Worst ever ..... work practices / employers

seen a few the last couple of weeks.

first up as just seen it in my inbox. " the cafe chain Mooboo Bubble Tea will now pay their staff for every hour they work. Until this week, Mooboo had been forcing new staff to work a 40-hour trial shift without pay, and without the guarantee of a job at the end of it" 38 Degrees.

Can’t say I’ve heard of them or had bubble tea so should be able to keep that boycott going well.

We all know about Amazon and Sports Direct anyone seen any others.

A lot of chef positions have an unpaid trial. I have done a few, between 2-6 hours (not 40). Catering is pretty terrible for the way they treat, and use guilt to get people to stay on for another shift.

I went back into catering when I first moved up here and some of the sexism that was going on was unreal. Also the actions of sone towards the opporsite sex was staggering. I did not like the environment at all and left after 3 weeks.

Not being paid for traveling to and from work even though it can take 2 days to get there.

Whilst traveling it being classed as company business so company rules apply I.E. no drinking alcohol. Rules are meant to be broken by the way and this one is nearly always never adhered to.

Sending you on training courses which are compulsory then not paying you to attend them.

Sending you on courses which have been cancelled and not telling you beforehand.

That all does sound shit.

I have met a few people working as carers, low paid work and only get paid for the hours they are in the service users home, not the time they travel to the service users. Not even sure some of them get fuel money. Sadly not allowed to tell them to join a union and get some representation.

That’s some commute! I couldn’t handle that twice a day. It’d make my working week 25 days long. You should get a car.

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My sister is a carer and she only gets paid the time she is actually in the persons house. Because of the nature of the job she is nearly always working unsociable hours. Up early and back late at night with no extra pay. You have to be dedicated to do that job.

Being paid (with my colleagues too) £17k in London with the employer outright lying about scope for progression. They then outsourced all the work to India after the company was invariably on its way to going busto seeing as none of the young grads stayed there long.

Done a variety of horrific callcentre jobs and worked cash-in-hand as a builder as well but hey-ho, live, learn and move on I guess.

No such worries for George Osborne. He’s being paid 650,000 quid a year for working four days a month as an ‘Advisor’ to Wall Street fund management firm BlackRock. BlackRock of course benefited from reforms to pension rules made when he was chancellor. This on top of getting 800,000 a year for speeches to financiers. Still picking up his MP’s salary plus expenses of course, courtesy of the British taxpayer. Nice work if you can get it!

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After 11 happy years for a fantastic American Company, they were bought by a French Conglomerate.

6 months after takeover, the Boss of Europe came to Dubai to meet clients and see the market.

He insisted on coming on a Friday “because French Law would not let hime work on his weekend” Friday was our weekend.

You do not show commitment was his statement when I said my customers would not want to give up THEIR day off to meet him.

I talked my clients into going to the seminar. HE was 3 hours late, told them his name and position and insisted we left for lunch straight away.

At lunch he told me “My Task” was to sell by Direct Invoice to every client across the entire Middle East within 6 months or he would find someone who could do that.

I asked him what my Budget was as it would require a Legal Entity & Office to be established in 12 Countries.

“We do not need zee licences, we are a Beeg Franche Coompanie, you are not to spend any money”

While I had loved that job, it is to my great pride and satisfaction that I stood up from the lunch table and said I quit and left him with the Bill.

(Obviously I sued them for constructive dismissal but…)

My replacement lasted 5.5 months - he couldn’t do the illegal thing and they got fined about $500k for illegal activities in Saudi & kicked out of the biggest IT account in the region as a result. They have never recovered almost 10 years later their revenues are lower than when I was there.

Which is why I hate the French

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Was once told by my old employer that I could join the contributory pension scheme, however I would have to take a pay cut to cover their end

I asked the same employer what I need to do get promoted, he told me that I was somewhere along the road, however he was not going to tell me how far and that I had to figure out for myself what is was that he wanted that I currently wasn’t doing.

the same employers regularly got the junior staff to put in up to 1500 hours overtime a year unpaid and then your reward would be a year end bonus that returned something like 30p to 50p an hour.

Ahhhh… The life of an article clerk in accountancy.

Now we get to see the recruitment practices of a lot of companies some of which leave a lot to be desired - no discrimination? Yeah right.

one Russian owned British company asked us to find a white male between 30 and 40 for one of their roles. Then right at the end of the conversation they said “Oh, you had better not send us any gays or disabled people”

Well that was pretty much a full house of the discrimination front. The consultant who took the order came to see me to ask what they should do. I picked up the phone, called their MD and fired the client.

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Difficult to actually like these posts due to the awful work practices.

You can like them as they are highlighting what you were looking for.

They are not good but this is now the world live in.

If you fear for your job / livelyhood / being able to provide for your family you will put up with a lot of shit.

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And if you are in a Foreign Country, where for example your bank will freeze your account and recall any loan/credit card debt the moment you change jobs and issue an arrest warrant for debt in that period, while your Kids are at a school that is an IB system not a GCSE system…

And of course none of those rules existed when you made the decision to move in the first place.

(And on the Bank thing, imagine taking out a mortgage on your home, being offered a new super dooper job with perfect conditions and double the pay and you resign and kaboom, you are in Jail until you repay the mortgage and you cannot start your new job. - All unintended consequences of legislation that was designed to stop all that Labour camp/worker exploitation stuff of 10 years ago.)

Me? I changed jobs. I had a survival mode job and my notice period expired last week. Bank has frozen my accounts. Of course I had a Rent Cheque due, funds for that in the bank but can’t use them. (Luckily I had preplanned for that).

Now I have had a week in limbo while the old company “Find the time” to cancel my old Visa (they have 30 days which is better than my last employer who took 18 MONTHS) but still I am without Bank Accounts, Credit Cards etc for about a month.

And this legislation HAS greatly improved things for ExPats - make no doubt - just the Banks took it one step too far.

The reality has been a noticeable increase in the number of cars left at the airport - for many people with loans they have a matter of hours to get out the country IF they lost their job unexpectedly due to Redundancy or a Company Failing. Redundancy Notice - Book next flight, run, sort the mess out from outside. Lots of effort going in to finding solutions, in this case it isn’t “UAE working conditions” that is at fault, it is mindless junior clerks at Citibank/HSBC and a few others who push automated buttons without applying any common sense “it’s the process innit”

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Worked in the NHS for a while. Not by choice, got made to by the job centre with the threat of pulling my housing/jsa. It was, obviously, unpaid on the basis that it’d be good experience. Spent my days in a room with no windows photocopying patient files 4 days a week, for 6 weeks. At the end, some management guy suggested I do an extra week - to show how keen I am, and it would look good, and he could have a word on my behalf. It helped that his aunt was very senior in the trust, hey he’d just got his little brother a super-cushty job.

Few weeks after I’d finished got a call from an agency asking me to sign up, as there was a job for me. Show up for my first day, sent straight back to photocopying. Not told what my job is, no contract, no idea whether I’m pt/ft, what my hours are etc. When trying to ask - I’m told I have an attitude problem, and asked not to come back.

Also did an internship, unpaid, at a small start up when I first moved back to London. The office consisted of around 12 people, over half were unpaid interns. No travel allowance, no lunch allowance, you even had to bring in your own computer! As an interns stint came to an end, 2 more would start. The job was advertised as one thing, turned out to be little more than data entry. Luckily, someone, tipped them off to HMRC - who gave them a rather significant nudge and pointed out that such a practice was very much illegal, and they’d have to go back and pay all their previous interns. Last I checked, they don’t offer internships anymore - and the CEO left. Shame.

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How could the jobcentre pull your housing? Did you have a council flat?

I know that they used to be able to literally force you into unpaid work though in order to keep your JSA. I got threatened with that myself when I was signing on. Happily enough its been got rid of. Stupid policy if there ever was one.

I was in private rented house.

Told if I refused the ‘programme’ I’d lose all benefits. It may well have been that they couldn’t have actually done it, or if I appealed it’d be thrown out - but my impression is the like to try and pull this shit to see what they can get away with.

I also had my jsa threatened when I didn’t get a job they put me forward for. It was an xmas temp role, at Poundland, there were 2 vacancies and the job centre alone sent 20 candidates. The job centre also told me they’d consider sanctions against me because I refused to lie and say to potential employers I’d been to university - as it might make me ‘overqualified’ for jobs.

Wouldn’t matter now, mind. I was 21 at the time - I’d just be straight up ineligible. So i’d be unemployed and homeless, I guess that’s one way to solve the problem.

Interesting experience working at the callcentre.

Basically we’re calling people on behalf of the FCA ringing people who’ve taken out payday loans to check if they’re alright and they haven’t been exploited and shit. On the whole, its not bad. It is genuinely a good cause and beats charity callcentring by a mile. There are still targets to achieve and you do still need to persuade people to give up their time (15 minutes or so) and answer a few fairly personal questions, but they do get a £10 amazon voucher at the end of it so its worth doing.

We have to read a sales script off a screen. To a large extent, much of what we have to say is out of our hands and beyond our control.

Now unfortunately, for a lot of the people we ring up, we give them the pitch and then find out they aren’t eligible to do the rest of the survey after all as the last payday loan they took out was actually declined/accepted when its registered on the computer system as the reverse.

Naturally, this leaves the people on the other end of the phone pretty angry that they don’t get their Amazon voucher - and occasionally they become abusive. I and a few of my colleagues have had people shouting down the phone as well as sneering with things like “go and get a better job”, “piss off you minimum wage prick”, “you effing this, that and the other” etc.

Now for me I can obviously take it - and as a (reasonably) compassionate person I can understand their frustration given that they’re obviously in a difficult financial situation - but for a lot of my colleagues for whom this is their full-time work, the barbs hit home a lot more and its seriously unpleasant to have to hear.

The worst thing? All this could be solved if the company would just get their software provider to provide a friggin’ button or drop-down menu to correct things if the person we’re speaking to is noted as declined-when-they-were-actually-accepted or vice-versa, but anyone bringing this up with the bosses is more-or-less told off for not concentrating on their work and (whilst they don’t actually say it), essentially getting ‘ideas above their station’.

Naturally theres a lot of tribalism and bitterness - but much of it is directed back towards the people on the other end of the phone (albeit in conversations amongst the staff). “KMT, I’m not the one gettin’ rejected for a payday loan bruv! /Nah mean fam!” was one conversation I overheard from a few of my colleagues.

Whilst I make no secret of the fact that politically I’m right-wing, I must admit, jumping back into the shit and hearing that sort of conversation does remind me how easy it is for the rich to (as George Carlin put it) get the ‘lower classes’ fighting among themselves while they essentially fuck off with all the money.

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I’ve seen quite a bit in my time.

I once had a finance director come into my office to discuss a project that he wanted doing. He didn’t communicate any particular requirement very clearly, but was keen on “what if” scenarios and was very keen on the ability to “slice and dice” figures (he said those three words in succession about twenty times). It didn’t go any further than that, because he really wasn’t making any coherent sense when describing what he wanted.

Three months later, he was bounced out of the company. A bit later than that, he was up on embezzlement charges. He ended up getting banged up for it, like.

It was then that I realised the real purpose of his project, and probably why he was so evasive in communicating his requirement.

What he really wanted was a system that said “what if that money I nicked was no longer there?” :lou_sunglasses: