Work colleagues

[jimbaxters]

1 hour ago, hk blues said:

Ah, teachers.

Then you'd rightly be claiming 2 months without a day off as an achievement! 

[DiegoDiego]

23 hours ago, LondonHMFC said:

I haven't posted in here for a while, mainly as I haven't worked with Milky Gem for quite some time. I left there in March 2021, and started with a recruitment company (to confirm, I am not a recruiter) who were in their infancy before moving to a more established company last year. Perhaps naively, I wasn't aware of the connotations with recruiters. Anyway, this is a story about a lad named Lee. 

Due to the length of this post, I will mark it as a spoiler. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Lee joined the first company I worked for around November 21. He was late 30's branded himself bit of a sales expert and had just returned from travelling from Australia (however it was later revealed he was most likely deported). 

The turnover in staff in recruitment is wild, if you aren't getting placements, you aren't getting money. You are disposable. In that company before I left, I had a quick look at staff retention, and in a calendar year 32 new starters came in, 8 lasted more than three months.

Lee really struggled to get any deals, now it is worth remembering that these guys were coming in on minimum wage, with the lure of high commission being the selling point. He had to move back home with his Mum (he said this was due to his brother being ill, and his Mum needing help to care for him) and would commute in when he could afford to. Friday's were our designated day at home, but as I was out in London one evening I decided to work from the office and then go out straight from there. Lee was in which was surprising and as soon as he saw me he was very nervous. Now whilst my role was more senior than his, I didn't have any management of him. We chatted for a bit this Friday, and I took real pity on him. He revealed he was being bullied and showed me a WhatsApp chat with other members of staff (some being relatively high up). It was filled with racism,sexism,homophobia and other Bernard Manning type comments. However the abuse he was directly getting was pretty evil. He was very emotional showing it, and asked me to promise that I hadn't seen it which I agreed to. Out of interest I checked his activity and saw he had several placements which would give him a good few grand extra in his pay. I asked if he wanted to go for a beer at lunch but he said he was skint (first alarm bell), so I said I would get them. Again, he was very pleasant, I didn't ask about his financial situation, and we went back to the office. A couple of hours passed, and he asked "would you mind if I got some gear". I was completely taken aback and just said "do whatever mate, it's not for me" he went away for half hour and came back. We didn't really chat too much until I could hear something tap the desk a few times, I looked over and he was cutting his coke up and did a line. I said that the office was really not the place to be doing drugs. He apologised and said he wouldn't do it again. He left for the day, and said he would get me the beers back next week. 

A week goes by, and I go into the office the next Friday. Lee is again sat there but he looked fucking awful. I could see straightaway he forgot that I was coming in, but we both just got on. As lunch came around, I said were we going to go for a beer and like the previous week said he was skint (we had just been paid two days previous, so would have had his commission). I asked if everything was okay, and he confided in me that he owed money to several people in the office. He also had to replenish the office kitty (the office decided to implement a football style fine system; £20 if you were late, £50 for a holiday submitted with less than a weeks notice etc) as he had taken the money. I just felt very sorry for him. The problem (among many) with the company was that they had no formal HR. The only person I could really notify was his boss who was part of the WhatsApp group bullying the lad or go to the CEO who only cared about results. Personal growth was not part of his manifesto. Lee let me know that a beer fridge had been put in the office and we could have a beer from there. I declined as I felt really lost as what to do. As the end of the day came round, Lee asked again if I wanted a beer, I said no and I could see he took it a bit personally. So I said "alright then, what do you want" and as I went to the fridge and opened it there was a pot of chewing gum. I think I said something like "who the f**k freezes chewing gum", Lee leapt from his seat and said to put it back in the fridge. I was very confused and opened the pot, and looked at this yellow/brown liquid and enquired "why has someone put apple juice in this" before sniffing it. It was piss. I just looked at Lee and he just broke down. Now I am stood in an empty office, holding a tub of Wrigleys containing piss. He just said "it's mine". Long story short, but Lee's Mum was a copper and well aware of her son's drug habit.  She had taken him home to try and wean him off his use, including making him do a urine test every week. To get round this, Lee would piss in a container, and give a clean sample from there. 

I explained to Lee that I couldn't let this go, and would have to bring it to the attention to CEO. He begged me not to which was pretty awful to stand in front of. I rung my CEO that evening and explained the situation, but made a point of saying he needed help. Lee rung me over the weekend and said he was sorry for putting me in a difficult position, and he had spoke with the CEO who was going to help him get over his drug habit. A week or two later, Lee was moved to a different office (near Brighton) to get away from the people who were ridiculing him on a daily basis. They knew about his drug trouble, and put two and two together re the missing money (also the fact he had borrowed a few hundred from most members of the office). The trouble with the move was that he was completely isolated, and filled his spare time with some undesirable faces. A few weeks lasted before he stopped turning up on time. Things started going missing from the office (PS4, TV, Monitors) and it got to the point where he was taken in for a meeting with the CEO and his original manager. Most of the office knew he would be sacked, but to our amazement he came out of the meeting and got back to work. What transpired was when they were telling him he was going to be sacked, he said he would share the contents of the WhatsApp group to LinkedIn. They decided on another chance, with a small salary increase to help him pay off his debts. Within a fortnight, he stopped turning up altogether and finally sent a email to the whole company saying he was leaving. The WhatsApp group was deleted, and to my knowledge Lee never took any screenshots, as nothing has ever popped up on LinkedIn. I reached out a couple of times to him but had nothing back.  

I am well aware not all recruitment agencies are like this (my current firm are very professional and a decent company to work for), but the amount of people who get sucked into position thinking that it is a glamorous role is quite staggering. The above story is one of those that I think about fairly often. Could I have done more? Could I have gone around things in a different matter? I started counselling around 6 months after he had left, and it came up quite a lot. He is no longer a contact on WhatsApp and to my knowledge he never found another role. I fully appreciate to get help, you need to want to help yourself, but he was a incredibly lost soul. 

Apologies for the somewhat depressing post, it has weighed very heavily for a while now. 

 

This might come across as slightly callous, but if you're questioning if you could have done more, then there are surely many others who were in a much better position to do something. His mother was well aware, knows him significantly better than you, has more influence on him, and presumably cares about him significantly more than you. If she couldn't help, what chance did you have?

Many people find themselves in a similar situation, but very few of us actually have the tools and training to help beyond saying "you need to get help". I had a schizophrenic, manic-depressive flatmate in my somewhat younger days and it was basically a year of being able to do nothing before finally getting him sectioned (not anywhere near as fun as they made it out to be on Peep Show).

[Peil]

23 hours ago, DiegoDiego said:

This might come across as slightly callous, but if you're questioning if you could have done more, then there are surely many others who were in a much better position to do something. His mother was well aware, knows him significantly better than you, has more influence on him, and presumably cares about him significantly more than you. If she couldn't help, what chance did you have?

Many people find themselves in a similar situation, but very few of us actually have the tools and training to help beyond saying "you need to get help". I had a schizophrenic, manic-depressive flatmate in my somewhat younger days and it was basically a year of being able to do nothing before finally getting him sectioned (not anywhere near as fun as they made it out to be on Peep Show).

Absolutely.  We tend to internalise stuff like this and ask what more could I have done.

It's easy to say, but there's no use second guessing after the fact, you can only react on the information and experience you have at that time.

[GHF-23]

The senior manager in my team in a meeting today raised the national insurance decrease out of nowhere and how delighted he was to get a few hundred quid in his pocket a year (he literally whooped) I said that yes I was thinking just the other day when listening to my wife talking about non-weatherproof buildings in the hospital she works in or my brother telling me about budgeting issues in the police service he works in that a cut to national insurance rates is just the thing the country needs. He told me to "stop taking the conversation off topic"

[Florentine_Pogen]

1 hour ago, GHF-23 said:

The senior manager in my team in a meeting today raised the national insurance decrease out of nowhere and how delighted he was to get a few hundred quid in his pocket a year (he literally whooped) I said that yes I was thinking just the other day when listening to my wife talking about non-weatherproof buildings in the hospital she works in or my brother telling me about budgeting issues in the police service he works in that a cut to national insurance rates is just the thing the country needs. He told me to "stop taking the conversation off topic"

Your manager is just begging to have a large tattie decored by his exhaust pipe. (Assuming the cvnt doesn't have an EV, natch......)

[Swarley]

"Hi I have an urgent query, can you do this now, its for senior management..."

"Not really no as I have other high priority work I'm doing, the earliest I could even start looking at it is the end of next week"

"Oh yeah that would be fine"

Then why the f#ck did you say it was urgent then?!

[Theroadlesstravelled]

4 hours ago, GHF-23 said:

The senior manager in my team in a meeting today raised the national insurance decrease out of nowhere and how delighted he was to get a few hundred quid in his pocket a year (he literally whooped) I said that yes I was thinking just the other day when listening to my wife talking about non-weatherproof buildings in the hospital she works in or my brother telling me about budgeting issues in the police service he works in that a cut to national insurance rates is just the thing the country needs. He told me to "stop taking the conversation off topic"

 

You should have budgeted for full stops.

[GHF-23]

9 hours ago, Florentine_Pogen said:

Your manager is just begging to have a large tattie decored by his exhaust pipe. (Assuming the cvnt doesn't have an EV, natch......)

He's gone on, at length, to me about the EV he got through the salary sacrifice scheme so no dice unfortunately.

6 hours ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

 

You should have budgeted for full stops.

You used to pretend to live in Palo Alto and that women whose image you found on the internet were your girlfriend. You're profoundly unpleasant. Please don't reply to me again

[Buzz Killington]

Got an email from a manager in another office to email a form to a customer, which i did, manager then phoned to tell me I had sent the email to him instead of the intended receipient.  Without checking the first email I sent, I assumed I had hit reply instead of forward so i sent it again.  Two minutes later another phone call "you've sent it to me again".  Upon checking both emails, I sent both to the right person and had cc'd the manager into both so he could see it was done.  Turns out he just doesn't understand that he can be cc'd into emails.  "Why is it in my inbox if you sent it to the customer".  

 

[Swarley]

9 minutes ago, Buzz Killington said:

"Why is it in my inbox if you sent it to the customer". 

 

[Fullerene]

1 hour ago, Buzz Killington said:

Got an email from a manager in another office to email a form to a customer, which i did, manager then phoned to tell me I had sent the email to him instead of the intended receipient.  Without checking the first email I sent, I assumed I had hit reply instead of forward so i sent it again.  Two minutes later another phone call "you've sent it to me again".  Upon checking both emails, I sent both to the right person and had cc'd the manager into both so he could see it was done.  Turns out he just doesn't understand that he can be cc'd into emails.  "Why is it in my inbox if you sent it to the customer".  

 

Good luck explaining Carbon Copy to him.

[Central Belt Caley]

Just now, Fullerene said:

Good luck explaining Carbon Copy to him.

BCC will make his head explode 

Edited April 10 by Central Belt Caley

[Florentine_Pogen]

9 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Good luck explaining Carbon Copy to him.

9 minutes ago, Central Belt Caley said:

BCC will make his head explode 

Bet he knows what a treasury tag is, though.....................

[Buzz Killington]

He's not even that old,  he's 46 and has been at the company over 10 years which means he has been using email for that entire time.  Given his age he must have been using computers and email for the majority of his career.   

I can only admire his dedication to avoiding work.

[Fullerene]

29 minutes ago, Central Belt Caley said:

BCC will make his head explode 

Make him go blind.  Hee hee

[Florentine_Pogen]

54 minutes ago, Buzz Killington said:

He's not even that old,  he's 46 and has been at the company over 10 years which means he has been using email for that entire time.  Given his age he must have been using computers and email for the majority of his career.   

I can only admire his dedication to avoiding work.

@scottsdad and his equally malingering pal, The Prof, are the gold standard here.

[welshbairn]

5 minutes ago, Florentine_Pogen said:

@scottsdad and his equally malingering pal, The Prof, are the gold standard here.

Scottsdad's a genius, pretends to be a workaholic so everyone tells him to take it easy.

[scottsdad]

24 minutes ago, Florentine_Pogen said:

@scottsdad and his equally malingering pal, The Prof, are the gold standard here.

He's been outed now as @Melanius Mullarkey

He's been on P&B for years...

[Melanius Mullarkey]

5 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

He's been outed now as @Melanius Mullarkey

He's been on P&B for years...

[Derry Alli]

Tuesday night, asked a steelworkers what time he'd be on site today. He said no earlier than half 8 as he's not leaving his house before half 7. 

I got to site at half 8 and he's on the phone to my boss. My boss phoned me and says "take it you'll work until 5 as you were half an hour late to site".

Eh, naw. And now yer steelworker mate will be hoisting his ane beams.

Edited April 10 by Derry Alli