Jester, Jessica, Pennywise and the Proverbial

This jester is usually a fairly cheerful kind of a person. I'm always ready with a joke, I frequently have a smile on my face and not always an ironic one either. I'm a friendly kind of a jester and get on well with most of my colleagues, our contractors and not infrequently my customers. I usually like to laugh at the absurdities that face me at work but last week was so, so different.

I was, to be perfectly frank, stressed and when I'm stressed I am not a nice person. The cause of my stress was off all last week, having taken a week's emergency leave. He (or Pennywise as I now call him, since he is a clown) has left me and my fellow "high-level" jesters to pick up the pieces because, it would appear, he has not been doing his job properly. Now, I'm not talking about the odd mistake. We all make them and I am no exception. I'm also not talking about failing to do something we had promised to do. Again, we all run out of time sometimes and have to put off something that is very, very important indeed. What I am talking about appears to be either gross incompetence or unbelievable laziness.

For instance, I have had to completely rewrite one of his final response letters and it took a large chunk of Wednesday because he had investigated the complaint so badly that I pretty well had to start from scratch. To make things worse, it was extremely urgent, mainly because it had to go to the customer's water company first for checking. It also transpired that this particular complaint had almost caused him a huge amount of trouble a few months ago when he e-mailed another letter (to the customer) to our head office for forwarding to the water company for approval and it had contained the words "I refer to your verbal diatribe..." This had not gone down well with the water company or our head office and he only just got away with it by claiming that somebody else had doctored his letter before he sent the e-mail unchecked. We all knew that was utter clap-trap. The wording had Pennywise written all over it.

On Thursday, I was asked to ring another person at our head office, an account manager, which meant that the complaint I would be dealing with was very sensitive. He just wanted to check that a cheque had been sent to a VIP customer on Monday, as promised. We have VIP customers and when we input their details onto our computer systems, alarm bells ring and red lights flash so that there is no doubt whatsoever that they need to be treated with caution. They are usually managing directors of water, gas or electricity companies or work for national newspapers or in television. I assume that if Tony Blair had a policy, he would be a VIP customer.

This one was a managing director of a water company. I said I would check and ring my colleague back. I checked into this and found Pennywise had been involved again. He had said that he would get the cheque to the VIP customer by Tuesday. The cheque would have to be raised manually on Monday so that it could be "expressed" and sent out special delivery to get there by Tuesday. He has been off since Monday and so no cheque has been raised or sent. He saw fit to e-mail us on Wednesday to ask us to do him a favour with another of his complaints. I deleted the e-mail unread I was so angry with him. Why couldn't he have done that with this cheque on Monday? I would have read the e-mail then; the proverbial was not hitting the fan at that point.

Well, I raised the cheque myself and it went out registered post on Friday. The gentleman in our head office to whom I had been speaking said that our manager will receive a complaint about Pennywise from his manager. More grist to the mill then.

On Friday, my good friend Goodwill Jessica, was asked to ring another of Pennywise's customers. This time, it was really serious. He had closed the complaint without contacting the customer and had put notes on the system that were out and out lies. She had to face a 15 minute barrage from the customer, who was furious. Jessica in her turn was furious and when he comes back to work (if he dares), Pennywise is going to have an uncomfortable time of it. We genuinely want him off our team (the Complex Jesters) because we have been carrying him for so long and this week has been murder for us all.

Before I went home on Friday, I found out that another customer had rung in and his complaint had also been closed with no action, although Pennywise's notes suggested otherwise. Again, the poor jester came in for some major ear-bashing and when he came over to ask Jessica what to do, she pointed him in the direction of Pennywise's manager.

There have been other instances too, like the letter from a County Court that was handed to him and has not been seen since (we found the missing cheque request form when we were looking for that). Jessica had to ring the court and ask them to re-send it. They were not impressed but then again, they could not possibly have been as unimpressed as we were.

Normally, I would not drop my colleagues in it. It is against the Jester's code but I have to make an exception in this case and I have documented every mistake, every instance of incompetence and laziness that I have come across this week. It has to be done. Pennywise has made my life and Jessica's and the two other Complex Jesters' lives misery this week. I have not been so stressed for ages and I don't intend to ever let this happen again.

I am a very angry jester indeed and I hope I can keep it up when he comes back to work because I think time, I really need to be.

Jester, Mr Krabs, the Non-Payer and the Marching Band

I would like to start this blog with a disclaimer. I cannot vouch for the veracity of what is to follow because the source of this story has a vivid imagination and likes to tell tall stories. Still, some of them must be true. As usual, I have changed names to protect identities.

First of all, let me introduce you to Mr Krabs. Mr Krabs or Eugene, as I prefer to call him, is one of the Dark Satanic Mill's approved contractors or, to be more precise, the proprietor or managing director of said approved contractor. Mr Krabs' company, Praxis Development, is a large building company in an affluent part of the country and takes a large amount of work from the Dark Satanic Mill.

I call him Mr Krabs because his apparent love, nay obsession, with money reminds me so much of the lovable character from Spongebob Squarepants. I can imagine him diving down a blocked toilet to retrieve a pound coin or tucking five pound notes into little beds at night and kissing them goodnight.

Eugene often tries to tell me that he is poverty stricken and his kids (I didn't know he had any) are starving (he can't afford to buy them krabby patties) and have no shoes to wear because the Dark Satanic Mill does not pay his invoices on time. My stock answer is "speak to Finance or your Area Network Manager". My job, after all, is to pay customers, not contractors. Anyway, I know that's not the case because, as I said before, his company is based in one of the most affluent parts of the country and the Dark Satanic Mill passes a huge amount of work to him.

Eugene and I get on really very well. He has very little time for most of my colleagues but seems to like me well enough. We have built up this relationship of mutual contempt. I call him Mr Krabs to his face and laugh at him openly. He recently called me a witch and said he could tell me where to shove my broomstick. I told him it was already up there. He tries to run rings round me and frequently succeeds. A couple of weeks ago, I got him to admit over the phone that he had made a mistake and I'm still dancing round the office, whooping and punching the air.

So that's Eugene Krabs and I hope he likes my description of him because he knows how to get to this blog. Well, on Wednesday he told me a story that I simply could not keep to myself. I told him it was too good not to blog about it and e-mailed him the url for this site. He had no objection to me putting this online so here is Eugene's little tale.

As I said before, Praxis Development is based in a very affluent part of the country. What I did not say is that this part of the country, according to Eugene anyway, is mainly populated by rich and famous pop and rock stars. There may be some footballers too and others who have earned vast amounts of money by doing unimportant jobs and sometimes not that well and I'm sure Eugene will have mentioned them.

Praxis had done a major redecoration job on a house in this area. This was an insurance job (but not a Dark Satanic Mill job, I hasten to add) and so Eugene was prepared to wait for the customer to get the settlement cheque before receiving payment from him. The amount owed was, I think, £20,000. That seems a lot to an insignificant jester like me but when you consider that most of the properties in the area go for millions, maybe it is only to be expected. So Eugene submitted his invoice and waited for the money.

He did not get paid. The customer rented out the house and moved to London and cashed the cheque. This caused Eugene an inordinate amount of heartache but being a resourceful little crab he hatched a cunning plan to get his money from the by now absent customer.

Eugene told me that this customer (or his tenants) had some very famous neighbours. There was a famous rock/indie star from the nineties, who has an equally famous brother, who lived next door I believe. Then there was the multi instrumentalist who is well remembered from the seventies. I think he was over the road. A few doors down was a former exponent of girl power and a little further down the road was a pop star who had been an extremely successful chart act in the seventies. All musicians.

Eugene's revenge was swift and appropriate. He found some other, less well known "musicians" and kitted them out with a bass drum, a trumpet, a tambourine and a banner saying "non-payer" and sent them to the house. The drummer banged his bass drum, the tambourine player banged or shook his tambourine and the trumpeter played his trumpet...

badly.

After about five minutes the multi instrumentalist's housekeeper came out of the house and asked them to keep it down. The drummer rang Eugene and asked what he should do. Eugene told them to play louder.

Within half an hour the non-payer's tenants had contacted the non-payer, the non-payer had contacted Eugene and apologised for the "mistake" and had transferred all of the money by banker's draft into Praxis' bank account. Eugene called the musicians off.

As I said before, I'm not sure I believe him but I hope Eugene is telling the truth. The story is definitely too good to keep to myself and I do have to say that it is people like Eugene who bring a little light into this jester's working life and make my job so enjoyable.

Jester and Meetings (The Practical Alternative to Work)

On Tuesday my fellow jesters and I all received an e-mail announcing a Team Meeting, which was to take place the next day. We were to be split into two groups and one half of us would go to a meeting at 10am and the other at 11am. Of course, our Task Masters, I mean Managers, would get to go to both meetings. That was all: there was no agenda, just a meeting. One of my colleagues, a very dear friend but a very grumpy jester, Mr Grumpy, replied to the e-mail asking if there was an agenda but our Managers like to keep us in suspense so it would be a nice surprise for us and did not reply.

I was in the 11am meeting with Mr Grumpy so I knew it would be an enjoyable experience. I like meetings anyway. There is an e-mail that makes the rounds every now and again that sums meetings up very nicely for me.

When I'm in a meeting, I don't have to speak to angry customers, I don't have to compile boring complaint summaries and I don't have to check my epistoliphobic colleagues' letters. They really are the practical alternative to work.

The first group over-ran by about 10 minutes and when they emerged I went into the meeting with the second group armed with a pencil and note pad. I had already drawn a noughts and crosses grid on the page as a post-modern ironic gesture. Unfortunately, it went completely un-noticed. I sat next to Mr Grumpy and prepared to be alternatively annoyed and bored for the next hour.

There were four items on the agenda (so there was an agenda then, after all): Sensitive Clients, our current high volumes of complaints, Letters and that old Chestnut, PDRs.

The first, sensitive clients (or as I prefer to call them, demanding clients), is a source of much amusement to me. We sell products on behalf of various water companies, electricity and gas suppliers and other insurers. We are a specialist in home emergency insurance. I have sometimes wondered if there is a direct correlation between how demanding our clients are (water companies, electricity and gas suppliers and other insurers) and how poor their service to their customers is. I've only wondered but I suspect there is.

Our most demanding client supplies me with my gas and electricity, at least I pay my bills to them. They expect us to investigate, deal with and close complaints within 10 working days. That is risible when frequently we have to wait for the customers to send in invoices, reports, photographs or if the claim is still ongoing or if the customer is unavailable; sometimes the list of reasons can seem endless. Many of our complaints reach the trigger point of 40 days (when the customer can then refer his/her complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service) through no fault of our own. Not all complaints can be resolved with an apology and small goodwill gesture, especially now our society is getting as compensation-obsessed and litigious as our American Cousins.

Next on the agenda were the extraordinarily high volumes of complaints we are receiving. There are a number of very good reasons for this. The main one being that our colleagues in our Admin Department/Head Office want to sell more policies to make the company look better in the back end of the financial year and make the share prices increase. They have decided to sell these policies by making more Quality Control calls to our customers who have recently made claims. They can then sell policies to customers who have received good service. The other side of the coin, of course, is that more complaints are generated and we have to work harder. We have also introduced FSA training designed to make our call-centre staff better aware of what exactly is a complaint. They're now logging more and we are having to work harder. Actually, I have no objection to extra complaints being generated this way. It shows that our call centre colleagues are doing their jobs better. I just wish that our company would recruit more Goodwill Jesters to enable us to cope better.

Then there were the letters. I mentioned in a previous blog that most of my colleagues are epistoliphobic (a word I made up with the help of an online English/Greek dictionary). I was not wrong. There have been major ructions about the number of letters we now have to send, mostly from Mr Grumpy but many other jesters are also very unhappy with this. The major effect this has had on our department is that we are working more slowly and closing fewer complaints.

The extra letters were introduced on the back of an audit of our Sales Department carried out by Price Waterhouse Coopers at our Head Office, which was to ensure that we were FSA compliant before an FSA audit is carried out in July. I believe that the conclusions were less than complimentary. I also believe that our company, and the new practices came from the top directors, over-reacted to the audit, so we are now having to be super-compliant.

I actually am quite prepared to be super-compliant. I have already realised through my dealings as a complainer that the company I work for, or at least its complaints department, is very customer-friendly. I wish it were a little more employee friendly, that's all. I would prefer it, though, if our department could be enlarged to take account of the extra work we now have to do. Oh and our targets should be reduced to reflect it as well. Some help from the IT department in automatically filling in customer names and addresses in the letters would also be of assistance. One little help is to become available: our company is going to offer touch-typing courses to all jesters if they want to learn. This jester is proud to announce that she can already touch-type!

The irony of it is, the vast majority of our complaints are not FSA reportable, so, in theory at least, we do not have to be compliant. However, our head office expects us to mirror them and so we have to achieve the same high levels of FSA Compliance that they do.

The final agenda item was our PDRs (Performance and Development Reviews or "Do I get a pay rise and bonus or not?"). This has been a major concern to all the jesters over the years because we never get out PDRs on time. I suppose this is because winter is our busiest time of year and our Managers' workload tends to reflect ours. We have not had our monthly appraisals for many months (I have not had one since my half-year review) and so we have not been given any indication of how well or badly we have been performing. This year appears to be no exception. Apparently, they have drafted our PDRs but they are going to e-mail them to us in advance so that we can pre-approve them. It seems a bit strange to me but if it means I get a fair PDR on time, I'll go for it.

It seems that some things at the Dark Satanic Mill never change.

Jester, The Fat Controller and Plodding

The Fat Controller aka Mad Eye Moody continues to make himself unpopular. About 10 of our Jesters have migrated upstairs to the main call centre to make room for the returning prodigals (see Mad Eye Moody, Jessina and Letting off Steam) and they are now under his watchful eyes and ears.


One of my younger colleagues, Goodwill Gary, came downstairs on Wednesday in a fit of Pique. The Fat Controller had overheard one of his comments and had complained to our senior manager. She had reported this back to Gary and it had roused his ire. Gary has a unique turn of phrase for one so young (he reminds me of a young Fred Dibnah). We're all used to it and we are able to translate what he says into Modern English, so when he says something like "I'll plod on with my list", we think "Gary's finished doing what he was doing and is now going to work on his list of complaints". The word plod has no special meaning for us. It has no connotations of slowness because we know him.


The Fat Controller's eagle ears (no, that's not right, it's eagle eyes), sorry, his bat ears or bird ears or even rabbit ears (I have been reliably informed that all the aforementioned animals have excellent hearing) picked up the word "plod" and, being a Christian and therefore the kind of man only to see the best in others, immediately assumed that Gary does not take his work seriously. He swiftly e-mailed our manager and she felt duty bound to pass on his concerns to Gary.


Gary was furious and came downstairs to let off steam. I told him to sit next to me (my neighbour was off for the day) and I went through it with him:


Jester: "Does the Fat Controller's opinion matter?"
Gary: "To some people, yes."
Jester: "Does it matter to people you respect?"
Gary: (thinking) "Ummm..."
Jester: "Does it matter to me for instance?"
Gary: (smiling) "No!"
Jester: "Don't let him get you down. He is really, really unimportant in the general scheme of things. How can you worry about someone who looks like a Sontaran?"
Gary: "?"
Jester: "You don't know what a Sontaran is?"
Gary: "No."
Jester: "Right. I'll e-mail you a picture for reference"


The next day, I sent Gary an e-mail with three pictures attached - one of a Sontaran, a picture of the Fat Controller that we had tampered with at home, making him even uglier than before and one of me at 17 when I was a very skinny punk. I was on the phone to him when he opened the attachments (The FC was downstairs at the time) and I heard the screams of laughter from him and his fellow exiles. Here is one of the pictures. I am not showing my picture because this is an anonymous work blog and I'm not showing the picture of the Fat Controller for the same reason. However, he does bear a striking resemblance to a Sontaran...

Jester, Retirement, Insults and Blogging

This particular Goodwill Jester has been particularly quiet of late. There have been a number of reasons for this but the main one, and it is the most important by far, is that my younger daughter is suffering from Henoch-Schonlein Purpura. It started as a slight rash on her calves and a pain in the ankle in Mid March and has developed into a magnificent purpuric rash, swollen and painful joints, stomach aches and most worryingly, problems with her kidneys. She was in hospital for four days at the end of March and so, not surprisingly, work has not been my primary concern recently.

However, she is on the mend now, although it is a slow process, and she will have to attend the renal clinic as an outpatient for some time, but work continues to throw up the same absurdities, irritations and entertainments which are a rich seam for blogging. I was not in the mood before but as she gets better I feel the urge to blog again.

So...

Last Friday was a sad day in the Dark Satanic Mill because one of our most senior jesters retired. When we presented her with her leaving present, which included a mobile phone, there was not a dry eye in the department. The Fat Controller even allowed her to go home early (no doubt docking the missed hours from her pay!) In the evening, we had a combined Retirement/Birthday party for her in a city centre restaurant. I am going to miss her very much. She was a good friend to me.

On a lighter note, we have recently had dealings with a particularly abusive customer. I have to admit that this sort of customer can be delightfully entertaining. She does have cause to complain but her method of complaining is probably the most ill-advised method anybody could use. I first heard about her yesterday morning when our managers were discussing her. She had rung the previous evening and had spoken to one of my fellow jesters, Goodwill Jerry. She had screamed so loudly down the phone that our senior manager, who sits some distance from us (so we cannot distract her from her work), could hear her. When Jerry suggested that they may achieve more if she were not to shout at him and personally insult him, she hung up.

She rang back shortly afterwards and spoke to another colleague. She gave him a false name and refused to give any other details. When he pressed her, citing the Data Protection Act (all customers should confirm the first line of the address, so that we know they are the genuine article), she told him to f*** off and hung up again. She also insulted other people in other departments during the evening (mainly managers) and in the morning I was asked to telephone her.

I rang but I was diverted to her answerphone - a lucky escape as it transpired. I left a message asking her to ring me back. I also said I would ring again in about an hour's time. I then went on my break and when I got back she had rung back and spoken to another of my colleagues, Goodwill Jessica. She told Jessica that she did not want to speak to me because I am not a manager. Nor did she want to speak to Jessica for the same reason. She then went on to say that Jerry had screamed down the phone at her like a demented woman on her period, which just goes to show that Jerry has no balls and is therefore a gay boy. Jessica arranged for one of our managers to ring her back. When she did, our demented customer told her to f*** off as well. Our manager is now putting our response in writing to her.

I firmly believe that there comes a point when a customer loses the right to complain and certainly loses the right to receive any financial compensation in respect of a complaint whether justified or not. I know she passed that point when she spoke to Jessica and I suspect she passed it the previous evening. Never mind though, we had great fun in telling Jerry she had got his number. All good fun in the Dark Satanic Mill, after all.