More about the New Broom

Now I hope that nobody would ever accuse this particular Jester of being unjust. I do like to poke fun at the absurdities of the modern working environment, at least the modern working environment in my limited experience, but I like to think that I draw the line at being unfairly critical about people.

So I am a little uneasy about how I have portrayed Dalek Caan. Now, please don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t choose her as a friend but, conversely, I don’t think she would choose me as a friend either. I don’t like her. She has done nothing to endear herself to me or my former colleagues but I have this pathological need to give credit where it’s due and I have to give her credit after some of her most recent actions.

First was the e-mail apologising for the missing overtime and pay. My former manager showed it to me and it was heartening. It was also heartening to receive my overtime in the form of a cheque about a week after pay day. Dalek Caan did promise an investigation and I believe her: she hates inefficiency and this was a classic example of it.

Then she had a meeting with my former colleagues (regrettably, I did not get to attend) to say thankyou for closing so many complaints and really turning the situation round (the complaints department had been on Red Alert when she first turned her attention to us). She awarded two Jesters, including one of the Gay Gordons, with bottles of wine to reward them for receiving compliments from customers and, to my delight, she awarded Mr Grumpy with a bottle of wine because he has not had a day’s sickness in the 5 years he has worked at the Dark Satanic Mill. I particularly like that because that sort of thing tends to go unnoticed most of the time.

Now she’s turned her attention to another failing department – IT. Well, I will have to go and personally congratulate her if she gets our IT staff sorted out. They are about as much use as the clowns in The IT Crowd (see the link above) but nowhere near as funny, personable or good looking. The consensus view of IT is that it is a support function. Our IT Department -ah, my desire to be scrupulously fair is getting the better of me – most of our IT Department, with some notable exceptions, have no concept of support. For them the job entails doing as little as possible and as badly as possible. The applications we use are constantly crashing, equipment does not work and they lord it over us and want us to be grateful when they spend a few hours at the weekend trying to rectify a fault that they probably caused themselves. They seem to think they are doing us a favour.

Dalek Caan thinks otherwise. I really hope she’s successful in her new endeavour because she has shown what a ruthless streak and an unpleasant personality could do when it came to the complaints department and it would be nice to see people who really deserve it to squirm.

Jesters, Daleks and Vogons

It’s a real shame that I seem to have found better things to do with my time recently than blogging because I have sadly neglected this blog. There is so much to say as well. For a start, the New Broom, Dalek Caan is doing her job at the Dark Satanic Mill ruthlessly and well. She has swept through the complaints department and decimated it.

I would give a roll call of the sadly missed but unfortunately, there are only two that I have provided Jester names for:

Goodwill Jessina and Yours Truly. Unfortunately, there was a cull of other Jesters, who have not been mentioned in previous blogs, in total 9.

Now, please don’t start worrying. I still work at the Satanic Mill and I still have some things I would like to get off my chest. I still do the same job – complaints – but for a sister company. Jessina and 7 others have gone back into the Call Centre (the true Dark Satanic Mill). I have been joined by the two other Jesters.

The New Broom has been more ruthless in the Call Centre and has basically got rid of anybody still in their probation not doing their job to her exacting standards. The rumours are that about 20 odd have gone, including 3 Team Managers. I know she hasn’t finished.

Actually, I forgot one more Jester, who, I heard today, has left the company: Goodwill Jasper. I know that he jumped before they could push him but I know little else but will get the low down off him if I can and, if it is entertaining, I’ll blog it.

So Dalek Caan is living up to her name and putting the fear of God into everybody.

Otherwise it has been business as usual. E-mails went down for a large part of the Satanic Mill for a number of weeks recently. This caused much embarrassment to a number of my colleagues because they were not receiving e-mails that needed urgent answers. None more so than Orville, a legally trained Jester who now deals with the Financial Ombudsman Service. They did not believe that she was not receiving their e-mails and assumed, most unjustly, that she was ignoring them. It is a pretty poor excuse, though, isn’t it, when you say that your IT Department is incapable of keeping e-mails working. Poor excuse; even worse reason.

The printers are or I should say were still rubbish. For a department that prints so many letters, they were wholly inadequate and had been so for years. Today, they were disconnected and replaced with a new, all singing and dancing one. Nobody has seen fit to train anybody on it though.

I think my favourite has to be the Payroll cock up. I worked a large number of hours’ overtime last month. I was eagerly awaiting my wage slip on Friday because I knew it was going to be a bumper pay day. Not so. Payroll messed up with a spreadsheet and forgot to add overtime worked by 100 employees at the Dark Satanic Mill. Whoops. I now have to wait for a cheque, like my 99 colleagues.

I think the Vogons were responsible for the misery endured by Goodwill Jerry and my lovely colleague and friend, young Goodwill Agamemnon. (Just a quick footnote here: Agamemnon chose her own Jester name. She loves the name and doesn’t mind that it’s a man’s name, even an ancient Greek man’s name. She loves it because it seems so absurd to her. I couldn’t refuse her, now, could I?) Anyway, the Vogons or Resource Planners as they more commonly known, have marked Aggie has having taken 16 hours’ unauthorised absence, so her pay has been docked by the relevant amount. This is blatantly unfair because Aggie does not remember taking any unauthorised absence and she would have been told about it if she had done so. Our Team Manager is looking into this for her so hopefully, she will get her money back.

I assume the same thing has happened to Gerard and I believe (although I have not heard it directly from him) that over £500 has been docked from his pay this month. That is a lot of money when you earn less than the national average and all Jesters earn less than that.

It’s a shame really because they do a good job and should be rewarded, not punished.