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.