This morning, a representative of our employment agency passed along the substance of an email from a contractor she did identify reporting a rise in pranks, trash, and other "slack behavior" since the client's supervising staff have not been on-site.
From what I've seen, the pranks have not been at anyone's expense (though the nametag "Jose Cuervo" was disappointingly unclever, and that just hurts all of us). Telling these persons (or unpersons), to stop will probably only make their activities more intriguing and outrageous, like cutting the heads off of parking meters. However, I would caution them to make sure it won't be anything that our client would frown on. Think things through, then doublethink them. Like my big brother used to say, "Don't give them rope to hang ya with." Maybe instead of an outer party, make it an inner party.
The only trash I've seen has been the overflowing boxes of paper to be recycled. I took several of those boxes out yesterday. I know one person wads his waste paper and shoots for the box. Despite his commendable shooting percentage, I'd ask to make sure he picks up his own rebounds. Recycling isn't on our client's priority list, but I think it's something worthwhile for us to do. We'll try to make it prettier.
As for "slack behavior", we've seen no decrease in productivity, which I think in part is due not to "slack" but some relative de-stressing over the past several weeks, some of which, in turn, I attribute to a little levity. I will ask that you use your inside voices when chatting with each other, though. Some of our neighbors are very loud, and we don't want to be like them.
Still, we don't want anyone reporting it again to our agency representative and making her have to deal with it, Or, well, to the client. I will say that I was disappointed to find that it was someone on my team, and disappointed that the person didn't think they could come talk to me about it. If anyone has an issue with the work environment, I encourage them to, old employee or new, speak to me about it.
Thanks for your attention and cooperation.
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