In order to get more work out of his employees Paul decided that the National Hire Service should be functioning seven days a week so there was no interruption in service. Whilst the drivers agreed that this would be beneficial to the customers, they pointed out that this would require a large increase in funding and manpower - about 40% in fact: a jump from five to seven days.
"There's no extra money," said Paul. "But it's the right thing to do so you need to do it."
The drivers were not best pleased with this attitude but did their best to produce a plan to enact this new way of working.
They felt inherently that all this had not been properly thought out. This feeling was confirmed when they found a memo from Paul's office that a manager had left lying around. It read:
Ten consequences of 7-day working
1. An application will be made to the OED to remove the word ‘weekend’ from the English language as it will no longer be necessary – each day being entirely interchangeable with any other. (In time, we will also apply to have the phrase ‘work-life balance’ expunged, as well as the word ‘happiness’).
2. Funds are being set aside to counter a legal suit from TGI Friday’s, who are contesting that this initiative will ruin their business model.
3. In a similar vein, NatWest, Lloyds, Barclays and RBOS are preparing to sue against this removal of Bank Holidays from the calendar.
4. It is unclear whether there will be a decline in the ‘Monday Morning Blues’ or whether these could instead simply be experienced on any day and thus increase.
5. The Christmas and Easter festivals will no longer be necessary.
6. There will be no point in naming the days of the week any longer so they will therefore be referred to as the number of the day in the year. Thus for example, the 1st of February 2015 will be known as Day 32, 2015. This will foster the conformity required in the National Hire Service and remove the ability to hanker for old style weekends.
7. Drivers will be permitted to carry photographs of their families as it is recognised that they will be seeing them much less frequently.
8. As no school will be adopting this 7-day working principle, we must guard against unreasonable requests from the drivers to offer childcare on (old-style) Saturdays and Sundays when they are working but their children remain unattended. It is for the individual to arrange such matters.
9. Clearly the next step in this programme is to treat day and night as the same as well with no distinction being drawn between the two, thus enabling a round-the-clock service to run. For the purposes of this project, the rotation of the sun and moon should be ignored.
10. Similarly, we need to ignore the fact that the rest of the world continues to work using the archaic five-day week. There is no need for the National Hire Service to be hidebound by tradition, nor indeed by common sense.
Signed: PAUL
(NB: All managers are exempt from the 7-day directive).
