The work shy and bone idle....

[Granny Danger]

37 minutes ago, Alert Mongoose said:

There’s probably loads of reasons but a lot of people these days work for an employer who they know would punt them at the drop of a hat as soon as they can get someone/something to do the job for a £1 cheaper. Hardly fosters a good relationship.

We have recently taken on a new employee for the first time in over a decade.  Invited at least four applicants in for interview who never showed up, only one gave advance notice.

We are paying over market rate and will continue to up the remuneration at intervals as it is not in our interest to invest time and energy into training someone only for them to leave.

I’m sure there are employers as you describe but many invest heavily in the staff they recruit.

[GordonS]

1 hour ago, btb said:

Crazy situation @ work about 5 years ago - a Time & Motion study was made into how long it took to do a product changeover.

We have 4  x 12 hour shifts running continuously so each shift was timed on said changeover, we were last and the other guys took a "let's be quickest" decision while I bumbled about however we were the quickest & the decision was made if we could do it in 20 mins all the shifts could - a rod on our backs that we have borne ever since.

I can't believe anyone is still doing Time & Motion studies. I thought they'd be found out by then end of the 1980s.

There's one major problem that has had a name since 1958 and that should be bloody obvious. It's the observer effect, or in this case more like the classic Hawthorne effect - when what you are studying changes because you are studying it. So your colleagues knew they were being assessed and did the job in a different way. That's extremely common.

Any manager who doesn't understand that should be punted.

[Hillonearth]

39 minutes ago, GordonS said:

I can't believe anyone is still doing Time & Motion studies. I thought they'd be found out by then end of the 1980s.

There's one major problem that has had a name since 1958 and that should be bloody obvious. It's the observer effect, or in this case more like the classic Hawthorne effect - when what you are studying changes because you are studying it. So your colleagues knew they were being assessed and did the job in a different way. That's extremely common.

Any manager who doesn't understand that should be punted.

It's a shame, but some workers have almost been Stockholm syndromed and as a result ruined to an extent by their previous working environments - we had one that came from a call centre situation and doesn't seem to be able to get over the fact that she's not being monitored every working moment...there's an open forum where suggestions can be made and her first contribution was to ask to institute a keylogger so managers can assess productivity which was greeted with a communal "Eh?". 

It's like she's been conditioned to think that aggressive monitoring of output is the norm...she clearly feels uncomfortable in a situation where it's not and doesn't feel valued unless she meets some - certainly in the area she's working - non-existent "targets."

 

[Adam]

 
It would be interesting to see that broken down by salary, different employment type or sector.
I've been in the workplace for nearly 20 years and I've been very fortunate, I have had a lot more positive experiences than negatives ones.  I've had four fulltime jobs since starting in work and I'd say three of those were very positive.  One wasn't a great place to work but there were positives about it - some people there were good and working in a place with major issues in all sorts of ways is actually a valuable experience.  I was lucky in that I was in a position to jump ship though.  
My job is reactive which is a big advantage because it means that things are varied and no two days are the same.  I also work in a very pressured role which I actually enjoy and have mentally adapted to pretty well.  One thing about being in pressurised situations all the time is that you eventually get used to it and unless you are very unlucky things are never as bad as they can be.  I can't really articulate it but I enjoy when things go wrong as it's interesting,  I enjoy disruption and chaos.  I like having things thrown at me that I don't understand and having to get my head around them.  People do burn out in this sort of role though and that has happened to colleagues but I enjoy it.  Maybe my burnout is in the post, we'll see.
 
 
 

Oh no, I completely agree. My job can be quite stressful at times, asked to write a script of code in an hour, pulling together various tables and schemas you’re not always familiar with, and I enjoy it. But I would never say I bounce out of bed each morning, delighted I’m going to be sat in front of numerous screens for 8+ hours each day. It’s manageable, I can deal with it. Wouldn’t choose to do it, but I’m not miserable doing it.

I just think it’s fantasy island that nearly 20% of people questioned love their job. As was asked previously, would you leave your role after winning the lottery? A job I love would mean I probably wouldn’t. Unless I was a professional footballer or pornstar, I can’t think of many jobs I would continue to work in after winning the lottery, no matter how much I loved it.

[Fullerene]

35 minutes ago, Hillonearth said:

It's a shame, but some workers have almost been Stockholm syndromed and as a result ruined to an extent by their previous working environments - we had one that came from a call centre situation and doesn't seem to be able to get over the fact that she's not being monitored every working moment...

 

I knew someone like that - worked in a call centre and hated it.

His next job was much nicer and he got paid more.  So much so that he shivered when a stranger came in the room, in case it was a posse or bounty hunter from the call centre who had tracked him down and was going to take him back.

I think he is over that now.

[RH33]

Worked in a call centre 

"Your toilet time is too high can you explain?"

Well the baby seems to be taking great joy in booting my bladder so not sure wtf you want me to do!

 

 

 

 

[Benjamin_Nevis]

1 minute ago, RH33 said:

Worked in a call centre 

"Your toilet time is too high can you explain?"

Well the baby seems to be taking great joy in booting my bladder so not sure wtf you want me to do!

Tax Credits are/were notorious for this pish

[101]

Anyone encouraging their child to work themselves into the ground for a car 3 years before they can drive?

 

[coprolite]

Remember when France went to a 35 hour working week and all the UK and US commentariat laughed about the lazy continentals crashing their economy while us hard working Anglos did 50 hour weeks. Stupid froggies.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

1 minute ago, 101 said:

Anyone encouraging their child to work themselves into the ground for a car 3 years before they can drive?

 

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the pic on the left (which I assume was taken at home) has a framed and mounted bible passage. 

I think the odds of this picture next being seen in 5 years time when the kid uses dad's AR-15 to shoot up that Burger King are pretty short tbh. 

 

[Honest_Man#1]

20 minutes ago, RH33 said:

Worked in a call centre 

"Your toilet time is too high can you explain?"

Well the baby seems to be taking great joy in booting my bladder so not sure wtf you want me to do!

 

 

 

 

The idea of existing in this type of environment makes me feel queasy. Actually having regimented and timed toilet breaks, fucking hell. 

[101]

25 minutes ago, Day of the Lords said:

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the pic on the left (which I assume was taken at home) has a framed and mounted bible passage. 

I think the odds of this picture next being seen in 5 years time when the kid uses dad's AR-15 to shoot up that Burger King are pretty short tbh. 

 

I know someone who worked in the service industry in the States in the 80's and said that they had Bible verses and motivation posters up like the work houses from the 19th and 20th century. Crazy stuff.

I agree that it's a quick way for him to lose the plot

[parsforlife]

2 hours ago, Hillonearth said:

It's a shame, but some workers have almost been Stockholm syndromed and as a result ruined to an extent by their previous working environments - we had one that came from a call centre situation and doesn't seem to be able to get over the fact that she's not being monitored every working moment...there's an open forum where suggestions can be made and her first contribution was to ask to institute a keylogger so managers can assess productivity which was greeted with a communal "Eh?". 

It's like she's been conditioned to think that aggressive monitoring of output is the norm...she clearly feels uncomfortable in a situation where it's not and doesn't feel valued unless she meets some - certainly in the area she's working - non-existent "targets."

I work with targets and tbh I enjoy the process.

Crucially I think it helps that my targets are 

1) not pay related,  I’d get the same each month. Tho I guess there’s a small element that yearly pay reviews would be marginally influenced.

2) don’t typically change,  I’ve had one change in 5 years, I’m expecting another one coming but it’s certainly not a case of well you sold 10 last month well done,  sell 15 next month

 

[The_Kincardine]

15 hours ago, Bairnardo said:

 

Reading about the brewdog thing on another forum, one thats utterly riddled with gammon

 

I started reading the thread and stopped at this point as I saw it was idiotic.

Edited June 11, 2021 by The_Kincardine

[RH33]

1 hour ago, Honest_Man#1 said:

The idea of existing in this type of environment makes me feel queasy. Actually having regimented and timed toilet breaks, fucking hell. 

Joy of a call centre. But as call centres went it wasn't too bad and there was no outbound calls. 

These kind of jobs you do to earn a living to pay the bills gives you transferable skills and ones you can fall back on.

I quit my job recently as it was making me ill. Three days later I picked up a bar job as I had experience when younger. I can only work certain amount hours/earnings as per my benefits. 

I never expected to grow up and be impeded by chronic mental health. Thought I'd have my career etc.

So I've found now the kids bit older that the admin going/call centre/kitchen commis/bar have given me ability to earn that little bit extra so I can take.kods on holiday.

[GordonS]

5 hours ago, RH33 said:

Worked in a call centre 

"Your toilet time is too high can you explain?"

Well the baby seems to be taking great joy in booting my bladder so not sure wtf you want me to do!

 

I worked in a directory inquiries call centre in Glasgow for 6 weeks after I graduated in 1998. The first two weeks was training, and then on we went.

We were arbitrarily assigned to teams. In my four weeks on the floor I never met anyone in my team, they were just a list of names on my time and target sheets. We had hotdesks and I didn't know who anyone was. Apart from occasionally bumping into someone in the break room that I'd done my training with I never spoke to anyone. In fact, in my whole 6 weeks I never met or spoke to my manager.

Our rotas included start and finish times, times for am and pm break and times for lunch. You had to be logged on and ready to take calls at the minute your working time started and you couldn't log off until after it had finished. You didn't accept or answer calls, they just kept coming - you'd press a button so the number would be read by the machine to the caller, there would be two beeps and the next call would come.

On a Sunday it might be quiet and you could get 30 seconds, maybe a minute between calls, but other than that it was never more than 2 seconds. That meant you could never speak to your colleagues.

They gave you a spill-proof cup for water and that was all you were allowed to put on the desk. If you forgot your cup, no water. 

They listened in on calls remotely and without you knowing when you were doing it. You weren't allowed to hang up on a caller, and if you disconnected without giving them a number they would listen to the call later.

If you needed to go to the toilet during a shift the time counted against you. If you took more than something crazy like 3 minutes of toilet breaks in a week it started eating into your bonus.

Our bonuses made up a big part of our pay. You lost out heavily for not being logged on at the right time and for going beyond 3 minutes for toilet breaks per week. The main target was an average of less than 30 seconds per call, which meant you were always hustling morons to get to the point.

Worst thing about the bonus was that something like a quarter of it was based on the "team" performance. So at the end of a week I'd see on my rota that someone I'd never met had cost me money because they had the trots or their bus had been late.

Eejits say that as long as you're being paid and not being beaten with sticks that every job is fine and you should be grateful. I suppose that's because they're already dead inside. For the rest of us there are things like fulfilment, dignity and human interaction, and they matter.

[Hillonearth]

7 hours ago, parsforlife said:

I work with targets and tbh I enjoy the process.

Crucially I think it helps that my targets are 

1) not pay related,  I’d get the same each month. Tho I guess there’s a small element that yearly pay reviews would be marginally influenced.

2) don’t typically change,  I’ve had one change in 5 years, I’m expecting another one coming but it’s certainly not a case of well you sold 10 last month well done,  sell 15 next month

Some jobs naturally lend themselves to that kind of approach, but the wifie I was talking about was in a fairly low level admin job where it was expected some days she'd be very busy and others less so...typical old school office job really that would be difficult to apply any metric to.

It brought it home to me though that even if you think the place you work is a bit shit sometimes, there are some true hellholes out there. When you see some quivering wreck emerging blinking into the sunlight from one of them almost begging to be intrusively surveilled and monitored, you realise some places seem to be run more like North Korean prison camps than workplaces.

"What's the process for asking if I can go to the toilet?"

"Stand up and walk to it, hen..."

[Hedgecutter]

1 hour ago, Hillonearth said:

It brought it home to me though that even if you think the place you work is a bit shit sometimes, there are some true hellholes out there. When you see some quivering wreck emerging blinking into the sunlight from one of them almost begging to be intrusively surveilled and monitored, you realise some places seem to be run more like North Korean prison camps than workplaces.

"What's the process for asking if I can go to the toilet?"

"Stand up and walk to it, hen..."

First new job after leaving a call centre:

 

[Jambomo]

10 hours ago, Hillonearth said:

It's a shame, but some workers have almost been Stockholm syndromed and as a result ruined to an extent by their previous working environments - we had one that came from a call centre situation and doesn't seem to be able to get over the fact that she's not being monitored every working moment.

 

This is absolutely true and I am one of those people! I worked in financial services for about 8 years, most of it call-centre and some of it admin (which is just the same) until I went back to Uni and retrained.

It has absolutely stuck with me, I am quite senior now and basically expected to manage my own time and left to get on with it but I still absolutely tell my boss everything I am doing, if I am going to X meeting, if I have a doctors appointment,  he’s said he doesn’t need me to tell him these things but clearly recognises that I I have to, so now just laughs and says ‘that’s fine’  because I honestly feel bad if I don’t say.

I also notice that I am trying to be as far away as I can from the call-centre monitoring boss, with my team. If they need time to go to an appointment or something and say they want an hour off I’ll be like ‘are you sure that’s enough?, take as long as you need, have two hours’ I’m a nightmare, I am so glad the team are trustworthy and don’t take the piss, I would be so easily played 

 

[Bairnardo]

I started reading the thread and stopped at this point as I saw it was idiotic.

And yet you couldnt stop yourself posting in it. Silly gammon.