When Animals Attack! Twice!
I'm, ahem, too fabulous to deserve a good sacking, clearly, but the people I work with....less so. However no one at my place seems to get sacked, even for gross misconduct. The worst that's ever happened were two guys who didn't get their contract after their probationary period, as to why.....well I just don't understand how managers work, which is probably why I'm not one. Oooooh, let's played sacked or not sacked.

First up, one of our data entry clerks, the most important part of his job was typing in a personal code used on forms that identified the person requesting payment. If the number was missing or illegible then his job became hugely complicated; he had to walk three yards, photocopy the form and pass it on to someone who would do the hard work and find out what the number should be! Yes, finding out what the number should have been used to be my job, but I'm not bitter, honest. Anyway, finding this a little too hard to manage he instead just got his biro out and changed the number until the system accepted it. Net result was thousands of pounds of tax payers money going to the wrong person and more money wasted on expensive adjustments to budgets when it was discovered. Sacked or not sacked? Why not sacked of course, he was made to sit on his own for a week. Yes, a 24 year old man was made to sit in the naughty corner, I can only presume he was threatened with a good smack if he misbehaved again. Also not sacked was a girl who I asked to file some records for me. When I later discovered them all shoved in the front of the filing cabinet she protested that 'the alphabet is too difficult so I couldn't put them in order'! It was at this time one of our managers informed me that apparently you can't sack people for being 'totally mongy', furthermore I was warned that was not an acceptable phrase to use about a collegue! I should have just spelled the word out, she wouldn't have had a clue.

Moving on, so at our work most people have to clock in and out and they're paid on these figures. One girl was discovered to be clocking in, walking straight out of the building and going home again and then coming back eight hours later to clock out thus getting paid for a full days work. Sacked? Of course not for fucks sake! Right, so let's try someone who was sacked (or 'didn't have their contract renewed', as my lawyers insist I should say), Stevey. Stevey was a lovely lad, just 17 who worked the evening shift. He was new and the gaggle of middle-aged women who had adopted him were quizzing him on his background. He was telling the story of how his parents met. Apparently they were both on holiday in Magaluf and riding on one of those big yellow inflatable banana type things pulled along by a speedboat. It hit a wave, everyone flew off and his Mum-to-be turned out not to be as strong a swimmer as she thought. Dad-to-be helped her back to the inflatable and it was love at first sight. Very sweet, but unfortunately summed up just as a manager walked past with the immortal line "So my parents met when they fell off the banana boat."! Stevey gets dragged into an office and warned about racist conduct, when the ladies he worked with backed up his story, the managers thought they were making things up to protect him. Result? Stevey stopped appearing at work shortly afterwards.

Better than that was Ern. Ern was another genuinely great guy from Nigeria who was over here getting a degree and the first of our animal attacks. Somehow a bat had found its way into the office and couldn't get out again. The middle aged women were cowering under a table screaming as it swooped around desperately trying to get out. One of our managers and Ern leapt into action and tried to corner it. After some Scooby Doo-esque chasing they finally herded it behind a filing cabinet. The manager picked up one of the lady's coats and, when it made it's break for freedom, gently smothered it and lay the coat covered bat down on the middle of the floor. As the ladies reappeared from under the tables the discussion about where to let it go or whether it should be left there while they called the RSPCA began. It was halted abruptly however as they heard a yell of delight from Ern who raced past them, jumped into the air and landed two footed on the bat coat with a scream of triumph and a dull crunch. In Nigeria, you see, bats are considered vermin and are treated as such. Ern turned round expecting to be congratulated to see everyone staring open-mouthed and one women, who was now the proud owner of a bat entrail smeared coat, burst into tears. The poor guy was absolutely distraught when he understood what he'd done but nevertheless the same manager who he helped capture the bat informed him his contract was not being renewed just a week or so later.

Incidentally, this was also the manager who a few months earlier had been heroically protecting the same ladies from a rogue wasp which had also got into the building. He ninja'd around after it with a can of bug spray and the first time it stopped he emptied pretty much the entire can at the wasp. Unfortunately the wasp had chosen to stop on a smoke detector and five minutes later three fire engines were outside and one very embarrassed manager was trying to explain. Yes, he's blatantly still there.

So, overall, I think the reason I should be fired and probably will be is because I'm not a gigantic fuck up! Well. Either that or my manager reads b3ta and I've just talked myself out of a job. Oh well.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Sat 11 Aug 2007, 10:36, Reply)