Well that was some fortnight.
No sooner had my reinvigorated 'balls to the agencies and their lies' jobsearch commenced in earnest than I got a mail from Kelly Services declaring that I'd be able to have a job underwriting credit card applications at the notoriously (well, in trade union circles, anyway) bad to their staff national bank based up by the M4 in Cardiff. Free bus travel there and back, good hours and good rate of pay. Is it a callcentre? Goodness me, no! So that was ok then.
Bollocks.
First day in there - "Here's an example of some of the calls you will be taking". I was persuaded to stay whilst on the random free minibus that occasionally is there to take you to or from work by the other lads I was training with - for the training fortnight at least. But despite my making it clear in both the afternoon's worth of tests Kellys put me through and the subsequent interview at the centre itself that I could not and would not work in a callcentre environment, they took the 'we'll give him the job anyway' approach. To be honest, come day three and the introduction of the processes and software we'd be using, I was almost looking forward to it - all my contact gathering to find something else was put on hold while I gave this training my all.
Needn't have bothered my arse really, as we had a week of sitting there as a total newcomer to training people read from an overcomplicated (we simplified it ourselves eventually) flowchart book. About a hundred pages worth. Alas, the spelling and grammar in these had not been checked and she was hopeless at reading aloud anyway (one of these people who are perpetually talking about something being done 'pacifically', for example). So even if I had had the patience to sit there for a week reading procedural notes that won't lay root in my head until I've applied them in context using real applications, I'd not have been able to as someone else was reading them out, badly, as I tried to.
In total, come the 'exams' you have to pass to get onto the shop floor and begin taking calls from thick people, I'd spent at least twelve or thirteen minutes by myself in front of a computer working apps and learning by doing, which is how I learn. Alas, they want you to have instant recall on these hundreds of pages of if, then processes for the exam. This last week has been torture for many of my colleagues, and I myself was the first of many to have a total loss of memory recall in the final test - strangely enough all the people studying to be underwriters who'd been working slightly less complicated jobs ON THE COMPUTERS WITH FULL ACCESS TO ALL THE SOFTWARE AND MANUALS FOR A FEW WEEKS BEFOREHAND passed, and all those of us who'd only had the fortnight's reading aloud failed the first time. I've got a resit on Monday, but I'm not going.
The party line (we've all had it) is, when you are being told you've got a resit "We've all had to take these exams too, and you've had 2 weeks to learn this stuff" I must confess to biting my tongue during my own debrief though others were not so reticent - we are sure the examiners weren't trained by the hapless wench we were, nor were they crammed into any little room that could be found, three to a one person desk, 4 to a half-working computer, because clearly no planning at all had been done for the training fortnight. I've worked at about 6 different financial places in the last ten years, even provided a training programme across a region myself for one of them, and I've never come across a lack of forward planning like this, be that in scale or longevity or bare-faced ignorance of all staff involved in the provision of this training.
I could elaborate more, write a more cohesive entry. I may even add to this post or edit it in the not-too-distant, but to be honest the sooner I record the fact that this fortnight happened and move on, the happier I'll be. It is the weekend and I'm not going to dwell on the futile. Suffice it to say I was happy to return on Monday and have a go at the resit, even spend the weekend studying, as they promised me a Friday of consolidation training wise after I failed my final exam on Thursday (passed the mock top of the class, naturally, and 100% on all other tests through the week!). Friday turned out to be me being fed a load of apps that only required me to do the stuff I already knew and ten whole minutes of contact time with her ladyship, in which I did learn some things I needed to know. The rest of the time was spent waiting for her to finish dealing with the whinges of those who'd already passed their exams and were 'bored' because their computers were broken. With such skewed priorities, eight hours of staring at that same bloody manual with no option to actually learn something in a proper manner left me with a splitting headache, not helped by the kid next to me doing phone work, repeating the same bloody script over and over and over and over until I hated her. At one minute to four I thought I might pack up and go home, seeing as I'd been unable to do anything constructive for most of the day and had a pain behind my eyes. I was still prepared to come in for one last hurrah on Monday though. Then she decided to bawl me and a few colleagues out for being packed to go home a whole minute early. Smart move, darling - you've just caused someone recognised to be the most experienced and capable person in your training team to walk out.
The days of me working these kinds of jobs are over. If I let myself be treated in a disrespectful manner, I deserve nothing else. I am a capable and talented bloke, I've done a lot and achieved much - but that counts for nothing if someone's blind adherence to pointless technicalities and unwillingness to challenge the status quo is going to dominate your every working moment.
Had she ever even tried to represent the wishes of the whole team - that we be allowed to work on the systems in order to learn our roles and that we not have to listen to her reading aloud for four whole days - I'd have taken that last little comment on the chin but she didn't so much cross the line there as take a running jump at it.
Still, 2 week's salary for staring in bemused wonderment at a car crash of a training program probably isn't all that bad a return. I have made some cracking acquaintances and hope to stay in touch with a couple of them at least.
No sooner had my reinvigorated 'balls to the agencies and their lies' jobsearch commenced in earnest than I got a mail from Kelly Services declaring that I'd be able to have a job underwriting credit card applications at the notoriously (well, in trade union circles, anyway) bad to their staff national bank based up by the M4 in Cardiff. Free bus travel there and back, good hours and good rate of pay. Is it a callcentre? Goodness me, no! So that was ok then.
Bollocks.
First day in there - "Here's an example of some of the calls you will be taking". I was persuaded to stay whilst on the random free minibus that occasionally is there to take you to or from work by the other lads I was training with - for the training fortnight at least. But despite my making it clear in both the afternoon's worth of tests Kellys put me through and the subsequent interview at the centre itself that I could not and would not work in a callcentre environment, they took the 'we'll give him the job anyway' approach. To be honest, come day three and the introduction of the processes and software we'd be using, I was almost looking forward to it - all my contact gathering to find something else was put on hold while I gave this training my all.
Needn't have bothered my arse really, as we had a week of sitting there as a total newcomer to training people read from an overcomplicated (we simplified it ourselves eventually) flowchart book. About a hundred pages worth. Alas, the spelling and grammar in these had not been checked and she was hopeless at reading aloud anyway (one of these people who are perpetually talking about something being done 'pacifically', for example). So even if I had had the patience to sit there for a week reading procedural notes that won't lay root in my head until I've applied them in context using real applications, I'd not have been able to as someone else was reading them out, badly, as I tried to.
In total, come the 'exams' you have to pass to get onto the shop floor and begin taking calls from thick people, I'd spent at least twelve or thirteen minutes by myself in front of a computer working apps and learning by doing, which is how I learn. Alas, they want you to have instant recall on these hundreds of pages of if, then processes for the exam. This last week has been torture for many of my colleagues, and I myself was the first of many to have a total loss of memory recall in the final test - strangely enough all the people studying to be underwriters who'd been working slightly less complicated jobs ON THE COMPUTERS WITH FULL ACCESS TO ALL THE SOFTWARE AND MANUALS FOR A FEW WEEKS BEFOREHAND passed, and all those of us who'd only had the fortnight's reading aloud failed the first time. I've got a resit on Monday, but I'm not going.
The party line (we've all had it) is, when you are being told you've got a resit "We've all had to take these exams too, and you've had 2 weeks to learn this stuff" I must confess to biting my tongue during my own debrief though others were not so reticent - we are sure the examiners weren't trained by the hapless wench we were, nor were they crammed into any little room that could be found, three to a one person desk, 4 to a half-working computer, because clearly no planning at all had been done for the training fortnight. I've worked at about 6 different financial places in the last ten years, even provided a training programme across a region myself for one of them, and I've never come across a lack of forward planning like this, be that in scale or longevity or bare-faced ignorance of all staff involved in the provision of this training.
I could elaborate more, write a more cohesive entry. I may even add to this post or edit it in the not-too-distant, but to be honest the sooner I record the fact that this fortnight happened and move on, the happier I'll be. It is the weekend and I'm not going to dwell on the futile. Suffice it to say I was happy to return on Monday and have a go at the resit, even spend the weekend studying, as they promised me a Friday of consolidation training wise after I failed my final exam on Thursday (passed the mock top of the class, naturally, and 100% on all other tests through the week!). Friday turned out to be me being fed a load of apps that only required me to do the stuff I already knew and ten whole minutes of contact time with her ladyship, in which I did learn some things I needed to know. The rest of the time was spent waiting for her to finish dealing with the whinges of those who'd already passed their exams and were 'bored' because their computers were broken. With such skewed priorities, eight hours of staring at that same bloody manual with no option to actually learn something in a proper manner left me with a splitting headache, not helped by the kid next to me doing phone work, repeating the same bloody script over and over and over and over until I hated her. At one minute to four I thought I might pack up and go home, seeing as I'd been unable to do anything constructive for most of the day and had a pain behind my eyes. I was still prepared to come in for one last hurrah on Monday though. Then she decided to bawl me and a few colleagues out for being packed to go home a whole minute early. Smart move, darling - you've just caused someone recognised to be the most experienced and capable person in your training team to walk out.
The days of me working these kinds of jobs are over. If I let myself be treated in a disrespectful manner, I deserve nothing else. I am a capable and talented bloke, I've done a lot and achieved much - but that counts for nothing if someone's blind adherence to pointless technicalities and unwillingness to challenge the status quo is going to dominate your every working moment.
Had she ever even tried to represent the wishes of the whole team - that we be allowed to work on the systems in order to learn our roles and that we not have to listen to her reading aloud for four whole days - I'd have taken that last little comment on the chin but she didn't so much cross the line there as take a running jump at it.
Still, 2 week's salary for staring in bemused wonderment at a car crash of a training program probably isn't all that bad a return. I have made some cracking acquaintances and hope to stay in touch with a couple of them at least.
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