Jester, Facilitators and Letter Writing

Today I saw Jay at work. Jay, the subject of my first Goodwill Jester blog, Jay, the resource planner and the disciplinary, has been off with stress and it was good to see him today. It was his sad tale that inspired me to start blogging about work. Well, I don't have any more news about him, so I cannot say if his ordeal is over. The Dark Satanic Mill is taking far too long to put the poor fellow out of his misery but please be assured that as soon as I have any news, my readers will be the first to hear it.

There were also more rumblings of discontent in the complaints department today when new, more FSA-compliant, working methods were introduced. The main consequence of this is that the number of letters we have to send out appears to have increased exponentially. This is not a problem for Jester, who loves writing letters, but many of my colleagues are feeling mutinous about it.

We were trained on the more FSA-friendly (and less jester-friendly) working methods last week. I did my training on Thursday and I immediately noticed an interesting change. We no longer had a trainer but a facilitator. Being the facetious kind of person I am, the first question I asked was, "Why use five syllables when two will do?" I received nine blank stares so I explained: "Fa-ci-li-ta-tor has five syllables. Trai-ner has two." The poor lass who was training us - I mean facilitating us - explained that she is facilitating us and not training us. I later learned from my husband (a policeman and therefore familiar with all things Newspeak) that being trained is very passive and therefore passé. Facilitation is the way forward because our knowledge is facilitated. That is not passive at all. Big Brother would have been proud.

In the morning we did the training, sorry, facilitating that our colleagues in the Call Centre will do. This is designed to generate fewer complaints (putting us in the Complaints Department out of a job, hopefully) but also to ensure that when they are generated, they are logged correctly and in a timely fashion. It was great fun.

We had a "Can say/can't say" session, where I found out that I cannot say: "If you would just let me explain..." or "You should read your policy, Mr So and So..." or "I know you're angry but..." So it appears we can still tell customers to get stuffed. Good.

We then discussed the three different types of customer: passive, aggressive and assertive. We were facilitated in saying that the easiest type to deal with is an assertive customer. I love such simplifications. I know I'm a combination of all three and how I behave is largely a matter of what mood I am in. What is more, when I'm being assertive, I am probably about as difficult as it gets.

We then moved on to "What is a complaint/what isn't a complaint". We had to tick complaints and leave non-complaints blank. Again, simple and great fun.

The afternoon was given over to specific training for complaints handlers. This was the bit we had been warned about and had caused so much rumbling from people who had been facilitated on the two previous days. We went through all the letters we are now going to have to send to our customers and when we are going to have to send them. If we don't want to do it, we will have to close all our complaints at 0 - 2 days old. That is a daunting prospect for all my fellow jesters.

We finished our training at about 4.30pm after a short test (in which I got 100%, thus winning myself an easter egg today) and I left the training room (or should that be facilitation suite) with a nice new note-pad and a spring in my step. I love writing letters.

Today, I helped a few of my epistoliphobic* colleagues with their letters, a welcome relief from speaking to angry customers. I might even have to write a few myself. I'm really looking forward to it.

*Unfortunately, the website I used to identify this phobia did not list it so I made it up with the help of an Online Greek/English dictionary. Other interesting phobias include Thygateraphobia, Paraponophobia and my favourite of all, Choratatzisphobia.

Jester, Blogging and Jay

When I started this blog (inspired by the plight of my friend Jay), I thought that I would have plenty of material to blog about. I was not wrong and material comes from all directions where I work. So I have blogged about my colleagues, our equipment and occasionally our contractors. I also blogged about something completely non-work related in my last two outings but I've decided to come back to the place where I feel most comfortable, the Dark Satanic Mill.

First of all, though, Jay. He has still not been told the upshot of his disciplinary hearing and unfortunately, the cracks are beginning to show. He's now off work with stress and I'm missing him. Jay is gay; he's as camp as a row of tents and I love him to pieces. I have always got on well with gay men. Maybe it's because we can leer at the same people or maybe there is a deeper, psychological reason. I don't know, I just know I get on with them. Jay is also somebody I can talk to and I can tell him anything, which is great. So I'm missing him and I wish that they would sort this all out soon so he can come back to work and we can resume our conspiratorial little chats. I did check on the Internet to see if the Satanic Mill has a time frame in which to make a decision but, as far as I am aware, now the wheels are in motion, they can keep turning as long as the company sees fit. I will keep you updated as and when anything happens.

Read and Weep Part 2

I posted yesterday's blog in the short time I had before leaving for work and I don't think I did my subject full justice.

I said that in nearly 21 years of being a copper, my husband has sustained no more than a few bruises. That is not strictly true. He can boast no more than a few bruises in terms of physical injury and I think he is lucky in that respect but police work has taken a more insidious toll on him.

21 years of those shifts for instance. He's now on a 5 week rota - Okay, I did my best but I was not able to put it on this blog in a legible form so I've given up. It's nights followed by earlies, followed by nights, followed by afternoons followed by, you guessed it, nights.

I never know whether he's coming or going so how on earth can he know? His body clock is messed up, his digestion is shot to pieces, he can't sleep - his body no longer knows when it's supposed to sleep.

He is now suffering from high blood pressure. Okay, I know the smoking and drinking (I wonder how many policemen have a drink problem?) and his weight don't help but I think those are also attributable to the pressures that he is put under every day.

Lastly, the depression. He probably won't thank me for mentioning it but I don't think he reads my blogs. Okay, he's never been a particularly happy go lucky sort of a man. I was attracted to his intensity when I first knew him and also a little alarmed at what I thought was his nihilism but this has got worse and significantly so since being in the job.

PC Copperfield and Inspector Gadget will explain far better than me the idiotic procedures, the bosses from hell, the bureaucracy, the idiotic members of the public a policeman encounters in the job. All I can say is my husband finds it all very depressing and his job satisfaction has to be nil or very close to it.

One thing I will say though is that he has worked with some of the most amazing people over the years. I've been privileged to meet a few of them and for a while they had a fantastic team working together from their particular Nick. Of course a forward thinking and energetic Chief Inspector or something similar decided to split them up over the Division a couple of years ago. Bloody typical.

Read and Weep

I was just adding a few more interesting blogs on another of my blogsites and I have just read three of the most depressing blogs ever. All on the same subject. They can be found in Police Inspector Blog, The Policeman's Blog and Mr Chalk. Here are the links to them:

Police Inspector Blog
The Policeman's Blog
Mr Chalk

I am married to a policeman myself and I know what a dangerous job it can be. I'm lucky because in nearly 21 years in the job he has sustained no more than a couple of bruises. This young man's life is over at 21 years of age and the thugs who put him in this state will be out of prison in a few years' time. It sickens me. Read and Weep.

Mad Eye Moody, Jessina and Letting off Steam

I mentioned Mad Eye W- or the Fat Controller in my last blog. Well since then, he has shown that he has a little courage after all. The Leper Colony has been moved back into the bosom of the Complaints Department. This move took place on Friday. Regrettably, this meant that some more of our colleagues had to move upstairs into the main part of the Call Centre and therefore under the watchful eye of our Customer Services Director. One of the girls, Goodwill Jessina, who has been exiled upstairs is, to put it mildly, a tad loud. A lovely girl but with a voice like a foghorn. (I sincerely hope she does not mind me describing her so because I am going to point her in the direction of this blog so she can read all about it.) Yesterday, she and a young colleague were chatting and Mad Eye W- asked them to stop talking and get on with their work because their 'personal chit-chat' was distracting him. At least he didn't ask one of our Team Managers to go upstairs and tell them off like he did last time.

More of my colleagues have expressed their dissatisfaction with being described as "a waste of space" and I would dearly love to see a grievance made against him. It's not an easy job dealing with complaints and occasionally one needs to let off steam. Some do it by going for a fag, others by chewing their pens to bits. I have been known to let off steam very violently by clearing my desk (usually with a sweep of the arm), putting my coat on and very loudly saying I've enough of the job and I'm going home. Fortunately, I have not had one of these episodes too recently; nowadays I tend to do it by letting out a relatively quiet string of obscenities once the customer has got off the phone. One other way to let off steam is to have a little bit of a chat with a neighbouring colleague to take your mind off the last unpleasant character you spoke to and the next one you're going to have to speak to. Now it appears that even this is not allowed.

Mad Eye W- came to the company a couple of years ago. I think the idea was for him to be a bit of a troubleshooter; that's certainly how he saw his role. He decided that his purpose in life was to turn failing departments around and make them successful. He has not really succeeded with our department but then, the only way he could do that is to either reduce complaints or staff us properly. I doubt he will do either. Anyway, I just wish he would finish the job and then disappear into the sunset like a gunslinger who has finished off the bad guy or even like a rather unpleasant Mary Poppins, borne off into the sky hanging for dear life to his umbrella.

A Jester, Shoes and the Fat Controller

There was outrage amongst some of my fellow Jesters a couple of days ago. I would have mentioned this yesterday but I was on an 11am - 8pm shift and when I got home last night, I was too tired to even contemplate going on the computer. I went to bed instead.

I think a little background would be useful here. Our department, the Complaints Department, has grown quite a lot over the past few years. There used to be five or six of us at one time and now there are 40 odd Complaints Handlers. This means that we have outgrown our part of the office and so we have sprouted offshoots. Up until today, there was a small group of us away from the main area but still on the same floor and another upstairs sharing space with other departments. I have been sitting in what I humorously call "the leper colony" downstairs. There is always a little bit of banter going on in our little offshoot. The people upstairs probably keep their heads down a little bit more and get on with their work a little bit more.

Unfortunately for them, they are under the eye of our Customer Services Director, also known as Mad Eye W- or the Fat Controller. Now I have very little time for this man. He likes to come across as a bluff sort of man, a bit of a man of the people. However, he is a moral coward and a back-stabber and he looks unpleasantly like a cross between John Prescott, a Sontaran, Kryten and Mad Eye Moody.

I had my first run-in with him a couple of years ago when he took objection to me getting coffee from our staff canteen during work time - i.e. not in my break time. I wouldn't have minded if he had told me himself but he got a junior colleague of mine to do it. He started as he meant to go on and to my knowledge has never tackled anybody himself about perceived misdemeanours but has instead e-mailed their managers or, if a manager cannot be found (as in my case), then a colleague. I make a point of avoiding him at all costs. I will not make eye contact with him or say a word to him. Petty, I know, but I cannot stand the man.

Anyway, apparently, one of our Jesters upstairs was talking enthusiastically about some new shoes she had just acquired and he noticed (her talking, not the shoes). He told one of our managers about this (ironically, the same junior colleague who told me not to get coffee in company time a couple of years ago - she has since been promoted), who immediately went upstairs and, if I'm not mistaken, told the whole group that the Fat Controller thought they were all a waste of space.

This inspired great wrath and one of the girls immediately spoke to our managers' manager (we have a complicated hierarchy in the Dark Satanic Mill) and said that if it was not "sorted out" she would put in a grievance against the FC. After a little to-ing and fro-ing, they were told that he had taken exception to just one of them (the shoe enthusiast), he had not said that they were all a waste of space and they did not need worry.

This leaves a bad taste in the mouth for us all. Yet again, he lacked the moral courage to go over and tell the Jester in question to shut up about shoes and get on with her work. It also begs the question, what exactly did he say to our manager? If he did not refer to them as all a waste of space, then surely she has behaved in an extremely unprofessional manner.

One last point. I have already written about this particular manager. She is the one I accused of being a bully in a previous blog, Jester, Jeannie and the Missing Post. Her rise through the ranks was rapid after the FC noticed her and he couldn't fail to notice her. We were without a manager at the time and she took over some of the administration tasks, as did Goodwill Jester and some other members of the department. However, she did this very noisily and with great fanfare and so she was noticed. She leap-frogged one of the grades in our department at her next PDR and when the Dark Satanic Mill advertised for Trainee Team Managers, he encouraged her to apply and sponsored her application. She "graduated" and is now a manager in our department. I have not been particularly impressed with her managerial skills so far and therefore, by extension, with him as a judge of good manager material.