Working as the proprietor of a company such as Well House Consultants is more like being in the army that being in a company in civvie street. That's the startling conclusion we came to at lunch time today, on a course where we have delegates who have been in both.
"When you're in the army, you're really always on duty, even when you're not" they tell me. "You may be on a weekend break, but something happens and your colleague who was supposed to be on duty isn't available, and you get called back in." The parallel - for the "civvie street" job - is that you finish at 5, and then can leave the office and forget about it until 9 O'clock on the next morning.
I confess to being surprised by the comparison; I've really not thought of it like that before, but there is a seed of truth. From a personal viewpoint, we are on call at virtually any time ... but then so is any small business. And from a team viewpoint, staff at any company really do - at least - represent their employer when they're off duty as well as on.
(written 2007-07-31)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
M300 - Well House Manor - Behind the scenes [203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)
[677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
[742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
[769] King Edward VII - days of empire - (2006-06-20)
[813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
[868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
[897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
[927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
[931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
[939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
[951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
[1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
[1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
[1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
[1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
[1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
[1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
[1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
[1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
[1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
[1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
[1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
[1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
[1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
[1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
[1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
[1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
[1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
[1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
[1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
[1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
[1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
[1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
[1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
[2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
[2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
[2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
[2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
[2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
[2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
[2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
[3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
[3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
[3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
[3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
[4302] Sunday is never quiet at Well House Manor - (2014-09-21)
[4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)
Some other Articles
Pure PerlLinux run states, shell special commands, and directory structuresWork and play at Well House Manor - Football and Shell ShortcutsA wasted evening?In the army, or in civvie street?An update on the West Wilts show ...Generating traffic for network testingStringing together Tcl scriptsLatercomer to the technologyWest Wilts - no longer Wet Wilts - show