The role of psychology

The problem with Ginny is that she's too good. Annoying, yes. But still good. On balance, her sales figures are enough to dampen my chronic irritation with her considerable noise levels, her unannounced and unnecessary claims on my time, and her utter disregard for her colleagues deals-in-process which she takes a perverse pleasure in disrupting by stealing the properties for her own clients at the last minute or hiding information about new apartments until Ginny's own clients match.

In an average month, if her performance is above the median (which is usually is), then Ginny might account for 30% of the monthly turnover. In short, we feel exposed to her over-performance and doubly so as she's been gabbing for the last year about moving to Suriname for a new life (and by the way, her aunt lives there). With a view to binding her into the team here and building a career for the next few years in Amsterdam, Klaas and I have been offering her (OK, begging her) different roles.

"Come on", says Klaas in his most encouraging voice, "make a decision - stay! What's Suriname got to offer if you're not a pensioner or tax exile?"

Pause.

"OK - I quit."

The lesson here is that while psychology has a role to play in persuading someone to stay, go or do something, education also has a role to play in ensuring that the would-be psychologist knows what the heck he is doing. Challenging Ginny was just not the right tactic. Money is her motivator. We should have attempted to buy her. Something like,

"Here's ten thousand Euro - please stay until Christmas."

Does this sound too much like groveling?

Weekly IT update

On asking Marcus – who works one day a week offsite on very tricky IT stuff – for his weekly update, I received the following. After reading it, I wonder which plant he’s from and if he visits very often:

"Well - had some very strange emails in my inbox this morning, which were sent a couple of weeks ago, but I only received today. How's this for a weird chain of events?

The new database functionality sends this to the role/email address “property.manager@...". I tested it yesterday before rolling it out. Turns out I forgot to create that address! No problem, that's why I'm testing, right?

Since there was no such address, it was sent to the Catchall account I set up a week or so ago. I had intended the catchall to be forwarded to it@..., but that wasn't set up. So the catchall account filled up. Since it was full, I received this morning an error that my test mail couldn't be delivered, so I looked into it, and discovered all this. I set up the forward to the it@... address, and now the queue is dumping all the stuff it was holding. Ugh.

End result: more junk mail for me to process... Don't know how to handle better without a new system. We only have 50 email accounts, so I can't leave ex-colleagues active with a "reject" rule....

Hold on, I just figured it out! Create one "Reject" address, and add all ex-employee addresses to that account as aliases. (After a certain time, of course, so that client emails still get to Klaas.) That way bad stuff gets rejected, but "Gelmer" still gets through for processing. Should work.

I've got to do something soon: I've received 50+ such emails already this morning...

-Marcus"

Payroll administration

Great relief yesterday to have administered the payroll. For those on zero variable – like the office manager – there is nothing to do other than check that they are still breathing. It can irk to pay an employee who, had a closer inspection been undertaken, would have been declared officially deceased and a salary check saved. In the case of Charlotte, I need not check her pulse as, surely, she must be alive in order to chat online with MSN Messenger for five of her eight hours per day. The three other hours interspersed with cigarette breaks, coffee breaks, and a long lunch break.

The end of the month payroll for the rental consultants is their recurring opportunity to attempt to persuade me that incomplete, poorly administered deals should be added to their variable remuneration. Sad as this may be, there is nothing to make the heart soar like a neat and complete dossier comprising signed contracts (by both lessee and lessor), passport copies, copy of employment contract, a signed inventory and inspection report...

Why we cannot agree that, if it’s not complete, the variable commission with slide to next month (assuming the deal is then complete)? At least this would be an honest system and I’d respect the consultants the more for being up front. What really bugs me is when, say, Jimmy, presents a handful of deal sheets with canyon-wide holes in them, AWOL documents, incomplete payments, missing signatures and accompanies his pitiful submission with a poorly structured, dreadfully articulated fairy tale in an embarrassing attempt to convince me that:

• Actually, the deals are all complete but that he’s a bit behind on getting the process steps signed off by the relevant party (contracts, finance…); and/or
• OK – fair enough – they are not complete but they will be by two o’clock (mmm… the deadline is 12.00 – same as last month); and/or
• The dossier was complete but someone has removed documents and just wait until he finds out which son-of-a …

Depressed that the consultants think I’m either very stupid or naively nice, I finally manage to get the salary numbers to our book keeper. Cycling home I feel pretty good about the fact that, once again, we are supporting the livelihoods and families of twenty people who, were they not working for me and Frank, would be sleeping under bridges.