It's Saturday and I have a hangover.

Well not me personally but as all employers do Sitel Exeter from time to time has a lot of people call in sick on a Saturday morning. Usually just after pay day. You employ a lot of 20-somethings and this is all but inevitable. The problem is that Sitel do not make this any easier for themselves when some of the management are out in the same bar as the agents and are partying as hard as anyone.

Take Keith for example. Keith is getting quite a reputation as the biggest party animal in the building. This is an eyebrow raising revelation when you consider in the office he is a pretty quietly spoken person. I can personally vouch for Keith being a hard drinker. A good example is when the company attended the South West Contact Centre Awards and he had been far too hungover the next day to work. To be fair to Keith almost all the Sitel attendees got pretty well smashed the last two years.

Stories that persist around the office:

• Keith getting falling down drunk regularly.
• Keith vomiting on an agent on account of how much booze he had drunk.
• Keith missing buses back home
• Keith taking a female agent to the Jurys Inn for sex.
• Keith spending huge amounts of money (I heard around £300 in one night once) in the watering holes of Exeter. 

Keith you're my new hero :-) I hope your woman doesn't mind your drunken antics.

Back to the original point then i.e. Agents calling in sick after going out and drinking. It's a bit hard for the company to call foul and take an agent into a disciplinary hearing when one or two of the rising stars in management are showing less restraint than the people they are trying to straighten out. This is not what management experts like to refer to as leading by example.

Work harder slaves!

Our managements demands for more work continue. Some agents are to be rewarded for their current hard work by being cross-skilled from computer support to supporting TVs and DVD players as well.

There are rumours that as we approach the end of the financial year the budget may be a bit screwed.

Isn't that nice.

I'm guessing he jumped

Something tells me that Phil has left the building. Official line is that Phil is on sick leave and we all wish him a speedy recovery etc. The funny thing is Phil went around a lot of people in the building on Friday and shook their hands and wished them well in life. Not really the behavior of someone expecting to be back in a few weeks. Looks like he's falling on his sword for the screw ups down on the second floor. I predict four to six weeks of sick notes for stress. Then he'll hand his resignation in and be placed on gardening leave for his notice period.

Is that sound I hear the wind of change at Sitel Exeter? Time will tell.

Money

Lets start off with a nice easy subject. Pay.

Over the past couple of years we have been told the company can't afford to give us a pay rise. The usual citations for this were the harsh economic conditions and the empty desks we had. This was fair enough. Even when you have a hundred empty desks a lot of the buildings cost are the same regardless of the number of people working there. We all grumbled about it and then accepted it with at least a measure of good grace.

Now the building is full to overflowing we are full on the third floor and the first floor. The second floor i.e. the one that was empty and the excuse for not paying us any more now has filled to the brim and beyond as teams overspill into training rooms and have used spare desk on other floors.

All that extra income from our new client surely can now be used to pay the troops something a bit close to what they are worth. Any sensible measure of inflation would show an 8-10% rise in the cost of living since our last increase. Therefore a pay rise is long overdue.

Welcome.

Hi and welcome to this blog.

I am going to be writing about Sitel Exeter and the daily comings and goings of life in the office there. If you have a story that you would like to contribute then please email me sitelblogger@hushmail.com. Your anonymity will be respected.

Hopefully we can have a bit of fun along the way.