Crikey! Car-hire broker Holiday Autos has been braying in the trade press that its bookings have jumped 40 per cent following the first showing of a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the company. Chairman and chief executive Clive Jacobs claims that he has been inundated with positive letters and even job applications after The Secret Life Of The Office was shown on BBC2.
Er... was he being ironic? Was he joking? Or does he just have loads of sycophantic friends? Anyone who has seen the first two episodes couldn't help being shocked by the close resemblance of the Holiday Autos call centre to a slave galley.
While management denied treating staff like children (despite rules requiring workers to pour the remainder of a Coke can down the sink and crunch it in half before disposal and to refrain from consuming so much as a cough sweet), the staff bitterly complained to the cameras that they were indeed being treated like kids. Worse actually. A six-point email was sent to the headphone brigade commanding them to only leave their desks if they had an official excuse - ie, going to the loo, to lunch or talking to a manager etc. Following the move to a new office they were also banned from displaying personal objects such as pictures and cuddly toys on their desks. Meanwhile a self-satisfied Jacobs was seen swanning around his brand-new luxury office suite admiring the mahogany furniture which had been designed to resemble organ pipes.
Smug board members brainstormed phrases on to a flip chart such as 'can do', 'fair' and 'generous...' to describe their company. You wondered if there was a lift between the ground floor and the boardroom and if they'd ever peeped into the sweatshop office in between. The last thing anyone but a masochist would do is apply for a job on the sales floor (or worse, customer services) after seeing this programme.
Holiday Autos's name will be elevated to household status by this programme, but with mud attached. Whatever your temptations to vanity, letting the cameras in is a risky business. Remember the BBC documentary Holiday Reps? Applications for holiday rep jobs with Sunset Holidays dropped by nearly 50 per cent after that.
I've booked a car many times through Holiday Autos. Their prices are cheap and the service, in my experience, faultless. But watching this programme put me off the company - especially when you saw the hundreds of complaints made each week. Maybe the incidents and dramas portrayed are common to most travel call centres, but seeing this was an illusion shatterer. A bit like when you're walking down the corridor of a posh hotel and a service door swings back, letting you glimpse the rubbish, grubby walls and concrete stairs.
Entrepreneur Clive Jacobs has come a long way in the 15 years or so since he set up Holiday Autos. Before then, many holidaymakers waited until they reached their holiday destination to book a car from a local company rather than booking it beforehand through a broker at discount prices. I don't doubt bookings are going well right now, as there is a mass exodus of people escaping the dreary British summer. But beware the docusoaps. They can bring the curse of Hello! with them and are hard to live down.
