Oh how I hate procedure
If a job is worth doing it is worth doing, they say, it is worth doing well. And seeing as I get paid to do my job it is most definitely worth doing. Ok I think it adds very little value to life and makes some of our neighbours and customers either only superficially happy or utterly miserable, but that is beside the point.
If only I could be told what to do and left to get on with it. In retail (is it the same in management and other such office jobs?) there seems to be an inferiority complex that forces the employer to revel in precision of procedure and the minutiae of doing a task in a particular way. You must have a tray and a wet cloth on you when you replace dirty ashtrays. You must put a napkin beneath drinks being served in the daytime. You mustn’t hold a glass over the ice when you are filling it with drink. You must put two straws into cocktails, one bent and one straight. I mean WHO CARES? I wouldn’t mind if it was just the inevitable money hungry managers pushing me to do this stuff- the people who stake their careers on appearances and came up with the procedures in the first place but I actually work with people at the same dogsbody-loser level as me who bug me when I hold a glass too close to the top or over/underpour vodka by a fraction of a millilitre. It is driving me mad and it all serves to undermine the work you do and make you feel constantly under pressure to do things differently. The sense is that there is always something you are doing wrong and, therefore, always something else you should do. Your work is never done. If I ran a bar I would show people what needed to be done and leave the rest to common sense. If I need to collect some glasses from the floor I can do it without instructions thankyou very much!
As if to add insult to injury, the staff area (grotty underground cavern full of back copies of The Sun and other people’s rubbish) has aging PC-printed motivational messages like ‘the bar is your stage, go out and perform’ and ‘attitude: A little thing that makes a big difference’. Attitude is not a little thing by any measure. It defines your relationship with the rest of the world! The motivational poster/book/greeting card industry exists because there is a huge number of people whose lives are unutterably dull and boring. It is founded on lies and if there is anyone reading this who hates this vacuous crap as much as I do then I recommend you check out www.despair.com. The brilliant people there should at least restore some of your faith in the rest of human kind.
If a job is worth doing it is worth doing, they say, it is worth doing well. And seeing as I get paid to do my job it is most definitely worth doing. Ok I think it adds very little value to life and makes some of our neighbours and customers either only superficially happy or utterly miserable, but that is beside the point.
If only I could be told what to do and left to get on with it. In retail (is it the same in management and other such office jobs?) there seems to be an inferiority complex that forces the employer to revel in precision of procedure and the minutiae of doing a task in a particular way. You must have a tray and a wet cloth on you when you replace dirty ashtrays. You must put a napkin beneath drinks being served in the daytime. You mustn’t hold a glass over the ice when you are filling it with drink. You must put two straws into cocktails, one bent and one straight. I mean WHO CARES? I wouldn’t mind if it was just the inevitable money hungry managers pushing me to do this stuff- the people who stake their careers on appearances and came up with the procedures in the first place but I actually work with people at the same dogsbody-loser level as me who bug me when I hold a glass too close to the top or over/underpour vodka by a fraction of a millilitre. It is driving me mad and it all serves to undermine the work you do and make you feel constantly under pressure to do things differently. The sense is that there is always something you are doing wrong and, therefore, always something else you should do. Your work is never done. If I ran a bar I would show people what needed to be done and leave the rest to common sense. If I need to collect some glasses from the floor I can do it without instructions thankyou very much!
As if to add insult to injury, the staff area (grotty underground cavern full of back copies of The Sun and other people’s rubbish) has aging PC-printed motivational messages like ‘the bar is your stage, go out and perform’ and ‘attitude: A little thing that makes a big difference’. Attitude is not a little thing by any measure. It defines your relationship with the rest of the world! The motivational poster/book/greeting card industry exists because there is a huge number of people whose lives are unutterably dull and boring. It is founded on lies and if there is anyone reading this who hates this vacuous crap as much as I do then I recommend you check out www.despair.com. The brilliant people there should at least restore some of your faith in the rest of human kind.
posted by huwtube at 9:11 pm
1 Comments:
thanks for the link to despair, huw. it was fun and made me feel like less of a time-wasting reprobate (always a problem around my hyper-active parents).
As far as the job thing goes, I think that there's a slightly sinister flipside to what you describe. It seems to me to be in a company's interest to constantly criticise your performance - it grinds you down and stops you thinking that you're too good for stuff like this. It gives people on your level a chance to one-up you in the self-esteem or working-towards-the-supervisor stakes by highlighting your failures rather than their own. When I worked for BHS I can remember constantly being treated like dirt; it made me feel like I was bad at my job and it eventually destroyed what little happiness I had there. I left, and went to work for John Lewis - where they treated me much better. I don't think it's coincidental that they're a partnership in which every employee has an equal share of the company rather than a privately-owned, publicly-listed company.
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