I knew this was part of the job and at first I liked the idea of the power of it all but now the day was here and the interviewees would be turning up, looking at me hopefully with their big puppy eyes and I’d hold their fate in my hands. It was a big responsibility. Real responsibility. Oh fuck, I thought, what have I got myself into?
The truth of it was that once I’d told Monika what I wanted, it took about a week to get the first interviewee in. UK HQ got back to me and said that the computers and Saj from IT would be with me in about two weeks. Saj would come with two women I knew well from the training department, Stacey and Sharon. They sound like an Essex nightmare but really they were two young and competent businesswomen.
I had got nothing back from the internet company so I set-up the desks or re-arranged them a few times to keep busy then finished my day at 2 pm. I asked Elly if she wanted to play tennis and she did so that afternoon we went and bought the clothes, new shoes of course, rackets and balls. We had to wait until the next morning for a free court but it wasn’t like I was over flowing with work.
The rest of the day was wasted at the pet shop cooing over little animals but I really wasn’t ready to commit to caring for anything yet and I didn’t believe that Elly could do it either. We went to a very generic Asian cuisine restaurant. They advertised it as Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai. I should have known from that that it wasn’t going to be very authentic. It was ok but I think coming from the UK I had been ruined by how fantastic and genuine the foreign food restaurants were.
If I ate carbonara it was by a really Italian who complained about the supermarket versions but then again the Mark and Spencer ready meals were so delicious that you didn’t mind how fake they were or how bad it was for you. I missed the ready meals or the general microwaveable potential in the British supermarket.
There were few ready meals in Poland and I gathered even fewer microwaves but then again the cost of the ready meals were significantly higher than buying the produce and losing half your day cooking for yourself. I had the time and found recipes on the internet so I gave it a crack. I didn’t think it was that bad but Elly was happy when Monika had organized interviews all day Thursday and Friday, meaning she could return to her pizzas or dining out.
I had tried to convince Elly to book us a tennis court so we could continue her learning experience but amazingly she said all the courts were booked up. Am not surprised if am honest because after she insisted that she could play and we spent good money on clothes and equipment we turned up on the Tuesday morning to find ourselves located in ‘the balloon’.
The balloon turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It was an inflated oval shaped tent with a tennis court in the middle. The incessant hum of the air being pumped into our dome was off putting at first but I quickly got used to it. What I couldn’t get used to was how bad Elly was.
She later confessed to having only ever seen tennis being played even though the afternoon before she seemed quite an expert when trying out the gear. She had trouble returning anything even in the warm-up rally and I spent the best part of our two hour block chasing down errant balls. I knew I wasn’t great but I had hoped to build up a little sweat and rivalry on the court and thought that tennis might be something to bond over.
We didn’t really have much and we felt like a very empty relationship. I was searching to find it, to find anything that could be the foundation to build on but instead the roof was being finished before the first floor had been started. I knew I was falling for something in her and she obviously liked spending time with me, she wasn’t a prisoner or anything and I started to realise that maybe there never would be any solid ground.
After the tennis we were both quite. I think she was sulking and I wasn’t that happy either, not to say I was angry or unhappy. In my neutrality I used work as an excuse and when I finally checked in Monika was looking ever so busy.
“I have the applications for your PA.” She said breathlessly.
“Great.” Something to do, not that I needed someone else to take any of my none existent work off my hands.
“Can you sort it into a shortlist of between seven and ten. Try to balance out the shortlist though, you know between men and women, ages, ethnicity?”
She didn’t know though and looked at me as if I’d taken a shit on her desk.
“Ethnicity?”
“Sorry. The different nationalities like Chinese, maybe Indian.”
“We don’t have.” She replied.
“No foreigner applied for the job?” It seemed strange but coming from England to a country which probably had less than 2% foreigners it was completely possible. “Oh, ok then.”
“We had an African apply for other job though.” She seemed very happy now.
“African?” I said hoping she would be more specific than a continent.
“Ok. Too lazy?” She questioned. “I won’t invite him.”
“No.” I protested. “Nothing like that, please do invite him. It is important that you invite him actually. I just wondered were in Africa he was from.”
Her blank look told me I’d be better off reading his CV so I went through his and several other applicants CV’s all of whom were wanting to work in our new customer service section. Monika found me about an hour later with seven CV’s with the diversity of a Justin Bieber fan club.
There were five females and only one was over 25, two males both of whom were 24. I started to look at the CV’s and decided I needed to invite the forty plus year old Beata if for nothing else not to look ageist. Ageism is a bigger issue now than it was back then but Wally had me scared. I invited the two guys and I chose two women whose CV’s seemed to be written in the more readable English.
Monika helpfully arranged for them to drop in throughout Wednesday. I still had no internet but was homing my managerial skills on my favourite computer game, Football Manager. I had decided to start a game in Poland, to get a feel for the place but I quickly abandoned that for the familiar feeling of England.
It felt weird not working, not harrying and harassing for the next sale. I don’t think I could be unemployed or retired for that matter. I needed to occupy my brain and even took up Sudoku but I was still bored. I joined Monika on the balcony for a cigarette and later regularly took up smoking to fill a void for three minutes, that’s how bored I was.
When I got home I was reminded of the morning’s tragedy as the tennis rackets and balls were ominously staring at me from a corner. Elly wasn’t haunted by them and busied herself with any TV show she could find. I made small talk and then jumped in the shower. My attempt at bonding seemed to have backfired but as depressing as that might have been I had a full day of interviews the next day and that lifted my spirits.
Finally, something to sink my teeth into.
I started my day with a very excited guy who called himself ‘Woo-cash’. I wanted to get up and do some stylin and profiling Ric Flair style but I resisted. I kept calling him Luke because to me that is how his name looked and I couldn’t say ‘Woo-cash’ without it sounding like a rapper. He was enthusiastic and full of confidence but he imagined a much grander scenario for my PA than I did so I let him fall into last place.
Next I interviewed Marta then Magdalena who was far too pretty to be given my assistants position so I convinced her to take one of the customer service positions. I met Beata and was underwhelmed by her but at least I gave her a shot and my last guy Paweł was the standout candidate. He was funny, focused, great at English and he had a young family so I knew he was going to be loyal.
In the end I felt like I had done a real day’s work for the first time since I’d landed. I went home with a spring in my step and the promise of returning to two more days filled with interviews. Paweł was going to start straight away and would help organize the candidates for the customer services jobs, again mainly young females.
I had planned a simple test. For each candidate I’d run through a call flowchart then have a little chat with them about their history, studies, ambitions etc and then do it again. If they seemed coachable I would give them a try and since I wanted to hire about twenty for training with only twelve full time places I knew I could trim the fat latter.
The last two days of the week flew by and I was feeling really good about myself on Friday. I think part of my good mood was because of an early morning exchange with Paweł.
“You’re already here.” I said surprised when I arrived an hour earlier than expected at the office.
“Yes.” He said proudly. “It is my personality to be coming early.”
“I bet your wife isn’t happy about that.” I smirked.
“She knows my behaviours and accepts them.” He said sternly.
I think the whole thing went over his head but it put a spring in my step.
Unfortunately he had set himself up in my office and I had hoped to watch a few episodes of South Park on my laptop in peace. What the hell though, we sat down and sifted through the days applicants and he was very interested in why people were chosen or not chosen from Thursday’s interviews. I explained my method, my madness and that like everything else it was subjective. Now I had some team members I needed others who’d fit in with them. I also explained that if I had made a mistake I could rectify it in the trimming down phase.
He looked at me as if I was a newborn. He saw that when you got a job in England you turned up for it but holding back his condescending tone he explained that in Poland, even though people shake your hand and promise they’ll come, hell most of the time you are doing them a huge favour, they don’t. I nodded and smiled and asked Monika and she confirmed Paweł’s version of Polish recruitment. I must admit I was taken aback.
I thought I had the power.
I thought I would have been the one to do the hiring and firing. It turned out that it was more of a negotiation in Poland than in the UK. I finished up Friday back in the good mood that I’d started it with and was confident in the team I’d put together.
I had a week with them before the UK team arrived and when they came, the crew, my team, finally had computers.
The UK weren’t sure about my team’s ability. For the whole time Stacey and Sharon were in Poland they just trained the team. Saj tried to configure the network to get the computers operable. He thought he had it fixed then something I had no idea about happened and everything failed. I was beginning to see that a good team would be sat on their arses unless the technology worked. All the things we took for granted, we needed to work without putting any effort it to them, all the services we paid for, all these small insignificant things could stop everything else unless they were properly looked after. It was the sort of thing somebody else had to think about until you became the boss.