h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Once upon a time, there were two companies. Let's call them A & B. No, better: let's call them Chas & Dave.

The hero of our story, let's call him Dr E Vibenstein, was employed by ChasCo Ltd, owners of a range of call centres and data processing centres. ChasCo had a contract to process credit card applications on behalf of The Dave Corporation, a medium-sized financial institution. ChasCo received the forms and entered the information into computers; the computers decided who would get the cards; and DaveCorp took care of the tedious financial stuff. Simple enough so far.

Now then. As part of the meticulously-negotiated contract between ChasCo and DaveCorp, DaveCorp's so-called Quality Control department checked a specified percentage of all the applications processed by ChasCo each week. If the amount of errors in these applications was found to be higher than that agreed in the contract, DaveCorp was allowed to take back some of the money they should be paying ChasCo for processing the applications. And this was all reasonably well and good, until the day that the amount of errors DaveCorp had been finding began to rise. Spectacularly.

The initial effect of this increase was for A Very Important Boss Person at ChasCo to turn various shades of purple, and demand that we work harder, faster and more accurately, all at the same time. This was met with much wailing, gnashing of teeth and obscene hand gestures from the employees, who complained bitterly that we were working as hard, fast and accurately as humanly possible, and that it wasn't fair and nobody loved us and we wished we were dead, that would show them.

And so it went on, for several weeks, with stress levels and the error rate still rising exponentially, and the workforce of ChasCo complaining that they were working themselves into the ground, that DaveCorp must be cheating, and that the Very Important Boss Person could get it right up him.

Then, with tempers flaring and the threat of a dirty protest hanging in the air, the employees of ChasCo were called to a secret meeting. At this meeting, the Very Important Boss Person explained that the error rate was unfeasibly high compared to previous error rates based on similar figures and all sorts of technical and financial jargon, which had led him to the conclusion that ChasCo was being royally shafted by DaveCorp.

However, before the employees could laugh and point and say "We told you so," the Very Important Boss Person announced that ChasCo had, therefore, told DaveCorp that they didn't want their contract anymore, and that ChasCo had lots of other offers on the table, and DaveCorp could jolly well go and get someone else to do their silly credit cards.

And with that, all was once again well with the employees of ChasCo, and they could smile and laugh and process applications in relative peace, until they suddenly realised that they had no idea what they would be doing once the DaveCorp contract ran out in August.

Oh EV

The daSilva response before things get anywhere this far is to

I call it "Guerillla Workfare" - He who works and s away lives to work another day

I sometimes wonder what I'd write journal entries about if I wasn't working where I am now.

If I did that and I got found out I'd have got shafted...


...but...


...I'm not a number, I'm a free man!

Sounds like you want to take the above advice mate. Still, at least ChasCo had the decency to say it wasn't their employee's fault.

Not at my old place!!!

The lack of communication is nearly always at fault and the worker was the one who always got it in the neck (I wont go into too much detail as there are still poor unfortunate victims there but put it like this - of the last 6 people to leave only one had a full time job to go to, one part-time, the rest nothing...my replacement started yesterday, finished yesterday too - only lasted 6 hours!)

A full six hours? Masochist!

Quoting the "bad vibe" in the place

So that's 6 people to leave, no, 7 in the last year to leave, only one with a full-time job to go to, one part-time

(Note there's only 17 in the company, including the part-time accounts person - Ok, so new people have joined and stayed for a bit at least bit if everyone new in the last 3 years had stayed, we'd be getting toward 40 by now and the attrition rate's accelerating)

I'm surprised we don't have more leavers, actually. When I worked for A Large Multinational Computer Firm (TM) there was a time when we had a leaving do every Friday. We used to walk around the office whistling "Ghost Town" and see if anyone would notice.

Well, an average of one coward a month for 2003 for such a small firm and bless him the guy running the show doesn't realise, aaaaw, bless

Like I said, 2 David Brent's in a company that size, ooooh, noooooo

Then again, once you've worked for National Rail Enquiries, everything else pales into insignificance.

Fortunately I think my lack of health would forbid me

As a wise man once said, "When a man is tired of working for NRES he has answered more than three calls."

I think I'd be reaching for the pills after one!

Freelance, anybody?

A freelance pill-popper? Not sure there's much call for it around here.

Maybe I could get sponshorship? A grant, perhaps?

Maybe if you send a quick speculative letter around the major pharmaceutical companies. You never know...

There's always that place that screwed up my suppositories making me relapse last year

I think we're straying into the "Too Much Information" area here.

When you have a condition like mine, you either let it take over or show it who's boss and take it with you