PINSTRIPE
not you send Christmas cards.
Three, stop taking your staff’s tips. This is a nasty little practice where some restaurant chains grab the money customers think they are giving to waiting staff and keep it for themselves – and tell their staff not to tell customers. Shame on them.
Four, stop paying senior executives too much and coming up with lame excuses for it. Nearly always we are told the over-generous pay packet has to be paid because it is the “market rate”. No it isn’t, the market rate means paying somebody £1 more than the other person who could do the job. The idea that some magic circle of people with superhuman executive powers must be paid too much or they will fly back to the planet Krypton is nonsense.
Five, stop pretending you are in the army. If you are on the beach in Portugal don’t tell me you are “on leave” – you are in fact on holiday and having a nice time.
Six, please stop pointless security silliness. How many times have you had to fill in a stupid little slip as you enter an office which then gets given back to you in a plastic pocket you are supposed to wear? I never wear mine, never hand them back and have a large collection back home – nobody has ever come looking.
Seven, stop pretending bad news is good news. Had any new terms and conditions from your bank lately? You almost certainly have and you almost certainly haven’t read them. The bits in bold are designed to give you the impression the “adjustments” to your account are good news, bringing things up-to-date, sensible stuff – when in fact they are nearly always to your disadvantage.
Eight, please actually think about health & safety rather than avoiding being sued for breach of health & safety rules. Putting stupid yellow signs on floors which say “slippery floor”, which you can’t see in a crowd and trip over, is dumb. Realising smooth designer floor tiles would be better replaced by a grippier surface is intelligent.
Nine, could you please staff your call centres properly? How many times have I phoned my mobile phone company to be told “we are experiencing a heavier than normal volume of calls”? – every time. Would I pay £1 extra a month to speak to somebody quickly rather than push buttons and get nowhere? Yes.
Ten, stop trying to destroy the English language in the mistaken belief that your latest American word is a good thing. What does “best” mean at the end of a letter? Absolutely zero. My most loathed phrase of 2016 however is “reach out” as in “I will get one of my colleagues to reach out to you”. Sounds almost Biblical but all it means is expect a phone call.
Sigh... have a good 2017. Pinstripe is a senior member of Scotland’s financial services community