Have been holding off laying off staff. Put low order levels down to snow and ice and felt it definitely wasn’t on to penalise staff for weather conditions when they had made effort to get here.

However, we have had nothing but moans and the standard of work from some people is still way off acceptable. Really cannot see why should dig into pockets if that is the response we get.

A chest which had been returned to us a second time (and therefore under personal inspection and control of line managers) failed to be ready to go out yesterday. Made me beg the question: if between all line managers, with entire staff at their disposal, they couldn’t achieve one chest going out on time, was there any point in us going on with this business at all? No-one had an answer.

This prompted me to call meeting of entire company. Explaining that people would be laid off and that selection would be done on skills, performance and attitude.

Following that meeting, you’d expect some improvement. But today pieces weren’t ready on time for a variety of reasons from a variety of people and – incredibly – the same chest of drawers described above has yet again been rejected by the customer for poor work.

I will have an entirely clear conscience about lay-offs next week. The staff, it would appear, are not remotely bothered.

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