It's Lunch Time! For Half the Team?

Talez — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:38:41 -0800

How do you deal with a boss that brushes you off when you offer a better solution to a problem when their solution has rather large and obvious holes in it? We've gotten a new team leader as of late who's quite young and inexperienced in the workforce in general. As a result of the front-line staff goofballs screwing up lunch times he's decided to implement a lunch schedule.

The only problem is that we're a small call centre department with only a few people and if the first person runs late it means we possibly have half of our team out of the call queue on their lunch break. I noticed this pretty much immediately and devised an alternative table which would result in a maximum of 2 people ever being out on lunch which has no difference in the amount of time people are out on lunch in total.

Me: Here you go. How about this?
Him: It'd be unfair on our new team member and this has a maximum of 3 front line staff in the queue.
Me: Ok then switch him to an earlier lunch and this experienced person to a later lunch? And that schedule can have the potential of only one front-line staff member in the queue.
Him: It wouldn't kill you, [other experienced staff member] and the mail shift [who doesn't answer calls until they've been waiting 45 seconds] to take some calls.
Me: Yes and we don't mind taking calls but if you're relying on our mail shift to answer calls as a last resort you're damaging the percentage of calls answered in 15 seconds stat.
Him: Well then the first person won't be late for lunch.

Now I've spoken to the supervisor who has basically told me "He's new and under a lot of pressure. Don't make his life difficult" and I agree to some extent. But I just can't shake that it's extremely inefficient, customer service will suffer and that he's just shooting himself in the foot when it comes time to justify why the stats look so crappy from 12-1.

Is there any way that I can get it through to him without rocking the boat?

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It's Lunch Time! For Half the Team?