when i was a student, i was working in a letting agency
we had a cleaner called marc. marc was responsible for cleaning, naturally, and also for doing inventories. he was shit at both. his idea of an inventory was "carpet", so that it was impossible to tell who was responsible for damage when the next tenant checked out. and as a cleaner, well, let's just say that he failed to notice when three disgruntled tenants (brothers, their mum must have been so proud) shat on the floor and wiped their arses on the curtains.

on top of this, marc smelled. oh god, he smelled. he smelled like a tramp corpse with butt rape and stilton inside it. it was 40 years of cigarettes and garlic and beer and sweat, all distilled into one seldom washed package. and, to make matters worse, he insisted on calling clients, "ze geezer" to their faces (he was french). clients did not like being called "geezers".

one day he was dispatched to a little house about 25 miles from the office to hand over keys to the new tenants. an hour later, he was back - the keys didn't work. the manager had decided that it was his last day, so she took the opportunity whilst he was in the office of hauling him upstairs and sacking him. this did not go down well. we adduced from the shouts of "fucking beetch" that he did not want to work his one month's notice.

he then stomped downstairs and up to the male director, to demand if the "fucking beetch" was telling the truth. assured that she was, he stormed out. we were all agog, as you can imagine.

about 6 hours later, i was signing up a new tenant at the counter, when i saw him weaving up to the shop door. clearly he had spent the past 6 hours in the pub. he was clutching a shitty little bunch of muddy daffodils that he had clearly nicked from the tiny village green next to the shop. the directors were all out, and we didn't know what to do. including the customers, we all watched open mouthed as he staggered in and weaved around the office, presenting these half-dead weeds to each of the girls with exaggerated courtesy. finally he turned to the second-in-command, who was very friendly with the "fucking beetch", and said in this chilling voice:

"and YOU. YOU do not get a flow-errr. because you are a fucking beetch as well!"

fortunately the team of plumbers/joiners turned up at that exact moment and persuaded him to leave. as we watched his reeking back disappear for the last time, the phone rang. i apologised again to my customer and picked it up. it's pretty common in that job to get angry phone calls - tenants blame you for everything from a leaking toilet to their own PMT. but this guy had good reason to shout.

"THIS IS MR SMITH OF 65 BLACK LANE. WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THAT FUCKING MARC TWAT TO COME BACK SINCE 10 O'CLOCK THIS MORNING...."

oops.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 9:23, 38 replies)

I have adduced that Marc was not the real problem.

( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 9:42, closed)

clearly it's his fault that the doppers in the office can't give him the right set of keys
despite this being essentially the only thing the lazy gobshites have to do all day
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:04, closed)

you have NO IDEA
we had about 500 sets of keys in the office. each stamped with a unique code. the system was perfect. provided that people stuck to it.

one careless person shoving them back on the wrong peg, one careless workman leaving them in his pocket, one careless tenant or landlord changing a lock without telling you... keys were the WORST bit of that job.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:16, closed)

you needed to keep track of five hundred things? oh the humanity!
how fucking retarded do you need to be to consider that the worst part of a job? it barely even qualifies as a job
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:42, closed)

you don't know, man
you weren't there.

what you couldn't keep track of was your COLLEAGUES. this is what would happen: viewing at 123 lapwing lane. you sign out the keys, you do the viewing, you put them back on the peg, you sign the keys back in.

then some other fecker takes them for a viewing, doesn't do any of the above, dumps them on the wrong peg/their desk/the side of the car/another property/up their grandmother's chuff.

you have no idea who has them, what they've done with them, but you're the last chump who visibly had them. so you get the blame. and your punishment is usually to stay in the key room sorting through 500 sets of keys until you find them. after a few occasions of getting the blame, people stopped signing them out at all.

the problem was the people. not the keys. people suck. i thought you knew that.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:54, closed)

right ... that's why you put simple systems in place to protect yourself from stupid people
it's still the fault of those with responsibility, not the dipshits they employ to do the menial work
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:00, closed)

so you're saying that the directors of a company should spend less time getting in new business and dealing with high end work
and more time checking what they are already paying people to do, which would need checking every single hour of every single day, when you frequently carry out in excess of 30 viewings/repairs per day? or that they should go around after every single inventory has been taken to check it?

sounds commercially sensible.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:08, closed)

no ... I'm saying the responsibility for inefficiency and incompetence lies with the people in charge not with the doppers they employ
not sure how you leaped from that fairly simple and uncontroversial idea to ... whatever it is you just said
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:18, closed)

he didn't get sacked because of the black lane keys, you muppetron. it was just bad timing that the director spotted him at that particular point in time
the guy was hopeless and he'd had about four warnings and numerous training sessions. like, how not to report a place as clean and tidy when it has three human turds behind the curtains and skidmarks on the back. so the people in charge decided he was never going to improve. and they made an efficient and competent decision to replace him.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:27, closed)

I'm sure that's all fascinating to somebody
no idea how it relates to what I said though ... soz
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:29, closed)

it's not my fault that you don't make sense

( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:36, closed)

I'm not the one who can't cope with a few sets of keys, pet

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:37, closed)

i would have said the same, until i did the job
colleagues misplacing them is only one bit of that merrygoround. the little bastards stick for no reason. they break in the lock. on one occasion, the doorknob fell off, and i was locked in a house with no electricity and 8 people viewing it.

don't judge a girl until you've walked around a one bedroom flat in her stilettos.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:39, closed)

hmmm, you given us all a lot to adduce here

( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:19, closed)

^ wants to wear stilettos ^

( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:23, closed)

I said I'm not judging the doppers doing the menial work
I'm judging the people in charge for not putting systems in place to stop the dopey cunts from doing stupid stuff like licking themselves in flats with inappropriate footwear.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:36, closed)

so you're saying that juniors should never be given any responsibility for their own actions?
way to go, mr motivator.

also, i never had to lick myself.

but two of my colleagues did fuck each other in the empty flats sometimes.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:41, closed)

pro tip here ... if you ever find yourself starting a sentence with something like 'so what you're saying is' then you should probably just stop typing
everything that follows will inevitably be a confused strawman bearing no relation to what the other person has said
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:57, closed)

pro?
what sort of pro? who would appoint you as pro of anything??
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:59, closed)

So, if you ARE going to lick yourself...
...make sure to wear the correct footwear!

Presumably, kinky boots.
(eViLegion Chief Commissioner of the Scottish Lunacy Board, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:50, closed)

If I ran a lettings agency, and found that my employees spent more time chasing after keys than they did matching tenants with properties,
I'd look at changing the key management system.
I'd like to think that I'd deal with incompetent staff more swiftly, too, although all that cocaine isn't going to snort itself, I suppose.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:53, closed)

to be fair ... the property market in the UK is so fucked up that even the witless morons running that shambles probably made enough money to buy a twee sports car and some mostly-amphetamine chav coke

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 12:58, closed)

this is lettings in south manchester
not sales in grosvenor square
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 13:02, closed)

this was a long time ago
they have some fancy computer system in place now that records who took them, i think. but any system is only as good as the people doing the day to day stuff. it only takes one fucktard to cause a headache.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 13:01, closed)

Probably using rfid system, makes sense - still got to go on the correct hook.

( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 20:03, closed)

I can see you are in a good mood today!
(maggied Riding the Gravy Train on, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 14:22, closed)

Not perfect then, really.
Otherwise it's the equivalent of saying that Beth Ditto is the perfect woman, asides from her face, hair, body, personality, etc.
( Muns, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:42, closed)

Scum, sub-human scum.
(Bum Bag Fashion Boy Burned a home made pizza on, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:36, closed)

so stinky marc is clearly not the villain in this story

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:03, closed)

he was lazy and drunk and totally shit at his job
but it later turned out that the fucking beetch had her hand in the till to a frankly unbelievable sum, so she was far far worse.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:17, closed)

you seem to be under some bizarre misapprehension that being lazy and drunk are bad qualities
and the people who are bad at their jobs are the ones with actual responsibility who failed to manage him or give him the right set of keys
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:44, closed)

you can't polish a turd, doc

( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:55, closed)

but you can roll it in glitter

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:01, closed)

No way to speak about my ex, you fucking bitch.

( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 10:08, closed)

bitch beetch
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Tue 3 Jun 2014, 11:57, closed)

I'd be more concerned about the person who interviewed Stinky Marc
and decided he was the right man for the job.

BTW how much for 123, Lapwing Lane?
( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Wed 4 Jun 2014, 9:43, closed)

Mr Smith of Black Lane.
He could have made something of that.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 4 Jun 2014, 10:18, closed)

well, I like this and I have clicked accordingly.
Worked in a letting agency briefly.

Keys + people = catastrophe.
( rofl harris, Wed 4 Jun 2014, 11:57, closed)