December 19th 2015

Today my sister and matriarch of the family informed me that her son, Mark, was enjoying an infestation of mice. She asked me what he should do about it. The irony is that recently we were in a position to supply cats to half the country. Be that as it may the question of pest control is one which holds salutary lessons in memory for the Prodigal.

At a time when the consideration of boosting the Prodigal’s income was pivotal it was suggested that the international firm of Rentokil was looking for new recruits to carry on and expand the business of mouse murder in the interest of providing a service to those who had statutory responsibilities in this regard. Being flexible in outlook I applied for the position and despite being more than twice the age of all other candidates I secured the position.

My first venture into private enterprise where the company was calling the shots. At that time the Rentokil organisation had more than 100,000 employees worldwide and was regarded as a serious entity within the business community, globally. To recall the history of my term within the company would astound, not least because of the wholesale corruption and defrauding of the customers clients which was endemic. The wages were generous albeit contingent to some extent on the ability to attract new customers.

Most of the staff at functional level had no clue as to what they might be doing, expected to do or qualified to do. This wasn’t important; nothing was, except to deliver results which had no basis in reality but which fitted on the page of corporate performance.

Just one example! Many of our clients were statutory bodies including County Councils, Corus Iompar Eireann, the Electricity Supply Board and Government Departments. These were treated as cash cows and frequency or quality of service was not an issue since nobody on the customer side gave a shit.

For instance I inherited the pest control contract for looking after the signal cabin, the offices, the sidings and the Gantry yard at CIE in Mullingar, Longford and a multitude of railway crossings and depots all over the midlands. On my first couple of visits I discovered that service was non-existent. The technician responsible for maintenance would arrive on site, say everything was in order without checking, and get the maintenance log signed by a member of staff; job done. Payee; taxpayer!

In Mullingar CIE alone the time allocated to complete the task was five hours while the time spent by my predecessors was five minutes. Five hours was the charge and this was repeated all over the country.

I joined the company in September 2004 and lasted two whole years. The fraud, extortion, intimidation and abuse I witnessed in the interim was astounding. No member of staff ever complained.

To raise your head above the parapet was to lose it. Promotion was a joke! If you came ‘on the job’ as we say as a trainee technician and satisfied the powers that be in terms of responding to the individual requirements of one in power then the sky was the limit in terms of promotion and advancement in the company. Corruption such as this I had never previously encountered and while not naïve I was amazed.

The diligent worker had a serious problem. If your performance measured, reflected the fact that you were on top of your ‘portfolio’ and could complete the tasks designated in the allotted time then you were always assigned additional duties. If on the other hand, you were a slacker or inefficient, you were ignored. This meant that the efficient were penalised by the allocation of additional area or workload and the non-performers were given assistance in the field. The non-performers of course were briefed on their answers before any questions were asked at team meetings which were very rare and only for cosmetic purposes.

I spent two years at this crack getting more and more frustrated at the treatment of decent staff and the injustice of screwing good customers to finance the lifestyles of senior executives in Rentokil Ireland who didn’t give a corporate shit about staff, service or customers. In the first instance of rebellion I complained to the Area Manager who was seriously incompetent and I attempted to make a genuine effort to improve matters all over the shop. She contacted her boss who gave her instructions on how mistakes should be handled. It was apparent that he was going to cover her arse which was already apparent anyway. Matters developed and it became obvious that the company was unimpressed with questions that might merit an answer.

While I enjoyed the job I disliked being taken advantage of and I decided that it was time to make a stand. But how? If my excellent performance meant that the office figures per quarter were justifying the existence of corrupt management and subsiding non-performers then what was the remedy.  How could the situation be best described? Unfair, to put it at its mildest. Unfair, that was the key word and I checked it in the dictionary. The answer is always in the word book!