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It's about who, not what, you know..

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It's about who, not what, you know..

Postby AkydefGoldberg » Sep 28, '17, 1:45 pm

OK, bit of a moan coming up..

Now, I've heard the phrase 'it's not about what you know, but who' but recently, I've seen that come true and it has been grating on me to the point it was affecting my thoughts today.

Three months ago, our organisation launched a recruitment process to hire an individual to review our reputation and awareness in the market. A week long advertisement (by advertisement, I mean a website page with social media posts regularly) began and an appointment was made. She was a nice girl, and intelligent and clearly during her three month stay offered some ideas that we will take forward.

Now consider that she had no interest in marketing and wasn't even doing her degree anything related to this subject, and she, like many students, had a summer break and as I can understand it's very difficult to find work as a student during the off periods. Now consider that her mother conveniently sits on our Board and low behold, the only application we received was the solitary one that turned out to be her daughter. Our whole staff felt the smell of nepotism hovering around when the process began, and ultimately, led to the appointment.

The two pieces of work she produced was what I'd expect (and probably what I may have completed at her age) but nothing that blew me away - it was all information we pretty much knew barring one or two areas. So, the money used on her employment could have been maximized by employing someone passionate in marketing or paid a tad more to experienced professionals to report back.

It just so fucking frustrates me. I know parents want their kids to succeed but giving her a jolly up in a role she's not massively interested in just to keep her busy, give her some money, is maddening. It's indictive, I feel, of our society when students from lesser backgrounds would kill for that work experience but wouldn't get it because they'd have to work damn hard to be considered. The other route is if your parents (and in this case, her mother has a vast experience in the field with many high position roles and has previously sorted out work experience roles for her daughter) can open the doors that in any other circumstance would be difficult, or would take a longer time, to open.

My journalism career never happened for many reasons but seeing things today that clearly show a prominent journalist father has helped his/her child into the industry by contacts is frustrating.

Anyway, it's off my chest now..
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Re: It's about who, not what, you know..

Postby PorkChop » Sep 28, '17, 3:28 pm

I've seen similar things happen in a few workplaces of mine over the years.

I used to work in a pizza shop when I was in college to get a bit of cash. I worked with three girls, all sisters, all from the same family - whose mum was best mates with my boss. I'll call them X, Y and Z. They were the slowest, shittiest members of the team, but received so much favouritism and special treatment. Off the top of my head:

- If anyone asked for more hours, the boss would say no. But if X, Y and Z asked for more hours, as if by magic, they'd find themselves with an extra couple of shifts. If this wasn't enough, the boss would try to persuade people to take time off so she could give the person's shift to them.

- Y and Z would regularly show up late and weren't questioned. In some cases they'd genuinely be 2 hours late to their shift but weren't questioned about it, and they were still paid for the hours they"d missed.

- If anyone did anything so heinous as to look at their phone for a few seconds during a shift, my boss would rip into them straight away about how they should be working, and how much bacteria is present on phones and how we deal with food, etc etc. But X, Y and Z could spend hours looking at their phones and nothing would be said.

- During the 2010 World Cup I asked my boss if we could have a portable radio in the kitchen to quietly listen to the commentary while getting on with work. She said no. A few months down the line, I'm taking an order from a customer at the counter who asks me what's happened to the radio. I'm confused, and he said usually there was music playing in the shop. I called in one weeknight to collect some wages when X, Y and Z were on shift. Lo and behold, a portable radio on the shop counter is blaring Toxic by Britney Spears. I look over at my boss, who laughs.

- They were always given the best shifts over others. I'd always only get given Friday and Saturday nights, the busiest time of the week for us (on a busy Saturday night, we were selling an average of 800 pizzas), and therefore I'd have no social life as if I gave up those shifts, I'd have no money. X, Y and Z always got given weeknights where we'd probably only sell 15 pizzas across 8 hours before closing. We were each paid about £7 an hour, but me and the rest of the team were paid £7 working non-stop during our busiest nights, while they were paid £7 to stand around chatting and listening to music with no customers around, just watching the clock tick down.

- A fairly new and well-liked member of staff was let go because allegedly we were overstaffed. A week after he left, their fourth sister joined us.

- Her boyfriend also joined as a delivery driver a few weeks after that. When cashing up at the end of shifts we would always end up £30-40 down whenever he was working, and it wound up that he was pocketing a cut of the money from the deliveries. He wasn't sacked or disciplined. He ended up with more shifts.

I left in 2011. I still go past the shop from time to time when going back to my hometown, and each of them are still there. They"re all about 30lbs heavier now though.
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Re: It's about who, not what, you know..

Postby Viazon » Oct 10, '17, 10:25 am

There is a guy I work with for is the step son of one of the big managers there. I personally have nothing against him. He can be a bit annoying and immature at times but he isn't a bad guy. However, I can say with complete confidence that he would 100% have been fired a long time ago if he wasn't his son.

I work in a warehouse and many of us drive trucks, including him. He has had so many accidents. Which happens. I myself have had two this year. My only two I have had since I've worked there. He has had at least four this year alone. And they have been big ones. But the last one took the cake. He was going backwards down a narrow aisle in what we call a VNA truck. Now, these trucks are supposed to slow down automatically when you reach the end of the aisle, so you don't crash into the wall. Well, this guy is going backwards down the aisle and he crashes into the gate at the end. He didn't even need to go that far back. I know because he took over from what I was doing when I went on my break. Now, he is saying the truck didn't slow down. They bought it and put it down to a truck error so he escaped any blame. Whether the truck was faulty or not is irrelevant. The reason he crashed was because he wasn't paying attention. He even admitted to me he wasn't. There is a camera on the truck so you can see what's behind you and mirrors all over. You are supposed to be looking in these mirrors and camera so you can see what is behind you. He clearly wasn't. And the fact that he reached the end of aisle, way past where he needed to go, proves he wasn't paying attention.

He gets so much special treatment as well. Most people start there as temps or agency workers. He got a permanent job straight away. He is on a 8-4. Everyone else in our department is either 6-2, 9-5 or 1-9. 8-4 is the dream shift in our warehouse and he somehow has it. He gets overtime during the week even though us others got told that overtime isn't available during the week and is limited only to weekends. The reason he got overtime during the week was because he car broke down and had to get a lift to work and back with his manager stepdad, who works 8-9:30. He has been there a while now and still doesn't know how to the basic tasks. He got a lot of his duties taken away from him because he just messes up too much and he is basically just there to assist other people with what they do or do any random job they find him to do. Usually donkey work.

He complained about people thinking he gets special treatment but I tried to explain to him that he does. He may not think he does. He is just playing the advantage he is being dealt with his stepdad working there. I tried to tell him to see it from other peoples perspective.
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