A FriNay weekend

So woke up for my Friday shift raring to get it over and enjoy the weekend.

While I still don't go out since we are still in the world's longest lockdown and nary a sight of things getting better I still look forward to the weekend to unwind, order in some food and drinks and just chill.

It was not going to be that way. Not today.

The first thing I noticed was our main chat group for all recruiters was full of messages. I am usually the first one up and greets people as they come in but there was an animated discussion going on already.

It seems that people were waiting for the salary for the cut off to be credited to our banks. Bills to pay, online shopping to purchase, debts to be paid. All the adulting stuff.

It was already past 7 PM and the salary should have been credited a couple of hours ago. People were asking why is there a delay and no one had an answer.

Shit is going to hit the fan. You never mess with the salary of people. Especially at this time.

So we sent a curt message to Payroll on what the fuck happened (well a bit more polite since we are on a business setting)

The canned response was it was sent the same time always and the problem was with the bank. Oh damn no accountability whatsoever...

People were not going to be happy with this.

The weekly meeting with the VP was canceled, people were clearly scrambling to appease people. Tempers were rising, and I managed to talk down several who wanted to send angry emails.

Then payroll's head sent an email. The salary was to be credited on Monday afternoon. It was chaos.

Photo by Stephen Radford on Unsplash

Have you ever wondered how it feels to be in the blast radius of one of the explosions in a Michael Bay movie?

How you see the blast coming, it slows down briefly and then it hits, and then suddenly time moves forward so quick it feels like whiplash and you get sucked in it. You lose control and all you can do is ride it out and hope to survive the landing.

It was like that.

The main chat erupted as over 300 people started talking all at once. Work stopped as there was an endless stream of messages at an ever speeding rate of being sent.

A lot were people voicing their frustrations. I caught a couple of cursed words but I let it go. No need to pour gasoline on the hotheads and have things further escalate.

Some were sad stories of how it will go to maintenance meds for their parents, others are sole breadwinners as the majority of their family members lost their jobs in this pandemic.

Honestly, it was unacceptable. It was downright frustrating for a lot of people, myself included.

I had to let it run its course, to lose steam. I reached out to some by private chat. I talked to them, acknowledged the problem and validate their frustrations.

Eventually dumb-dumb (payroll's head) said they will cover penalties, interest charges and anything really, really important. I don't know who will fund it and frankly I didn't care.

This was a problem they created and we are trying to put out some of the fires that we can manage.

The chat slowed down, their frustrations and energy spent as people move to accept that they can't do anything else. They got shat at all they can do is wipe themselves off.

Someone will be accountable for this for sure. Some will pay for this FriNay.