Is there really a bike shop called W. S. Atkins? Let's hope that their standards are somewhat higher than those of the bunch of sharks posing as civil engineers who rejoice under the same name.
Don't blame the staff. My sister has been employed by that firm, but she never applied for a job with it. Takeovers & outsourcing . . . . and once you have the job, you have to choose whether to stick with it when the bosses do something you disapprove of.
I was employed by Crapita once, & found myself allied with my colleagues in trying to provide a decent service despite senior management. A customer once told us that he had been told by our management that something he knew was due to decisions taken by them* was due to failings by the staff doing the work, i.e. us, & he & his colleagues had felt they had to defend us.
Sometimes the people on the shop floor are crap just because they're like that, but often they're being crap because of the position they're put in, despite themselves.
*The contract meant that his organisation had sight of many internal Crapita documents relating to how their service was provided.
