Confessions of a payroll manager – I want to be alone
Another episode in a series of occasional yet insightful/inciteful, anonymous and whimsical reports revealing the arcane, weird and sometimes torturous world of payroll frequented by payroll professionals. T here are few things that make me anxious at Crumbitts, as over the years I’ve seen and heard it all: Molly Parkins – our veteran tea lady – expressing her confusion around the new payslips through a bizarre song and dance routine culminating in her whispering “you’ve got to imagine it underwater”; Simon from packing announcing to the whole factory that he’d not only just boxed 1,000 packets of Crumbitt’s crinkles but somewhere in one of the hundreds of boxes was his wife’s pedigree chihuahua which he’d been ‘looking after’ for the day. And, most recently, we had Evie bursting into tears during lunch and maintaining the sobs for a full hour before someone managed to find out from her that she’d just remembered a moving scene from the previous night’s episode of Emergency Ice Dancers on Skis. However, the sight of Richard Wright – “I’m always right, aren’t I?”– from estates standing next to a maniacally grinning Mr Crumbitt is enough to strike fear into the most hardened of hearts. As my mind flooded with a cacophony of reasons why Richard – “Always right, never wrong” – was in my office Mr Crumbitt announced that following Richard’s suggestion the office was going ‘open plan’. Now, I like to think of myself as sociable – a people person, if you will – but there are occasions when you must have some time on your own. And, having my
own office meant I’d been able to have private conversations with the team when discretion was key – well, not everyone’s as keen to share as our Evie. When I raised this with an excitable Mr Crumbitt, he smiled rather smugly and thrust a piece of paper in my face. Once I’d focussed I could see the words ‘Privacy Pods’ scrawled across the top. Pods? I wasn’t about to go into cryo-sleep for heaven’s sake! Mr Crumbitt, however, was undeterred by my raised eyebrow and explained that they would ‘revolutionise’ payroll meetings. After my misgivings I expected my team to be equally reserved, but my announcement to them – along with the ‘artist’s impression’ of the Privacy Pods – was met with wild excitement. Jace asked if he could work in a Pod all the time, and a school-yard-style debate started on who should sit near whom. Only Tom asked, rather sensibly I thought, if it might be a bit noisy – but that was it, everyone was on board. In preparation for the change-over we packed away contents of our desks. If seeing Richard Wright was a panic inducing event, that was nothing compared to sight of the detritus emerging from desk tidies, drawers and files. The underneath of desks turned out to be something of a minefield, too. Evie brought out twelve pairs of shoes, one odd wellington boot, a broken radio, 34 carrier bags stuffed into one and an ‘Andrew and Fergie – the love story of our time’ wedding souvenir magazine. Although the change-over happened at a weekend I couldn’t resist visiting to see how things were going. My heart sank beholding
the wasteland that used to be my office. I dropped off the cake and flasks of coffee I’d used as an excuse to visit and plastered a – probably not very convincing – smile on my face. Richard was there supervising and delivered one of his classic lines with a disconcerting wink: “Don’t worry Pen, it’ll be all right in the end”. On Monday, Mr Crumbitt, looking extremely pleased, stopped us at the closed office door. I braced myself, but as he opened it with a flourish it was like the wasteland of Saturday had never existed. It looked truly lovely, much bigger, incredibly clean and welcoming. I found my seat at a shared hexagonal desk and although the first hour was pretty much silent – a hitherto unknown occurrence with my team – as everyone was conscious every word could be heard, normality returned as the day progressed and I found myself enjoying being in the thick of the payroll action again. Being able to see and hear so much I could make notes of things to pick up with the team, so we could make little improvements. As expected, the Privacy Pods have been a huge success and the free coffee machine inside them really eased the conversations in respect of late payments or pension queries. I confess, I’ve also taken to booking one every now and then just for some quiet when it all gets a bit too ‘Love Island’ in the office. o The Editor: Any resemblance to any payroll manager or professional alive or dead, or any payroll department or organisation whether apparently or actually portrayed in this article is simply fortuitous.
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | July - August 2018 | Issue 42 52
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