Sunday 8 July 2007

Setting things straight

Now this week I found out that Neil is officially (or maybe not officially) off sick. I found out that, rather than having the day off on Friday, my boss and my team leader went on a home visit to try and see Neil. I don’t think that they got in. Karen told me that the downstairs blinds were drawn. They had, however, gone prepared with an official letter to stick through his door to make sure that he knew he was off work without any excuse at the time. So on Monday morning my team leader got a phone call from Neil, or Neil’s mom (I’m not too sure) saying that he was off sick, apparently with black-outs and headaches. According to her, Neil had gone to see his doctor to get a sick note, but his doctor was off sick himself, so he couldn’t get one.
Now at my doctor’s surgery if one doctor is off you get the choice of another doctor, and if his surgery is only a small one then they would get a locum in. Also, if I was having black-outs I would like to think that my doctor would get me straight over the hospital for a brain scan. Not sure if he’d find much, but I imagine that he wouldn’t mess about with stuff concerning the brain. So this all sounds very dodgy. When he started going through his first lot of “competency”, when he was missing days at work before, he had some counselling and they put him in touch with an Alcoholic’s group. So they’re fairly sure that it’s all drink related, especially with him turning up drunk the other Monday morning.
Apparently now, the next step is to get HR involved. This will take another three months or so for the whole process of sacking him to take place. They know because this is what happened to Fat Dave.
Yes. Sadly (although not for me, because I had to redo all his work) we had to let Fat Dave go. I know some of you were asking about where Fat Dave had got to. Even sending in sites like this:
that Dave would enjoy. In Fat Dave’s case this was solely based on his attendance record, rather than the crap work he used to churn out. Although I kept copies of all the crap he did used to hand in, in case his attendance did pick up.

I hope this doesn’t paint me as a heartless bastard, but I do have colleagues who come to work punctually, day after day, and work hard, and turn out a decent workload that they can (and should) be proud of. I work very hard myself, and don’t like having to do extra in order to make up for the freeloaders that I also have to work with.

So there you go. People have been asking all week where Neil has been this week. All I could tell them was that he was AWOL, because that is all I knew until Thursday. I’m not too happy with the secrecy (like having to interview Junior, even though he was the only bloke who had applied) and only getting told things when I need to know, and being asked to keep secrets from other colleagues.

There are a few more blogs I wrote about Fat Dave that I didn’t get chance to publish while he was still here, which will have you amazed. I will be publishing these retrospectively when I find the memory stick they are stored on, and when there is less going on at work to write about. I haven’t forgot that I promised you the story about Jen getting dropped on her head as well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is Neil going to be kept on then? Is there a chance that could happen?

x