nourishing obscurity

For staff at a Melbourne call centre for internet service provider Netspace, one-fifth of a minute is considered time enough for a rest break between calls. Staff have also been told they are now only to leave their desks four times a day - during set breaks - to increase the number of calls handled.

As a former headmaster and in the light of my current work, it is clear there is a mindset which continually moans about conditions, rights and time off without considering the success and solidity of the company which provides them with their salary and benefits in the first place.

This sort of person is rife in schools and is ultra-quick to react to apparent breaches of his/her rights and knows them all off by heart. If you said there are no rights - only those you gain by securing your workplace in the market in the first place, they think you're Attila the Hun.

And don't even start me on political correctness.

On the other hand, on the face of it, Netspace appear to be out of order, running a sort of sweatshop, using young employees which it knows it can squeeze and this is the worst sort of capitalism. I don't think legislation does a lot because of three things:

1. There really are lazy good-for-nothings who want an easy wicket instead of embracing the company they work for and these are the people forever quoting regulations at you whilst sitting on their bums - in other words, malcontents, ne'er-do-wells and bludgers [naturally I never said anything like this to their faces at the time];

2. It's more effective to hurt the company in the market place over its tactics, such as this MSM article on it. They're far more likely to alter their behaviour on that basis. Legislation simply causes them to shift the problem sideways by taking on, in future, employees least likely to cause a stink.
3. When you tie up a company or an industry in a plethora of regulations and bureaucratic restrictions on every little thing, you stifle the company's effectiveness and freedom to move, i.e. it's ability to keep functioning. A company is not a big mother pig to feed off - it needs space to breathe and expand or restructure to suit prevailing conditions.

It's not a one way street and there have certainly been milestones such as the stopping of child labour and the 40 hour week but then look where unionism went with its little coteries in their cushy positions at the top, dictating to businesses with nothing to lose themselves.

A good worker is a good worker and a good boss will recognize and provide incentive for the good worker to remain. However, when you get the allegedly Alisha the Hutt type and allegedly Netscape type, the pendulum swings and they have to be stopped or exposed for the doings.

As this article said at the outset - a very political issue.

[the dale lists] perspectives

On December 9th, 2006, a small blogger said this, about the American Weblog Awards:

The whole thing is a total w—k. Worthy candidates like Norm, Samizdata, Jon Swift and one or two others aside, this poll is flawed for these reasons:

1] top blogs are left off both in terms of content and in terms of traffic;

2] it’s completely swamped by the Americans, who have five times the population. And what about tiny New Zealand or Australia?

I mean, seriously, who’s going to compete with Malkin, a most overrated blogger or with Instapundit? As I say, it’s a w—k.

He then went on:

It annoys the hell out of me to see some big names promoting themselves shamelessly [not those on my blogroll], getting major traffic and they’re truly neither quality nor well laid out. Of course, they say people visit for the expertise, to read the pearls of wisdom but this seems a very MSM thing to say. Why are they emulating the MSM? Is that what they’re trying to get into?

He then called for a collective of little bloggers to be set up. It was eventually called Blogpower. So how does this malcontent feel now that he finds himself on a 100 list?

Predictably proud, especially as it was 12 peers who did the voting, not one man. And equally proud of the little association we have called Blogpower, who featured well in the rankings and it vindicates the belief that there are some truly great blogs out there largely unsung and some of them now recognized. This is largely Dale's doing.

It's part of our job, methinks, to find them and promote them too. This is the Blogpower ethos in a nutshell. On the other hand, there seemed some anomalies but that's what happens when people vote on things.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

[political blogging guide] non-aligned results

These are the ones from my blogroll and congratulations to all. Blogpower is in red:

2 NHS Blog Doctor 9 As a Dodo 10 Westminster Wisdom 12 Little Man in a Toque 22 Pub Philosopher 23 Not Saussure

Congratulations to all of these and to Iain Dale for the hard work.

[political blogging guide] centre-right results

Lot's of hard work, Iain. These are the ones from my blogroll and congratulations to all. Blogpower is in red and the 2nd figure in some cases is last year's position:

1 2 Iain Dale’s Diary 2 5 Dizzy Thinks 5 14 Croydonian 7 3 Burning our Money 8 NEW Devil's Kitchen 9 NEW Tim Worstall 10 6 8 Archbishop Cranmer 7 James Cleverly 11 23 Mr Eugenides 12 NEW Waendel Journal [the one BP lost and hope to get back] 16 64 Prague Tory 19 9 Ellee Seymour 21 NEW Daily Referendum 23 NEW Sinclair's Musings 24 NEW An Englishman's Castle 25 52 Theo Spark 28 36 UK Daily Pundit 29 58 Freedom & Whiskey 32 NEW Islington Newmania 33 NEW City Unslicker 34 NEW Matt Wardman 35 48 Man in a Shed 37 NEW Nourishing Obscurity 38 NEW Samizdata 40 50 Martine Martin's Lebwog 41 NEW Daily Propaganda 42 NEW Musings of a Reactionary Snob 43 22 Bel is Thinking 44 NEW Prodicus 51 NEW Nation of Shopkeepers 54 79 Thunder Dragon 56 NEW Little Man in a Toque 59 NEW Last Ditch 60 31 Gavin Ayling 64 NEW Is there more to life than shoes? 66 41 A Conservative's Blog 71 NEW Blognor Regis 81 24 Road to EU Serfdom 84 NEW Istanbul Tory 85 NEW Neue Arbeit Macht Frei 86 NEW Pub Philosopher 98 NEW Martin Kelly 100 71 Laban Tall

I don't see how Devil's Kitchen and Tim Worstall are new but there you go.

[the telephone] tyrant of the modern age

New Nokia - er - phone

The question came up today why I hate phones so much. After all, everyone and his dog is glued to the phone pretty well 24/7 these days with the advent of the mobile monstrosity.

My first question is - why is it necessary to have to speak to someone on a phone in the first place whilst walking down a street [or even in a car]? We used to wait till we either got to the office or got home.

This gave us time to read the paper, notice things going on about us instead of living in a cocoon and at a frenetic pace. I'm not talking Richard Briars and Felicity Kendall but still - what's the necessity?

The businessman immediately answers: "Because I don't want to lose business." If your product is any good, why won't that person accept your secretary's "he's just stepped out of the office for the moment"?

And what if you're not a businessman or woman? I suggest it's just an affectation you induce yourself into and all those bells and whistles and tunes are pretty neat, aren't they, flashing away and polluting our airspace? Gives you a sense of empowerment.

Except that it does no such thing - it actually disempowers you. The phone is a bl--dy tyrant. Please tell me which parliament enacted the law that whenever the damned thing rings, you must immediately drop anything you're doing, stop the train of thinking, cease the conversation with the person you're with and devote your time to someone who has blown in from nowhere?

Why does the caller assume you've been sitting around half the day waiting for this call and you're eternally grateful for the chance to immediately drop your own business to help him/her?

Why does the caller assume that the person you're with is a lower priority because they took the trouble to get into their car and visit you whereas the caller just punched a number and bingo?

Why does the caller assume you have the time exactly at that moment to devote to addressing his/her issues?

The answer is that the caller never once stops to think. He or she is so into the faster-faster lifestyle that it's assumed that if it can't be dealt with in the first minute, then he hasn't any more time. This is bol---ks.

One of my friends goes too far, admittedly. He lays the three phones down on the table and sees which rings. If it's the phone which he usually answers, he asks: "Srochno?" [Is it urgent?].

Another friend has a better plan.

He lifts the receiver and holds it at half an arm's length, then sweetly asks the one he's with: "Do you mind? I'll just be a moment." Then he turns to the phone and says, warmly: "He--llo." A person with some sort of antennae picks up on that and asks when's a good time to call.

Lesson learnt - the phone does not over-rule the seated incumbent. Time must be mutually agreed, as it is with every other voluntary communication between two people.

But the person without antennae presses on with the inevitable: "No, I was just going to ask …" or "Just a quick question …" Naturally, it is irrelevant to the caller how long it takes, as long as he gets what he wants and gets it in one go.

With such people, if you say: "Could I call you in twenty minutes?" this immediately tells the incumbent how much time he/she has left and it's not nice. Stretching that time outside the expected range is nicer.

However, the caller won't like that. He/she will have another try. "Couldn't you just …?" or "Just a quick question" is repeated and then the whole story begins. The only way to deal with this is to repeat your own "could I call you" and then repeat it and then repeat it.

If you're up against a real hard case, your only recourse is to apologize profusely but you have to go and you promise you'll call, all the while moving the receiver further away and then sliding it into closed position, then slip the plug from the wall socket because they're bound to recall.

Or else they'll hate you forever and never come back. Good riddance, I say.

Again, the businessman will say he can't afford to make enemies that way and I reply that he can't afford to lose the customer he's with either and his customer is watching and listening closely to how the matter's handled. Then he/she also gets the message and two people have been trained.

I've lost countless people this way but none of them were ever contacting me for my health. They all wanted something for free and had no antennae. So my reputation as a curmudgeon got around and they knew they must play by these rules or not at all. This tended to leave one with either serious customers or good friends and with them one was ever so friendly.

"Just wait," you might say, "What if I myself wanted something from that person?" Well, you'd phone and ask if it was convenient for a start. Sometimes that gets you in straight away. If not, then have it already factored into your plan to have to call back twice more and any less is a bonus.

The Russians do have an expression and business people often use it: "Sorry to be troubling you but …" As there are so many over here who don't use any intro at all, then people who do are seen as better to do business with. They're going to be softer touches, for a start - or so the other person thinks.

This post was about empowerment - wresting the power back from the phone and from the people who would set your agenda for you and allowing you to be a full half-partner in a compromise on just when the two of you are going to deal with the matter in hand.

1896 version - kept calls to a reasonable length