03 August 2007

Workin' in the Coal Mine

Apologies all for the dearth of posting lately — the blame lies squarely with my work.

Over the past few months, out of a department of eleven people, four have left or changed positions and none of them have been replaced due to budget concerns (which seems strange when said company has billions of dollars in profits, but ours is not to question the logic of the corporate gods). So this fourty percent reduction in staff has meant that the summer, usually a slow season with clients and brokers on vacation, has been rather busy.

Then added on top of that has been the fact that the supervisor has allowed people to take overlapping vacations, so we have even fewer people to do what needs to be done. It's basically call after call after call, without break, for the entire day. Awful! Today and tomorrow, there were only four people in the whole department!

And worse then trying to get stuff done for your previous call while you're on the phone with the subsequent caller and working like a crazy person, is the fact that the supervisor is giving us a hard time about how the stats are bad and we're not meeting our service standards, and we really have to pay attention to how much time we spend on each call, and blah, blah, blah. I just want to scream "That has nothing to do with us! It isn't possible to meet the service standards without enough employees! And even more imposible when the employees we do have are all on vacation at the same time!" (And maybe I want to yell some other things at her too).

I will be so happy to leave there aren't even words.

5 comments:

Miss Ash said...

I feel your pain. My agency is super small, but they have a tendency to allow overlapping vacations as well some workers are offsite at various times throughout the week. It's impossible to leave for even 30 mins if there are only two of us.

When is your last day???

Tokyo Tintin said...

Last day is September 7th. Can't come quickly enough really. (Although at the same time I am super-freaked about moving).

Yikes! It seems so soon and yet still so unreal.

Anonymous said...

Europe beckons!

Jennifer said...

I feel your pain too, my work area is down by 60%, we're trying to replace, but the problem is that doing job interviews are taking us down even further in staff. Resultantly when I pointed out to me boss that if I got injured playing rollerderby, I might be sick next week, my boss threatened to kill me if I got hurt and couldn't come into work next week. She had a murderous look in her eye too.

Michael Motor-Cyclorama said...

A one month count down. So great! You'll be enjoying the tanines of red wine, eating baguettes, smoking and strolling down the rue soon enough. HOORAY!!!