Unravelled

I am in the final fortnight of my employment with Sweatshop Busters Inc. I don’t think I have mentioned my job for a very long time; once I remember it being important enough to merit regular comment. This makes me sad.

In January 2007 I returned from maternity leave to a part-time position which was something of a demotion. The job was no easier; in fact, because I now work in Operations, I find it much more difficult than my Client Account Manager role. I co-ordinate a team of auditors, arrange for them to visit factories all over Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East; find interpreters, hotels, flights etc; forecast a P&L for each trip; and then process the reports they send in. It all sounds so simple, but it rarely comes off as slickly as my job description makes it seem. In the pecking order of our company, schedulers only outrank work order entry clerks, despite the challenging nature of the work. I have tried to do a good job, but I haven’t enjoyed it much.

When I first returned to work, Bernard was still breastfeeding during the day, so I had to express milk on the one day that I was required to go into the office. I know I’m lucky that they allowed me to work from home, and my employers have been really flexible over working times. But as long as I was doing the job, they generally didn’t care. When it came to specifics such as me requiring a private, lockable room to express milk, there was much less enthusiasm. I resorted once to a toilet; once to an unlocked archive room. Then I figured that my milk supply could take one day of not being used every week, which it did. So I gave up the rigmarole. I have been quite literally bullied into attending meetings outside my working hours, more than once.

I am the last person of the original team to leave. When our area manager went on maternity leave last year, a manager was brought in from an office on the other side of the world. A position was created for his wife, as Operations Supervisor. In other words, I suddenly had a direct supervisor here in the UK office with me, instead of answering to the Ops Manager in LA. That meant on the one hand not having to wait days for a response to any problem I might have; and on the other hand being so micromanaged that I have really lost the will to try anymore. Today I have come back from two days’ leave, and it is virtually impossible for me to pick up some of the threads. I find this demotivating in the extreme. I am not trusted to work from home and now have to go into the office twice a week: increased daycare hours for the boy, more expense, more tiring for me.

I also feel like, here on the workfloor, I see the clients and the factories as they really are. I know how reluctant they are to go through this audit process, except where they understand that they give themselves a veneer of respectability by going through a social compliance assessment. I also know how many of the auditors are in the pockets of various factories, and what vastly different standards are applied in different parts of the world. And I am fed, fed, fed up of going back time and time again to explain simple things like why I am not happy to send a single female auditor to Uzbekistan, or a Russian to Latvia, or to attempt to schedule a series of factory visits in Poland at Easter, or France in August. We are an international company with shockingly little comprehension of cultural issues.

I used to think that I was doing some good in this job. Now I feel like I serve one more commercial interest, with hypocritical pretensions towards an ethical stance.