Nightmare on Nutley Lane
I have been having a bit of bother with the old sleep lately.
And when I do eventually grab an hour or two, I invariably have vivid dreams that I am back working in RTE.
Maybe nightmares would be the right word?
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed my job and the people I worked with were in the main a very decent bunch of people.
There were two things I hated about working there. I hated the fucking traffic every morning and evening – sitting staring at the rear of the car in front of me for an hour or two is not my idea of fun – and above all, I hated the managers.
When I first joined the place back in ‘72 [or was it ‘71?] it was a brilliant place to work. There was a relaxed family atmosphere and everyone worked their arses off because we were proud of what we did. To give an idea of what it was like, when I did my final interview for the job, I shook hands with the manager who had just confirmed that I was in, and then I remembered I hadn’t asked a fairly important question – what time did I start in the morning? He replied that I officially started at a quarter past nine, but that if I rolled in any time after that I would find the lads from the department having breakfast in the canteen.
For a few years, that was the way it was. They didn’t really care what time we started or finished, provided we got the job done. And not only did we get the job done but we never knocked off until it was done. We were happy to work our balls off and we took pride in our work.
Then the accountants and the bureaucrats moved in.
Overnight the place changed. We had to sign in and if we were a minute or two late we were hauled over the coals. They started doing time and motion studies on us, and cost analysis on our work. They stopped worrying about the standard of our work provided we were cost efficient and turned up on time.
Fuck that.
It became worse over the years. If an urgent job needed doing, we no longer could go to the engineers to requisition vital equipment; we had to go to the accountants where everything had to be countersigned and copied in triplicate. If they whinged about budgets, then the job didn’t get done. It was more important to balance the books than to keep things working. Needless to say, we lost interest in our work. We no longer worked beyond half five because if they wanted to play silly-buggers over timekeeping then so would we.
By the time I left, it was a soulless place. Everything was run by the book. Staff would spend more time at meetings than at the desk. There were policy meetings. There were progress meetings. There were meetings where we had to endure endless Powerpoint presentations on workflow or some such shit. I fucking hated those meetings with a vengeance, but management’s eyes would light up at the very mention of one, and regularly we would be ordered to down tools to attend yet another pointless meeting.
So now you know why I wake in a cold sweat these days.
I could take the work all right.
I would enjoy being back with my old colleagues.
I could nearly, almost, possibly tolerate the rush-hour traffic jams.
But those fucking bureaucrats and their fucking endless, pointless meetings.
No fucking way.
Speaking separately with two public servants recently on the issue of swipe card recording arrival time, it is not unknown for some to swipe card and then drop child to creche or start having breakfast at a worktable and discuss the match or whatever from the night before. Fifteen or twenty minutes could pass before an item of work is executed.
Since any shortfall in hours/minutes worked is noted and may be brought to a meeting, there is a resentment in some now to work any additional hours which would have been worked to get the job done previously.
I think it is akin to nut and sledgehammer. Yes there were some who were abusing the system but to be seen to be fair, someone decided to enforce the swipe on all. It was probably perceived to be above board and same to all.
If management were able to manage their staff and take any abusers of the time system to task, then those who had willingly worked additional time to ensure task was completed would still provide those additional minutes to the organisation.
A Lose-Lose situation
As for the other item of hate, there is graffiti written on Cork to Waterford road on a wall at the Little Island exit that appears to have been written with you in mind:
Don't complain about the traffic when you are the traffic
Yup! They introduced swipe-cards too. I suppose there was a reason as security needed to be tight [national broadcaster and all that crap]. We were suspicious that the cards were being used to monitor our movements so I devised a wee scam. There were two entrances to the upstairs TV Building – the main door required a swipe card but there was another little-used door through the News Room. I used to go in one door and out the other, so I would have ben recorded as having entered the TV Building several times, but never leaving. Heh!
As for the traffic – I'm not blaming the other cars so much as an appalling system of lghts where you have to stop on a red light every couple of hundred yards. During the rush hour it could take fifteen minutes just to get through a mile or so of lights.
They never got the traffic lights synchronized on the way into town.
I used to work in Adelaide road for a few years and I hated the commute.
There will be a meeting tomorrow at 0845 to decide on the framework to use to determining the scheduling of the meeting to discuss the issue.
Sounds like you used to work in RTE?
They have traffic in Ireland ?
The odd donkey or sheep can cause a bit of a disruption.
I had the exact same experience. Started with a great Company – the sales team brought home the bacon in spades and we were called the “Assets”. As the big money continued to pour in, sales targets were blown and the Company grew, the fancy accountants were hired. I remember visiting customers on Sundays as well as every other day, but when the accountants wanted me to clock in at 9.00am, I stopped turning up at 7.30am instead. At 5.30pm used to set out my work for the evening as an asset, but as a “Cost Centre”, I fucked off bang on 5.30pm.
When the cost centres as changed to “Human Resources” as opposed to “Physical Resources” such as desks and chairs, I resigned, and was soon back into another outfit that saw me as an asset. Funny though, it was great to get back to real asset work with the satisfaction of getting the job done and the pride in doing it well.
SNAP !
One of the main problems with the modern world is the proliferation of accountants and bureaucrats. There are far too many chiefs for the number of indians in the workplace. Just look at the likes of the HSE, or indeed any Civil Services office. They tend to see the world in terms of spreadsheets and pie-charts and haven't a fucking clue how things actually work.