Give her a break

Gill, my wife, works as a locum pharmacist. The other day she arrived at one of the large supermarkets (J Sainsbury) where she sometimes works, to find that the pharmacy kettle had disappeared. She found it in a cupboard with a tape stuck over it saying "do not use."

There was a note explaining that all electrical equipment in the store needed to be checked before it could be used. A check would cost £200 and, since new kettles were on sale in the store at £20, the management had withdrawn the kettle from use. Staff were being asked to use the canteen instead.

All well and good if you have breaks built in to your work. But this isn't the deal with locum pharmacists. If they take a break the pharmacy must shut down - since the presence of a pharmacist is a legal requirement - and the supermarket, which has a contract to provide 100 hours a week pharmacy cover, doesn't want that to happen.

So Gill must work the whole shift without a break and now, it seems, without a cup of tea. She used the kettle all the same. What else can you do when faced with such ridiculous measures?

These are the sort of everyday issues in the workplace that never come to the attention of the boardroom. They were the sort of "petty" things that led to strikes in the past when unions were stronger. Except they are not petty. These are basic issues that matter to people. Every employee should have an opportunity for a break

Recruitment just became sexy

Everyone, it seems, had an opinion on the latest series of The Apprentice. Suddenly we all have something to say on recruitment. After 14 years my patch has just become sexy. It's been a long wait.

After reading many of the comments I decided the subject had been flogged to death so have avoided it in my upcoming Thursday FT column which, instead, will have more to say on social networking.

I do, however, have some sympathy with the comments on CV cheating in this item on the Recruitment and Employment Confederation website. It doesn't say much for the recruitment industry when one of their own is caught out in this way.

A curse on work or an online aid to collaboration?

I don't know much about Zappos.com except that it is an online shoe retailer and that every member of the Zappos staff has a presence on Twitter.com, a social networking site. Why, you may ask? Social networking sites burn time among company employees. They must be banned.

If you have time to switch channels for a minute to the Donkin Life blog you can see the raw product of some discussion after my first attempts at twittering (although some may argue I've been practicing all my life). Jon Ingham and David Creelman make some interesting points. Note Jon's point that the Zappo twitterers (or tweaters) also include customers. Imagine the power of constant customer-employee dialogue. Just like it used to be before companies discovered the economies of online business.