Friday’s Rants from the Soap Box in my Living Room!

Welcome to my Friday’s Rants from the Soap Box in my Living Room. A small space in the week where I can have a chunter about things that have made me twitch with annoyance or made me question if the world has gone mad or not….
I also  linked up with MummyBarrow for her Ranty Friday. You can find her blog and link up here if you’d like to join in. A good rant can be therapeutic.

Is it appropriate to conduct a job appraisal/performance review in public? By public, I mean in a busy cafeteria area, in the local leisure centre, surrounded by people who can hear every word you are saying, about the job appraisal and how you conduct business? I don’t think it is, but maybe I am wrong?

I have started swimming, at our local leisure centre, one afternoon a week, when Big Girl is at school, and Small Boy is with his lovely child-minder for a few hours after I have finished working at our toddler group. I am slowly working up to getting fit and in shape, and swimming is low impact, which is good for me, my knee is taking a bit of work, with starting to run again.

After I had done my 20 lengths (I am aiming to be able to do 40) I decided to treat myself to a coffee. The refreshment area overlooks the swimming pool, and is usually quite busy. I was sitting at a table, in the middle, minding my own business, when two employees of the leisure centre appeared and sat down next to me, at the adjacent table. One, was I assume a manager, and the other a gym employee. They then proceeded to go through a performance review for the gym assistant, and it was fairly scorching, and not in a good way. The manager basically gave him a huge dressing down, told him how crap he was at his job (his words) and put him on a formal warning that if he didn’t improve, he was out of a job. Fine, really, by me, if he really is bad at the job, then of course they have the right to take him to task and warn him, but in PUBLIC? In the cafe area, where we could all hear every word of the conversation. The poor kid looked mortified (he looked very young) and I don’t blame him. He maybe deserved to be told off for not doing his job well, but really, I don’t think it was fair to do it in front of paying customers, and the public?

The also discussed sales strategy and how to “persuade” potential customers to sign on for what seems to me, to be pretty pricey gym memberships etc.  He apparently wasn’t very good at that bit either. From what I gathered, they are supposed to “catch” 2 new sign ups a week, and he had only had 3 since he started working, 3 months ago. Some of their sales tactics were interesting, I won’t be signing up there, any time soon, I can tell you that much!

Inappropriate? I think so. They do have offices, and rooms where this interview could have been conducted. It certainly isn’t  how I would have approached the matter. I wonder if they do it deliberately to pile on even more humiliation to put pressure on staff to perform?

I actually sent the leisure centre an e-mail, telling them about this, and that I really felt it wasn’t appropriate or fair. I haven’t heard back yet.

Am I wrong?