You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Work Here...

        Have you ever worked in retail? I have. It pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the human race once you've had to work a minimum-wage job selling stuff to the general public, and in fact I'd go as far as saying that, when I come to power, it will be compulsory that everyone should work at least six months in retail. If you manage to get stuck with the Christmas period, then I'll be generous and cut it down to three months. Let's start with the customers. 80% of them are fine, upstanding examples of what should be considered the absolute basic levels of human decency i.e. they don't have an overwhelming urge to leave everything they look at strewn across the floor, but that remaining 20%? Let's put it this way: if you've never worked retail before and you've ever wondered what happens when someone leaves the door open of the holding pen for the Jeremy Kyle show, letting the inhabitants roam free without their much-needed supervision, then that should give you an idea what they're like. Truly, I've seen a level of not only utter contempt for their fellow man, but a joyful glee in causing stress and fear to innocent people from these individuals that can only be surpassed by going into "head of an organised crime syndicate" territory. If you're one of those people who looks forward to a mistake so you can pressure a manager into sacking a student and depriving them of much-needed income, just to feel better about yourself, then you really need to take stock of your life.

        Now the only other thing I remember about my sentence in Retail besides the public, were the Management. Now I do hold a lot of sympathy for Retail Managers in general. The ones I worked with were working so many hours that they were technically on a lower per-hour wage than I was! However, there were a tiny minority of Managers there who were so bad that you almost felt that the TV cameras were about to jump out of the rack of grey chinos and offer £20,000 for appearing on "Undercover Clowns". No, really, they clearly didn't have a ha'p'orth of an idea what they were doing. "No", we'd say, regularly, "that's the Menswear section. You don't put various tupperware on display there" as well as "10% off of £29.99 isn't £5, even if it is your Mother that you're serving" as well as "why are you hiding in the store-room?". It sometimes even felt like I had to "manage" the managers, so that they didn't blunder by, oh I don't know, storing stock in the waste crusher or putting socks on customers' hands. So, imagine you land another job in an office after this mini-ordeal. You imagine your last day being one of high-fiving your fellow convic... er, colleagues followed by a few diplomatic words with your former Managers, followed by running into the sunset and a corporate world of managerial competence, office flirting, endless tea and "team-building" trips to the golf course/go-cart track. Is this what you come across in reality?

        Nope! All you get is the privilege of sitting down while making sure your Manager doesn't set fire to everyone, rather than standing at a till. Honestly, if you think back across your careers, you'll remember at least one manager that absolutely had to be a long-lost relative of the big boss, because you can't think of any other plausible way he's still on the payroll. A friend of mine, for example, has a Manager that does exactly this. He regularly forgets to book people's holidays, which must be an absolute hoot! He's been known to leave people's employment contracts, with salary clearly detailed, sitting on the main office printer, which could well be illegal, and he's the kind of guy who sits in an important meeting with clients... while having biscuit crumbs all down him. These are the occasions when he's not asleep in a meeting. Yep, he's that kinda guy. But the pièce de résistance has to be this: the Managers' job is heavily involved in Geology and monitoring Earth... and he doesn't believe in carbon-dating! That's the same as being an architect and believing that rulers are lying propaganda machines created by Satan, despite them clearly not lying and being integral to his job. So how exactly does this person, who still cannot come out of the toilet without a little bit of shirt hanging out of his flies (oh God I wish I was kidding) stay in such a senior role?

        Well, it turns out that someone else has noticed this, and it's called the Peter Principle. Basically, it says that people are promoted up and up and up, right until they hit the position where they are no longer competent, and that's where they stay! Apart from having to dress like Rupert Bear and attend a "golf club" with your new golf bats that set you back the equivalent of a deposit on a 2-bed semi, the only way to get promoted is to become really good at your job. Eventually, you go up! However, there will be a point where your new job role is so demanding, you cannot ever be "really good" at it. In fact, it may well be so demanding that you struggle to reach "competent". When this happens, that's where you're staying, buddy! The rubbish thing about this is it leaves people like the aforementioned "special" Manager where he is, meaning no one who can do the job can get a chance to, you know, do the job! This then totally demoralises everyone below them as not only do they have to waste their time making sure that their Manager doesn't come in with his underpants on his head, but that this person is getting paid a massive salary for the privilege of not being able to do his job, when they could do it much better.

        So what's the solution? Well, I'd like to say that their Manager should notice that he's not gone up the ranks for a good few years, but I suspect that, according to the same principle, that this higher Manager may well be in his position for the same reasons, and doesn't want to rock the boat. And so, the rot sets in; every Management position is filled with a klutz who spends all day spinning in his chair with pencils in his nose. In fact, this has been the case as long as there's been big businesses. If someone hasn't been promoted in a while, there's probably a good reason as to why. Any good Manager will spot this and root it out before the rot sets in.

        This is why I slightly envy anyone who works in a mental hospital. The difference between an office worker and a mental health nurse is that they both have to look after people who struggle to look after themselves, but at least the nurse expected to be doing so, and the patients aren't paid more than them for no discernible reason.

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