4am woken up by Spock the cat meowing outside. It was cold, so I don’t blame him. Went down to let him in, and Bilbo (the other cat) came to investigate. Spock had been godd enough to bring me a little gift; and he dropped the dead mouse on the kitchen floor and wandered over to his food bowl. Bilbo loves a dead mouse and he grabbed it, started shaking it around and tossing it. It’s 4am.
I timed my grab of Bilbo to when he had hold of the mouse, picked him up and tossed him outside. By now I wasn’t all the bothered by how cold it was. It was, after all 4am.
Came back in, went back to bed. 5 minutes later is’s 6am and I have to get up for work. Jumped in the car and it made a noise like which any car probably shouldn’t. Hrmph! I need to get that seen to. (Hrmph! wasn’t the noise the car made, it was the noise I made)
Got to work and I really could not be arsed at all. It’s cold in the office. We have complained for the last month about the temperature and always they are looking into it. It’s always going to be fixed, it just never is fixed. Very frustrating. Struggled to motivate myself to do anything of substance, then at about 10am we got this email:
Hi Guys, I hope you are all well.
I have just come out of the 10.15 meeting and there a few things I need to remind you all about.
Hot Food – No hot food should ate at desks any time. This is including break times. If you are to eat hot food it must be away from desk. (canteen, discovery) Cereal is ok but this must be ate before you log into the phones at all times. It has also been discussed that people are logging in at their shift start times and then going straight to the canteen to get breakfast and bringing it to desks. Can you make sure that this does not happen.
Phones – They must not be on desk’s at any time during your shift, unless it has been agreed by myself. If you are to take a call whilst on your break’s or at anytime, please move away from your desk as there are over people logged into the phones.
Dress Code – Please can you make sure you stick to the dress code at all times as it has been highlighted that some people across department are not.
Log in times at start of shift – Please can you make sure you are on time to start your shift. If you are going to be late at anytime, please let myself know.
Cheers Team
This is just so typical of the cowardly management team we have. Rather than tackling… Hmm, I’ll let you read my response to the team rather than trying to explain it all again:
What this comes down to, ladies and gents, is the gutless management team who, rather than having ‘a difficult conversation’ with someone who is breaking the rules, would rather send out a global ‘big stick’ email to bash us all. Most of these things can be handled one to one, such as someone’s short skirt, or someone else eating crisps, or someone else spending too long at another team. Tell the team managers to handle it rather than telling us all what we cannot do. It shows a culture of cowardice is springing up. One where tackling problems with individuals becomes less important than being able to say, “well, we told them all, so if they don’t listen we’ll just… I dunno, tell them again… and again… until” – let’s face it. NOTHING is gonna change.
Hey, but morale is at an all time low. So that’s progress, right?
There you have it folks, in a nutshell, exactly why I think the current set up is poor. The thing is, the company do not appear capable of recruiting manager’s with spines. If you see someone breaking the rules, tell them right there and then. It’s like having dogs. You cannot tell a dog that it has done wrong after the event because they do not understand why they are being told off. If a dog poos on the carpet and then you come home. Telling the dog off, or shouting at the dog that he has done wrong is futile, because the dog cannot see any correlation between behaviour and punishment. Same applies here. Someone does something such as, ooh, leaves their phone on their desk. A manager sees this, they tell there manager who contacts the manager of the area in question who sends out a global email about not leaving phones on the desk. Meanwhile, the person who did has forgotten they did and ignores that email.
I AM NOT SAYING I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE RULES! (I don’t, I think they are childish) But what I cannot condone is the cowardly approach our managers have to management. It sucks arse, it does not fix an issue, it just damages morale because EVERYONE thinks THEY are being targeted, rather than just the fool who did something wrong.
It put me in a right foul mood for the rest of the day, it did.
1pm. I take a call from the mortgage company about them needing more information to do with my finances. Eurgk! More delays on top of delays. Guess what they want to see. The Tenancy Agreement for the guy who used to live in my house, but does not any longer, and had a dispute over money owed. Suuuuuuure, I can’t see why that would be a problem.
3pm. I leave work and go to pick up Tom from nursery. We then drive to the garage to have someone take a look at my car. The noise is fearsome. The mechanic dude puts my car on the ramp and then comes to tell me the good news. A part of the exhaust (the ONLY part NOT covered by the guarantee) has broken and needs replacing. The price tag for the replacement, £420.00. I could cry.
The car is worth about £1000 if it works. It needs a £420 replacement exhaust piece, plus needs to go through it’s MOT. There is something not right with the clutch too, so I know the MOT will fail and I’ll need something doing. I will be looking at, probably, close to £1000 to get the entire thing fixed. And even if it’s £800 or £600. I simply don’t have the money right now to invest in fixing something so that I might be able to sell it and get my money back. The good thing is I was going to sell it anyway, the sale was not to get something back from the car; although that would have been nice, but instead to reduce monthly outgoings. No car = no insurance bills, petrol bills, tax, etc.
Hey, no care means no driving so more walking and more fitness.
(c’mon work with me here!)
Positive, right? RIGHT!?
What a day of today has been. Things can, only get better.
