Ha ha, this thread takes me back to a time when I worked for Showsec, everything mentioned has happened over the time I was with them, they have a good structure but the way they run it is diabolical, they take on everyone that applies to them so they always have way too many staff which is why the office staff treat the casuals like s**t cos they know if they bin someone over the phone it wont affect operations, because there is too many staff there is never enough shifts to go round, they would be much better off taking on less people and concentrating on getting quality staff then there would be a lot less issues.
They expect you to exclusively work for them even though there is no guarantee of work especially outside festival season, they ring up with 2 hours notice expecting you to be sitting at home in full uniform ready to rush to the other side of town right away and get the hump when you tell them you cant do it, they book you for shifts telling you its sia and then you get there and find its a steward shift, they get the hump when you ask them the rates for the shift and constantly cancel and change or shorten shifts at even shorter notice.
At the festivals they just pick out a number of people from the pens for the task but do not take size/experience/skills in to account so you end up with some brick outhouse with years door experience looking after a gate that no is going to use at the other end of the arena and 2 size 8 females in xxl jackets trying to deal with a baying mob in the front of an arena or around the toilet block, laughable.
They have loads of supervisors and some are good, they can be given 10 people to look after an area of 25 square feet and still f**k it up, people just wander off at festivals and they are never seen again, some of the supervisors disappear too and leaving people out on desolate posting on their own and forgetting about them is commonplace, instead of getting the packed lunches delivered in the morning they are delivered about an hour after everyone is deployed so when it comes to breaktime (30 minutes) you have to walk all the way to logistics from the arena and back to get your lunch, 30 minutes gone, 2 minute to eat.
Everytime I left a major festival or event I thought to myself we got away with it again, I used to look around at the people working with me and think if something major happens we are f**ked...
Payroll and the staff portal work well but the rest of it needs a complete overhaul...