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 [4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)
[4302] Sunday is never quiet at Well House Manor - (2014-09-21)
[3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
[3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
[3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
[3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
[2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
[2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
[2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
[2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
[2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
[2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
[2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
[1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
[1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
[1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
[1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
[1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
[1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
[1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
[1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
[1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
[1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
[1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
[1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
[1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
[1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
[1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
[1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
[1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
[1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
[1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
[1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
[1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
[1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
[1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
[951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
[939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
[931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
[927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
[897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
[868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
[813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
[769] King Edward VII - days of empire - (2006-06-20)
[742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
[677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
[203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)
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