I had to laugh – or am I the laughing stock?

Tweet

As I’ve mentioned before I sometimes do events work. Today I was working at a finance conference at a posh hotel. I was one of three staff sent by the agency I usually work for. One was a woman in her late thirties, let’s call her Carol. The other was a young man of 18; we’ll call him Neville. We were due to start at 8 am so we were asked to arrive ten to 15 minutes beforehand. I was taking Little One to school so I was a bit late; I rushed in apologetically at 7:59 am. But then I found I was the only one there, the others didn’t show up until 8:25. We put out coffee and pastries for the delegates, but then once they had gone into their first session there wasn’t much to do. Still I believed it was my duty to at least look and act professionally, and keep an eye out in case anyone looked as if they needed anything, or things needed clearing up, but it seemed I was the only one. Carol and Neville lounged on a sofa chatting loudly, in a room set aside for the conference delegates. At least Carol looked presentable but Neville had his crumpled shirt half hanging out of a pair of casual trousers with an elasticated waistband, and his underpants clearly visible above it. And he sprawled spreadeagled on the sofa as if he was in front of the TV at home. This pretty much set the pattern for the whole day. Neville would say yes to everything but then either not bother to do it or do it in a very slap-dash way, while Carol would say she couldn’t do things because she didn’t know where they were, couldn’t find whatever was needed, or just didn’t want to do whatever because it was too hard. Both of them continually complained their backs ached, their legs were tired and their feet hurt. Carol told us both she’s been going to women’s strength training classes and how refreshing it was to see women building strength rather than trying to be as skinny as possible. But then when the event leader (a young woman called Sophie) asked us to clear away the chafing dishes used to keep the lunch dishes warm she said she couldn’t do it as they were too heavy. Sophie looked a bit disgruntled and actually said that she had carried them all down there herself, but I guess you can’t force people to do things… I carried them instead. After that we were given a bag and asked to clear all the paper (schedules, name labels etc.) off the tables. Carol was ‘helping’ but she just chucked used napkins, food wrappers etc. in there as well and when I said that we were supposed to be collecting just paper she said ‘Sorry I wasn’t really paying attention’ but then proceeded to throw some more rubbish in the bag anyway! Meanwhile when Neville was asked to move some water glasses he slammed them down on the marble counter top and when one broke he seemed surprised and said ‘the glass just broke’ like he had nothing to do with it! And all the while Carol and Neville were sympathising with each other over their treatment and saying that they shouldn’t be treated that way and that they needed a massage. When we were chatting later as we did some other preparations and I commented that I thought poor spelling looked unprofessional especially in an educational establishment, they both disagreed and made me feel like I was a total dinosaur! So now I’m wondering whether this sort of behaviour is just what counts as normal in the modern workplace, and even if you’ve paid a fortune to hold an event in an expensive hotel you can’t expect the staff to actually do anything strenuous or look smart or attend to your needs. Maybe I’m just sadly old fashioned. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.