Dear Blogette,
It has been quite a little while, hasn't it? Well, when I started this blog, I never promised you a rose garden or regularity - that's something that work requires too much of me already, so there just isn't that much left to give anymore at the end of the day.
Since I last wrote here, much has happened.
My escape plan to return to Germany to take over a Brit-pub from friends there collapsed largely because the two friends involved (while being nice people who are involved in a bitter, sadly failing marriage) are just too flaky to deal with. They just could not fathom the fact that (at now 54 years of age) the Baron is no longer willing or able to completely uproot himself, sell up and move somewhere on someone else's mere say-so. When I asked for a contract, along with the second stumbling-block, a contract from the people from whom the pub leases its space, the proverbial walls came tumbling down.
There was much inaction and many empty promises and reassurances were proffered and dispatched by e-mail and on FaceBook. There was a lot of back and forth with the old coots who own the building. They apparently felt that ignoring my two friends' utterances informing them of their decision to soon close the pub down because of their marital problems and suggesting to them that I would be the best choice as a qualified successor were nonsense; simply ignoring made things even worse with totally unreasonable demands such as insisting that I should just "fly up" for a day or two so they could meet me in person, etc. The fact that "just hopping up" anywhere from South Africa involves at least a 20 hour plane trip and costs money apparently was of no concern... Instead offering them a video conference on Skype only elicited responses claiming something like Skype could not possibly exist and was akin to witchcraft, possibly even voo-doo itself.
Of course my two friends, the pub owners, didn't really help much either with their continued inaction and hemming and hawing and not being able to come to terms or even giving the old coots written notice, as they should have, since Germans believe nothing that is not in writing. (This, despite the fact that one of the best German proverbs is "Paper is patient"!)
So, sadly, I gave up on the whole affair and rather bitterly faced up to the fact that for the time being at least, I remain a prisoner of Zenda and must come to terms with that at my own pace.
In the meantime, I've been working on rebuilding and starting anew. It is obvious that at in my present position I will eventually either suffer a work-induced stroke or heart-attack. The stress levels we are subjected to by uncaring, inept management are so high that they could prove a serious health risk not just for me, but also for most of my coworkers as well. It's amazing to watch as our employer blithely carries on changing what was at the outset a very nice and enjoyable place to work into a near-concentration camp environment.
All the obvious jokes about my being German and my employer being a German company aside, it truly is disheartening. Whether the "improvements" and changes being implemented are truly occurring at the behest of our German parent corporation (unlikely) or are caused by the fact that local management is inept, bumbling and truly ill-equipped to handle a company that has basically outgrown them I cannot say with any certainty. No matter - in any event I need to do something drastic in order to save my own sanity.
Local management seems to be dead set on pouring oil on the blaze by each week coming up with new silliness designed merely to chastise and harass us all. Allow me to recount some of them here... we have several co-workers who make many long personal calls during work. At some jobs that would not be a big issue, but since our work is done half by telephone, it interferes and can lead to safety errors and distractions which could cost the company a lot of money and business. Instead of approaching the two or three cases (they are obvious o the rest of us), the company resorts to draconian threats and drastic measures being put on record, but then enforcing them in an entirely amateurish, uneven manner that would make an interesting case for a claim of job discrimination in court.
Another new "measure" has been making us stay until the very end of our shifts. Each shift overlaps with the next by 30 minutes in order to make a smooth shift change possible. The afternoon-evening shift, however, usually does not need the overlap, as those working it usually have closed their entire table of work before leaving. In the past, if you had one or two assignments that were finished but merely awaiting the final closing status (which comes from abroad and usually happens within a short period after you send out your closing notice here), you were free to go. Sometimes, this meant you might be able to leave as early as 20 minutes before the actual end of your shift, a nice little bonus after a very severe, stressful and long day. Recently, however, management decided that this practice was to be done away with and we would now have to sit at our desks, virtually twiddling our thumbs, until the close struck the hour. If we wished to leave early, we would have to ask permission and use comp time.
Now perhaps the mother ship in Germany truly had said the company was paying out too much comp time, as one coworker suggested, but in actual fact, that is highly unlikely. The new measure is merely another form of "tightening control" and making work grueling and unpleasant, which seems to be management's forte.
At one point, a new rule was put on the books that we were all to notify the shift manager each and every time we needed to go off the floor. The reason behind this was simple - often people duck out to smoke or for a bathroom break and shift managers complained that they could not find them during those times. Also, the smokers were taking gross advantage of the non-smokers by going to smoke in cliques or little gangs, leaving one of us non-smokers behind to watch not one, but often three or four other desks in their absence.
None of this was a problem when we were still allowed to smoke in the building's atrium which adjoins the floor - we could see our own phones or colleagues would signal and we could duck back in and take a call. Sadly, in a desperate effort to keep up with first-world countries, Cape Town went ahead and passed a law similar to those found in the U.S. and much of the EU forbidding smoking just about everywhere. This, for some reason, was also found to include our open-to-the-elements atrium. Instead of our illustrious employer possibly launching a legal inquiry as to whether the ban could possibly be held to include a private space open to the elements, the inclusion was just accepted as fact. And instead of our employer
doing what most employers in the fatherland do - set up smoking cabins which allow you to stand in the same room as co-workers with no smoke escaping or bothering anyone else - they did nothing except forbid smoking in the building and force needing to light up to make the decision to either quit smoking altogether (as I did) or to have to duck out, take a lift down nine stories and smoke outside.
Now, dear blogette, the building has five lifts, so you would think this would be easy, but usually at least two or three of the lifts is off, broken or not running for some reason, so often a simple excursion to the ground level and thus the street can turn into a 15-minute affair. When this became commonplace, a number of coworkers began to feel taken advantage of and voiced protests against abuse of our friendliness. Some of my smoking colleagues really did take advantage by going out for more than 10 or 12 smoking breaks in a single shift, which amounts to a genuinely large chunk of time lost and stress placed on others who were already enduring sufficient strain without the added burden of covering for smoking coworkers.
The situation came to a head when a number of non-smoking coworkers voiced their disapproval of the smokers' behavior. And, in typical fashion, instead of investigating, observing, consulting and coming up with a sensible solution for all - say, maybe entitling smokers to two breaks per 8-hour shift and then giving the other workers the same - the answer was "no more breaks without first asking permission and notifying the manager on duty."
That idea lasted less than a week as the managers themselves were among the smokers, and they didn't like the fact that the way the new rule was worded, it meant that employees literally would have had to inundate them with constant interruptions in order just to go to the bathroom, or even to walk to the cafeteria to get a quick cup of coffee. So the result was swift non-enforcement.
Nonetheless, these rules stay on the books and are then cited when convenient in a most uneven-handed way, largely to intimidate those who, in management's eyes, are "trouble makers" or those who have incurred the wrath of management in some other way.
Sadly, I too, have experience the poor management first-hand. Recently, the Baronial Chariot, a 1990 Nissan Sentra (considered cutting edge technology here in Zenda) blew its head-gasket and needed repairs (which, in turn required a massive cash-injection). While said vehicle was laid up, I still needed to work.
Anyone who knows the miserable state of public transportation here in Cape Town will tell you, I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Our company's shifts, designed to meet the needs of the business in Germany, begin at 5 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. respectively, although those times are adjusted during the homeland's "summer schedule" to 6 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. While when on the latter summer time table one can actually get to work from where I live and back home again using the creaking, ancient Metro Rail system, none of the late shifts work as the trains stop running at 8 p.m. and our shifts don't end until 10 p.m. or later.
In all of my past employment history, an employer who was told of my predicament (only able to work first shift, and then only beginning late as the train cannot chug the 30 miles into town in under 45 minutes, plus 10 minutes needed to walk to work from the station in town), most employers have been accommodating. Whether arranging a special shift proactively or arranging a car pool (that would have been harder, I'm the only one living where I do) or finding some other way to get me to work - they would have cared and offered to help. Doesn't matter if we are talking about European or American employers - it would have happened.
Here, it was much more fun. The first two days, one of the shift managers was nice enough to cover for me. On the third day, I received a terse write-up. No mention of the fact that the train got me to work 45 minutes after shift start, or that I had called to inform them of that fact. No mention of the fact that the circumstances were unusual... just "Baron was 45 minutes late work work on..." I was galled, but good. And further adding to that gall was the fact that two other co-workers were also late that morning. One, who incidentally also happens to be one of the biggest "I make personal calls all day long" offenders, was 30 minutes late. He had recently lost his car in a spectacular accident he was lucky to walk away from and also was taking the train to work. Another, a new woman co-worker, was 35 minutes late and reportedly offered no excuse at all. Never mind those details though - neither of them received a write-up. Just Baron. Lucky me!
Naturally I felt unfairly treated. After going around and making a number of inquiries, I found coworkers willing to help. Two of the ladies doing scheduling assisted by arranging a work roster which simply began 45 minutes later than usual, and the other arranged for me to use comp time for those 45 minutes as long as the car was in the shop. Problem solved.
But where was management in all of this? Ah, dear Blogette... I'll quit whining and moaning now. Just this final observation - proactive, caring, motivating and engaged are all unknown bon-mots when it comes to many an employer here in Zenda, but especially when applied to mine.
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