Tuesday - The Bitches of East Wing

Tension is building up between my team and Jez's. It's now almost a daily occurance for Anne to pull me to one side because - someone somewhere has said that someone in my team has done something that they shouldn't have. Not that I'm one to apportion fault but this blame-throwing has a distinct Jez aroma to it.

Today it was the high volume of calls.

"Handled rates were particularly low yesterday," said Anne. "Tell me what happened."

So I told her that I'd offered overtime. I told her how I pulled staff back from breaks and that I'd taken ringbacks but volumes were high and staffing levels were low.

"I heard that you allowed Jo to have an hour long break in the afternoon," She said cocking the gun that said all it needed to say. Her source was now obvious but somehow the time scale concerned had been through some sort of clerical black hole in the journey from Argumentative Man to Jez to Anne, and had been distorted from its actual 2 minute reality.

I told her the truth, although whether she believed it or not was uncertain.

Later I discovered just how perceptive the rest of the team were in our weekly team meeting. With a lot of sabre rattling, they moaned how Jez's team were quick to pass work back to you if it was yours but would not take it off you if it was theirs and you'd been unfortunate enough to receive the call.

They picked up on the fact that even though Jez has more staff, their output is far less per head than mine.

"Just what does Jez's team do exactly? Apart from slagging off everyone else in the department,"

I wallowed in the shared moment for minute before doing the professional thing and reasoning the issue into its rightful state of indifference.

With any luck, Jez's gameplay will see him promoted out of the department before long.