Hygiene in the work place

Hygiene is usually never meant to be an issue in the general office type environment workplace. Obviously workplaces that involve hospitality (particularly food) and the health services need to have fairly strict hygiene standards. Generally, hygiene issues are not that big a deal in the standard office workspace.

However, when you are working in a call centre, there are some important issues to be aware of in regards to hygiene. Most call centre type work spaces have policies in place to deal with these issues. Unfortunately, an organisation may have the best policy in place, but if it is not effectively policed by the team leaders and managers, then it is useless.

Working in a Government department, I always thought that there would be well implemented policies on most (if not all) matters related to OH&S. Generally this has held to be true. Unfortunately, like many other things in life, People tend to only pay attention to those things that relate to themselves, or that they can see the point in.

Enter the issue of headset hygiene.

My current employer has policies in place to deal effectively with telephone headset hygiene. My current team is not what you would call a real call centre environment. Our team consists of about 30 people spread throughout the region, distributed between about 4 offices. Our office usually has 4 members of the team, and we sit in our own section of the greater office space, make our little phone calls all day long. We use telephone headsets for obvious reasons. I have seen our department's policy on headset hygiene on our intranet, but it doesn't get policed in our office.

The biggest issue with headsets is reusing the ear padding. This is meant to be a big no-no. However, this does not seem to be an issue for my local office. In my short time ere, I have changed desks 6 times, and used at least 4 different headsets. None of them have had their ear padding or microphone covers changes as I went around the desks.

You would expect a government organisation to have good standards on this, but I have found private companies to be much better on this. A call centre I have previously worked in gave all its workers their own microphone tube and earpiece pad to take with them for which ever desk they moved to.

Look, to be honest this is not something that would really upset me. Apathy is really not a motivating force to make you want to kick up a stink about these things. But then, something happens that drives home the point of these policies, and the need to enforce them.

I have mentioned earlier that the Hippie has left us. Well, one of our old team members has re
turned to our team from maternity leave to take the Hippie's place, and her desk. This returning team member has discovered that she has been infected with head lice. Her first thoughts were that her older kids had got them from school, but upon checking out her whole family, she found that she was the only one with nits.

Se has gone over her movements in the last while, and she the only place she can see that she would have got the lice from, is from the Hippie's headset.

I guess this makes another good reason for her to have gone. We first of all loose her negative whining attitude, but now we have lost her dubious personal hygiene.

Navel gazing on a global scale

I have posted previously that I enjoy using Google Earth. I still do. It is a fantastic application. I can waste hours just browsing the entire planet. Microsoft has tried to imitate the success of Google Earth by releasing an application called Virtual Earth. No where near as good as Google Earth, or Google Maps, in my opinion. It is essentially a copy of Google Maps, but you can only use it in Internet Explorer, surprise, surprise.

Lets not forget NASA's entry into the fray with World Wind. An unfortunate beast with an awkward interface ans non intuitive navigation system.

Anyway, this is not why I am posting. I wanted to draw your attention to Google Sightseeing. This is a fun sight (if you like this kind of thing, and lets face it....I do!) It shows you some of the things in Google Maps that have been spotted by other people, and posted.

If you want to loose a few hours of your life, check it out. Browse the categories and follow the picture links to Google Maps. All postings have links to the Google Maps reference, from which you can easily find them on Google Earth, if you have it. If you don't, Google Maps is still bloody brilliant, and it works in Internet Explorer AND Firefox. YAY.

DPS.

The Inevitable has Happened

The Hippie is dead! Long live the hippie!

Well, no quite dead. But her career with the Public Service is.

She has announced to all and sundry that she is leaving us, and going to work for the local council organising a festival. Apparently she used to do this a bit.

So, she is off, and escaping from the fun and frivolity of outbound calls to our select clientele.

When she announced this news, one of my co-workers and I looked at each other, and said: "Are we surprised?"

Nope. We are not surprised that The Hippie has taken the first opportunity she could find to get out of here. I am surprised though, that she has gone back to a situation that she has told us all a number of times that she had to get out of before because she couldn't handle it. Just like when she had to quit her photography job because she couldn't handle it.

I am starting to see a repeated pattern here.

This reminds me of a young lady I used to work with at my previous employer. She had come to our team, and although she was a nice enough person, she could get a bit negative at times about her previous work, and sometimes about the work she was doing with us at the time.

Anyway, after a short while, she left us to go work for a different company, in a different industry. A couple of months later, my then manager had to contact another company, and found himself talking to this young lady. She had gone through 2 different jobs with different companies since she had left us. Shortly after this brief reconnection, she called me directly and asked if there were any jobs available with our team. We had obviously refilled her position since she had gone, but she was asking because apparently she didn't realise how good our work place was before she left. She said she wasn't happy in the places she had been since she left us. I felt for her, but asked her if she will ever be happy in a workplace. She insisted that she could be.

Unfortunately we were not able to bring her back into the fold. But at the same time, I do tend to feel that you should never go back to a previous employer without a very good reason, and not just because everywhere else you have been to sucks.

This young lady didn't know what she had until she lost it. I hope she learnt from her mistake and was able to chalk it up to experience.

Anyway, I digress. The Hippie is now leaving us. I played the role of the encouraging team mate: "This should be a good move for you", "That sounds like a good challenge", "Its a better move, career wise", etc. But inside I am jumping cartwheels and shouting WOO-HOO! and spinning on the floor, a-la Homer Simpson style.

God, I am a hypocrite.

But a happy one.

DPS

PS, no image for this post. I wanted to find images of a "dead hippie" and "office escape" or "work escape" and "homer Simpson" Flor spinning. Nothing that Google images found was quite right, and I can't be bothered looking elsewhere. Besides, if it ain't on Google, it doesn't exist.

Shifting the Blame

An incident occurred at work a few weeks ago that really ticked my goat.

Like many workplaces, we have a tea room/staff lunch room/break out room. Whatever you want to call it, it amounts to pretty much the same thing. A room where staff members can eat their lunch without having to leave the office, and away from the prying eyes of the public.

This tea room, like many others, has a dish washer.

It has become an issue from time to time, that some people are making a mess in the tea room, and not cleaning up. It has also become an issue that some people are misusing the dishwasher. The main crime is opening the dishwasher before it has finished its washing cycle. This causes the dishwasher to stop, and people tend to open the dishwasher, notice that it has not finished, and then just close the door and walk away. This leaves the dishwasher sitting there full of half cleaned dishes, and dirty water everywhere. Not surprisingly this really frustrates many others in the office. It has been raised a number of times at our (semi) weekly staff meetings, and there is even a big sign on the front of the dishwasher saying not to open it until the dial is showing that it is finished.

This is not what annoyed me. I am fine with this. I think it is a bit silly that it is something that needs to be brought up at meetings, but I get the point. I can honestly say that I am not one of the people who make a mess without cleaning up I guess good parenting and working at Maccas has instilled a "clean as you go" philosophy in me.

I also have enough intelligence to be able to read and understand signs such as the one on front of the dishwasher.

The situation that pissed me off was this: One day, the Hippie was looking for a mug for her herbal tea. She couldn't find one that suited her in the cupboards, so she went to the dishwasher, and without checking, opened it. She discovered that it was part way through a wash cycle. She muttered an "oops" and I made some comment about the sign on front, to which she responded with an "oh well" and left it there without turning it back on. I left the tea room with my coffee as some other workers were entering, and when I came back in, The Hippie told me that she had blamed me for opening the dishwasher!

This is what pissed me off. She thought it was funny, and I later heard her telling another team member that she gets off on that sort of thing: shifting the blame to other people.

Shifting the blame is, in my view, totally wrong. It shows cowardice, and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for one's actions. Anyone who tries to shift blame is beneath contempt. Even though this is just a small issue, it demonstrates a possibility of it happening with larger issues.

This is not really what got my goat. My cynical nature half expects people to fail morally, or in competency. What really bugged me was the fact that the Hippie was trying to blacken my name. Trying to make me look incompetent.

I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that I am not an incompetent slob. But I find it aggravating when my work ethic is brought into question.

As far as the Hippie was concerned, it was all just a joke. But even jokes can ruin a reputation.

This is my view in the greater world too. My reputation is MY reputation. If I do something to fuck it up, then I reap the rewards of my own efforts. But if a smear is made on my reputation (even only in jest) then it can irreparably damage it. Even little dents can add up over time. I value the good will that I have built up with people, both in my professional and private lives. I do not appreciate this being placed in jeopardy simply because some Hippie wants to have fun, and try to shift the blame.

This may seem a little bit like over reaction for something so little as opening a dishwasher, and I may be making a mountain out of a mole hill. But I like to remember the example of the par-boiled frog. Many little instances can add together to make a big issue.

DPS

A Great Miscarriage of Justice

Saddam Hussein is dead.

This is a great shame.

Before I get lynched, let me state that I think Hussein was a tyrant. He was a dictator who ruled a country with an iron fist. But did he deserve to die?

Bob Ellis had a good opinion piece about this in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. It is not a long article, but makes you think. I don't usually have much time for Mr Ellis, but this article struck a chord with me.

I feel a great pity when I think of all the crap that the U.S. is making the world go through. I know through other reports that the U.S. wanted to postpone Hussein's execution, but apparently they only wanted to by two weeks.

We have all heard the reports of ordinary Iraqis longing for the good old days of Saddam Hussein. The days when you were pretty sure that when you left your house in the morning, you would live through the day to enjoy coming back to a still standing house. That is, unless you had spoken out against Hussein. Then you knew you were a marked target.

Yes, he was a bastard, but at least under his rule, there was law and order. It may have been his law and his order, but what has been left in his absence?

I won't try to defend Hussein's record. Not in the slightest. My greater concern is in the performance of the US. The hypocrisy, the incompetence, the double standards.

Ellis says in his opinion piece: ...if a head of state can hang by the neck until he is dead for having ordered, or countenanced, or signed off on, or not punished, or failed to countermand the torture and killing of 148 Iraqis guiltless of any great crime, what will happen to the generals, bureaucrats, prime ministers and heads of state who ordered, or countenanced, or signed off on, or did not punish, or did not countermand, the killing of 150,000 Iraqis guiltless of any great crime (this is now the Iraqi Government's estimate of the dead) and the torture of ten thousand more of them in Abu Ghraib? And how many Americans - Bremmer, Abizaid, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bush - should on this precedent be charged and hanged?

This reminds me of a few important points.

1. The U.S. went against U.N. orders when it invaded Iraq.

2. The U.S. is the only country, to my knowledge, that has been found guilty of terrorism by international courts

3. The U.S. no longer consider it's citizens to be answerable to international courts

4. Hussein, and Bin Laden are essentially U.S. creations. Both were financially and materially supported by various U.S. administrations, and were at one stage or another considered allies.

The world is still going to Hell in a hand basket, and it is the U.S. that will drive us forward.

The people in power (and in this regard I do not include Bush) will probably never answer for their actions. All the atrocities the U.S. have committed, or allowed to be committed, will go unanswered by those who are responsible.

Ellis also raises the point:

They may also ask, as many legal experts have, how much was fair about a trial in which three of the defence lawyers were shot dead and those who survived forbidden to see the prosecution's written testimony before it was unveiled in court, and only those parts of the proceedings the Government liked were telecast - lest Saddam "grandstand" his cause and gain followers. And how wrong it was this trial was not aborted, and another trial begun in The Hague.

They may ask as well why Saddam died so soon. Something to do, perhaps, with his coming genocide trials and the complicity of Germany, France, the US and Britain in the manufacture of his nerve gas, anthrax, cluster bombs and helicopter gunships, and his amiable business relationships with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush snr, once head of the CIA, in past decades, and how his genocidal methods back then did not greatly annoy them, not so long as he paid his bills.

Interesting questions indeed. Read the opinion piece. There are some thought provokers about the freedoms we have, too.

So, why was Saddam Hussein executed. Really.

DPS

Back.....Again.

I have returned.

Again.

I know, I know. I'm a slacker.

Well, yes. I am a slacker, but at the same time, there have been external forces at work preventing me from devoting much time to those pursuits that I wish to.

The first thing that has prevented me from posting, has been the ISP problems I described in my previous post. Yes, Optus had allowed us to connect, but only at dial up speeds. I didn't really do any surfing at all while we had dial up access. I tried it a few times, but just found things too excruciatingly S L O W. I guess I had become accustomed to the relative speed of DSL. (I will not refer to DSL as broadband considering the level of broadband speed experienced by people in other countries. Those that consider DSL to be on a level with dial up).

Anyway, we were finally reconnected to DSL. It only took 3 weeks to get things back to normal, thanks to finally getting a replacement modem (even though I told customer support it was a modem problem within the first week).

When we finally got a decent internet connection happening, it was getting well into the silly season. Christmas day was just around the corner, so the annual tirade of family visits, interspersed with the enjoyable visits of friends (thanks to Harrangue Man's Mikey Capital and his good wife!) consumed just about every waking hour. Then, after Christmas it is the limbo days before New Year's. I always find those days bizarre. It is a period in time when you don't feel you can really start anything. Half of the businesses in town close down totally between Christmas and New Year's. Well, at least they do in this city/town. I know in the major capitals, most things stay open, but out here in the rural towns and cities of Australia it is the opposite.

Anyway, I have been a slacker, but it has not all been my fault either. I do feel guilty though. I guess my New Year's resolution can be to keep up with a (fairly) regular posting schedule, so all my adoring legions of fans (*cricket's chirping*) can get their daily/weekly/monthly DPS fill.

ISP Hell

I am stranded. It's amazing how much you realise something impacts your life when you lose that one thing.

We are living without broadband.

We have been without broadband for nearly two weeks now. Initially we thought it was just a phone line issue. We had a close lightning strike one night that seemed to fry our line. We got that fixed within one day of calling our phone supplier. When we found that our DSL connection was not working, I called that in too, and (after faffing around performing various tests such as changing phone sockets and removing the splitter/filter) eventually was told to expect a call within the next 3 days from a technician to arrange a time to look at our connection.

4 days latter, after no call, I called customer support again, to be told that the technician had us on their list for 2 days time. I was miffed, but accepted it and expected the call from the technician to notify us of what time, exactly, they would be coming round. Both my wife and myself work, so (like many people) we do not have the time to sit around at home for hours on end waiting for a technicial to turn up.

Still no call.

That night I called customer support AGAIN and was told that they would look into it and get a technicial to make a house call, but that there may be a $99 charge for the call, if it is determined that the fault is our doing, or caused by equipment not belonging to them.

It was getting worse.

The next day, I received a call from customer service expressing concern that our connection had not been fixed up yet. They were going to credit our account the same amount that it would cost for us to be using dial up, so that we can connect through dial up while our DSL is fixed.

OK, not fantastic, but at least we are online again. Even if we are chugging along at 56kbs. WhoooooooHoooooo!

Now the experiences above (phone line, and DSL broadband) are very different. You would expect that I am dealing with two different companies. But NOOO!

Our phone is provided by Optus. Our DSL internet connection is provided by Optus.

Why is is so difficult to get both aspects of the one company to behave in the same way.

Now, I know that different parts of a company can be very different from each other, even to the point of being outsourced to other separate companies. But, this is no excuse. A large company will value its brand. It would not appreciate any aspect of public experience that was a negative experience towards its name and brand.

So, why would Optus have two very different customer experiences for the same customer?

Shut your big yap!

Man, I hate it when people complain about things that can not be changed, or that they have the power to change, yet do not.

The Hippie (see previous posts) is one such person.

When I last posted on our office work assignments, I think I mentioned that us newbies are being rotated through the office, to give us all a break from being on the phones.

This has now changed. The newbies and one other older staff member are now located on the phones permanently. The main reason for this is because of office costings. The office that our team is located in is administered and budgeted by a business line coded the the actual physical office. This office is apparently over staffed by 5 people.

Our phone team is part of a larger team situated in a number of offices, and is therefore administered by a business line that is separate from the line of the physical office we are located in. Our phone team is not over staffed. In fact we are reportedly going to be growing.

So, in placing us newbies permanently into the phone roles, the office manager is protecting us from any possible redistribution of staff in the rest of the office.

The Hippie can not, or will not, see this. When she heard that we were no longer to be swapped around the rest of the office, her first reaction to proclaim that she did not know how much longer she could last on the phones. She did not want to be a "Battery Hen" for ever, and let just about everyone know it.

There was no acknowledgement of the fact that this situation may just save her job. She can only see the negative aspects of the situation and how they directly affect her.

Now, I am not too fond of being on the phones either, but I realise that someone has to be on them, and that by putting us on them, the office manager is guaranteeing that we will still be here in the near future. The Hippie just needs to get over it, and see what she can constructively do about changing her circumstances, not just winge and bitch to everyone who will listen.

She has also noticed that her flex time is in a negative balance of over 12 hours. That's 12 hours of time that she owes our work. She keeps complaining about it, concerned about how she will make up the time.

The annoying thing for me is that I have to listed to it, knowing full well that it is her own doing. First of all, she has taken a flex day when she didn't have the full hours in flex to cover it. Second, we are rostered to start at 8:30am. In the last two months, I have not once seen her come into the office before 8:50am. Third, and last: we get allocated an hour for lunch. The Hippie regularly takes at least 1hr 10mins for lunch.

Most times that she complains about it, I remind her why she has this negative flex time.

But this is what I mean. The Hippie just wants something to complain about, and doesn't want to look at how she can fix it, or acknowledge that there is no way to fix and she should just get on with it.

So either she fixes it herself, and then stops complaining, or she recognises that it can not be fixed right now, and she just has to deal with it, and stops complaining.

Either way, she just needs to "Shut her big YAP"

DPS