I went to visit my Mum and Dad on Saturday morning. They were sitting in the kitchen with my brother, who’d hand-delivered their wedding invitation.
“Here’s yours, Sis,” he said, proudly passing me a brown office-style envelope. “We’re having to keep costs down so Kirsty nicked the envelopes from work. And the cards too, actually.”
I opened mine up. The date on the invitation was the end of October close to Halloween with the service at 1 pm at the Registry Office, followed by a reception at The George pub. Is it really going ahead then?
“What’s this bloody thing?” asked my Dad holding up a slip of paper. “We’ve got to get you bleeding Argos vouchers? I’ve never been to Argos in my life, I don’t even know where it is.”
“It’s in Italy isn’t it?” said my mother. We all looked at her.
“That’s alright, Dad,” said Stu, as if my mother hadn’t spoken, “that’s just if people want to buy us a present. We thought we’d get some new furniture for the house, so it’s nice when Kirsty moves in...” His voice trailed off and he looked a bit sad, as if he was just starting to realise that his much-loved bachelor lifestyle was coming to an end.
“Won’t she be bringing lots of her own stuff with her?” I asked. Like her daughter, for example?
“Yeah some, but we thought it would be nice to have stuff of our own, you know - too many memories attached to other things.” He tailed off again. My father caught my eye and shook his head.
The kitchen was filling up with steam. Mum had put the kettle on to boil but seemed to have forgotten about it.
“I’ll make the tea,” I said, taking the kettle off the stove. “Got any biscuits Mum?”
“Oh yes,” she said, “they’re in the greenhouse. I’ll go and get them.” She went out into the back garden. I looked at my Dad and then at my brother.
“Dad, you really ought to get her to see a doctor,” I said. “She’s not right. You must see that.”
“Oh, she’s fine,” grumbled my Dad, “Just getting older. We both are.”
“She does seem a bit confused, Dad,” said Stu. “Perhaps you ought to get her looked at.”
“Get her looked at? She’s not a bloody car! I can’t just lift up her bloody bonnet! She’s fine, don’t make a fuss.”
He wouldn’t listen. Mum came back in and picked up the wedding invitation.
“Oh, what’s this?” she asked in surprise. I made the tea and Stu told her about the wedding - again.
Sunday
I had an argument with the Husband which started with me complaining about a dirty sock he’d left on the bedroom floor - why couldn’t you just pick it up, you’ve obviously picked up the other one, why did you leave one lying there, why? I know you’ve seen it, you’ve walked over it five times - and culminated in him listing my many failings as a wife, which took a worryingly significant amount of time to reel off. He then stormed out of the house and slammed the front door, only to reappear, embarrassed, at the back door as he didn’t have his car keys or wallet.
Oh dear. What a total over-reaction. Could it be his hormones? Did men suffer at certain times of the month too?
I didn’t know where he’d gone or what time he’d be back, but he was currently keeping an eye on his boss’s house whilst he was working abroad so I guessed he may have taken refuge there. I took advantage of the peace and quiet and fetched the Sunday papers. I came across another article on Perypils in the finance pages.
Headline: Perypils: The Unacceptable Face of Insurance.
There was a picture of an unsmiling Big Cheese beneath the headline. The story had been written by a “whistle blower”. This was a former member of staff, who no doubt had become “former” for a very good reason, and had gone blabbing to the press about the unacceptable standards at Perypils. They were accusing the company of failing to train its staff properly, and had sent the paper a 68 page Perypils training guide which they referred to as “meaningless, out of date gobbledygook”. The writer said the team managers were lazy and incompetent and the senior management team were only interested in sleeping with each other, and boasting about how much they’d drunk the night before. There was a small picture of the Perypils head office building next to a larger picture of a glass of red wine. The caption read: “Life is a Cabernet”.
The writer said the failure of the company to train its staff properly meant that the standards of customer service were extremely poor, and that the quality and competency scores were always very low - but none of the management team cared. The writer said that reams of management information is produced each month that no one ever looks at, and the managers just twisted the statistics into showing anything they wanted them to show. It was only a matter of time before the Financial Services authorities swooped on Perypils and closed the company down.
Although the writer had been kept anonymous, they had complained in the article that the company did not offer a Welsh-speaking service to its customers, so I assumed they had been employed at the Bridgend office. I wouldn’t like to be working there on Monday morning.
A new working week and I was on tenterhooks, waiting to hear about the outcome of the interview. Every time my phone or mobile rang my heart started to race and I’d brace myself for news. When I’d arrived at work in the morning The Snake had presented me with a copy of Sunday’s newspaper article, which she’d photocopied from the paper.
“I just thought you ought to see this,” she hissed, her eyes glinting. “Everyone’s talking about it this morning.” I wondered how many copies she’d made. Not many of my team seemed to read or take any interest in the financial press, so if they were all talking about it, somebody must be encouraging them to do so.
“I thought it would have upset you Cynthia,” I said, “you know, the bit about the incompetent and lazy team managers.”
“Well some of them are, aren’t they?” she replied, seeming to forget she was a team manager herself. “The writer was only stating what they experienced. What do you think’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said but I’ve no doubt the communications team will manage to spin it into a really good thing. “But I do know if your team don’t start to answer some of those calls that are queuing they are going to have something in common with the writer - they’re all going to become former employees.”
I was starting to sound like The Big Cheese. She slithered off, back through the long grass. Hopefully someone morbidly obese would tread on her.
It was all quiet from the communications team throughout the morning, and then at lunchtime, everyone received an email message from The Big Cheese himself. He denounced the article in the Sunday press as being “a shameful pack of lies from a deluded and bitter ex-employee who couldn’t personally meet the extremely high standards we set ourselves at Perypils.” He said the company’s lawyers were considering taking legal action against the paper. There was then a huge load of gushing blurb about our wonderful customer service standards, our world class employee training schemes and our exceptional expert analysis of management information to continually strive to exceed and out perform our competitors. It made me wonder who really was the deluded one.
I received an email from Brett the Boss. It read:
To All.
I have just been in a telecon with our Chief Exec. His directive is that every site’s Quality and Competency figures must be at 95% by month end, and all sites must constantly remain above 95%. He stated that failure to achieve this target is “career threatening”.
I hope that’s clear enough for everyone. If you have any problems give me a call, I’m always here for support.
Brett
Bloody hell, 95%? There was no way was I going to achieve that. Last month my department had scored 73%. This was because I had a number of new colleagues and it takes them a while to get fully up to speed. This month, I was on for a score of 79%, which was a good improvement and I felt really pleased with the progress. It was probably going to take the
best part of six months before I was at 95%, and that was assuming I didn’t get too many leavers. I phoned The Boss. He answered, sounded harassed and said he couldn’t talk, could I email him? Always there for support...
I emailed:
Brett
I’m afraid I’m going to struggle to get my Q&C score to 95% for a number of months as I have a high proportion of new starters. I am currently on 79% month to date, which is a 6% increase on last month’s score, so we are making excellent progress. Happy to discuss.
Kate
I pressed send. Thirty seconds later he called me.
“Kate,” he said, sounding panicky, “you have to achieve 95% this month. Kevin has made it very clear that it’s not optional. If you don’t, you and me are going to be out on our fucking arses!”
“But Brett, I’m nowhere near 95%,” I protested. “And I wouldn’t expect to be with lots of new starters - no one would expect to be. It takes time and experience to achieve consistently high Q&C results-”
He cut me short. “It doesn’t matter how you achieve it Kate, but it’s an absolute no-brainer. You need to be at 95% by month end. End of.”
There was an uneasy silence as I considered my next move.
“I just don’t see how I can achieve it Brett, it’s not possible. The only way would be by manipulating the quality sample by removing all the new guys and the numpties from the sampling, but we’re not supposed to do that as it doesn’t reflect the true customer experience and breaches the competency regulations.”
“Do it,” said Brett. “Do whatever you have to, but for fuck sake hit 95%.”
“I feel really uncomfortable about this, Brett,” I said unhappily, “it’s just not right, and no one in their right mind is going to believe I’ve gone from 73% to 95% in the space of one month.”
He cut me off again. “Just do it Kate,” he said. “It’s what everyone else is doing. Just fucking do it.” Oh God, this had to be a joke. I stayed until very late, waiting for everyone to go home before I started messing around with the quality sampling figures. When I’d taken out all the new starters and the Muppets whose quality was always poor, the score was still only 89%. Either I was going to have to enter a completely false score or I was going to have to get the team managers to only enter scores for calls that they knew would score very highly. Month end was approaching, so we’d have to get a move on. What would the team managers say when I tell them what we’ve got to do? Wasn’t I always preaching to them about being open and honest and acting with integrity? I couldn’t think how I was going to put a positive spin on this one.
I found it very difficult to get to sleep that night. I lay awake, tossing and turning, going over things in my mind. What if I got caught - I’d put colleagues on disciplinaries for falsifying their figures. What would happen to me? These figures got reported to the financial regulators; if they were found to be deliberately fudged I’d be thrown to the wolves. And saying “My boss told me to do it” just wasn’t going to wash. I’d lose my job, I’d never get another one as my references would say I’d been dismissed for “gross misconduct”, which any prospective employer would interpret as “she’s a dirty little thief, don’t touch her with a barge pole.” We’d struggle to meet our mortgage payments and would have to move in with my parents, where we’d be forced to watch the Antiques Roadshow, eat corned beef and drink wine measured out from a thimble.
Brett’s words swam around my head “It’s what everyone else is doing.” Why is everyone faking their figures? Where is the benefit to the company of pretending we’re offering our customer’s a better quality of service then we actually are? 95% isn’t the real experience - 79% is. No wonder Perypils was in such a mess, pretending all was rosy, not bothering to get underneath what was going wrong and put it right. Were they really that short-sighted? So many questions were whirling around in my head but I kept coming back to the same one - what was I doing still working for Perypils? I must be mad - perhaps I was mad; perhaps I was actually clinically insane. How would I know? I got up and found an insanity test on the Internet. There were 100 questions, with your answers rated to show just how close you were to sticking pencils up your nose. I’d answered 93 of the questions before my suspicions about the authenticity of the test were aroused.
Question 93: Have you ever tried to fly?
Question 94: Did you die as a result?
I read on. Question 95: When talking to someone with the same name as you, do you sometimes get confused as to which one you are?
Question 96 clinched it: I’d been had. Do you understand the deeper meaning of Dannii Minogue records?
At work the next morning, I still hadn’t decided how I would approach my team managers - I couldn’t work out how to ‘sell’ the fact that we were going to fake our figures, so instead I confided in The Rock and told her the truth. She was really quite shocked, but quickly recovered herself and said in her usual manner: “I’d better go and find some 100% calls to listen to” and off she went to do just that. By the end of the day, she’d found enough to bring the score (the faked score) up to 93%, and we had another couple of days before month end so we should just about make it if she kept this up.
I was just preparing to go to a meeting with the other managers about resource requirements (what else?) when I noticed an email in my inbox from Eunice Jones. It was entitled: Strategic Sales Manager position. I opened it up.
To Kate.
Thank you for your interest in the above role. Unfortunately, on this occasion, your application has not been successful. I wish you all the best for the future.
Kind regards, Eunice.
I stared at it in disbelief. I couldn’t believe they’d sent me an email! They couldn’t even be bothered to pick up the phone to tell me. That’s disgraceful. Surely it would be common courtesy to call the candidates? How would they know I’d look at my emails today? I might not have even seen it for a couple of days, and by then I might have discovered the outcome from another source. Cowardly bastards. After all that time spent on the application and the interview preparation, I’d lost at least ten evenings and two weekends from my life. And they couldn’t even be bothered to call. Is that how Perypils really treats its managers? It was just appalling.
I picked up the phone to call Eunice to protest, but stopped: it would sound like sour grapes because I hadn’t got the job. I thought about complaining to Brett the Boss, but what was the point really? He wouldn’t be interested. The wave of anger passed, and I sat slumped at my desk, disconsolate and trying to come to terms with my failure. Big Andy bounded over, coming to collect me, as I was late for the meeting.
“Come on Kate-Skate,” he boomed. “Get your arse in gear.” He saw my long face. “What’s up?” I told him what had happened. He didn’t know I’d applied for another job as I hadn’t told any of the others about the interview. I hadn’t wanted Cruella to find out and think I was running scared. Which I was.
“Bloody hell Kate, what the heck did you apply for that one for? Everyone knows that Lisa Hewitt was getting that job. The interviews were just a formality.”
I stared at him.
“What, Lisa the big-busted weasley-featured project manager, that Brett was, well er, you know-”
“Yes that’s the one! Brett promised her that role when he, well um, when things went a bit pear-shaped between them. She was always going to get it.”
“Why was it advertised then?” I wailed. “Why let others apply for it?” Why didn’t Brett bloody well tell me not to bother?
“So it looks genuine of course,” he laughed. “Come off it Kate, everyone knows how it works round here! All the internal vacancies are a stitch-up. Christ, I hope you didn’t waste too much time on it. Come on, let’s get to this bloody meeting. I hear The Shark’s waiting to tear some big lumps out of you!”
Oh my God. Why was I so naive? Bloody Perypils, bloody Brett, they owed me ten evenings and two weekends of my life. I’d never get them back. N
ot to mention the cost of my new suit and the power hair cut/fringe disaster. Perhaps getting the boot wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all, this was just such bullshit. I traipsed after Big Andy, who was suggesting we hold The Shark upside down to put him into a hypnotic trance. I couldn’t even raise a smile.
At month end I submitted our Q&C score as 95%. The real score had actually been 78%. Surely someone would query how my department had managed to go from 73% one month to 95% the next? Every time I passed The Rock she’d quip “That’s magic!” in a Paul Daniels voice. I called her Harry Bloody Potter.
The Communications team issued a message from the Big Cheese. It said he was extremely proud to announce that all sites had achieved a quality and competence score of 95% for last month. He said it was “a reflection of the outstanding Perypils training and development programs, the fantastic quality of our people and the hard work of our management teams.” There were quotes from several new employees (plants) saying how great their training had been and how quickly they had been able to achieve the required standards of their role. They also said they loved working for a company that was so customer-focused. There were a few pictures of these employees, showing smartly dressed, clear-skinned, white toothed individuals smiling broadly whilst speaking into their headsets. I looked across at the colleague sat in front of me. His trousers were very low slung, and the beginnings of a builders bum had appeared. I could have dropped my pencil down the crack. He was speaking to a customer whilst flicking around the internet and wiping his nose on the back of his hand. He examined the back of his hand closely. I had to look away.
Brett the Boss sent an email which said:
Well done to all on achieving 95% Q&C last month - this is a brilliant effort!
Please say a big well done to all your teams and keep up the good work.
You may buy cakes for your department as recognition from me on their superb achievement.
Brett
PS
Go careful with the cake expenditure, get BOGOFs where you can. Sainsburys do a tray of 20 previously frozen doughnuts for £2, but you’ll need to get there tonight.
Bloody hell. Did he actually believe his own lies? He knew the figures were completely fudged, had he convinced himself that this was a genuine achievement? And what about the Big Cheese - did he seriously believe every site had suddenly improved massively from the previous month? Surely he smelt a rat. It was farcical. It was all a load of big, hairy buggery bollocks. I had to get out of here.
Chapter Twenty-Two