break during that shift. But it is made clear when employing someone and specifying their shifts, as well as via posters at the clocking-in machine, on the staircase to the staff room, inside said staff room and at a couple of additional strategic positions that this is a privilege and as such it is something that can be withdrawn by the business.

And I understood that to have happened in the case of the minx.

But some instinct born of bitter experience warned me to re-confirm recently on a rare night when the two of us were working the same shift. And sure enough the privilige has been re-instated and according to the Handmaiden that's because "we can't actually withhold her tea break". Yes we can, and if we did a bit of that sort of thing the rest of the slackers might take us just a little bit seriously.

Sense of humour failure

Of course I was joking... I don't really believe violence has a place in the well trained management consultant's problem solving tool kit.

But ...

I still don't understand why I can't strangle the work-shy, the stupid, the deceitful and the rude, and particularly the stupidly deceitful rude work-shy.

Loreen Lie-A-Lot got on my wrong side within hours of joining when she called me Luv as in "Alright Luv". It is an expression that sets my teeth on edge any time but most particularly and acutely when dripping from the lips of some diminutive blonde poppet who isn't yet old enough to sell alcohol (legally). This by the way is a round about way of saying that she's not yet 18 years old.

Within a couple of days she'd learned to chirrup "Can I get off, please". Because when she's not working a checkout lane she's at liberty to drift about the store looking distinctly ornamental and being distinctly nonfunctional. Sadly, though, we're actually paying her to accomplish things and not just look gorgeous.

Then the dramas started: A drunk father, an uncaring mother, a delinquent brother, a violent boyfriend, no money, perilous journey. She's one of those frightfully boring people who simply cannot just turn up for work and get cracking; there's always got to be some little catastrophe to make her a focus of our however so reluctantly it may be given attention.

Sympathy would have been readier had she actually showed any grasp of our expectations of her. She has the knack of looking deeply wounded whenever she's taken to task, however gently. Such is the magnificent resolution of the spine of the collective management that we've given up all hope of getting a return on our investment in the form of training and assigned her to the smellies, which means she gets to play with the deodorants and the fragranced* bath products to her heart's content.

There are some disadvantages to this strategy; not the least of these is the isolation of that section (with the attendant difficulties any manager has in monitoring her work output). But on the other hand all the boys work elsewhere so there's some chance we might still get some work out of them.

I'd suspended judgement but on Tuesday night, after learning that she's had her tea-break privilege withdrawn for epic slacking, I had to witness her piss off one of our customers and then have her lie to me, that customer, the customers behind her in the queue and two other colleagues.

Right now she's speed dating her way through all the unattached male members of staff (hopefully keeping her claws out of the attached ones, though I wouldn't put a spot of marriage-wrecking past her). She's dazzled the warehouse manager and now sold him a sob story about how her violent ex is planning to "kick his head in". Such is the wattage of her lustre she can have two swains prepared down animosities and share the duty of protecting her from each and every buffeting breeze.

What is troubling thought is that she's quite prepared to ride roughshod over anyone she's decided isn't worthy of her notice, and what's terrifying is the accuracy of her instinct in this respect. So I'm OK, for the moment, and all men are obviously potentially useful, but there isn't a single woman outside the small circle of managers and supervisors who gets a civil word of acknowledgementfrom her.

This little minx is going to ruin a lot of lives before she's finished. Don't say you weren't warned.

* that's how we speak in retail. Cute isn't it?

Kiddies

Mother nature played a cruel trick on Australia. She bestowed upon her vast quantities of top grade, easily extractable iron ore, vast reserves of coal, an immense coast line and then positioned her at the arse end of the globe. [New Zealand is beyond the arse end of the world, where ever that is]. Even then things would have been fine but Mother nature, fickle floozy that she is put the iron ore on the western side of the continent and the coal on the other side. Make economically viable steel out of that.

Well we just about have.

Our farmers extract a living from unlikely soil. We have literacy and numeracy levels just about as high as those any where in the world.

The kiddies we employ, as opposed to those we've rejected as unsuitable, work an entire shift before they've earned an hour's pay. That's a cage of goods put out per person per shift when it should be a cage of goods per half hour. Danny, James and Jack - consider yourselves shamed. Jack, I know you've got a my space presence and I'm not afraid to use it, so extract yourself from your student rep activities just long enough to actually earn what we're paying you. OK?

Pole dancing

Like every other town we've our share of migrants from central and eastern Europe. Probably the story here is one that would be told in each of those towns, too; or indeed everywhere except between the covers of the Daily Mail. The vanguard was a woman who married a Brit oh, about thirty years ago, had a couple of kids then divorced him not long after, stayed, married another bloke, had another kid and then about eight years ago sponsored one of her two brothers, his wife and their two kids to come over and Set Up A Business.

They're still here and a few friends have dribbled across the channel more recently. So now we have our own little Polish Enclave.

On the whole these people are so thoroughly integrated they're invisible. The only time they'll be noticed is when they say please or thank you which obviously sets them a mile apart from the locals. And the men will tilt their heads by way of a mini-bow to the ladies as they pass in the street. Such behaviour is totally alien and therefore deeply suspect.

Until yesterday I hadn't heard a single negative word - and then there was a conversation between the Handmaiden and the Bolshy Book Worm about one of our shop floor employees (Polish woman, hard worker but married with very young daughter, husband holding down two jobs). She's struggling to keep her shifts while her husband isn't available to care for their daughter - because he's working two jobs.

And one of the two of them did say that she had a problem with this. She doesn't mind them coming over, but when they take a Second Job she can't help feeling they really are starting to nick jobs from under the noses of otherwise hard working Brits.

Let's be clear about this - the husband spends one third of the day stripping asbestos out of the London underground and one third of the day working on the demolition of a nuclear power plant and there was Fuck All Competition for those jobs from Local Hard Working Brits.

Proportionality please.