How To P155 Off Suzy, Volume 1 – Hunting & Escaping

As you can probably tell, at the moment I am making the most of my money. Thus, as I was planning what was going to be a very busy Friday, I didn’t think anything of the fact that I didn’t have more than a few pennies at the end of a Thursday night. Friday is pay day. As I go into Friday morning, the balance on the phone is less than £1, but I have some free mobile Internet and text messages to use.

I phoned the bank to check – I usually do on most Friday mornings, because the payment amount may vary. “Your account balance is zero pounds and….”

Eh? I know it’s early, but that woke me up “better than a hot cappuccino”

Phoned the agency, got through to L at 0930 who said she would get the person doing the pay to call me back after 1000.

I wait till 1100, and use my mobile to tap out an email (via wap) to the agency. Just a few moments later, I get a very unfamiliar voice on the line. Turns out that mailbox now goes to someone different, who tells me I have to contract the right person. When I try to point out that I am waiting on them calling me, and have been for just over an hour, I get ignored.

At 1130, I then call the agency once more. The payroll person (F) picks up the phone, and says that she never got the message to call me. It then turns out, that no-one had submitted a timesheet for me at the end of last week, Because that wasn’t the agency’s fault, they are unable to do a same day payment for me, so “the best” I’d be looking at is a three-day transfer. Add the bank holiday Monday, and we are talking getting paid a week late – unless the company are willing to pay the £25 charge for a same day transfer. Oh yeah, and hand in a timesheet as soon as (but how am I meant to get in?)…

That was the end of it – so I have to do the chasing. I’ve now got 25p left on my phone… and now I can see exactly what I mean to the agency. I’m not worth passing on a message for, or even absorbing £25. The fact that they spent more than seven times that figure obtaining doctors reports on me (two years ago) is obviously forgotten. I’m not looking for special treatment, just courtesy would be nice.

At this point, I feel VERY upset – but promise to try and carry on, on my own. So, I am currently half and half between two managers, one of which is away. I try to email one of them, explain the situation in brief (remember I am tapping this out on my mobile), and ask him to give me a call about this.

He doesn’t, but replies to my email, saying there was no timesheet for me for this week in question.

I then reply to this too, pointing out that I am broke, have no way of getting in, and I don’t understand why one of the weeks was paid while I was on holiday – last Friday I got paid, and the Friday before that. (I submitted three timesheets to the manager who is away, on the Thursday before I left).

In the meantime, I still don’t get a phone call back. Why is not getting paid suddenly my responsibility, when I was 422 miles away from work?

Now it seems, neither the company nor the agency will get in touch!

At around 1330, I should really be out the door now, but I don’t have the resources to get there – say nothing of everything else that has to be paid today, and everything that I had to do. I would have normally sent at least one text to Caroline by this point in the day, and I send her one explaining what has happened. I get a message back offering help, and a couple go back and forth. The next thing I know, she has got out of work, has driven from Melbourn (Cambridgeshire) back to Royston (Hertfordshire), has been to her own bank to take out some cash, and is now trying to follow my directions around parts of Royston that I’d not been to two weeks ago at this point, trying to explain a place I’d seen off the bus, that may be an agent for my own bank (there’s not actually a Halifax or BoS branch in Royston). By the time this is done, it is about 1530.

So, my employers and colleagues over the last four and a half years don’t seem interested, and I’ve had to ask a huge favour from my new girlfriend as a result.

I then had a shower (still felt like s*it), took out some of the money, and headed for the bus to work. In the meantime, Caroline sends me a very touching text saying “…You’re not paid very much above minimum wage are you? I think you are more capable than that…” (Agency staff have not had a wage rise since 2005, despite many changes and productivity improvements, procedure changes etc.) Even Adam Hobson has sent me in a message offering financial assistance, and he was down south in Derbyshire at the time!

Once I got to work, management gave me a late form for turning up 2hrs 45mins down, as well as one or two other niggles from during the week. It’s difficult not to feel cheated when a manager gives you a form to sign saying you won’t do something, and then you see them doing the same eight feet in front of you! Re the pay, the reason I got paid last week was because another manager filled in a timesheet for me, but didn’t fill in one for the second week of my holiday. There was none for that week, or this week. THERE WAS, BECAUSE I WROTE THEM ALL OUT! So, what happened to the other two that I handed in? Too late to find out, and the boss in question is off.

The way I have been treated today was certainly with contempt, and almost made me feel so low and small. As I’ve documented previously on this blog, pay errors are not an entirely unknown quantity – and that is just those of my own experiences. Abundant thanks to a certain “superwoman” of mine, but the response (or lack of) from those in power doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it?

Last week, the managerial announcements (reshuffle – who got what) were announced. This, of course, has nothing to do with the above, does it? In the past, I’ve seen new manager types come in, run the strictest ship in the beginning, and gradually wear themselves down. It may well happen again!

This matter WILL be taken further.