Attention To Detail?

Pennywise

Does no-one care enough anymore to get things right? This week, it seems I've been plagued with sloppiness and general laziness.

1. Mother went into hospital today for a long-planned operation. It turns out all the required tests (i.e. heart scans etc) havn't been done, so the op has been cancelled for another couple of weeks. The thing is, this Op has been planned for several weeks, and a few problems were highlighted over a month ago (i.e. reason for heart scan). Don't the departments within the NHS bother talking to eachother? What a waste of valuable NHS resources - someone else could have had their Op instead? Not to mention wasted time off work of my OH taking a day of work (unpaid) to take her into hospital!

2. Ordered a new mobile phone. It arrived yesterday. They've sent the wrong one! Now "I" have to waste time repackaging it, going to PO to send it back special delivery.

3. Just going through an excel spreadsheet provided by the Inland Revenue. The columns don't add up, so I have to manually re-add them all. Come on, surely something as simple as adding a column automatically in Excel is not beyond the capabilities of the average public sector worker! So another hour or so of wasted time.

Isn't it time there was a campaign for people to take more care over whatever they are doing - it seems that sloppiness and laziness has become the norm.

aliasojo

Whooo hoooo! A person after my own heart!

Over the last week, I have had many issues which have arisen just because a little bit of care was not taken in the first place.

It usually works the third time for me......first item wrong, second item damaged, third item ok. It's got to the stage where I take the third item off the shelf now, lol.

I've lost count of the amount of tradesmen who did a shoddy job just because they didn't spend an extra 5 minutes just making sure everything was ok.

As above, left hands which don't talk to right hands. Lost count of the amount of times this has affected me and mine.

I'm afraid Great Britain hasn't been great in my eyes for a long long time. Other countries seem to manage to produce quality products and have good workforces, why can't we?

Did anyone see the house building prog where the Germans came over to erect a kit house? They were on the ball and needless to say it was our lot that held the work up. Even at the end of the build when a tiny defect was found, they rectified it immediately. Bit different from the documentary programme which detailed all the faults in our new build houses.

We do seem to be developing into a country which is plagued by falling standards.

Plasticman

We seem to have lost any pride in what we do in this country. I remember asking my grandfather about his work and he told me (with enthusiasm) about how hard he worked and the quality of what he produced. Even in his 80's he kept examples of the work he had carried out and was proud if it. If you ask somebody now about their work you are more likely to hear how much they can earn and how little effort they need to put in.

WHA

You've taken the words out of my mouth.

Last Friday we had a leaking water pipe. Plumber came late afternoon and seemed to be in a hurry (presumably wanted to get home and then off to the pub). Did the job in just under an hour.

Next morning we noticed it was still leaking so called him out again. He was not at all happy being called out on Saturday morning but we insisted. It turned out that he had only replaced a small section of the pipe where he "thought" it was leaking. He then spent around 3 hours replacing the entire length of pipe and was really grumpy throughout at losing his Saturday morning.

If he'd spent a little bit longer in the first place, he'd have done the job and wouldn't have had to come back. Silly !!!!!! it was his own fault!!!

IvanOpinion

I have posted many times on this site that the quality of the Great British worker is stretching to reach new lows. Nobody takes pride in what they do ... I recently had this discussion with the MD in the company I work for. Too many people simply see 9-5 as an opportunity to talk to their mates, organise their social life, have coffee and lunch breaks and, if it does not inconvenience them too much, do a bit of work. One of the major issues is that everybody thinks they are a manager and most have absolutely no managerial experience ... further, they try too hard to be their employess mate and chum ... this doesn't work, a manager has to manage ... the only problem is that if they come down hard on some lazy sod they are the one that ends up in trouble.

I can understand why a good friend of mine is now employing his THIRD crew of foreign migrant workers. As he says they are reliable (not the usual Monday morning sickies, child coughed once so took day off types), they take pride in the product they produce, they work hard during the hours they are meant to (he reckons production is up over 60%) and they do not look for every opportunity to sue over somethig trivial. These are not low paying minimum wage jobs ... he pays the migrant workers exactly the same as the locals (except the migrants always seem to get the big productivity bonus cheques).

My friend has a very poor opinion of the 'poor quality uneducated wastrels' that our education system and society is pumping out. He currently needs 2 more crews (about 50 people) and he is only advertising overseas to fill them. He doesn't even want to waste time interviewing locals ... I think this is a disgrace but he has his targets to meet and I can see his point.

Ivan

trace-j

IvanOpinon wrote:

I have posted many times on this site that the quality of the Great British worker is stretching to reach new lows..........

I do agree with you, if your friend has a job to do then he will utilise the best human resource available.

I am annoyed somewhat by these lazy types and disappointed that your friend has me labelled as such for being from GB.

I work (very hard) in an underfunded Local Council Office (I trust you have your own opinions on these!). The amount of balls (I have no other way of describing it) we have to do and making things accountable on bits of paper is outrageous. For a days work you spend 1/2 actually doing what you're expected, they rest is recording what you've done, said and why on a database and accounting for the full days work. I account on the system the time spent accounting for my time :mad:

I have seen laziness and fraud first handed and the employee was not sacked and merely giving a warning. This person basically closed files that were not dealt with in some elses name (so they got the flack when complaints rolled in) inflated figures with work not done and claiming mileage on the use of his car.

So why is the GB worked labelled as lazy, well there are those who simply are lazy, those who work hard lose the motivation as the work is never good enough and when you are lazy you get away with it. Not forgetting, you don't even have to work and get a crust in this country. I have no pride in my country (though shameful as it sounds) as I do not feel looked after for doing nothing other than be a law abiding hard working citizen. My partner and I would consider emigrating as we have no children to worry about.

Gwenhwyfar_(Guinevere)

WHA wrote:

You've taken the words out of my mouth.

Last Friday we had a leaking water pipe. Plumber came late afternoon and seemed to be in a hurry (presumably wanted to get home and then off to the pub). Did the job in just under an hour.

Next morning we noticed it was still leaking so called him out again. He was not at all happy being called out on Saturday morning but we insisted. It turned out that he had only replaced a small section of the pipe where he "thought" it was leaking. He then spent around 3 hours replacing the entire length of pipe and was really grumpy throughout at losing his Saturday morning.

If he'd spent a little bit longer in the first place, he'd have done the job and wouldn't have had to come back. Silly !!!!!! it was his own fault!!!

So true. Every time you get some 'professional' in to do a job they are always in a hurry and definatley no attention to detail. Why call themselves professionals? We had a BT guy come to fix an internet point in an upstairs room, -BT were aware that the point was going upstairs-we waited 3 weeks for the appointment and guess what? he didn't bring a LADDER!!!

bats_2

I'm not sure that I understand your complaint Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere). You wanted the BT engineer to fix an internet point in an upstairs room. Would he not then assume that there were stairs to this room? Why on earth would he feel the need to use a ladder to bypass the stairs?