And the most pointless award goes to…….

A few weeks ago, in a half arsed attempt to boost office moral, we had an e-mail about how you can nominate yourself or a co-worker for a monthly “superstar” company award.

The name of the award is in itself is so patronising that it conjures up images of an adult patting the head of a slower than normal child and calling them a brave little soldier for doing something that they do every day. “Wow aren’t you wonderful, little Jonny. You managed to say your name! Yay!!”

Well to this company, they are that adult and somehow have come to the conclusion that because we are at the bottom rung, we will be happier if they give us something shiny and say just how good we are doing whilst metaphorically patting our head. Seriously they sporadically give us really pointless things to unsuccessfully disguise the lack of a well deserved pay rise because they assume we will be satisfied with a lightbulb or a company logo pen.

Anyway I thought this latest initiative was hilarious and after discussing it with my co- worker, we decided to vote for each other. We gave a plausible but childish reason why each other was a super duper “superstar”, slipped it in the ballot box, chuckling at how we had mocked the system.

Then a few days ago we received an e-mail congratulating us and inviting us down to the presentation to find out that we weren’t good enough to win a £20 gift voucher. Instead we had to hold back the tears as the true winner was presented with a “you are special” certificate.

Now to be fair by the look of the winner you would have thought that she was filling the special needs quota of the company thus deserving this patronising awards system.  She won the award because she had dealt with a heinous miserable customer whilst being polite on the phone. “And even though it was a tough case, we hope that this won’t deter her from doing it again,” they exclaimed in such a way that saying this would encourage the rest of us to aspire to be like her.

So a pat on the head, well done, special lady; lets take a moronic picture with you holding your poorly designed certificate that was made on one of the Word templates (you can find it under “other documents/certificates for your five year olds”).

She won it for successful dealing with some offensive moron?!  Seriously?!  We work in a call centre environment, you are bound to have to deal with an obnoxious fool once a week.  It’s in the job spec!  If this is the criteria for a voucher then I would be earning more than my shitty annual salary in vouchers alone.  Giving her that award is like giving an ice cream seller an award for selling a particularly cold ice cream on a random day.

 

The whole thing really was a waste of 15 minutes. Our nominations weren’t mentioned anyway, we just had to settle for our names to be on a corrugated cardboard framed board that looked like it was made by a partly blind person with Parkinson’s disease. They might have well written “you’re special” in macaroni pieces and glitter.

I suppose it is a good thing that I knew my nomination was bogus. Otherwise I would have been more insulted that I lost out to a woman that got the award for basically doing what I do on a regular basis.

I’m not an idiot, I understand that the company wants to show that they appreciate us, but £20 voucher in some sub crappy chain store isn’t going to get those results.

Now giving a person an extra day’s holiday would be a worthy way to show your staff you love them.  Although this would be more expensive and less condescending, it would be a proper incentive to make your worker work extra hard for a chance of a paid day off.  Of course they are not going to implement that because it makes far more sense.  But upon saying that, if I was high of the ladder corporate whore, I would probably offer shining objects to give my staff a five minute break from self loathing at why they ended up here. 

 

 

 

When I grow up I want to be………

Well I certainly didn’t dream of the day that I would be a corporate monkey wasting my IQ because I can’t be bothered to play the corporate whore game (ass kissing and bullshiting) and therefore on crappy money compared to my peers who do 1/3 of the work I do and still complain.

Maybe its just me having integrity, a very bad case of naivety or even just that I’ve ended up in the place where common sense died that the actual thought that doing a good job, being highly productive and not bitching about it was enough to at least get paid more or get recognition.  Ah, no my friend, this is not the case.  It’s only now as I descend on the final days of my twenties I realise that actually I should be further up the ladder and it is my fault for not following the steps to getting higher up on the ladder aka corporate whoredom.

1.  Thou shall embelish what thou does and make it known to all.

Whatever you are doing in the office, you need to make out that you are doing more than that.  Honestly hand on heart, I do a fair whack of work, a ridiculous amount of work but as I’ve always found it relatively easy and I’ve never made a fuss at what I do, I realise that it has been taken for granted by some of those above me that just expect it from me.  Surely if I was above, looking down below at us bottom rungers I would look at someone like me, see how much work that person does and their attitude then expect the others to bloody do the same, not just take it for granted.  I’m not the best business woman in the world, cos I would be rich instead of having a bitch but wouldn’t it make common sense to have 20 workers, working at a high rate than just 1 worker often doing the work of two people and the rest of the office just plodding along.  I know I’m a damn good worker cos any time they need someone to sort out the major cock-ups that other people in the office make, they come to me, I get the job done in record speed.  Oh yes so now I realise that I actually have to make a fuss, which to me feels just plain wrong but you’ve got to play the game it seems.  And to prove my point about making a noise, when I did get to the point where I was fed up of this crappy treatment and was looking for an escape, I was pulled into an office and begged to give it a few more weeks before making a decision.

2.  Thou shall flatter as many powers that be to get what you want

Point is that a person in my office who is a major suck up, who managed to come into work and actually not do the job that they were paid to do because they played the game has managed to get a job elsewhere in the company without actually applying for it and really not doing that much work but getting the praise for it.  Now as they are in this job, I’ve been assigned the mini project that they’ve had for a stupid amount of time and had to re-do it from scratch which took me a day, in between my normal day’s worth of work and actually the happy nods from above, whereas before they hated it.  Still I am applying the first rule to this piece of work that I’ve done and it seems to be paying off.

3.  Thou shall raise thy name to be shiny and known by all

This is the golden rule and the most hated rule by myself.  You need to raise your profile in the office environment, which involves schmoozing the powers that be and your peers, making sure everybody knows your name for the right reasons (as opposed to that twat that made a fool of themselves at the office party) and just being the name on every ones lips.  AND I HATE IT!!  Some people just get this naturally, which is a combination of having the right management but if you were like me and had a shit incompetent manager (who fortunately has been moved) then you have to do it all by yourself. 

As much as I hate the fact that this has to be done, it seems like this is the rule of the world in all different jobs that you must adhere to if you want to be bigger.  We are taught this at an early age in the school playground.  The popular people stand out and if you aren’t popular, you aren’t standing out in a crowd and if you aren’t standing out, nobody notices you. 

It really does sicken me that it comes to this in life overall.  If the world were a fair and just world, talent and hard work would be enough.  It is unfair that not only do you have to put your hard work and effort into work, you then have to scrape more effort into raising your profile again.  No wonder depression and anxiety is on the up in the office environment!

Fortunately for myself I’ve been given a decent manager in the last few months so I don’t have to bust my balls trying to get noticed but if I do want to move on up, I have to play the game in a job which is not my first choice following rules that just angers me when I think about it.

Sad thing about it is if I did want to be what I would love to do as a job, I would still have to do all this.  Goddam world!