Newscast and people were heavily amazed
Recently there was a report in the news about how much 'free' overtime UK workers, um... work. The average is 7 hours a week of unpaid overtime. Which the BBC worked out to be close to £23billion of lost wages. (I love random numbers like this)The bit went on to say how France is 20% more productive than the UK. And this got me really thinking. It got me thinking about a lot of things actually. First of all, I'm assuming that they calculate productivity based on hours worked and GNP by individual? Or something like that. Stats are all made up anyway. But the productivity thing got me ranting about lazy UK workers. Now before you email me ranting, I'm not saying every UK worker is lazy. I've worked with some bloody hard workers since I've been over here. But I've also worked with some of the most slack arsed, slopped shoulder, work shy sharlatans I've ever met... since I've been over here.
A good example of this is the plumber I once had come to my house to fix a broken boiler. He spent an hour just looking at the boiler and not actually doing anything. I know it was a rented house and he wasn't wasting my £80/hour, but its still not right.
But more importantly, and much closer to home, is not only my boss... but also the manager that I share an office with. My department have been asked to look into re-wiring one of the buildings on site. I've had the contractor in to give us a quote for the physical work, and knowing that we require 3 or 4 new network switches to cope with the increase wiring... I had a chat with the other manager, as he is responsible for networking on site. The project has a start date of Feb 23rd, with a completion date of mid April. When I told him that we would need 3 or 4 network switches to cope with the increase user capacity... he told me it was impossible to achieve in 4 months. Why? Because he didn't feel his team could fit it in with everything else they are doing.
Now I fully admit that I don't do a whole lot on a day to day basis, but when things need to get done, they bloody well get done. and done fast. because that's the nature of the business, we put out fires. And most fires need to be put out fast. The other manager on the other hand, just doesn't do anything quickly. And if he can slope the shoulders to someone else who won't do anything either... he will. So I've had to go back to the project manager and tell him that this guy is just lazy and won't allow the project to go ahead. That's right, won't allow it to go ahead. Rather than say he will try and make it work, he just won't do it at all. Unless the time line he gives is met (6 months) he won't do it at all.
How frustrating is that? But more importantly, how anti-productive is that? Unfortunately, he is like so many other people in this company - and like a few people I've worked with in the past. But don't worry, this is not dig at anyone who would be reading this. :)
Title: Public Enemy - More News at 11 from Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black - 1991
posted by Wally @ 8:58 am
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