Public Sector Efficiency at the Companies Registration Office...

MrDarcy

I've just tried ringing the CRO on their lo-call number: 1890 22 06 26... I'm listening to a voice mail here that says the following:

Our office is currently closed, opening hours are 10:00AM-12:30PM and 2:30PM-4:00PM Monday-Friday.

They start at 10:00AM, work 2.5 hours until 12:30PM, take a 2 hour break until 2:30PM, work 1.5 hours until 4:00PM and then that's their working day done.

As a private sector employer I find this absolutely infuriating to look at. It's 2010, these people don't work weekends, they start work when I've in all seriousness half a days work done by 10:00AM, a two hour lunch break, with the whole office shutting down and no staggered breaks to provide cover during lunch?!?!?!?!?!?

If people in the public sector want to know why people like myself despise them at the moment, then this is a pure example of why I feel the way I do towards some of our public sector workers.

At at time when people like myself are literally handing over my own salary to staff things are that tight, we have the highest paid public sector workers in Europe, sauntering into work at 10:00AM, two hour lunch breaks where the whole office shuts down, no lunch cover provided, waltzing off home at 4:00PM, there isn't a private sector small enterprise operating in Ireland on these kind of terms, it would be out of business within a month.

It's an absolute f*cking disgrace that this goes on in this country, I've had enough of it, it's disgusting. I'd actually be ashamed to take a wage doing a job like this, I'd be mortified working in a place that shuts down for 2 hours every day for lunch and feels so smug that the phones can be switched off and Joe Public can go off and take a sh*te for himself, and this is the mentality behind this level of sh*t public service...

Banned Account

They will say that this is the only time they take calls as they are soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo busy doing other things - we will not believe them, they will cry witch hunt and tell the unions on us yadda yadda yadda

MrDarcy

The person in government who stands up to this lunacy, be it a Fianna Fail person or not, will get my vote on the next occasion. I honestly feel violated as a tax payer that this is what I'm ultimately paying for, an absolutely SH*T standard of public service, all pushed along nicely with a "f*ck you Jack", attitude to the tax payer.

Jesus Christ, I'm in work since 6:00AM this morning, I still have to have a break, I won't get out of here until 8:00PM tonight, and I work six days a week. The idea of the phone ringing out here or not being answered ONCE is alien to everyone who works here.

dan_d

Feeling your pain MrDarcy. You wouldn't mind the wages if there was a decent service, or you could see the returns for your money. But you don't. It vanishes into a black hole and nothing ever changes.
Btw, the motor tax office operates similar hours. As does the births and deaths office....and the list goes on....
Even the post office manages a 9.30 to 5.30 day, with an hour for lunch + Saturday mornings.

Persiancowboy

Presumably the hours you have quoted for the CRO are the hours the public desk in that office is open as against the Office itself. Despite your obvious extreme frustration arrangments of that nature are not at all uncommon.

If you want an experience of total head-wrecking in terms of telephone access to a public body try ringing South Dublin County Council.....they are in a league all of their own. Then again you try ringing that paragon of private sector efficiency and brilliance...Ryanair...and see how long it takes you to get "served."

In any event I predict a very short life for this thread as it simply another in the increasingly tiresome rants of private sector good versus public sector bad.

MrDarcy

dan_d wrote: »

Feeling your pain MrDarcy. You wouldn't mind the wages if there was a decent service, or you could see the returns for your money. But you don't. It vanishes into a black hole and nothing ever changes.
Btw, the motor tax office operates similar hours. As does the births and deaths office....and the list goes on....
Even the post office manages a 9.30 to 5.30 day, with an hour for lunch + Saturday mornings.

It's just revolting I think. It's like some kind of obscene joke, where one half of the country are keeping their mouths shut and getting on with things, as difficult and all as they are, and the other half, that incidentally are making the most noise, are living in some sort of parallel universe where phones can be shut off for two hours for lunch and remain unanswered, where nobody appears to give the slightest sh*t for the customer, it's out the gap at 4PM and good luck and God bless to you...

MrDarcy

Persiancowboy wrote: »

Presumably the hours you have quoted for the CRO are the hours the public desk in that office is open as against the Office itself. Despite your obvious extreme frustration arrangments of that nature are not at all uncommon.

If you want an experience of total head-wrecking in terms of telephone access to a public body try ringing South Dublin County Council.....they are in a league all of their own. Then again you try ringing that paragon of private sector efficiency and brilliance...Ryanair...and see how long it takes you to get "served."

In any event I predict a very short life for this thread as it simply another in the increasingly tiresome rants of private sector good versus public sector bad.

It's 2010 for Christ's sake, do you expect me to get on a Luas and turn up at a public desk to get a simple query that can be answered in a minute, actually answered?!?!?

As for Ryaner, I don't contribute to the costs of running Ryanair, I'm not a customer so I couldn't give a fiddlers how they run their operation...

ei.sdraob

The only efficient public service

are the Revenue Commissioners

I love how they send you "preliminary estimate" notice to pay them more money than you actually earn and make it sound like its the end of the world if you dont pay up

changes

Alot of dole offices are the same... open to public from 10 to 12 and then from 2 to 4.

This doesn't mean that they start work at 10 take 2 hrs for lunch and are away home at 4 though.

dan_d

MrDarcy wrote: »

It's just revolting I think. It's like some kind of obscene joke, where one half of the country are keeping their mouths shut and getting on with things, as difficult and all as they are, and the other half, that incidentally are making the most noise, are living in some sort of parallel universe where phones can be shut off for two hours for lunch and remain unanswered, where nobody appears to give the slightest sh*t for the customer, it's out the gap at 4PM and good luck and God bless to you...

Emmm....I've seen those in the private sector out the door at 4pm and good luck too........they don't tend to be a majority I suppose, but they do exist alright.
And the Revenue Commissioners are highly efficient!!!

zootroid

changes wrote: »

Alot of dole offices are the same... open to public from 10 to 12 and then from 2 to 4.

This doesn't mean that they start work at 10 take 2 hrs for lunch and are away home at 4 though.

It does mean a very poor service is being offered to the public though if they are only open 4 hours a day.

Edit: that's in relation to the CRO office

Persiancowboy

MrDarcy wrote: »

The person in government who stands up to this lunacy, be it a Fianna Fail person or not, will get my vote on the next occasion. I honestly feel violated as a tax payer that this is what I'm ultimately paying for, an absolutely SH*T standard of public service, all pushed along nicely with a "f*ck you Jack", attitude to the tax payer.

Jesus Christ, I'm in work since 6:00AM this morning, I still have to have a break, I won't get out of here until 8:00PM tonight, and I work six days a week. The idea of the phone ringing out here or not being answered ONCE is alien to everyone who works here.

hopefully you'll feel a bit better tomorrow....today is obviously not a good one for you.

Scofflaw

zootroid wrote: »

It does mean a very poor service is being offered to the public though if they are only open 4 hours a day.

Edit: that's in relation to the CRO office

The problem with this kind of definitive statement is that there's a whole heap of missing variables.

For example:

1. does the CRO receive enough funding to have sufficient staff both to process all the paperwork and be 100% customer-facing eight hours a day?

2. if the CRO does not receive enough funding to do both the above (and why should it, given it's hardly politically sensitive?) which would you prefer to lose - keeping up with the paperwork or being customer facing?

3. do you know whether the current public desk hours represent a compromise between processing the paperwork and being customer facing? In other words, is running a customer services desk 8 hours a day the most productive use of available resources? Is it even necessary?

If you don't know whether it's actually possible to run an eight-hour public-facing service and process the paperwork, the complaint that they don't do both is a little meaningless.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ClayDavis

Their website is pretty good, did you look up stuff there? As per Scofflaw's post, maybe there isn't demand for 8 hours direct customer service?

MrDarcy

Scofflaw wrote: »

The problem with this kind of definitive statement is that there's a whole heap of missing variables.

For example:

1. does the CRO receive enough funding to have sufficient staff both to process all the paperwork and be 100% customer-facing eight hours a day?

2. if the CRO does not receive enough funding to do both the above (and why should it, given it's hardly politically sensitive?) which would you prefer to lose - keeping up with the paperwork or being customer facing?

3. do you know whether the current public desk hours represent a compromise between processing the paperwork and being customer facing? In other words, is running a customer services desk 8 hours a day the most productive use of available resources? Is it even necessary?

If you don't know whether it's actually possible to run an eight-hour public-facing service and process the paperwork, the complaint that they don't do both is a little meaningless.

cordially,
Scofflaw

This "either have this service or that service" approach to the delivery of efficient customer service, I think is part of the problem here. Clearly the working arrangements in the CRO are so utterly backward, that they can't even agree for one person or two people to stay at work while others on the team go on lunch. You simply can't run a business or deliver any service or product to a consistently high standard with this type of inflexible, intransigent and bullsh*t mentality.

I genuinely think that it's long past time that Prime Time took a look at the kind of constant firefighting that is going on in an awful lot of private sector businesses, and gave our brethern in the public sector a long overdue eye opener. I'm genuinely not trolling here, it feels so fundamentally unfair to be seeing such blatantly defective business management in operation, knowing that you are paying for it.

ClayDavis wrote: »

Their website is pretty good, did you look up stuff there? As per Scofflaw's post, maybe there isn't demand for 8 hours direct customer service?

Extremely doubtful, when I eventually got through at 3:30PM today, I was 20 minutes waiting after being told by the automated system that I was 9th in the queue!

ClayDavis

MrDarcy wrote: »

Extremely doubtful, when I eventually got through at 3:30PM today, I was 20 minutes waiting after being told by the automated system that I was 9th in the queue!

Fair enough, I've never had to call them, I tend to only use the website.

MrDarcy

ClayDavis wrote: »

Fair enough, I've never had to call them, I tend to only use the website.

I use the website for filing, OK fair enough to them they have that end of it working fine... But not everything can be answered via a website, if I'm dealing with a business here in the private sector, or thinking of doing business with a company, and I call up at lunch hour and get told that the whole business is shut for lunch, there endeth that!

The difference here is that in the private sector, if headcount is cut or resources are cut, people HAVE to work harder and the job ultimately gets done to the same standard, albeit under more stressful conditions.

In the public sector, the it appears to me that the decision gets made immediately that when resources get cut, services get cut. In order for a private sector business to survive, this default position is simply not an option, not unless the business is positioning itself for closure.

Scofflaw

MrDarcy wrote: »

I use the website for filing, OK fair enough to them they have that end of it working fine... But not everything can be answered via a website, if I'm dealing with a business here in the private sector, or thinking of doing business with a company, and I call up at lunch hour and get told that the whole business is shut for lunch, there endeth that!

The difference here is that in the private sector, if headcount is cut or resources are cut, people HAVE to work harder and the job ultimately gets done to the same standard, albeit under more stressful conditions.

In the public sector, the it appears to me that the decision gets made immediately that when resources get cut, services get cut. In order for a private sector business to survive, this default position is simply not an option, not unless the business is positioning itself for closure.

The response of a private company to a resource cut depends on many things, though, including the size of the company. In a large company where that business unit is not profit-making, the response will be exactly the same as in the public sector.

In a small company, it depends on why the company is suffering a resource squeeze - the usual reasons are a lack of customers or an increase in costs. The response in the latter case, however, is usually to raise prices, often leading, in turn, to a drop in the customer base. The thing about a drop in the customer base is that it won't automatically lead to a reduction in your level of service if you stay with them, because there are fewer customers to be serviced, which means the company can devote fewer resources without a loss of service to the retained customers. Indeed, identifying and pruning customers who generate a net loss is a worthwhile exercise at all times.

In the case of somewhere like the CRO, they don't have the option to raise prices (since their funding probably doesn't come directly from their work anyway), and they don't have the option to refuse service. The CRO is never allowed to say "we won't take on any more work, we're swamped".

Now, if one wants to argue that we're getting a bad deal here, one should show that a private company doing the CRO's job would be as cheap, as efficient, and as honest, within the limits of a universal service obligation. It's quite possible that's the case, but it has yet to be demonstrated.

cordially,
Scofflaw

jimmycrackcorm

Where in the private sector can you find a company that will only make themselves publicly accessible for a few short hours daily.

I suspect that it's principally a union thing which is probably why many post offices cannot manage even one staff member on a lunchtime counter either.

Absurdum

MrDarcy wrote: »

They start at 10:00AM, work 2.5 hours until 12:30PM, take a 2 hour break until 2:30PM, work 1.5 hours until 4:00PM and then that's their working day done.

It isn't as straightforward as that; you go in there at 12:29, and you will see that they will continue serving customers until they get through the queue. Lunch will more than likely be from 1:30 or 2:00 until 2:30. I can't vouch for the CRO staff because I don't work there, but to state that their working day is just 4 hours is nonsensical and ignorant .

P. Breathnach

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Where in the private sector can you find a company that will only make themselves publicly accessible for a few short hours daily.

Many financial institutions have limited opening hours. So does my local surgery (and I need an appointment to avail of them).

While maintaining a public record is part of the CRO's brief, it is not primarily a public access business in the same way as, for example, a grocery shop.

rightwingdub

County council offices are only open from 10am till 4pm, its a joke the level of restricted opening hours that exist in the public service.

steof1984

It's obviously not a union thing, as SFA and Revenue open during lunchtime. So it is obviously a management decision, perhaps a supply/demand thing

If a report came out that they manned the office during breaks at a cost of €X amount and only 3 or 4 people phoned during lunch, people would cite that as how wasteful the PS is. You just cant please everyone.

To say only Public Sector works restricted hours is stupid. Doctors who are Private Sector workers work very restricted hours, my doctor opens on a Friday at 10 and closes at 12:30. So it also happens in the Private Sector

What hours would you like to see them open?

bonzos

If you think yesterday was bad try ringing any state office during cheltenham!!

douglashyde

It hasn't been mentioned yet in this post:

While the Public Sector do (and they do) work less hours than their Private Sector equivalents, they also:

1. Get paid more. (on average)

2. Are extremely inefficient. (but refuse reform the system)

3. Will never lose their job

4. And are no better qualified than Private Sector (and my own personal suspicions would be that they are less qualified

The person who stand up to unions and gets their hands dirty will be Irelands' savoir.

ClayDavis

douglashyde wrote: »

It hasn't been mentioned yet in this post:

While the Public Sector do (and they do) work less hours than their Private Sector equivalents, they also:

1. Get paid more. (on average)

2. Are extremely inefficient. (but refuse reform the system)

3. Will never lose their job

4. And are no better qualified than Private Sector (and my own personal suspicions would be that they are less qualified

The person who stand up to unions and gets their hands dirty will be Irelands' savoir.

Yeah! All private sector workers are harder working, more efficient, lower paid, more flexible, more innovative, less secure and just god-damn prettier than all public sector workers. That's cleared that up for me.

Gumbo

rightwingdub wrote: »

County council offices are only open from 10am till 4pm, its a joke the level of restricted opening hours that exist in the public service.

Dublin City Council is 9am to 5pm Mon-Fri. I think they cover lunch too.

steof1984

@DouglasHyde

A recent CSO report shows that over half of the Public Sector have a 3rd Level qualification, compared to 34% of Private Sector workers

Looks like your suspicions are wrong.

danbohan

steof1984 wrote: »

@DouglasHyde

A recent CSO report shows that over half of the Public Sector have a 3rd Level qualification, compared to 34% of Private Sector workers

Looks like your suspicions are wrong.

his facts are wrong {maybe}but his suspicions are well founded. you judge people by their ability and how their doing their job , not some qualification , on that basis most of the public sector fail dismally

steof1984

Read what he wrote, he said that his suspicions are that the Public Sector workers are less qualified than Private Sector workers.

He is wrong, plain and simple

If he wants to say, “while they may be more qualified, in my experience they are lazy and don’t use those qualifications”

Fine I have no problem with that. But he said simple that the Private sector has a more qualified workforce, and this is just wrong

dan_d

A simple solution this problem in public sector offices that do interface with the public would be to open longer hours maybe 2 or 3 days of the week, and restricted hours on other days. Even opening late (til say 7) one night of the week would be a huge benefit to a lot of people.Obviously you'd never keep everyone happy, but at least they could point to that option and say it's available, now it's up to you to work with it.
Probably shouldn't hold our breaths on that though.

murphaph

steof1984 wrote: »

Read what he wrote, he said that his suspicions are that the Public Sector workers are less qualified than Private Sector workers.

He is wrong, plain and simple

If he wants to say, “while they may be more qualified, in my experience they are lazy and don’t use those qualifications”

Fine I have no problem with that. But he said simple that the Private sector has a more qualified workforce, and this is just wrong

You're confusing educated with qualified I feel. A higher %age of the PS may be educated to a higher level than in the private sector but that doesn't mean they are more qualified to do their particular job.

In reality most of the clerical jobs in the PS require nothing more than an ability to read, write and perhaps do a little arithmetic. Few, if any, will actually require the education received during a degree course to do the job. I've a degree in engineering, would I be considered more qualified to stamp and file forms than someone with a leaving cert only? I think not.

steof1984

murphaph wrote: »

In reality most of the clerical jobs in the PS require nothing more than an ability to read, write and perhaps do a little arithmetic.

Well if thats all it takes, all PS workers would be qualified

murphaph

steof1984 wrote: »

Well if thats all it takes, all PS workers would be qualified

And so they should be, they are paid handsomely to do what's asked of them

changes

murphaph wrote: »

In reality most of the clerical jobs in the PS require nothing more than an ability to read, write and perhaps do a little arithmetic. Few, if any, will actually require the education received during a degree course to do the job. I've a degree in engineering, would I be considered more qualified to stamp and file forms than someone with a leaving cert only? I think not.

If i was a manager in the PS i wouldn't give you a job as a CO murphaph you'd be on boards posting all day... you'd get bugger all filing and stamping done:D:D

ronano

The hours on surface seem crazy but in my experience the cro office in dublin has been a shining light of the public sector. The staff are efficent,the online site is easy to use,cheaper and faster and whenever i had a problem,they went beyond what i expected and got what i needed done. I'm not pro public sector in anyway but the revenue and cro in my experience has been great.

douglashyde

steof1984 wrote: »

@DouglasHyde

A recent CSO report shows that over half of the Public Sector have a 3rd Level qualification, compared to 34% of Private Sector workers

Looks like your suspicions are wrong.

That is because "Private Sector workers" have a much broader job range(and do not require 3rd level education), while in most cases "Public Sector workers" are professionals; it is not fair to compare retail staff to someone working in accounting in the HSE.

However, I actually wasn’t talking about 3rd level education; I meant that lot Public sector workers are not very qualified due to a few reasons:

1. Many of them have only had that one job their entire life.

2. They are not commercially or target focused because their jobs are secure and most parts of all government organisations don’t have any sort of competition.

3. Wages are mainly increased on pay grades or role change - there is no incentive for people to work harder.

4. Over unionised - because of the absurdly unionised nature of our public service - staff can be very reluctant to adopt to change.

Godge

douglashyde wrote: »

That is because "Private Sector workers" have a much broader job range(and do not require 3rd level education), while in most cases "Public Sector workers" are professionals; it is not fair to compare retail staff to someone working in accounting in the HSE.

However, I actually wasn’t talking about 3rd level education; I meant that lot Public sector workers are not very qualified due to a few reasons:

1. Many of them have only had that one job their entire life.

2. They are not commercially or target focused because their jobs are secure and most parts of all government organisations don’t have any sort of competition.

3. Wages are mainly increased on pay grades or role change - there is no incentive for people to work harder.

4. Over unionised - because of the absurdly unionised nature of our public service - staff can be very reluctant to adopt to change.

How does any of that mean they are unqualified to do the job???

Take someone who qualifies as a doctor. He has only ever been a doctor. Using your point 1, he is not qualified to be a doctor????

Why does everyone think that every public servant stamps and files forms????

How should a social worker be commercially focussed? If one says that three of his clients took overdoses this week so that means we are more productive so he should get a bonus????

The problem with this debate is that there are very few who understand what it is like to work in both sectors. Most private sector workers have no experience of the public sector and vice versa. That is why neither side understands each other and we get these long-running repetitive debates on boards.

BeardyFunzo

douglashyde wrote: »

1. Many of them have only had that one job their entire life.

2. They are not commercially or target focused because their jobs are secure and most parts of all government organisations don’t have any sort of competition.

3. Wages are mainly increased on pay grades or role change - there is no incentive for people to work harder.

4. Over unionised - because of the absurdly unionised nature of our public service - staff can be very reluctant to adopt to change.

1. Many? Nice and vague. I've had waaaayyyy more than one job my entire life. there was a time i used to work three jobs while going to third level.

2. That is the point of being public service. it's not, in many areas supposed to be commercially focused.

3. In a small group like the one i work in there are only two levels: the boss and not the boss. We can't all be the boss. should i have stayed on 25K for the last ten years?

4. and some of us are striving for efficiency and getting things done to the best of our ability. I know that doesn't sit well with you but it's true. I'm always looking to make things faster and better for people.

Bedtime! and yep, I'm only going to bed at 2am because I only sleep 5 and half hours a night. Didn't expect that from a lazy public servant eh?

The_Thing

Why does everyone think that every public servant stamps and files forms????

Those with their own agenda would like everyone to believe that.

RichardAnd

The times listed in the OP are the core flexi-time hours that most public sector bodies use. For those who don't know what this is, allow me to explain.

Every person on flexi-time has to work 7 hours a day, minimum. However, it is called flexi-time because they can come in any time before 10 and leave any time after 4. They can work less than 7 hours a day if they wish but doing puts their hours worked into a deficit which, in theory at least, will affect their pay.

12:30 - 2:30 are the hours where the PS worker CAN take their lunch. If they wish, they can take a 2 hour break but once again, if they work less than 7 hours a day they will have the same time balancing problem.

When I worked for the PS back in my youthful days, I used to get in a 8am, take a half an hour lunch break and then leave at 4pm (sometimes 4:30). This put me 30 - 60 mins over my quota every day. One of the great things about flexi-time is that it allows surplus time to be kept and used for a day off every 4 weeks (one flex time period).

I take no sides in the public vs private civil war because neither side is entirly right but this should be laid down. don't shoot the messenger .

Liam Byrne

What about all the commercial companies who have recorded messages saying "your call is important to us" (which means it's anything but) and you're charged whatever per minute for the privilege of listening to their recording while they don't answer ?

Bobby31

Yeah I agree completely. What galls me most is the fact that one bloody civil servant goes for lunch and as a result many of us are inconvenienced. We simply dont matter ....what matters is that these underworked, overpaid. self important leeches on society se that the most important thing about their job is the fact that they are doing it.
I've seen it Social welfare offices ..I've seen it in FAS and in other Government offices where people with basic clerical skills and very little if any social skills treat people with contempt. It's almost as if we were "the enemy"
None of them know what a real days work is like where you come home physically f**ked after 10 hours for minimum wage .How many of these wasters work for minimum wage ...it makes my blood boil They're spoilt rotten ..the lot of them

RichardAnd

Bobby31 wrote: »

Yeah I agree completely. What galls me most is the fact that one bloody civil servant goes for lunch and as a result many of us are inconvenienced. We simply dont matter ....what matters is that these underworked, overpaid. self important leeches on society se that the most important thing about their job is the fact that they are doing it.
I've seen it Social welfare offices ..I've seen it in FAS and in other Government offices where people with basic clerical skills and very little if any social skills treat people with contempt. It's almost as if we were "the enemy"
None of them know what a real days work is like where you come home physically f**ked after 10 hours for minimum wage .How many of these wasters work for minimum wage ...it makes my blood boil They're spoilt rotten ..the lot of them

Hold on, this isn't fair at all. When I worked for the PS, I used to have to staff a public office and I was often by myself in doing it so I had to see to a dozen or so people at a time and I had no one backing me up.

Your are quite correct about FAS, I don't know about SW. There are plenty of lazy f**kers but there are lazy people everywhere. The public sector just seems to tolerate it because with the unions, nothing can be done.

But still, don't paint them all with the one brush.

murphaph

Called up the dept. of social and family affairs, client eleigibility services section today. I need to get 2 forms (E301 and E104) for my health insurer here in Germany, as I have switched jobs and am going into their public system. I need the forms relatively quickly, before the end of this month would be ok though. Bloke on the phone told me it would be a "wait of several months" to get those forms as they are "totally swamped with people leaving Ireland and requesting them". Several months? Wtf? All these forms state are that I have paid class A PRSI etc. for 12 years in Ireland. How ddifficult can it be to verify this? If we had received ANYTHING in exchange for sodding benchmarking, all this would have been computerised and the records availabale at the touch of a button. I have mates from England here who needed the same forms for the same reason and they had them sent to Germany within a week. The Irish PS is s fcuking disgrace, possibly beyond reform.

bonzos

If the employees of any company of this country refused to answer the phones of a few months the company would be gone under......do these clowns not see the damage they are doing to this country,ironically they are probally doing more damage to the future of this country than the banks and politicans they are protesting againest:mad:

murf313

MrDarcy wrote: »

I've just tried ringing the CRO on their lo-call number: 1890 22 06 26... I'm listening to a voice mail here that says the following:

Our office is currently closed, opening hours are 10:00AM-12:30PM and 2:30PM-4:00PM Monday-Friday.

They start at 10:00AM, work 2.5 hours until 12:30PM, take a 2 hour break until 2:30PM, work 1.5 hours until 4:00PM and then that's their working day done.

As a private sector employer I find this absolutely infuriating to look at. It's 2010, these people don't work weekends, they start work when I've in all seriousness half a days work done by 10:00AM, a two hour lunch break, with the whole office shutting down and no staggered breaks to provide cover during lunch?!?!?!?!?!?

If people in the public sector want to know why people like myself despise them at the moment, then this is a pure example of why I feel the way I do towards some of our public sector workers.

At at time when people like myself are literally handing over my own salary to staff things are that tight, we have the highest paid public sector workers in Europe, sauntering into work at 10:00AM, two hour lunch breaks where the whole office shuts down, no lunch cover provided, waltzing off home at 4:00PM, there isn't a private sector small enterprise operating in Ireland on these kind of terms, it would be out of business within a month.

It's an absolute f*cking disgrace that this goes on in this country, I've had enough of it, it's disgusting. I'd actually be ashamed to take a wage doing a job like this, I'd be mortified working in a place that shuts down for 2 hours every day for lunch and feels so smug that the phones can be switched off and Joe Public can go off and take a sh*te for himself, and this is the mentality behind this level of sh*t public service...

Im a public servant. I was in work at 06:45 this morning and wont be finished until 19:00 this evening (hopefully). same for the previous 3 days.
I dont have any defined breaks during the day. I grab a cup of tea and lunch in between calls (could be anytime)
Thats 4 12hr shifts in a week. Same again next week. Including bank holiday and the weekend.

lesson for you = dont tar all public servants with the one brush!

murphaph

murf313 wrote: »

Im a public servant. I was in work at 06:45 this morning and wont be finished until 19:00 this evening (hopefully). same for the previous 3 days.
I dont have any defined breaks during the day. I grab a cup of tea and lunch in between calls (could be anytime)
Thats 4 12hr shifts in a week. Same again next week. Including bank holiday and the weekend.

lesson for you = dont tar all public servants with the one brush!

The problem for the hard workers like you murf (and of course there are some hard workers in the PS) is that you group yourselves together with the dead wood in strongarm unions and attempt to hold the country to ransom through force of numbers and nothing else. It is understandable to me that the PS gets tarred with the same brush when the unions paint this picture of a united PS themselves.

murf313

murphaph wrote: »

The problem for the hard workers like you murf (and of course there are some hard workers in the PS) is that you group yourselves together with the dead wood in strongarm unions and attempt to hold the country to ransom through force of numbers and nothing else. It is understandable to me that the PS gets tarred with the same brush when the unions paint this picture of a united PS themselves.

sorry but this has nothing to do with unions.

the op had a bad experience with one dept but he generalised this and lumped all PS as inefficient, lazy, good for nothings.
simple as....

I was in homebase the other day and asked a guy working there for help in locating a product. Well, he looked like i had asked him to find the holy grail. He grunted at me to wait there and he'll go and have a look. 10 mins later im still standing there and he comes back and said he forgot what i wanted.

I had a bad experience but I dont tar all the private sector with one brush

Jaysoose

murf313 wrote: »

sorry but this has nothing to do with unions.

the op had a bad experience with one dept but he generalised this and lumped all PS as inefficient, lazy, good for nothings.
simple as....

I was in homebase the other day and asked a guy working there for help in locating a product. Well, he looked like i had asked him to find the holy grail. He grunted at me to wait there and he'll go and have a look. 10 mins later im still standing there and he comes back and said he forgot what i wanted.

I had a bad experience but I dont tar all the private sector with one brush

Difference being of course the employee in homebase can be sacked and more than likely wont be getting a pay rise......where the guys in the CS cannot be sacked and enjoyed pay rises for the same work.

Did you complain at the time?

murf313

Jaysoose wrote: »

Difference being of course the employee in homebase can be sacked and more than likely wont be getting a pay rise......where the guys in the CS cannot be sacked and enjoyed pay rises for the same work.

Did you complain at the time?

no i didnt complain, i was in a rush.

Your getting away from the point I was making that perhaps people shouldnt be tarred with the one brush?

As i said not everyone works those hours with weekends off..........