The Update. Another day in the life…

Following on from my ‘nightmare Saturday’, because it never happens on a quiet Tuesday…..

I had a pile of ‘stuff’ today, what a surprise. All relating to my team. The good news is, we have replaced the couple that have left, I hope. It’s all down to the recruitment company that I thought we spent an obscene amount of money on, until I got the ‘real story’ of the Eastern Europeans that we hire.

One day, I was hosting a Customer Care course, and we were discussing the costs and benefits of having a team that gave ‘excellent’ service. Asking the question, “What do they want to stay for?” In that conversation, the chat was about the cost of recruiting new staff. I thought we had it bad. Eastern Europeans have to pay about £1000 for the privilege of going onto a recruitment company’s books. That shut me up. Not often that happens in a training session! I was gob smacked. Speechless. (I know, it’s hard to believe) I won’t share how much we spend per couple.

So, not only that, in their country, they pay the same amount for food as we do, the average pay is £450 a month, (don’t quote me on that, this was the average of the conversation) and we think we have it bad? The rent for a town-centre pad is at least £400 per month. Unless, of course you work with us. No wonder we have an in-flux of Eastern Europeans! No wonder a lot of Eastern Europeans come back like a boomerang to The Green Welly Stop. They pay £41 per week each (coz that’s what the government says), they have all their utilities paid for, and they get free food. What’s even better (for them) is the evening meals they can have now due to extended opening hours. Go them.

I’m not bitter in the slightest. Quite the opposite. Without our EE team, where would we be when about 25% of the village can’t get off their sorry arses to get a job. Really.

I know, this is probably a small rant. I don’t care. What you don’t know, in addition to the stuff that happened on Saturday, there was another ‘issue’. A star member of staff went AWOL. He did. He’s a star, and in this case, let himself down. He suffers from migraines, as I do on the occasions that I don’t enough caffeine (it was a close run thing yesterday). I sympathise. It doesn’t forgive the lack of phone calls. Sometimes you have to forgive people. Today, however, he came in unshaven. He knows the rules. Clean shaven, or go home. His excuse was, “The co-op didn’t have any razors.” Well, funnily enough, we do… and shaving foam. Sorted.

The member of staff that fecked off to London, good luck. I hope she’s happy. Certainly working in Tyndrum didn’t bring a smile to her face. Her ex-room mate has hopefully recruited another EE. Sorted. If her friend stays, that’s £50 in her pocket.

As for another member of my committed team today, he complained of ‘broken ribs’. Really, if you had broken ribs, you wouldn’t be at work. Fact. Good on him, he was feeling shit enough, he got on with his day. There’s much more about that, as you can imagine!

There’s much, much more. I don’t want to bore you, my reader. The ‘Day in the life of…’ may be a regular occurrence.

Congratulations for getting here. Well done on reading my small, restrained rant.

For those that think that their job is easy, think again, 90 headaches. Occasionally, I get asked, “Why don’t you have kids….” ya thunk? Luckily most of them are great to work with….. however there are the ‘challenging’ ones.

I do love a challenge.

On a personal note, I feel I have to mention that I went on a training day yesterday. A slo-mo training day. The one difference between myself and the rest of the ‘blokes’ is that they won’t have the sore forearm that I have. How can they?