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, Jeannie and the Missing Post

I said in my last post that there have been rumblings of discontent at the Dark Satanic Mill over two issues and covered the first in that blog. The second issue is one that I find very disturbing because it involves the bullying of a young team member by one of our managers.

I think it would be a good idea to give a little background here. The manager in question, Fran, has been promoted from the ranks as it were. A couple of years ago, she was a level 1 complaints handler and our department was having a crisis. Our manager had gone off sick with stress because he had been expected to deal with an unreasonable workload and when he had been unable to cope, instead of receiving support, he just got more hassle from his bosses. We were then, as I used to enjoy saying, rudderless.

This girl took over some of the administrative tasks because somebody needed to do them. She also made a great fuss about doing it in a "Hey! Look at me!" sort of a way. Other members of the team, including yours truly, carried on with our work and took on some extra responsibilities so they would get done but did not make a big fuss about it.

This girl came to the notice of the Fat Controller, our Customer Services Director, and he liked her style. Suddenly, she was surrounded by grateful directors, praising her for running the department single-handed, and was even given a Gold Award for Achievement, a very rare honour indeed.

At her next Performance Development Review, she leap-frogged Level 2 handler to Level 3 and her star was now clearly in the ascendant. She had previously applied for Trainee Team Manager but had been rejected because she was too aggressive. Now the Fat Controller asked her to apply again and this time she sailed through the application process and then the training period.

She is now a manager in our department and I really hate to say this because I like her as a person but she is not a good manager at all. She is aggressive in her dealings with her staff, too many of her decisions about complaints do not make any sense and it seems that her knowledge of some of our policies is pretty poor. Worst by far, though, is how she bullies weaker members of the team.

Which brings me to my present gripe. Her treatment of the daughter of my good friend and "adopted" little sister, Goodwill Jessica. Jessica's daughter, Jeannie, is only 17 and it is a marvellous achievement for her to get a job in our department when there must have been other candidates with more experience. It must have been a blinder of an application and interview. Now, please do not be cynical and say that she only got the job because she is Jessica's daughter. What kind of company do you think I work for?

Well, she got the job and she started work and what a lovely girl she is! Everybody loves her. She's a hard worker, pleasant company and just generally a nice kid. So why would anyone want to bully her? Because she doesn't work hard enough? But she does so much work and keeps her head down. She doesn't join in with the general gossip and chatter that goes on in our department, she just works. Unfortunately, her manager seems to think that she should be able to do more and do it faster and tells her off for not doing enough.

On Friday, the post for 14 February went missing and Jeannie was at the photocopier doing one of her myriad Admin tasks. Fran shouted from her desk for Jeannie to stop what she was doing immediately and go and look for it. That may not, on the face of it, seem too bad but in conjunction with everything else, the poor girl ended up in tears. If it wasn't where it was supposed to be, then where was it going to be and how was she going to find it?

The answer was simple, really. My friend, Jenny, e-mailed the whole department asking if anybody had removed it. When she got no response, she looked in the filing cabinet herself and found it, not far from where it should be, with the post for 15 February. It had been put back by some nameless member of the department in the wrong place. This begs the question. Surely the person who reported it missing could have done the same thing and found it and avoided all the heartache and who had put it in the wrong place anyway? My bet is that it was not a member of the Admin team.

I e-mailed the head of our department after that incident. I did not mention it specifically but just told her that I think too many people in our department undervalue our Admin Team and it would be nice for them to get some public recognition for the superb job they do. I blind-copied in Jenny, Jessica and Jeannie.

I hope they do get the recognition they deserve. It really is about time, after all. I also hope that Fran can improve her management skills. I'm not going to hold my breath though.

Jester, Exploding Boilers and Manager Call-backs

Full time hours are not going too badly and the tiredness is becoming less of an issue for me but I'm now full of a cold so I have a sore throat, stuffed up/runny nose and I'm sneezing fit to burst. Never mind, I'm happy to keep going into work, safe in the knowledge that I'll be spreading my germs like nobody's business and also staying out of trouble. You see my company has a sickness policy - if you are still breathing, you have to come into work. Some forward thinkers are trying to make even death no excuse for taking time off work.

My reasonable gentleman, mentioned in the last blog, who went straight to the top settled for a nice figure yesterday - nicer for him than the company but I am a generous jester so that's one complaint closed.

I was investigating another yesterday and today and I was struck at the lengths some people will go to to speak to a manager. This particular person was having trouble with her boiler and was unhappy with how long her claim was taking so she rang our help-line and told one of my colleagues that her boiler had exploded and blown one of the walls off her house, causing £340,000 worth of damage.

She got her manager call back quickly enough, I can imagine the poor fellow running to find a manager and breathlessly telling her what had happened. The manager rang her back and she explained that the boiler had not exploded and the wall was still where it had been the previous day and probably had been since the house had been built. She told the hapless manager that she had thought that that was the only way to get a response from our company. The manager explained that she had only needed to ask for a manager to call her back and one would have done so.

I would say that that is being economical with the truth. We have a team of people to make manager call backs and none of them are managers. Of course, if the customer is still not happy then we may get a manager to call back but it might just go to a slightly more experienced member of staff. I suppose if you're insistent enough, you may get to speak to a manager but we try to look after them as much as possible.

Fortunately, most of our customers do not feel the need to make such claims to get a manager to call back and of course, this one provided me and my colleagues with a great deal of amusement along the way.