Yet another urgent meeting was called. I had to cancel all the work I was doing to clear our backlogs in order to attend a meeting that Anne called to discuss methods of clearing our backlogs. As well as the usual suspects, Short Bloke - one of the sales managers attended.
Anne went through her usual rigmarole of asking how we could get the teams to work harder - that was the problem after all. Jez very helpfully pointed out that his team cleared 500 items last week whereas mine only cleared 350. Of course he failed to mention that he has 10 members in his team and I only have four (Three and half if I really include Dan).
At the end of the day, Gareth's suspicions could be well-founded. Reference was made to the timesheets, followed up by a comment that we need to manage out poor performers. The timesheets are Anne's Weapons of Mass Redundancy.
There followed an uncomfortable grilling by Anne, Gary and Short Bloke.
"How many MD complaints can you clear by end of play Friday?"
"Well if we are happy to prioritise them over .. " I began.
"Wrong Answer," said Short Bloke smugly. I expected him to make a noise like the display on Family Fortunes when the contestant guessed incorrectly.
Several 'Wrong Answers' later and I looked at the enthused faces of Anne, Short Bloke and to a lesser extent, Gary, and suddenly realised that the dim kids who went to Kindergarten and got excited by shiny paper have done well for themselves. I couldn't get excited by shiny paper because I'd seen it, cut it and pasted it. That was the difference between them and me. Only they could feel that working in middle management in a financial services company was as fulfilling as feeding the starving millions in Africa. I couldn't. That's why they were there and I was opposite them and the words 'Wrong Answer!' was shouted at me the instant I opened my mouth.
Something has to change. I'm worried that it might be me.
Induction Course
- First Day Here? Attend the induction course for the team background
- Paul Cornell's blog - He writes for Doctor Who!
- Dooce - Sacked for Blogging!
- Dilbert's blog
- Shuffling Chunks - Not sure if this is animal, vegetable or mineral. But I like it in a strange sort of way!
- Rachel from North London
- Random Acts of Reality
- The Medium is Not Enough
- 200 percent
- Sensei Katana
- Brummie Blogs
- Helen's World
- Foolish pranks
- Brazen Careerist
- A Day in the Life of a Middle Manager
- Big n Juicy
- Viper Squad ten
- «
2 comments:
Feeding the starving millions in Africa would be more fulfilling than financial services? I hope you'll re-think that. Most of the starving Africans are starving because of political instability, with war often dislocating people. To really remedy the situation, you'd need to pick out the good guys and supply them with all the weapons they need to get the job done. Good luck picking out the good guys. And the weapons business is full of people you'd probably dislike. Plus, there's a lot of travelling involved.
I've always considered the financial services industry to be right up there with medicine as far as social goodness goes. Of course, you have to see it for what it is-- a means of separating rich people from their money.
There, I hope you feel better now and can stick with this job you have. I'd really miss this bit of entertainment I get each day.
This wasn't intended as some serious political discourse - as serious as the subject is. Feeding starving millions in Africa was used as an illustration of a more worthwhile use of anyone's time. Forget the deep routed political and social reasons why people across the world are starving, at the of the day a starving child just wants food in his belly. Fulfilling that need and allowing a child to live another day is surely more meaningful than selling a totally worthless and expensive extended warranty policy to a probably not-so-rich family in Walsall. Unfortunately financial companies separate rich people from their money but only to give it to even richer shareholders and directors.
I apologise for the serious note of this comment. I promise not to let this happen again!!
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